Contested Will (45 page)

For the deifying performances at Drury Lane, see Richard Fitzpatrick,
The
Occasional Prologue, Written by the Rt. Hon. Major General Fitzpatrick, and
Spoken by Mr Kemble, on Opening the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with
Shakespeare's Macbeth, Monday, April 21st 1794
(London, 1794). See too, vol. 1 of
Biographia Dramatica
, ed. David Erskine Baker, Isaac Reed and Stephen Jones, 3 vols (London, 1812), and
The London Stage 1660–1800
, part 5, ed. Charles Beecher Hogan (Carbondale, 1968). On the deification of Shakespeare in general, see Robert Witbeck Babcock,
The Genesis of
Shakespeare Idolatry 1766–1799
(Chapel Hill, 1931); Péter Dávidházi,
The
Romantic Cult of Shakespeare
(Houndmills, 1998); Charles Laporte, ‘The Bard, the Bible, and the Victorian Shakespeare Question',
English Literary
History
74 (2007), pp. 609–28; and Marcia Pointon, ‘National Identity and the Afterlife of Shakespeare's Portraits', in
Searching for Shakespeare
, ed. Tarnya Cooper (London, 2006). Dryden's remarks about the divine Shakespeare can be found in
Aureng-Zebe
(1676),
The Tempest, or The
Enchanted Island
(1670) and
All for Love
(1678). For Voltaire, see Thomas R. Lounsbury,
Shakespeare and Voltaire
(London,1902). For an account of deifying Shakespeare in the visual arts, see William L. Pressly,
The Artist as
Original Genius: Shakespeare's ‘Fine Frenzy' in Late-Eighteenth-Century
British Art
(Newark, 2007).

The literature on Garrick and the Jubilee is considerable. I have relied on Christian Deelman,
The Great Shakespeare Jubilee
(New York, 1964); Johanne M. Stochholm,
Garrick's Folly; the Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769 at Stratford and
Drury Lane
(London, 1964); Martha W. England,
Garrick's Jubilee
(Columbus, Ohio, 1964); Halliday,
Cult of Shakespeare
; and Vanessa Cunningham,
Shakespeare and Garrick
(Cambridge, 2008); I quote from Samuel Foote,
Letter … to the Reverend Author of the Remarks, Critical and
Christian
(London, 1760).

For the emergence of the Shakespeare expert, see Simon Jarvis,
Scholars
and Gentlemen: Shakespearian Textual Criticism and Representations of
Scholarly Labour, 1725–1765
(Oxford, 1995); Peter Seary,
Lewis Theobald and
the Editing of Shakespeare
(Oxford, 1990); Marcus Walsh,
Shakespeare,
Milton, and Eighteenth-Century Literary Editing
(Cambridge, 1997); Arthur Sherbo,
The Birth of Shakespeare Studies
(Michigan, 1986); Jonathan Bate,
Shakespearean Constitutions: Politics, Theatre, Criticism 1730–1830
(Oxford, 1989); Michael Dobson,
The Making of the National Poet
(Oxford, 1992); and Gary Taylor,
Reinventing Shakespeare
.

The best biography of Malone is Peter Martin,
Edmond Malone,
Shakespearean Scholar
(Cambridge, 1995). On Malone's attempts to establish the plays' chronology and topicality, see his ‘Attempt to Ascertain the Order in Which the Plays of Shakespeare were Written' (London, 1778); his ‘A Second Appendix to Mr Malone's Supplement' (London, 1783); and ‘Mr Malone's Preface,' as quoted in
The Plays of William Shakespeare
, ed. Samuel Johnson and George Steevens, 4th edn (London, 1793). Margreta de Grazia writes about Malone in
Shakespeare Verbatim: The Reproduction of Authority
and the 1790 Apparatus
(Oxford, 1991). William Oldys's manuscript notes, which Malone consulted, can be found in British Library Add. MSS 22959. For the emendation to ‘brown best bed', see Malone's account in vol. 1 of the 1793 edition of Johnson and Steevens, where he writes: that ‘Mr Theobald and other modern editors have been more bountiful to Mrs Shakespeare, having printed instead of these words, “– my brown best bed, with the furniture”.' See, too, Kenneth Gross's inventive and often brilliant
Shylock is
Shakespeare
(Chicago, 2006).

