Representing a heightened British delicacy regarding sexual morality that came to be known as “Victorian,” the English physician Thomas Bowdler published an expurgated version of William Shakespeare’s works that removed what he deemed “vulgar parts.” His attempt to sanitize literature for middle-class readers gave birth to the term for all such attempts, “bowdlerization.”
Along with Charles C. Boycott
The first edition of The Family Shakespeare: In Which Nothing Is Added to the Original Text, but Those Words and Expressions Are Omitted Which Cannot with Propriety Be Read Aloud in a Family, containing twenty plays, appeared anonymously in 1807, hiding the fact that it was largely the work of Henrietta Maria Bowdler, Thomas’s sister. In 1818, Thomas, presumably wishing to protect his sister’s reputation from those who would judge her for having worked so intimately with such “offensive” passages, published the work in ten volumes under his own name. The 1818 edition included all of Shakespeare’s plays, although the language of Othello, the Moor of Venice
Thomas Bowdler generally continued Henrietta’s omission of sexually suspicious words or passages. Romeo’s statement about Juliet in Romeo and Juliet
In the Bowdlers’ editions, Henry IV called Owen Glendower “vile Glendower” rather than “damned Glendower,” Falstaff’s “belly” became his “body,” and in Measure for Measure
the indecent expressions with which many of the scenes abound are so interwoven with the story, that it is extremely difficult to separate one from the other. I trust, however, that I have succeeded in doing it. . . .
In all, Bowdler removed more than 10 percent of the text of Shakespeare’s plays; Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
The earliest edition of The Family Shakespeare was published at a time when Romantic poets such as Lord Byron
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Altered versions of Shakespeare had already appeared in the late seventeenth century. For example, William Davenant and John Dryden revised The Tempest
This desire for a more “beautified” Shakespeare was influenced by the eighteenth century emphasis on “sensibility.” Persons of delicate taste, especially young women, were believed to be too sensitive to experience whatever was deemed violent, gross, or obscene. No moral person would wish to be offended even by the printed page; therefore, editions designed to protect tender sensibilities became popular, especially anthologies of inoffensive passages such as Vicesimus Knox’s Elegant Extracts (1784), William Dodd’s Beauties of Shakespeare (1752), and Elizabeth Griffiths’s The Morality of Shakespeare’s Drama (1775). As Bowdler himself asserted, in capitals, in 1823:
IF ANY WORD OR EXPRESSION IS OF SUCH A NATURE, THAT THE FIRST IMPRESSION WHICH IT EXCITES IS AN IMPRESSION OF OBSCENITY, THAT WORD OUGHT NOT TO BE SPOKEN, OR WRITTEN, OR PRINTED: AND IF PRINTED, IT OUGHT TO BE ERASED.
A third factor in Bowdler’s success was the influence of evangelical Christianity,
Not everyone was pleased with Bowdler’s work. In 1818, the Monthly Review
The verb “bowdlerize”
More nauseous and more foolish cant was never chattered than that which would deride the memory or depreciate the merits of Bowdler. No man ever did more service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him into the hands of intelligent and imaginative children.
For Bowdler’s defenders, then and now, his censorship of Shakespeare was mitigated by the resulting wider readership for the dramatist, especially among youth who might not otherwise have come to know him in print. It is also true that, compared to some other contemporary expurgators, Bowdler was more lenient; for example, John Philip Kemble’s
The English Drama Purified (1812) had done. If the Shakespeare that Bowdler produced was an emasculated and benign dramatist whose main purpose was to avoid offending women and children, epitomize English creativity, and arouse patriotic literary pride, he was nevertheless, according to Marvin Rosenberg, “the most nearly authentic Shakespeare virtuous females were then likely to hear.”
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Dobson, Michael. “Bowdler and Britannia: Shakespeare and the National Libido.” In Shakespeare and Race, edited by Catherine M. S. Alexander and S. Wells. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Contends that Bowdler’s edition promoted the dramatist as a model of both national pride and sexual propriety. -
Franklin, Colin. “The Bowdlers and Their Family Shakespeare.” The Book Collector 49 (2000): 227-243. Summarizes Bowdler’s social context and his edition. Defends his efforts to popularize Shakespeare while guarding young readers from his bawdiness. -
Perrin, Noel. Dr. Bowdler’s Legacy: A History of Expurgated Books in England and America. 3d ed. Boston: David R. Godine, 1991. A popularly written and well-documented account of Bowdler’s work and influence. -
Price, Leah. “The Poetics of Pedantry from Thomas Bowdler to Susan Ferrier.” Women’s Writing 7 (2000): 75-88. Argues that the novels of Susan Ferrier (1782-1854), which are composed largely of extracts and quotes from famous authors, follow Bowdler’s practice of altering texts for reading aloud in polite, mixed company. -
Rosenberg, Marvin. “Reputation, Oft Lost Without Deserving. . . .” Shakespeare Quarterly 9 (Autumn, 1958): 499-506. Summarizes Bowdler’s work and defends him by comparing him to more stringent expurgators of his time and earlier.
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