reach of the understanding and
the pocketbooks of the average reader. Finally, it is the first to
include an extended life and critique of the author.

Shakespeare scholars from Pope to the present have not been kind to Rowe
either as editor or as critic; but all eighteenth-century editors
accepted many of his emendations, and the biographical material that he
and Betterton assembled remained the basis of all accounts of the
dramatist until the scepticism and scholarship of Steevens and Malone
proved most of it to be merely dubious tradition. Johnson, indeed, spoke
generously of the edition. In the _Life of Rowe_ he said that as an
editor Howe "has done more than he promised; and that, without the pomp
of notes or the boast of criticism, many passages are happily restored."
The preface, in his opinion, "cannot be said to discover much profundity
or penetration." But he acknowledged Rowe's influence on Shakespeare's
reputation. In our own century, more justice has been done Rowe, at
least as an editor.[1]

The years 1709-14 were of great importance in the growth of
Shakespeare's reputation. As we shall see, the plays as well as the
poems, both authentic and spurious, were frequently printed and bought.
With the passing of the seventeenth-century folios and the occasional
quartos of acting versions of single plays, Shakespeare could find a
place in libraries and could be intimately known by hundreds who had
hitherto known him only in the theater. Tonson's business acumen made
Shakespeare available to the general reader in the reign of Anne; Rowe's
editorial, biographical, and critical work helped to make him
comprehensible within the framework of contemporary taste.

When Rowe's edition appeared twenty-four years had passed since the
publication of the Fourth Folio. As Allardyce Nicoll has shown, Tonson
owned certain rights in the publication of the plays, rights derived
ultimately from the printers of the First Folio. Precisely when he
decided to publish a revised octavo edition is not known, nor do we know
when Rowe accepted the commission and began his work. McKerrow has
plausibly suggested that Tonson may have been anxious to call attention
to his rights in Shakespeare on the eve of the passage of the copyright
law which went into effect in April, 1710.[2] Certainly Tonson must have
felt that he was adding to the prestige which his publishing house had
gained by the publication of Milton and Dryden's Virgil.

In