[16] Pope’s “Shakspere,” 1725.

[17] For a fuller discussion of this subject, consult “A History of Opinion on the Writings of Shakspere,” in the supplemental volume of Knight’s Pictorial Edition.  Editions of Shakspere issued within a century following the Restoration were the third Folio, 1664; the fourth Folio, 1685; Rowe’s (the first critical edition, with a Life, etc.) 1709 (second edition, 1714); Pope’s, 1725 (second edition, 1728); Theobald’s, 1733; Hanmer’s 1744; Warburton-Pope’s, 1747; and Johnson’s 1765.  Meanwhile, though Shakspere’s plays continued to be acted, it was mostly in doctored versions.  Tate changed “Lear” to a comedy.  Davenant and Dryden made over “The Tempest” into “The Enchanted Island,” turning blank verse into rhyme and introducing new characters, while Shadwell altered it into an opera.  Dryden rewrote “Troilus and Cressida”; Davenant, “Macbeth.”  Davenant patched together a thing which he called “The Law against Lovers,” from “Measure for Measure” and “Much Ado about Nothing.”  Dennis remodeled the “Merry Wives of Windsor” as “The Comical Gallant”; Tate, “Richard II.” as “The Sicilian Usurper”; and Otway, “Romeo and Juliet,” as “Caius Marius.”  Lord Lansdowne converted “The Merchant of Venice” into “The Jew of Venice,” wherein Shylock was played as a comic character down to the time of Macklin and Kean.  Durfey tinkered “Cymbeline.”  Cibber metamorphosed “King John” into “Papal Tyranny,” and his version was acted till Macready’s time.  Cibber’s stage version of “Richard III.” is played still.  Cumberland “engrafted” new features upon “Timon of Athens” for Garrick’s theater, about 1775.  In his life of Mrs. Siddons, Campbell says that “Coriolanus” “was never acted genuinely from the year 1660 till the year 1820” (Phillimore’s “Life of Lyttelton,” Vol.  I. p. 315).  He mentions a revision by Tate, another by Dennis ("The Invader of his Country"), and a third brought out by the elder Sheridan in 1764, at Covent Garden, and put together from Shakspere’s tragedy and an independent play of the same name by Thomson.  “Then in 1789 came the Kemble edition in which . . . much of Thomson’s absurdity is still preserved.”

[18] “Faerie Queene,” II. xii. 71

[19] “Essay on Satire.”  Philips says a good word for the Spenserian stanza:  “How much more stately and majestic in epic poems, especially of heroic argument, Spenser’s stanza . . . is above the way either of couplet or alternation of four verses only, I am persuaded, were it revived, would soon be acknowledged.”—­Theatrum Poetatarum, Preface, pp. 3-4.

[20] “Observations on the Faery Queene,” Vol.  II. p. 317.

[21] “The Faery Queene,” Book I., Oxford, 1869.  Introduction, p. xx.

[22] “Canto” ii. stanza i.

“Now had Bootes’ team far passed behind
The northern star, when hours of night declined.”
—­Person of Quality

[23] “Eighteenth Century Literature,” p. 139.