Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) Part 1

Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709).

by Nicholas Rowe.

_INTRODUCTION._

The Rowe-Tonson edition of Shakespeare's plays (1709) is an important event in the history of both Shakespeare studies and English literary criticism. Though based substantially on the Fourth Folio (1685), it is the first, "edited" edition: Rowe modernized spelling and punctuation and quietly made a number of sensible emendations. It is the first edition to include _dramatis personae_, the first to attempt a systematic division of all the plays into acts and scenes, and the first to give to scenes their distinct locations. It is the first of many ill.u.s.trated editions. It is the first to abandon the clumsy folio format and to attempt to bring the plays within reach of the understanding and the pocketbooks of the average reader. Finally, it is the first to include an extended life and critique of the author.

Shakespeare scholars from Pope to the present have not been kind to Rowe either as editor or as critic; but all eighteenth-century editors accepted many of his emendations, and the biographical material that he and Betterton a.s.sembled remained the basis of all accounts of the dramatist until the scepticism and scholars.h.i.+p of Steevens and Malone proved most of it to be merely dubious tradition. Johnson, indeed, spoke generously of the edition. In the _Life of Rowe_ he said that as an editor Howe "has done more than he promised; and that, without the pomp of notes or the boast of criticism, many pa.s.sages are happily restored."

The preface, in his opinion, "cannot be said to discover much profundity or penetration." But he acknowledged Rowe's influence on Shakespeare's reputation. In our own century, more justice has been done Rowe, at least as an editor.[1]

The years 1709-14 were of great importance in the growth of Shakespeare's reputation. As we shall see, the plays as well as the poems, both authentic and spurious, were frequently printed and bought.

With the pa.s.sing of the seventeenth-century folios and the occasional quartos of acting versions of single plays, Shakespeare could find a place in libraries and could be intimately known by hundreds who had hitherto known him only in the theater. Tonson's business ac.u.men made Shakespeare available to the general reader in the reign of Anne; Rowe's editorial, biographical, and critical work helped to make him comprehensible within the framework of contemporary taste.

When Rowe's edition appeared twenty-four years had pa.s.sed since the publication of the Fourth Folio. As Allardyce Nicoll has shown, Tonson owned certain rights in the publication of the plays, rights derived ultimately from the printers of the First Folio. Precisely when he decided to publish a revised octavo edition is not known, nor do we know when Rowe accepted the commission and began his work. McKerrow has plausibly suggested that Tonson may have been anxious to call attention to his rights in Shakespeare on the eve of the pa.s.sage of the copyright law which went into effect in April, 1710.[2] Certainly Tonson must have felt that he was adding to the prestige which his publis.h.i.+ng house had gained by the publication of Milton and Dryden's Virgil.

In March 1708/9 Tonson was advertising for materials "serviceable to [the] Design" of publis.h.i.+ng an edition of Shakespeare's works in six volumes octavo, which would be ready "in a Month." There was a delay, however, and it was on 2 June that Tonson finally announced: "There is this day Publish'd ... the Works of Mr. William Shakespear, in six Vols.

8vo. adorn'd with Cuts, Revis'd and carefully Corrected: With an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author, by N. Rowe, Esq; Price 30s."

Subscription copies on large paper, some few to be bound in nine volumes, were to be had at his shop.[3]

The success of the venture must have been immediately apparent. By 1710 a second edition, identical in t.i.tle page and typography with the first, but differing in many details, had been printed,[4] followed in 1714 by a third in duodecimo. This so-called second edition exists in three issues, the first made up of eight volumes, the third of nine. In all three editions the spurious plays were collected in the last volume, except in the third issue of 1714, in which the ninth volume contains the poems.

That other publishers sensed the profits in Shakespeare is evident from the activities of Edmund Curll and Bernard Lintot. Curll acted with imagination and promptness: within three weeks of the publication of Tonson's edition, he advertised as Volume VII of the works of Shakespeare his forthcoming volume of the poems. This volume, misdated 1710 on the t.i.tle page, seems to have been published in September 1709.

A reprint with corrections and some emendations of the Cotes-Benson Poems _Written By Wil. Shake-speare. Gent._, 1640, it contains Charles Gildon's "Essay on the Art, Rise, and Progress of the Stage in _Greece_, _Rome_, and _England_," his "Remarks" on the separate plays, his "References to Cla.s.sic Authors," and his glossary. With great shrewdness Curll produced a volume uniform in size and format with Rowe's edition and equipped with an essay which opens with an attack on Tonson for printing doubtful plays and for attempting to disparage the poems through envy of their publisher. This attack was certainly provoked by the curious final paragraph of Rowe's introduction, in which he refused to determine the genuineness of the 1640 poems. Obviously Tonson was perturbed when he learned that Curll was publis.h.i.+ng the poems as an appendix to Rowe's edition.

