COMMENT
SUBSCRIPTIONS (cash and carry) will be received in this office for the erection in Vesey Street, New York, of a statue to Dr Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825). Our own artist has already submitted to us a small model of that noted physician and editor, showing him not too erect and holding by the hand a little girl. Both of the characters are fully clothed.
The Family Shakespeare ("in which nothing is added to the original; but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family") was issued in 1818. From the prefaces to the first and fourth editions we learn that Dr Bowdler held Shakespeare his favourite poet, but that he felt that of the five greatest plays "there is not one that can be read aloud by a gentleman to a lady, without undergoing some correction." Of the indecencies "the greater part were evidently introduced to gratify the bad taste of the age . . . and the rest may perhaps be ascribed to his own unbridled fancy. But neither the vicious taste of the age, nor the most brilliant effusions of wit, can afford an excuse for profaneness or obscenity." An edition was therefore prepared "unsullied . . . by any word that can give pain to the most chaste." It was well received. Those only protested who "condemn every attempt at removing indecency from Shakespeare." It was a good job; and six years later the editor found only a few objectionable expressions remaining; he does not name them, for obvious reasons, poor man, as he says.
It is interesting to note that although Dr Bowdler got the idea of his vast enterprise from hearing his father read The Bard—the older gentleman had to make his expurgations impromptu—he did not offer his edition exclusively as one which could be read to children. The very young person is mentioned, but the main thing is the rescue of delicacy. In those days, apparently, gentlemen read Shakespeare to ladies, and the works which could be read by gentlemen to gentlemen, could not be read across the abyss of sex. In our time this has changed. The Editor of The Literary Review makes public no discrimination of sex. He says, flatly, that
