William Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage Volume 5 1765-1774 (The Collected Critical Heritage : William Shakespeare)

454 Pages·1996·2.65 MB·English

by  Brian Vickers

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: THE
CRITICAL HERITAGE VOLUMES.
1765–1774
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 5, 1765–1774
THE CRITICAL HERITAGE
Edited by
BRIAN VICKERS

London and New York
First published in 1979
Routledge ia an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis
or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to
http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.”
Compilation, introduction, notes and index © 1979 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 0-203-19799-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-19802-6 (Adobe e-Reader Format)
ISBN 0-415-13408-0 (Print Edition)
TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER 22 NOVEMBER 1914 TO 10 MAY 1977

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 x

INTRODUCTION 1
NOTE ON THE TEXT 38
205 SAMUEL JOHNSON, edition of Shakespeare, 1765 39
206 GEORGE COLMAN, Johnson’s edition reviewed, 1765 127
207 WILLIAM KENRICK, Johnson attacked, 1765 131
208 WILLIAM GUTHRIE, Johnson reviewed, 1765–6 153
209 JAMES BARCLAY, Johnson defended, 1766 167
210 THOMAS TYRWHITT, on editing Shakespeare, 1766 172
211 GEORGE STEEVENS, on Shakespearian scholarship, 1766 177
212 GEORGE STEEVENS, proposals for a new edition of Shakespeare, 1766 182
213 RICHARD HURD, Shakespeare’s pastorals, 1766 186
214 RICHARD FARMER, Shakespeare’s lack of classical learning, 1767 189
215 WILLIAM GUTHRIE, Farmer reviewed, 1767 206
216 T.W., on three Shakespearian tragedies, 1767 209
217 GEORGE COLMAN, Farmer criticized, 1768 216
218 GEORGE COLMAN, King Lear partly restored, 1768 219
219 RICHARD WARNER, Shakespeare’s language, 1768 221
220 EDWARD CAPELL, introduction to Shakespeare, 1768 227
221 ELIZABETH MONTAGU, Shakespeare’s genius, 1769 245
222 DAVID GARRICK, Jubilee Ode to Shakespeare, 1769 256
223 Unsigned oration, In honour of Shakespeare, 1769 268
224 Unsigned essay, on the deficiencies of English drama, 1769 272
225 CHARLES JENNENS, on editing King Lear, 1770 274
226 WILLIAM DUFF, Shakespeare’s genius, 1770 277
227 FRANCIS GENTLEMAN, Shakespeare the dramatist, 1770 282
228 PAUL HIFFERNAN, idolizing Shakespeare, 1770 307
229 EDWARD BURNABY GREENE, rhetoric in Shakespeare, 1770 313
230 JOHN ARMSTRONG, Shakespeare and the Unities, 1770 316
231 J.R., Ode to Shakespeare, 1771 317
232 RICHARD CUMBERLAND, adaptation of Timon of Athens, 1771 320
233 JOHN POTTER, Shakespeare in the theatre, 1771–2 328
234 GEORGE STEEVENS, Shakespeare in the theatre, 1771–2 337
235 GEORGE STEEVENS, advice to Garrick on adapting Hamlet, 1771 346
236 DAVID GARRICK, adaptation of Hamlet, 1772 350
237 Various writers, Garrick’s Hamlet reviewed, 1772–3 356
238 GEORGE STEEVENS, Shakespeare in the theatre, 1772–3 372
239 TATE WILKINSON, adaptation of Hamlet, 1773 385
240 GEORGE STEEVENS and SAMUEL JOHNSON, edition of Shakespeare, 391

1773
241 THOMAS HAWKINS, English drama before Shakespeare, 1773 422
242 EDWARD CAPELL, notes on Shakespeare, 1774 425

A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 428
INDEX 430