Once again a Shakespearian publication was successful, and Tonson incorporated the Curll volume into the third issue of the 1714 edition, having apparently come to some agreement with Curll, since the t.i.tle page of Volume IX states that it was "Printed for J. Tonson, E. Curll, J. Pemberton, and K. Sanger." In this edition Gildon omitted his offensive remarks about Tonson, as well as the "References to Cla.s.sic Authors," in which he had suggested topics treated by both the ancients and Shakespeare. This volume was revised by George Sewell and appeared in appropriate format as an addition to Pope's Shakespeare, 1723-25.

Meanwhile, in July, 1709, Lintot had begun to advertise his edition of the poems, which was expanded in 1710/11 to include the sonnets in a second volume.[5] Thus within a year of the publication of Rowe's edition, all of Shakespeare, as well as some spurious works, was on the market. With the publication of these volumes, Shakespeare began to pa.s.s rapidly into the literary consciousness of the race. And formal criticism of his writings inevitably followed.

Rowe's "Some Account of the Life, &c. of Mr. William Shakespear,"

reprinted with a very few trifling typographical changes in 1714, survived in all the important eighteenth-century editions, but it was never reprinted in its original form. Pope re-arranged the material, giving it a more orderly structure and omitting pa.s.sages that were obviously erroneous or that seemed outmoded.[6] It is odd that all later eighteenth-century editors seem to have believed that Pope's revision was actually Rowe's own re-writing of the _Account_ for the 1714 edition. Theobald did not reprint the essay, but he used and amplified Rowe's material in his biography of Shakespeare; Warburton, of course, reprinted Pope's version, as did Johnson, Steevens, and Malone. Both Steevens and Malone identified the Pope revision as Rowe's.[7]

Thus it came about that Rowe's preface in its original form was lost from sight during the entire eighteenth century. Even in the twentieth, Pope's revision has been printed with the statement that it is taken "from the second edition (1714), slightly altered from the first edition of 1709."[8] Only D. Nichol Smith has republished the original essay in his _Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare_, 1903.

The biographical part of Rowe's _Account_ a.s.sembled the few facts and most of the traditions still current about Shakespeare a century after his death. It would be easy for any undergraduate to distinguish fact from legend in Rowe's preface; and scholars.h.i.+p since Steevens and Malone has demonstrated the unreliability of most of the local traditions that Betterton reported from Warwicks.h.i.+re. Antiquarian research has added a vast amount of detail about the world in which Shakespeare lived and has raised and answered questions that never occurred to Rowe; but it has recovered little more of the man himself than Rowe knew.

The critical portions of Rowe's account look backward and forward: backward to the Restoration, among whose critical controversies the eighteenth-century Shakespeare took shape; and forward to the long succession of critical writings that, by the end of the century, had secured for Shakespeare his position as the greatest of the English poets. Until Dryden and Rymer, criticism of Shakespeare in the seventeenth century had been occasional rather than systematic. Dryden, by his own acknowledgement, derived his enthusiasm for Shakespeare from Davenant, and thus, in a way, spoke for a man who had known the poet.

Shakespeare was constantly in his mind, and the critical problems that the plays raised in the literary milieu of the Restoration constantly fascinated him. Rymer's attack served to solidify opinion and to force Shakespeare's admirers to examine the grounds of their faith. By 1700 a conventional manner of regarding Shakespeare and the plays had been achieved.

The growth of Shakespeare's reputation during the century after his death is a familiar episode in English criticism. Bentley has demonstrated the dominant position of Jonson up to the end of the century.[9] But Jonson's reputation and authority worked for Shakespeare and helped to shape, a critical att.i.tude toward the plays. His official praise in the first Folio had declared Shakespeare at least the equal of the ancients and the very poet of nature. He had raised the issue of Shakespeare's learning, thus helping to emphasize the idea of Shakespeare as a natural genius; and in the _Discoveries_ he had blamed his friend for too great facility and for bombast.

In his commendatory sonnet in the Second Folio (1632), Milton took the Jonsonian view of Shakespeare, whose "easy numbers" he contrasted with "slow-endeavouring Art," and readers of the poems of 1645 found in _L'Allegro_ an early formulation of what was to become the stock comparison of the two great Jacobean dramatists in the lines about Jonson's "learned sock" and Shakespeare, "Fancy's child." This contrast became a constant theme in Restoration allusions to the two poets.

