Lewis Theobald, son of an attorney, at Sittingbourne, in Kent, and bred to the law, published, in 1714, a translation of the “Electra” of Sophocles; and produced in the following year an acted tragedy, the “Persian Princess,” written before he was nineteen. His “Perfidious Brother,” acted in 1716, was on the model of Otway’s “Orphan,” In 1715 he published translations of the “Œdipus” of Sophocles, and versions from Aristophanes of “Plutus” and “The Clouds.” To these he had added opera, melodrama, and, in 1725, when Pope issued his “Shakespeare,” the pantomime of “Harlequin a Sorcerer,” before his attack upon Pope’s “Shakespeare,” in 1726, with a pamphlet, called “Shakespeare Restored; or, Specimens of Blunders Committed and Unamended in Pope’s Edition of this Poet.” Theobald understood Shakespeare better than Pope did, and lived to show it; but this did not lessen the annoyance of his attack, and, fresh from the smart of it, Pope made Theobald the hero of his “Dunciad.” In 1727 Theobald gave work to the critics by producing at Drury Lane, as a play of Shakespeare’s, “The Double Falsehood; or, The Distrest Lovers.”

Personal

  A notorious idiot, one hight Whachum, who, from an under spurleather to the law, is become an understrapper to the playhouse.

Shakespeare Restored, 1726

  In the body of the work he confines himself to animadversions on “Hamlet,” but in an appendix of some forty-four closely printed pages in small type he deals similarly with portions of most of the other plays. This work not only exposed the incapacity of Pope as an editor, but gave conclusive proof of Theobald’s competence for the task in which Pope had failed. Many of Theobald’s most felicitous corrections and emendations of Shakespeare’s text are to be found in this, his first contribution to textual criticism.

  Pope found a rigorous critic in Lewis Theobald, who, although contemptible as a writer of original verse and prose, proved himself the most inspired of all the textual critics of Shakespeare. Pope savagely avenged himself on his censor by holding him up to ridicule as the hero of the “Dunciad.” Theobald first displayed his critical skill in 1726 in a volume which deserves to rank as a classic in English literature. The title runs “Shakespeare Restored, or a specimen of the many errors as well committed as unamended by Mr. Pope in his late edition of this poet, designed not only to correct the said edition but to restore the true reading of Shakespeare in all the editions ever yet publish’d.”

Edition of Shakespeare, 1733

  Mr. Theobalds (Mr. Baker tells me) is a very genteel man, and has show’d himself a scholar in his Shakespeare, which I just run over, and might (were it not quite out of my way) have made observations. I noted, however, that he had taken too great liberty. I wish rather he had follow’d the first editions very exactly, be they faulty or not. Shakespeare wanted learning. He was guilty of pseudography, sometimes perhaps designedly. He (Mr. Theobalds) is too bold in bringing his own conjectures into the text, which (it may be) will lay him too open to his adversaries, and make them say Shakespeare wants as much to be restored as ever, and that his edition is not of much greater authority than that of Mr. Pope, who is much inferior to Mr. Theobalds in learning. Mr. Theobalds hath all along, very often justly enough, discovered and reflected upon Mr. Pope’s defects, which will, without doubt, nettle Mr. Pope, who, however, may thank himself, he having in his Dunciad (a scurrilous piece against many of the greatest men of the age) treated Mr. Theobalds in a very barbarous manner, for which Mr. Pope is much blamed.

  This Tibbald, or Theobald, published an edition of Shakespear, of which he was so proud himself as to say, in one of Mist’s Journals, June 8, “That to expose any Errors in it was impracticable.” And in another, April 27, “That whatever care might for the future be taken by any other Editor, he would still give above five hundred emendations, that shall escape them all.”

  Mr. Theobald was naturally turned to industry and labour. What he read he could transcribe; but as what he thought, if ever he did think, he could but ill express, so he read on; and by that means got a character of learning without risking to every observer the imputation of wanting a better talent. By a punctilious collation of the old books, he corrected what was manifestly wrong in the later editions by what was manifestly right in the earlier. And this is his real merit, and the whole of it…. Nor had he either common judgment to see, or critical sagacity to amend, what was manifestly faulty. Hence he generally exerts his conjectural talent in the wrong place. He tampers with what is sound in the common books, and in the old ones omits all notice of variations the sense of which he did not understand.

  Pope was succeeded by Theobald, a man of narrow comprehension and small acquisitions, with no native and intrinsic splendour of genius, with little of the artificial light of learning, but zealous for minute accuracy, and not negligent in pursuing it. He collated the ancient copies, and ratified many errors. A man so anxiously scrupulous might have been expected to do more, but what little he did was commonly right.

  Among the commentators on Shakspeare, Warburton, always striving to display his own acuteness and scorn of others, deviates more than any one else from the meaning. Theobald was the first who did a little.

  His attempts were limited to the emendation of corrupt passages, and the explanation of obscure ones: the more elevated disquisitions to develop the genius of his author, by principles of criticism applied to his beauties or his defects, he assigned to “a masterly pen.” This, at least, was not arrogant. The man who is sensible of his own weakness is safe by not tasking it to the proof. His annotations are amusing from the self-complacency of the writer, who at times seems to have been struck by his now felicitous results; and in truth he was often successful, more than has been honestly avowed by those who have poached on his manor. Theobald exulted over Pope; but he read his triumph in “the Dunciad.” The Popeians now sunk the sole merit of the laborious sagacity of “the restorer,” as Mr. Pope affectionately called him, to that of “a word-catcher.” But “piddling Theobald,” branded in the forehead by the immortal “Dunciad,” was the first who popularized the neglected writings of Shakespeare. His editions dispersed thirteen thousand copies; while nearly a third of Pope’s original subscription edition, of seven hundred and fifty copies, were left unvendible.

