Annabel Patterson notes ( Shakespeare and the Popular Voice ) that contemporary critics, whatever their own political outlook, assume that Shakespeare was an advocate of Elizabethan hierarchy. This view, however, is a product of the 19th century. Dryden, Johnson, and others criticize Shakespeare for violating the conventions of his genre, for including comedy in tragedy, for instance, but attribute this to his accommodation to the audience: “That is to say, Shakespeare erred by being popular himself.” Dryden wrote, “Our Poets... Read more

By the 18th century, acting styles also invested Shakespeare with “courtly” virtues of control, dignity, stateliness. Dobson writes, “Shakespearian acting . . . in the decades following Betterton’s death in 1710, seems to have settled into a grandiloquent vein of static declamation, best exemplified by the stout James Quin (1693-1766) . . . . Reminiscences of Quin on the Covent Garden stage picture him holding forth as the central, heavily bewigged figure in a deferential semicircle of immobile colleagues, and... Read more

Dobson again: “after Charles II’s death in 1685 England would never again have another monarch with such an informed interest in the drama (or, mercifully, such a lascivious one), and deprived of royal patronage and protection the playhouses came under renewed attack from the moralists (led by the redoubtable clergyman Jeremy Collier), who wanted the threatre at best stringently reformed and at worst closed down altogether. Nor surprisingly, the occasional new adaptations of unfamiliar Shakespeare plays produced in the wake... Read more

To one of his servant, Shakespeare’s Macbeth says, “The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!” Davenant’s says, “Now, Friend, what means thy change of Countenance?” And for the wonderful surging lines in Macbeth 2.2.58-61 (including “the multitudinous seas incarnadine”), Davenant substituted the much weaker “can the Sea afford/ Water enough to wash away the stains?/ No, they would sooner add a tincture to/ the Sea, and turn the green into a red.” And there is no Porter, since it... Read more

Michael Dobson notes ( Shakespeare: An Illustrated Stage History ) that the restoration of drama in 1660 was not really a restoration but a re-creation, involving “a transformation of the London theatre, carried out by royal warrant” tht “forever altered the relationship between drama and the state, the design and location of playhouses, and the typical composition of theatrical companies.” The dramatic sensibility had shifted: “Sumptuously baroque in costume and music, technologically sophisticated in design and elegant in diction, the... Read more

In the Edinburgh Review notice regarding the publication of Bowdler’s Family Shakespeare (1821-22), Francis Jeffrey, Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, praised the edition for meeting the needs of decent people everywhere: “Now it is quite undeniable, that there have been many passages in Shakespeare, which a father could not read aloud to his children – a brother to his sister – or a gentleman to a lady: – and every one almost muts have felt or witnessed the... Read more