For Heywood's unfinished or lost literary biographies from the early seventeenth century, see vol. 2 of Edmond Malone, ed.,
The Plays and Poems of
William Shakespeare
(London, 1821), where he cites Heywood's note to
Hierarchy of Blessed Angels
(1635) where he is still promising this work over twenty years after Richard Brathwaite first mentioned in 1614 that his ‘judicious friend, Master Thomas Heywood, hath taken in hand, by his great industry, to make a general, though summary, description of all the poets'. For the rise of literary biography in eighteenth-century England, see, in addition to
Biographia Britannica: Lives of the Most Eminent Persons Who
have Flourished in Great Britain and Ireland, 7
vols (London, 1747–66), Roger Lonsdale's outstanding introduction to his edition of Samuel Johnson,
The
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
, 4 vols (Oxford, 2006). On the missing inventory of Shakespeare's will, see J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps,
Outlines of
the Life of Shakespeare
, 3rd edn (London, 1883), pp. 235 ff. The quotation from Capell is from ‘Mr Capell's Introduction', in
The Plays of William
Shakespeare
, ed. Johnson and Steevens.

For autobiographical readings of the Sonnets cited here, see
A New Variorum
Edition of Shakespeare: The Sonnets
, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins, 2 vols (Philadelphia, 1944). On Wordsworth in particular, see
The Letters of
William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Early Years 1787–1805
, ed. Ernest De
Selincourt, rev. Chester L. Shaver (Oxford, 1967). Anna Jameson is quoted from her
The Loves of the Poets
, 2 vols (London, 1829). For Keats, see
The
Letters of John Keats, 1814–21
, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins, 2 vols (Cambridge, Mass., 1958). And for Coleridge, see
Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
, ed. H. N. Coleridge, 2 vols (London, 1835); Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Lectures 1808–1819 on Literature
, ed. R. A. Foakes, 2 vols (Princeton, 1987); and Samuel T. Coleridge,
Shakespearean Criticism
, ed. Thomas Middleton Raysor, 2 vols (London, 1960). Gary Taylor's account of this autobiographical turn in
Reinventing Shakespeare
is especially helpful. For the backlash against reading Shakespeare's life through his works, see C. J. Sisson, ‘The Mythical Sorrows of Shakespeare', Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy,
Proceedings of the British Academy
20 (1934).

For an early response to collaboration, see Edward Ravenscroft,
Titus
Andronicus
(London, 1687). For Theobold, Hanmer and other editors on plays they deemed collaborative or not by Shakespeare, see Babcock,
The
Genesis of Shakespeare Idolatry
; see too Alexander Pope's Preface, included in vol. 1 of
The Plays of William Shakespeare
, ed. Johnson and Steevens; Edmond Malone,
A Dissertation on the Three Parts of King Henry VI Tending
to Show that Those Plays Were Not Written Originally by Shakspeare
(London, 1787); Henry Tyrrell,
The Doubtful Plays of Shakespere
(London, 1851); and Joseph C. Hart,
The Romance of Yachting
(New York, 1848).

On biographical information about Shakespeare that emerged in the nineteenth century, see Schoenbaum, Chambers and Wheler. On Collier's discoveries, see J. Payne Collier,
Reasons for a New Edition of Shakespeare's Works
(London, 1841); Collier's biographical essay in vol. 1 of his edition of
The
Works of William Shakespeare
(London, 1844); and the magisterial study by Arthur Freeman and Janet Ing Freeman,
John Payne Collier: Scholarship and
Forgery in the Nineteenth Century
, 2 vols (New Haven, 2004). Joseph Hunter published his discovery in vol. 1 of
New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and
Writings of Shakespeare
, 2 vols (London, 1845). On Halliwell-Phillipps and his discoveries, see Halliwell-Phillipps, ‘Life of William Shakespeare', in vol. 1 of his
Works of William Shakespeare
(London, 1853). See too, Arthur and Janet Ing Freeman, ‘Did Halliwell Steal and Mutilate the First Quarto of
Hamlet?', The Library
2.4 (2001), pp. 349–63, as well as D. A. Winstanley, ‘Halliwell Phillipps and Trinity College Library',
The Library
5.2 (1948), pp. 250–82. And for a defence of Halliwell-Phillipps, see Marvin Spevack,
James
Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps: The Life and Works of the Shakespearean Scholar
and Bookman
(London, 2001). For the verdicts rendered by Halliwell-Phillipps and Alexander Dyce that Shakespeare attended carefully to his financial interests, see Halliwell-Phillipps, ‘Life of William Shakespeare', in his
Works of William Shakespeare
, and Dyce, ‘Some Account of the Life of Shakespeare', in his
Works of William Shakespeare
(London, 1857). The essay ‘Who Wrote Shakespeare?' appeared anonymously in
Chambers's Edinburgh
Journal
449 (August 1852), pp. 87–9.

