Shakespeare Domesticated

This book is a general survey of Shakespeare's 18th-century editions and editors, including prefaces and footnote debates, editorial concern about Shakespeare's "learning", his meaning, his coarseness and his puns. There are also chapters on the illustrations, and growth of critical apparatus. It covers the period from Nicholas Rowe (1709) to the 21-volume Boswell-Malone variorum (1821), generally accepted as the foundation of modern Shakespeare scholarship. Rowe was the pioneer in attempting to retrieve a true text, and his six octavo volumes with their pleasant engravings offered the first "library edition" of Shakespeare. Colin Franklin follows the editorial and publishing history of these works through passionate disputes which divided Pope from Theobald, Warburton from Hanmer, Steevens from Malone, analyzing Johnson's calmer position among them.