Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) | Page 4

the other Qualifications put together." He admitted that all the
faults pointed out by Rymer are real enough, but he added a question
that removed the discussion from theory to immediate experience: "Yet
who will read Mr. Rym[er] or not read Shakespear?" When Dryden
died in 1700, the age of Jonson had passed and the age of Shakespeare
was about to begin.
The Shakespeare of Rowe's Account is in most essentials the
Shakespeare of Restoration criticism, minus the consideration of his
faults. As Nichol Smith has observed, Dryden and Rymer were
continually in Rowe's mind as he wrote. It is likely that Smith is correct
in suspecting in the Account echoes of Dryden's conversation as well as
of his published writings;[10] and the respect in which Rymer was then
held is evident in Rowe's desire not to enter into controversy with that
redoubtable critic and in his inability to refrain from doing so.
If one reads the Account in Pope's neat and tidy revision and then as
Rowe published it, one is impressed with its Restoration quality. It

seems almost deliberately modelled on Dryden's prefaces, for it is
loosely organized, discursive, intimate, and it even has something of
Dryden's contagious enthusiasm. Rowe presents to his reader the
Restoration Shakespeare: the original genius, the antithesis of Jonson,
the exception to the rule and the instance that diminishes the
importance of the rules. Shakespeare "lived under a kind of mere light
of nature," and knowing nothing of the rules should not be judged by
them. Admitting the poor plot structure and the neglect of the unities,
except in an occasional play, Rowe concentrates on Shakespeare's
virtues: his images, "so lively, that the thing he would represent stands
full before you, and you possess every part of it;" his command over
the passions, especially terror; his magic; his characters and their
"manners."
Bentley has demonstrated statistically that the Restoration had little
appreciation of the romantic comedies. And yet Rowe, so thoroughly
saturated with Restoration criticism, lists character after character from
these plays as instances of Shakespeare's ability to depict the manners.
Have we perhaps here a response to Shakespeare read as opposed to
Shakespeare seen? Certainly the romantic comedies could not stand the
test of the critical canons so well as did the Merry Wives or even
_Othello_; and they were not much liked on the stage. But it seems
probable that a generation which read French romances would not have
felt especially hostile to the romantic comedies when read in the closet.
Rowe's criticism is so little original, so far from idiosyncratic, that it is
unnecessary to assume that his response to the characters in the
comedies is unique.
Be that as it may, it was well that at the moment when the reading
public began rapidly to expand in England, Tonson should have made
Shakespeare available in an attractive and convenient format; and it
was a happy choice that brought Rowe to the editorship of these six
volumes. As poet, playwright, and man of taste, Rowe was admirably
fitted to introduce Shakespeare to a multitude of new readers.
Relatively innocent of the technical duties of an editor though he was,
he none the less was capable of accomplishing what proved to be his
historic mission: the easy re-statement of a view of Shakespeare which

Dryden had earlier articulated and the demonstration that the plays
could be read and admired despite the objections of formal dramatic
criticism. He is more than a chronological predecessor of Pope,
Johnson, and Morgann. The line is direct from Shakespeare to
Davenant, to Dryden, to Rowe; and he is an organic link between this
seventeenth-century tradition and the increasingly rich Shakespeare
scholarship and criticism that flowed through the eighteenth century
into the romantic era.
Notes [Footnote 1: Alfred Jackson, "Rowe's edition of Shakespeare,"
Library X (1930), 455-473; Allardyce Nicoll, "The editors of
Shakespeare from first folio to Malone," Studies in the first Folio,
London (1924), pp. 158-161; Ronald B. McKerrow, "The treatment of
Shakespeare's text by his earlier editors, 1709-1768," Proceedings of
the British Academy, XIX (1933), 89-122; Augustus Ralli, A history of
Shakespearian criticism, London, 1932; Herbert S. Robinson, English
Shakespearian criticism in the eighteenth century, New York, 1932.]
[Footnote 2: Nicoll, _op. cit._, pp. 158-161; McKerrow, _op. cit._, p.
93.]
[Footnote 3: London Gazette, From Monday March 14 to Thursday
March 17, 1708, and From Monday May 30 to Thursday June 2, 1709.
For descriptions and collations of this edition, see A. Jackson, _op. cit._;
H.L. Ford, _Shakespeare 1700-1740_, Oxford (1935), pp. 9, 10; TLS 16
May, 1929, p. 408; Edward Wagenknecht, "The first editor of
Shakespeare," Colophon VIII, 1931. According to a writer in _The
Gentleman's Magazine_ (LVII, 1787, p. 76), Rowe was paid thirty-six
pounds, ten shillings by Tonson.]
[Footnote 4: Identified and described by