A Yiddish Version of King Lear, at the Pavilion Theatre, Mile End, East London, 1906.

Jacob Gordin (1853-1909) completed "Der Yidisher Kenig Lir" in 1892. He was born in the Ukraine, but emigrated to New York in 1891. Jacob Gordin adapted his script from Shakespeare and the Russian writer Nikolai Leskov's "King Lear of the Steppe", and he set it in 19th century Russia, establishing a new kind of realism in local Yiddish drama. Jacob Adler (1855-1926) played the Lear role in New York before appearing in London as David Moschles, "the modern King Lear," a version ending happily like Nahum Tate's. Adler was popularly known as "the Jewish Irving" and his Shylock was equally famous. The photograph appeared in The Sketch, 22 August, 1906 (courtesy of the JISC East London Theatre Archive project, via JISC Collections Open Education User Licence version 1.0).