Lewis Theobald Totally Explained

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Lewis Theobald (baptised April 2, 1688 – September 18, 1744), British textual editor and author, was a landmark figure both in the history of Shakespearean editing and in literary satire. He was vital for the establishment of fair texts for Shakespeare, and he was the first avatar of Dulness for Alexander Pope.

Life and Work

Before coming to Shakespeare, Theobald's career wasn't very distinguished. He began as a lawyer, as his father had been an attorney in Kent, but he set his sights on a literary life. He was a competent classicist, and his first publications were translations of Greek works. He began with Plato's Phaedo in 1714 and contracted with a book seller for the serial translation of the tragedies of Aeschylus (of which, only Electra and Ajax were done) and Sophocles's Oedipus Rex 1715. These translations are not particularly good, as he performed them very rapidly. Theobald also wrote for the Tory Mist's Journal. He attempted to make a living with drama and began to work with John Rich at Drury Lane, writing pantomimes for him. He also probably plagiarized a man named Henry Meystayer. Meystayer gave Theobald a draft of a play called The Perfidious Brother to review, and Theobald had it produced as his own work. As an author, Theobald's work was rather poor.
Theobald's fame and contribution to English letters, however, rests with his 1726 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 variorum is, as its subtitle says, a reaction to Alexander Pope's edition of Shakespeare. Pope had "smoothed" Shakespeare's lines, and, most particularly, Pope had, indeed, missed many textual errors. In fact, when Pope produced a second edition of his Shakespeare in 1728, he incorporated many of Theobald's textual readings. Pope claimed that he took in only "about twenty-five words" of Theobald's corrections, but, in truth, he took in most of them. Additionally, Pope claimed that Theobald hid his information from Pope. Such wasn't the case.
Pope was as much a better poet than Theobald as Theobald was a better editor than Pope, and the events surrounding Theobald's attack and Pope's counter-attack show both men at their heights. Theobald's Shakespeare Restored is a judicious, if ill-tempered, answer to Pope's edition, but in 1733 Theobald produced a rival edition of Shakespeare in seven volumes for Jacob Tonson, the book seller. For the edition, Theobald worked with Bishop Warburton, who later also published an edition of Shakespeare. Theobald's 1733 edition was far the best produced before 1750, and it has been the cornerstone of all subsequent editions. Theobald not only corrected variants but chose among best texts and undid many of the changes to the text that had been made by earlier 18th century editors. Edmund Malone's later edition (the standard from which modern editors act) was built on Theobald's.

Theobald the Dunce

Theobald (pronounced by Pope as "Tibbald," though living members of his branch of the Theobald family say it was pronounced as spelled then, as it's today) was rewarded for his public rebuke of Pope by becoming the first hero of Pope's The Dunciad in 1728. In the Dunciad Variorum, Pope goes much farther. In the apparatus to the poem, he collects ill comments made on Theobald by others, gives evidence that Theobald wrote letters to Mist's Journal praising himself, and argues that Theobald had meant his Shakespeare Restored as an ambush. One of the damning bits of evidence came from John Dennis, who wrote of Theobald's Ovid: "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 p. 90). Until the second version of The Dunciad in 1741, Theobald remained the chief of the "Dunces" who led the way toward night (see the translatio stultitia) by debasing public taste and bringing "Smithfield muses to the ears of kings." Pope attacks Theobald's plagiarism and work in vulgar drama directly, but the reason for the fury was the Shakespeare Restored. Even though Theobald's work is invaluable, Pope succeeded in so utterly obliterating the character of the man that he's known by those who don't work with Shakespeare only as a dunce, as a dusty, pedantic, and dull witted scribe.

Double Falshood

In 1727, Theobald produced a play Double Falshood; or The Distrest Lovers, which he claimed to have based on a lost play by Shakespeare. Pope attacked it as a fraud, but admitted in private that he believed Theobald to have worked from, at the least, a genuine period work. Modern scholarship is generally of the opinion that Theobald was honest in his claim, for Double Falshood appears to be based on the lost Cardenio, by Shakespeare and John Fletcher.

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