Two other early critical ideas were to be elaborated in the last four decades of the century. In the first Folio Leonard Digges had spoken of Shakespeare's "fire and fancy," and I.M.S. had written in the Second Folio of his ability to move the pa.s.sions. Finally, throughout the last half of the century, as Bentley has shown, Shakespeare was admired above all English dramatists for his ability to create characters, of whom Falstaff was the most frequently mentioned.

All of these opinions were developed in Dryden's frequent critical remarks on his favorite dramatist. No one was more clearly aware than he of the faults of the "divine Shakespeare" as they appeared in the new era of letters that Dryden himself helped to shape. And no man ever praised Shakespeare more generously. For Dryden Shakespeare was the greatest of original geniuses, who, "taught by none," laid the foundations of English drama; he was a poet of bold imagination, especially gifted in "magick" or the supernatural, the poet of nature, who could dispense with "art," the poet of the pa.s.sions, of varied characters and moods, the poet of large and comprehensive soul. To him, as to most of his contemporaries, the contrast between Jonson and Shakespeare was important: the one showed what poets ought to do; the other what untutored genius can do. When Dryden praised Shakespeare, his tone became warmer than when he judicially appraised Jonson.

Like most of his contemporaries Dryden did not heed Jonson's caveat that, despite his lack of learning, Shakespeare did have art. He was too obsessed with the idea that Shakespeare, ignorant of the health-giving art of the ancients, was infected with the faults of his age, faults that even Jonson did not always escape. Shakespeare was often incorrect in grammar; he frequently sank to flatness or soared into bombast; his wit could be coa.r.s.e and low and too dependent on puns; his plot structure was at times faulty, and he lacked the sense for order and arrangement that the new taste valued. All this he could and did admit, and he was impressed by the learning and critical standards of Rymer's attack. But like Samuel Johnson he was not often p.r.o.ne to subst.i.tute theory for experience, and like most of his contemporaries he felt Shakespeare's power to move and to convince. Perhaps the most trenchant expression of his final stand in regard to Shakespeare and to the whole art of poetry is to be found in his letter to Dennis, dated 3 March, 1693/4. Shakespeare, he said, had genius, which is "alone a greater Virtue ... than all the other Qualifications put together." He admitted that all the faults pointed out by Rymer are real enough, but he added a question that removed the discussion from theory to immediate experience: "Yet who will read Mr. Rym[er] or not read Shakespear?" When Dryden died in 1700, the age of Jonson had pa.s.sed and the age of Shakespeare was about to begin.

The Shakespeare of Rowe's _Account_ is in most essentials the Shakespeare of Restoration criticism, minus the consideration of his faults. As Nichol Smith has observed, Dryden and Rymer were continually in Rowe's mind as he wrote. It is likely that Smith is correct in suspecting in the _Account_ echoes of Dryden's conversation as well as of his published writings;[10] and the respect in which Rymer was then held is evident in Rowe's desire not to enter into controversy with that redoubtable critic and in his inability to refrain from doing so.

If one reads the _Account_ in Pope's neat and tidy revision and then as Rowe published it, one is impressed with its Restoration quality. It seems almost deliberately modelled on Dryden's prefaces, for it is loosely organized, discursive, intimate, and it even has something of Dryden's contagious enthusiasm. Rowe presents to his reader the Restoration Shakespeare: the original genius, the ant.i.thesis of Jonson, the exception to the rule and the instance that diminishes the importance of the rules. Shakespeare "lived under a kind of mere light of nature," and knowing nothing of the rules should not be judged by them. Admitting the poor plot structure and the neglect of the unities, except in an occasional play, Rowe concentrates on Shakespeare's virtues: his images, "so lively, that the thing he would represent stands full before you, and you possess every part of it;" his command over the pa.s.sions, especially terror; his magic; his characters and their "manners."

Bentley has demonstrated statistically that the Restoration had little appreciation of the romantic comedies. And yet Rowe, so thoroughly saturated with Restoration criticism, lists character after character from these plays as instances of Shakespeare's ability to depict the manners. Have we perhaps here a response to Shakespeare read as opposed to Shakespeare seen? Certainly the romantic comedies could not stand the test of the critical canons so well as did the _Merry Wives_ or even _Oth.e.l.lo_; and they were not much liked on the stage. But it seems probable that a generation which read French romances would not have felt especially hostile to the romantic comedies when read in the closet. Rowe's criticism is so little original, so far from idiosyncratic, that it is unnecessary to a.s.sume that his response to the characters in the comedies is unique.

