SOURCE: Dash, Irene G. “A Glimpse of the Sublime in Warburton's Edition of The Winter's Tale.” Shakespeare Studies 11 (1978): 159-74.

In the following essay, Dash compares Warburton's commentary on The Winter's Tale with those of his predecessors, claiming that Warburton applied the principles of Longinus's theories of the sublime to the play.

Ironically, William Warburton, the acerbic bishop of whom John Nichols wrote, “In his youth he was a member of the debating society. It was a skill he never lost,” was the first editor of Shakespeare's Works to stress the beauties of the pastoral passages in The Winter's Tale.¹ Nicholas Rowe, the writer of she-tragedies, attempted to intensify the dramatic, potentially tragic, early sections of the play by adding punctuation.² Alexander Pope, from whom Warburton learned the value of indicating preferred passages, commended to his readers only two speeches, both from the first half of the drama.³ Lewis...