  In 1733 he produced an edition of Shakspere, in seven volumes octavo, which annihilated Pope’s quartos and duodecimos. The title-page of Theobald’s Shakspere bore that it was “collated with the oldest copies, and corrected, with Notes.” Pope’s edition was not again reprinted in London; but of Theobald’s there have been many subsequent editions, and Steevens asserts that of his first edition thirteen thousand copies were sold. Looking at the advantage which Pope possessed in the pre-eminence of his literary reputation, the preference which was so decidedly given to Theobald’s editions is a proof that the public thought for themselves in the matter of Shakspere.

  Theobald, “poor, piddling Tibbald,” the first hero of his Dunciad, came after Pope, and is one of the very best editors who have fallen to the lot of Shakespeare. He was the first who did any great service by conjectural emendation, and the judicious use of the quartos.

  Strangely enough, it is not the men of highest intellect that have in this way done the most for Shakspeare. Pope was one of his editors; so was Warburton; Johnson another; Malone too, a very able man. Mr. Charles Knight is correct in saying that the best of the old editors of Shakspeare is Theobald.

  To be regarded not only as the father of Shakspearian criticism, but as the editor to whom our great poet is most deeply indebted. To speak of any of the eighteenth-century editors in the same breath with him is absurd. In the first place he had what none of them possessed—a fine ear for the rhythm of blank verse, and the nicest sense of the nuances of language as well in relation to single words as to words in combination—faculties which, as it is needless to say, are indispensable to an emendator of Shakspeare, or, indeed, of any other poet. In every department of textual criticism he excelled. In its humbler offices, in collation, in transcription, in the correction of clerical errors, he was, as even his enemies have frankly admitted, the most patient and conscientious of drudges. To the elucidation of obscurities in expression or allusion, and for the purposes of illustrative commentary generally, he brought a stock of learning such as has never perhaps been found united in any other commentator on Shakspeare…. The proper monument of Theobald is not that cairn of dishonour which the sensitive vanity of Pope, the ignoble and impudent devices of Warburton to build his own reputation on the ruin of another, the careless injustice of Johnson, the mean stratagems of Malone, and the obsequious parrotry of tradition on the part of subsequent writers, have succeeded in accumulating. It is the settled text of Shakspeare. It should be the gratitude of all to whom that text is precious, the gratitude of civilised mankind.

General

  Theobald was one of the worms of literature, a painful antiquarian, devoting his feeble powers to the illustration of obscure passages in Shakspeare’s writings; useful, indeed, but certainly humble enough to have escaped the martyrdom of a “Dunciad” immorality. The truth is, that private pique had animated Pope in placing Theobald at the head of the dunces. The great poet had himself published an edition of Shakspeare, in which his want of that minute antiquarian knowledge which Theobald undoubtedly possessed was glaringly apparent, a defect which the latter was naturally but too willing to point out. The character given to Theobald in the “Dunciad,” though of course exaggerated with all the ingenuity of a rich imagination and an intense jealousy, was in the main appropriate.

  Lewis Theobald was a type of the class whom Pope was resolved to crush. He was pedantic, poor, and somewhat malignant. He had attempted with equal ill-success original poetry, translation, and play-writing; and had, indeed, no disqualification for the throne of Dulness except his insignificance. Pope, as we have seen, admits this drawback, and candidly avows that the sole reason for Theobald’s sudden elevation to the unwelcome dignity was the attack which the latter had made on his edition of “Shakespeare.” At first sight, even this personal reason seems inadequate, for Theobald, in his preface to “Shakespeare Restored,” speaks of the poet with studied respect. There was, however, a sting in his title,—“Shakespeare Restored, or an Exposure of the Blunders Committed and Unamended in Mr. Pope’s late edition,”—which might not unfairly be cited by the poet as a proof of wanton malignity. To this we must add that it was malignity triumphant. Theobald was by nature better qualified than Pope for the task which both had undertaken; and he had exhibited Pope to the world in a position of somewhat ridiculous inferiority.

  The fate of Lewis Theobald is without parallel in literary history. It may be said with simple truth that no poet in our own or in any language has ever owed so great a debt to an editor as Shakspeare owes to this man. He found the text of the tragedies and comedies, which is now so intelligible and lucid, in a condition scarcely less deplorable than that in which Aldus found the choruses of Æschylus, and Musurus the parabases of Aristophanes, and he contributed more to its certain and permanent settlement than all the other editors from Rowe to Alexander Dyce…. From the publication of the “Dunciad” to the present day he has been the butt of almost every critic and biographer of Shakspeare and Pope. Indeed, the shamelessness of the injustice with which he has been treated by his brother commentators on Shakspeare exceeds belief. Generation after generation it has been the same story. After plundering his notes and appropriating his emendations, sometimes with, but more generally without, acknowledgment, they all contrive, each in his own fashion, to reproduce Pope’s portrait of him. Whenever they mention him, if they do not couple with their remarks some abusive or contemptuous expression, it is with a sort of half-apology for introducing his name. They refer to him, in fact, as a gentleman might refer among his friends to a shoeblack who had just amused him with some witticism while polishing his boots.