medies 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 (1