Be that as it may, it was well that at the moment when the reading public began rapidly to expand in England, Tonson should have made Shakespeare available in an attractive and convenient format; and it was a happy choice that brought Rowe to the editors.h.i.+p of these six volumes.

As poet, playwright, and man of taste, Rowe was admirably fitted to introduce Shakespeare to a mult.i.tude of new readers. Relatively innocent of the technical duties of an editor though he was, he none the less was capable of accomplis.h.i.+ng what proved to be his historic mission: the easy re-statement of a view of Shakespeare which Dryden had earlier articulated and the demonstration that the plays could be read and admired despite the objections of formal dramatic criticism. He is more than a chronological predecessor of Pope, Johnson, and Morgann. The line is direct from Shakespeare to Davenant, to Dryden, to Rowe; and he is an organic link between this seventeenth-century tradition and the increasingly rich Shakespeare scholars.h.i.+p and criticism that flowed through the eighteenth century into the romantic era.

_Notes_

[Footnote 1: Alfred Jackson, "Rowe's edition of Shakespeare," _Library_ X (1930), 455-473; Allardyce Nicoll, "The editors of Shakespeare from first folio to Malone," _Studies in the first Folio_, London (1924), pp.

158-161; Ronald B. McKerrow, "The treatment of Shakespeare's text by his earlier editors, 1709-1768," _Proceedings of the British Academy_, XIX (1933), 89-122; Augustus Ralli, _A history of Shakespearian criticism_, London, 1932; Herbert S. Robinson, _English Shakespearian criticism in the eighteenth century_, New York, 1932.]

[Footnote 2: Nicoll, _op. cit._, pp. 158-161; McKerrow, _op. cit._, p.

93.]

[Footnote 3: London _Gazette_, From Monday March 14 to Thursday March 17, 1708, and From Monday May 30 to Thursday June 2, 1709. For descriptions and collations of this edition, see A. Jackson, _op. cit._; H.L. Ford, _Shakespeare 1700-1740_, Oxford (1935), pp. 9, 10; _TLS_ 16 May, 1929, p. 408; Edward Wagenknecht, "The first editor of Shakespeare," _Colophon_ VIII, 1931. According to a writer in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ (LVII, 1787, p. 76), Rowe was paid thirty-six pounds, ten s.h.i.+llings by Tonson.]

[Footnote 4: Identified and described by McKerrow, _TLS_ 8 March, 1934, p. 168. See also Ford, _op. cit._, pp. 11, 12.]

[Footnote 5: The best discussion of the Curll and Lintot Poems is that of Hyder Rollins in _A new variorum edition of Shakespeare: the poems_, Philadelphia and London (1938) pp. 380-382, to which I am obviously indebted. See also Raymond M. Alden, "The 1710 and 1714 texts of Shakespeare's poems," _MLN_ x.x.xI (1916), 268-274; and Ford, _op. cit._, pp. 37-40.]

[Footnote 6: For example, he dropped out Rowe's opinion that Shakespeare had little learning; the reference to Dryden's view as to the date of Pericles; the statement that _Venus and Adonis_ is the only work that Shakespeare himself published; the identification of Spenser's "pleasant w.i.l.l.y" with Shakespeare; the account of Jonson's grudging att.i.tude toward Shakespeare; the attack on Rymer and the defence of _Oth.e.l.lo_; and the discussion of the Davenant-Dryden _Tempest_, together with the quotation from Dryden's prologue to that play.]

[Footnote 7: Edmond Malone, _The plays and poems of William Shakespeare_, London (1790), I, 154. Difficult as it is to believe that so careful a scholar as Malone could have made this error, it is none the less true that he observed the omission of the pa.s.sage on "pleasant w.i.l.l.y" and stated that Rowe had obviously altered his opinion by 1714.]

[Footnote 8: Beverley Warner, _Famous introductions to Shakespeare's plays_, New York (1906), p. 6.]

[Footnote 9: Gerald E. Bentley, _Shakespeare and Jonson_, Chicago (1945). Vol. I.]

[Footnote 10: D. Nichol Smith, _Eighteenth century essays on Shakespeare_, Glasgow (1903), pp. xiv-xv.]

The writer wishes to express his appreciation of a Research Grant from the University of Minnesota for the summer of 1948, during which this introduction was written.

--Samuel Holt Monk University of Minnesota

[Ill.u.s.tration: Picture of Shakespeare surrounded by angels]

THE

WORKS