Lewis Theobald

Lewis Theobald (baptized April 2, 1688 in Sittingbourne , Kent , † September 18, 1744 in London ) was an English editor and author and a key figure in the history of the editions of William Shakespeare and in the field of literary satire .

Life

Theobald's professional career was initially not characterized by anything special. He started out as a lawyer, especially since his father in Kent had also started a legal career. But he was toying with a life dedicated to literature. He was knowledgeable about the ancient world and his first publications were translations of Greek works. He began with Plato's Phaedo in 1714 and signed a contract with a publisher to translate the tragedies of Aeschylus (of which only Electra and Ajax were completed) and of King Oedipus in 1715 by Sophocles . These translations are not very good because he made them very quickly. Theobald also wrote crap for the Tory Nathaniel . He tried to make a living with drama and began a collaboration with theater producer John Rich at the Theater Royal Drury Lane venue . There he wrote pantomimes for him. He was probably using plagiarism from a certain Henry Meystayer. Meystayer gave Theobald a draft of a piece entitled The Perfidious Brother to read and Theobald produced it as his own work. Theobald was comparatively unproductive as an author.

Theobald's fame and his contribution to English philology, however, is based on his 1726 work entitled 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 published. Theobald's edition is, as its subtitle suggests, a reaction to Alexander Pope 's Shakespeare edition. Pope had smoothed out Shakespeare's lines and, in particular, Pope had overlooked many textual errors. However, when Pope published a second edition of his Shakespeare works in 1728, he took into account numerous readings by Theobald. Pope claimed that he had only copied about twenty-five words from Theobald's corrections. In truth, however, he took over most of them. In addition, Pope alleged that Theobald withheld information from him. However, this was not true.

Pope was a much better poet than Theobald, but Theobald was also a better editor than Pope, and the events surrounding Theobald's attack and Pope's reaction are both at the height of their abilities. Theobald 's Shakespeare Restored is an ill-tempered but justified answer to Popes Edition, but in 1733 Theobald delivered a competing Shakespeare edition in seven volumes for Jacob Tonson's publishing house . For the edition, Theobald worked with Bishop Warburton , who later published a Shakespeare edition. Theobald's 1733 edition was by far the best produced before 1750 and the basis of all subsequent editions. Theobald not only corrected versions, he also selected the best texts and reversed many of the text changes made by earlier editors in the 18th century. The later edition of Edmund Malone (standard which serves as the basis of modern editions) was created on the basis of Theobald's edition.

Theobald, the hollow head

Theobald (written as "Tibbald" according to Pope, although members of the branch of the Theobald family say the name was spelled the same way then as it is today) received the receipt for his public criticism of Pope in the form of the role of the first hero in Pope's ridiculous poem The Dunciad (1728). In Dunciad Variorum , Pope goes even further: in the apparatus for the poem he lists negative comments from third parties on Theobald, suggests that Theobald wrote letters to Nathaniel Mist in which he praised himself and interprets Theobald 's Shakespeare Restored as a trap. Some of the damning evidence comes from John Dennis , who wrote of Theobald's Ovid as follows : “There is a notorious Ideot. . . who from an under-spur-leather to the Law, is become an under-strapper to the Play-house, who has lately burlesqu'd the Metamorphoses of Ovid by a vile Translation "( Remarks on Pope's Homer, page 90). Until the second version of The Dunciad in 1741 Theobald remained the top of the "hollow heads" ("Dunces"), who misled the public's taste. (He brings "Smithfield muses to the ears of kings".) Pope directly attacks Theobald's plagiarism and his work on vulgar dramas, but the motive for his anger was very likely Shakespeare Restored . Although Theobald's work is highly valued, Pope managed to portray it in such a bad light that for people who know nothing about Shakespeare's editions, he is only seen as a fool and a dusty, pedantic and mindless scribe.

Double falshood

In 1727 Theobald wrote the piece Double Falshood ; or The Distrest Lovers , which he claims was based on a lost Shakespeare play. Pope attacked this as a fraud, but privately admitted that he believed Theobald had at least a work from the right time as a basis. Modern literary scholars generally believe that Theobald was honest, as Double Falshood is arguably based on the lost play Cardenio by Shakespeare and John Fletcher .

literature

• Gary Taylor : Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present . London: Hogarth Press, 1989. ISBN 0701208880 .