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Page 1
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION
Lewis Theobald's edition of Shakespeare (1734) is one cornerstone
of modern Shakespearian scholarship and hence of English literary
scholarship in general. It is the first edition of an English writer in
which a man with a professional breadth and concentration of reading in
the writer's period tried to bring all relevant, ascertainable fact to
bear on the establishment of the author's text and the explication of
his obscurities. For Theobald was the first editor of Shakespeare who
displayed a well grounded knowledge of Shakespeare's language and
metrical practice and that of his contemporaries, the sources and
chronology of his plays, and the broad range of Elizabethan-Jacobean
drama as a means of illuminating the work of the master writer. Thus
both in the edition itself and in his Preface, which stands as the first
significant statement of a scholar's editorial duties and methods in
handling an English classic, Theobald takes his place as an important
progenitor of modern English studies.
It is regrettable, though it was perhaps historically inevitable, that
this pioneer of English literary scholarship should have been tagged
"piddling Theobald" by Pope and crowned the first king of _The Dunciad_.
Pope's edition of Shakespeare was completed by 1725, and in the
following year Theobald made the poet his implacable enemy when he
issued his _Shakespeare Restored_, which demolished Pope's pretensions
as an editor by offering some two hundred corrections. But the conflict
was not merely strife between two writers: it was a clash between two
kinds of criticism in which the weight of tradition and polite taste
were all on the side of Pope. What Theobald had done, in modern
terms, was to open the rift between criticism and scholarship or, in
eighteenth-century terms, to proclaim himself a "literal critic" and to
insist upon the need for "literal criticism" in the understanding and
just appreciation of an older writer. The new concept, which Theobald
owed largely to Richard Bentley as primate of the classical scholars,
was of course the narrower one--implicit in it was the idea of
specialization--and Theobald's opponents among the literati were
quick to assail him as a mere "Word-catcher" (cf. R.F. Jones, _Lewis
Theobald_, 1919, p. 114).
His own edition of Shakespeare, therefore, was the work of a man and a
method on trial. At first Theobald had proposed simply to write further
commentary on Shakespeare's plays, but by 1729 he determined to issue a
new edition and in October of that year signed a contract with Tonson.
From the first Theobald found warm support for his project among
booksellers, incipient patrons, and men of learning. His work went
forward steadily; subscribers, including members of the Royal Family,
were readily forthcoming; and by late 1731 Theobald felt that his labors
were virtually complete. But vexing delays occurred in the printing so
that the edition, though dated 1733, did not appear until early in 1734,
New Style. When it did appear, it was plain to all that Theobald's
vindication of himself and his method was complete. Judicious critics
like the anonymous author of _Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet_
(1736) were quick to applaud Theobald's achievement, and even Pope
himself was silenced.
Ultimately of course Theobald came under severe attack by succeeding
editors of Shakespeare, notably Warburton and Johnson, yet both men were
guilty of unwarranted abuse of their predecessor, whose edition was nine
times issued in the course of the century and was still in current use
by the time of Coleridge (cf. Wm. Jaggard, _Shakespeare Bibliography_,
1911, pp. 499-504). Warburton and Johnson's abuse, coupled with that of
Pope, obscured Theobald's real achievements for more than a century
until J.C. Collins did much to rehabilitate his reputation by an essay
celebrating him as "The Porson of Shakespearian Criticism" (_Essays and
Studies_, 1895, pp. 263-315). Collins's emotional defense was largely
substantiated by T.R. Lounsbury's meticulous _The Text of Shakespeare_
(1906), R.F. Jones's _Lewis Theobald_ (1919), which brought much new
material to light, and most recently by R.B. McKerrow's dispassionate
appraisal, "The Treatment of Shakespeare's Text by his Earlier Editors,
1709-1768" (_Proceedings of the British Academy_, XIX, 1933, 23-27). As
a result, so complete has been Theobald's vindication that even in a
student's handbook he is hailed as "the great pioneer of serious
Shakespeare scholarship" and as "the first giant" in the field
(_A Companion to Shakespeare Studies_, 1934, ed. H. Granville Barker
and G.B. Harrison, pp. 306-07).
Theobald's Preface occupied his attention for over a year and gave him
much trouble in the writing. Its originality was, and still is, a matter
of sharp dispute. The first we hear of it is in a letter of 12 November
1731 from Theobald to his coadjutor Warburton, who had expressed some
concern about what Theobald planned to prefix to his edition. Theobald
announced a major change in plan when he replied that "The affair of the
_Prolegomena_ I have determined to soften into a _Preface_." He then
proceeded to make a strange request:
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