FullReads

11. Falstaff’s Billet-Doux … expressions of love in their way, omitted by Pope.

12. The Merchant of Venice was turned into a comedy, with the title the Jew of Venice, by George Granville, Pope’s “Granville the polite,” afterwards Lord Lansdowne. It was acted at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1701. The part of the Jew was performed by Dogget. Betterton played Bassanio. See Genest’s English Stage, ii. 243, etc.

is a little too much (line 13). Pope reads is too much.

Difficile est, etc. Horace, Ars poetica, 128.

All the world, etc. As you like it, ii. 7. 139.

13. She never told her love, etc. Twelfth Night, ii. 4. 113-118: line 116, “And with a green and yellow melancholy” is omitted.

Pope omits a passage or two in (line 34).

ornament to the Sermons. Cf. Addison, Spectator, No. 61: “The greatest authors, in their most serious works, made frequent use of punns. The Sermons of Bishop Andrews, and the Tragedies of Shakespear, are full of them.”

14. Pope omits former (line 5).

Caliban. Cf. Dryden’s Preface to Troilus and Cressida (ed. W. P. Ker., i., p. 219) and the Spectator, Nos. 279 and 419. Johnson criticised the remark in his notes on the Tempest (ed. 1765, i., p. 21).

Note. Ld. Falkland, Lucius Gary (1610-1643), second Viscount Falkland; Ld. C. J. Vaughan, Sir John Vaughan (1603-1674), Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; John Selden (1584-1654), the jurist.

Among the particular beauties, etc. This passage, to the end of the quotation from Dryden’s Prologue, is omitted by Pope.

16. Dorastus and Faunia, the alternative title of Robert Greene’s Pandosto, or the Triumph of Time, 1588.

17. Pope omits tyrannical, cruel, and (line 36).

18. Plutarch. Rowe’s statement that Shakespeare “copied” his Roman characters from Plutarch is–as it stands–inconsistent with the previous argument as to his want of learning. His use of North’s translation was not established till the days of Johnson and Farmer.

Andre Dacier (1651-1722) was best known in England by his Essay on Satire, which was included in his edition of Horace (1681, etc.), and by his edition of the Poetics of Aristotle (1692). The former was used by Dryden in his Discourse concerning Satire, and appeared in English in 1692 and 1695; the latter was translated in 1705. In 1692 he brought out a prose translation, “with remarks,” of the Oedipus and Electra of Sophocles. Rowe’s reference is to Dacier’s preface to the latter play, pp. 253, 254. Cf. his Poetics, notes to ch. xv., and the Spectator, No. 44.

19. But howsoever, etc. Hamlet, i. 5. 84.

20. Betterton’s contemporaries unite in praise of his performance of Hamlet. Downes has an interesting note in his Roscius Anglicanus showing how, in the acting of this part, Betterton benefited by Shakespeare’s coaching: “Sir William Davenant (having seen Mr. Taylor, of the Black Fryars Company, act it; who being instructed by the author, Mr. Shakespear) taught Mr. Betterton in every particle of it, gained him esteem and reputation superlative to all other plays” (1789, p. 29). But cf. the Rise and Progress of the English Theatre
, appended to Colley Cibber’s Apology, 1750, p. 516.