ALEXANDER

See also:

• ALEXANDER DYCE (1798–1869)
• DYCE, WILLIAM (1806–1864)

DYCE (1798–1869)  , English dramatic editor and literary historian, was born in Edinburgh on the 3oth of June 1798 . After receiving his early education at the high school of his native city, he became a student at Exeter College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1819 . He took holy orders, and became a curate at Lantegloss, in Cornwall, and subsequently at Nayland, in Suffolk; in 1827 he settled in London . His first books were Select Translations from Quintus Smyrnaeus (1821), an edition of Collins (1827), and Specimens of British Poetesses (1825) . He issued annotated editions of George Peele, Robert Greene, John Webster, Thomas Middleton, Marlowe, and Beaumont and Fletcher, with lives of the authors and much illustrative matter . He completed, in 1833, an edition of James Shirley left unfinished by William Gifford, and contributed biographies of Shakespeare, Pope, Akenside and Beattie to Pickering's Aldine Poets . He also edited (1836–1838) Richard Bentley's works, and Specimens of British Sonnets (1833) . His carefully revised edition of John Skelton, which appeared in 1843, did much to revive interest in that trenchant satirist . In 1857 his edition of Shakespeare was published by Moxon; and the second edition, a great improvement on the old one, was issued by Chapman & Hall in 1866 . He also published Remarks on Collier's and Knight's Editions of Shakespeare (1844); A Few Notes on Shakespeare (1853); and Strictures on Collier's new Edition of Shakespeare (1859), a contribution to the Collier controversy (see COLLIER, JOHN PAYNE), which ended a long friendship between the two scholars . He was intimately connected with several literary societies, and undertook the publication of Kempe's Nine Days' Wonder for the Camden Society; and the old plays of Timon and Sir Thomas More were published by him for the Shakespeare Society . He was associated with Halliwell-Phillips, John Pgyne Collier and Thomas Wright as one of the founders of the Percy Society, for publishing old English poetry .

Dyce also issued Recollections of the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers (1856) . He died on the 15th of May 1869 . He had collected a valuable library, containing amongst other treasures many rare Elizabethan hooks, and this collection he bequeathed to the South Kensington Museum . He displayed untiring industry, abundant learning, and admirable critical acumen in his editions of the old English poets . His wide reading in Elizabethan literature enabled him to explain much that was formerly obscure in Shakespeare; while his sound judgment was a check to extravagance in emendation . While preserving all that was valuable in former editions, Dyce added much fresh matter . His Glossary, a large volume of 500 pages, was the most exhaustive that had appeared .