For a detailed overview of the Homeric authorship question see J. A. Davison, ‘The Homeric Question', in
A Companion to Homer
, ed. Alan J. B. Wace and Frank H. Stubbings (London, 1962), pp. 234–65; see too Martin West, ‘The Invention of Homer',
Classical Quarterly
49.2 (1999), pp. 364–82. Emerson's assessment of Wolf is quoted from Moncure Daniel Conway,
Emerson at Home and Abroad
(London, 1883). See as well Robert Wood,
Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer
(London, 1775), and Thomas Blackwell, An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer (London, 1735).

For an excellent edition of Wolf, see, F. A. Wolf,
Prolegomena to Homer
, translated with introduction and notes by Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most and James E. G. Zetzel (Princeton, 1985). I am deeply indebted to Anthony Grafton, ‘Prolegomenon to Friedrich August Wolf',
Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
44 (1981), pp. 101–29. For responses to Wolf 's argument in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see, in addition to Disraeli's novel: Samuel Butler,
The Authoress of the Odyssey
(London, 1897); de Quincey's essays in vol. 13 of
The Works of Thomas de Quincey
, eds. Grevel Lindop and John Whale (London, 2001); Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Aurora Leigh
, ed. Margaret Reynolds (New York, 1996), cited in Laporte, ‘The Bard, the Bible, and the Victorian Shakespeare Question'; and E. V. Rieu's introduction to his translation of
The Iliad
(Harmondsworth, 1950).

On Strauss and his
Life of Jesus
, see David Friedrich Strauss,
The Life of
Jesus
, 3 vols, [trans. George Eliot] (London, 1846); Richard S. Cromwell,
David Friedrich Strauss and His Place in Modern Thought
(Fair Lawn, New Jersey, 1974); and Horton Harris,
David Friedrich Strauss and His Theology
(Cambridge, 1973). H. Bellyse Baildon discusses the Higher Criticism in the introduction to his edition of
Titus Andronicus
(London, 1904), and Robertson speaks of it in
The Baconian Heresy
(New York, 1913). For Shakespeare as holy writ, see Joss Marsh,
Word Crimes: Blasphemy, Culture
,
and Literature in Nineteenth-Century England
(Chicago, 1998), and J. B. Selkirk,
Bible Truths
(London, 1862). On Carlyle, see Adrian Poole,
Shakespeare and the Victorians
(London, 2004); Arnold is quoted from
Matthew Arnold
, ed. Miriam Allott and Robert H. Super (Oxford, 1986), and George Gilfillan from ‘Shakespeare – A Lecture' in
A Third Gallery of
Portraits
(New York, 1855) – I'm indebted to Laporte for this reference. So far as I know, Gary Taylor, in
Reinventing Shakespeare
, is the only Shakespeare scholar to mention Samuel Mosheim Schmucker, and I'm grateful that his work alerted me to
The Errors of Modern Infidelity Illustrated
and Refuted
(Philadelphia, 1848), reprinted (unchanged except for the title) as
Historic Doubts Respecting Shakespeare: Illustrating Infidel Objections
against the Bible
(Philadelphia, 1853), from which I have quoted.

The Beechers' remarks about Delia Bacon are quoted in Martha Bacon, ‘The Parson and the Bluestocking,' in
The Puritan Promenade
(Boston, 1964). The admirer's glowing description was offered by Sarah Edwards Henshaw; see Theodore Bacon,
Delia Bacon: A Biographical Sketch
(Boston, 1888), as well as Henshaw's article (under the pseudonym Sydney E. Holmes) that appeared in the Chicago
Advance
, 26 December 1867. Henshaw is also the source for Bacon's lecturing style, in her ‘Delia Bacon as a Teacher of Shakespeare' in
Shakespeareana
5 (February 1888). Bacon's academic range is described in an admiring letter about her lectures that appeared in the
New York Herald
on 21 December 1852. For other facts about her background described here, see the standard biography, Vivian C. Hopkins,
Prodigal Puritan: A Life of Delia Bacon
(Cambridge, Mass., 1959). See, too, Nina Baym's excellent ‘Delia Bacon, History's Odd Woman Out',
The New England Quarterly
69 (1996), pp. 223–49. For more on her association with Tree, see Charles H. Shattuck,
Shakespeare on the American Stage
(Washington DC, 1976), and Joy Harriman Reilly's Masters essay, ‘Miss Ellen Tree (1805–1880), Actress and Wife to Charles Kean' (Columbus, Ohio, 1979). Letters are quoted from Hopkins's edition – except for those quoted specifically from Delia Bacon's surviving correspondence and papers that are housed in the Folger Library.