WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE VOLUME 3, 1733–1752 THE CRITICAL HERITAGE SERIES General Editor: B.C.Southam The Critical Heritage series collects together a large body of criticism on major figures in literature. Each volume presents the contemporary responses to a particular writer, enabling the student to follow the formation of critical attitudes to the writer’s work and its place within a literary tradition. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to fragments of contemporary opinion and little published documentary material, such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included in order to demonstrate fluctuations in reputation following the writer’s death. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE VOLUME 3, 1733–1752 THE CRITICAL HERITAGE Edited by BRIAN VICKERS London and New York First Published in 1975 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE & 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. Compilation, introduction, notes and index © 1975 Brian Vickers All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data ISBN 0-415-13406-4 (Print Edition) ISBN 0-203-19791-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-19794-1 (Glassbook Format) FOR RORY HANDS General Editor’s Preface The reception given to a writer by his contemporaries and near- contemporaries is evidence of considerable value to the student of literature. On one side we learn a great deal about the state of criticism at large and in particular about the development of critical attitudes towards a single writer; at the same time, through private comments in letters, journals or marginalia, we gain an insight upon the tastes and literary thought of individual readers of the period. Evidence of this kind helps us to understand the writer’s historical situation, the nature of his immediate reading-public, and his response to these pressures. The separate volumes in the Critical Heritage Series present a record of this early criticism. Clearly, for many of the highly productive and lengthily reviewed nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers, there exists an enormous body of material; and in these cases the volume editors have made a selection of the most important views, significant for their intrinsic critical worth or for their representative quality— perhaps even registering incomprehension! For earlier writers, notably pre-eighteenth century, the materials are much scarcer and the historical period has been extended, sometimes far beyond the writer’s lifetime, in order to show the inception and growth of critical views which were initially slow to appear. Shakespeare is, in every sense, a special case, and Professor Vickers is presenting the course of his reception and reputation extensively, over a span of three centuries, in a sequence of six volumes, each of which will document a specific period. In each volume the documents are headed by an Introduction, discussing the material assembled and relating the early stages of the author’s reception to what we have come to identify as the critical tradition. The volumes will make available much material which would otherwise be difficult of access and it is hoped that the modern reader will be thereby helped towards an informed understanding of the ways in which literature has been read and judged. B.C.S. Contents PREFACE xi INTRODUCTION 1 NOTE ON THE TEXT 19 84 DAVID MALLET, textual criticism attacked, 1733 21 85 WILLIAM POPPLE on Polonius, May 1735 22 86 AARON HILL on King Lear and Hamlet, October 1735 29 87 GEORGE STUBBES on Hamlet, 1736 40 88 ALEXANDER POPE, conversations, 1736 70 89 Unsigned essays, Shakespeare and the actors, December 1736; February, March 1737 71 90 THOMAS BIRCH and WILLIAM WARBURTON on Shakespeare’s life and works, 1739 81 91 WILLIAM SMITH, Shakespeare and the Sublime, 1739 96 92 COLLEY CIBBER, Shakespeare in the theatre, 1740 104 93 THOMAS GRAY, Shakespeare’s language, April 1742 109 94 THOMAS COOKE, a panegyric to Shakespeare, 1743 111 95 WILLIAM COLLINS, a panegyric to Shakespeare, 1743 113 96 SIR THOMAS HANMER, preface to Shakespeare, 1744 118 97 JOSEPH WARTON, Shakespeare: Nature’s child, 1744 121 98 CORBYN MORRIS, Falstaff’s humour, 1744 122 99 DAVID GARRICK, How not to act Macbeth, 1744 130 100 DAVID GARRICK, from his presentation of Macbeth, 1744 133 101 DAVID GARRICK, from his presentation of Othello, 1745 134 102 COLLEY CIBBER, adaptation of King John, 1745 135 103 Unsigned essay against Cibber’s King John, 1745 155 104 ELIZAH HAYWOOD on the adaptations of Romeo and Juliet, 1745 162 105 SAMUEL JOHNSON on Macbeth, 1745 165 106 MARK AKENSIDE, Shakespeare weighed and measured, December 1746 186 107 WILLIAM GUTHRIE on Shakespearian tragedy, 1747 191 108 Unsigned essay on jealousy in Othello, August 1747 206 109 SAMUEL FOOTE, Shakespeare and the actors, 1747 211 ix