Bowdler, Dr. Thomas

Dr. Thomas Bowdler (1754–1825), a retired physician turned country gentleman, became a self-appointed censor with the uncompromising view that “Words that give an impression of obscenity should not be spoken, written or printed.” He put his views into practice by publishing major texts in bowdlerized or clearly expurgated versions. The most famous of these was The Family Shakespeare (1818), in which, according to the title page, “nothing is added to the original text; but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.” Reading aloud was then an important family entertainment. The Preface was quite frank: “Many words and expressions occur which are of so indecent a nature as to render it highly desirable that they should be erased … neither the vicious taste of the age, nor the most brilliant effusions of wit, can afford an excuse for profaneness or obscenity” (viii). Continuing in this vein of total assurance, Bowdler announces: “The most sacred Word in our language is omitted in several instances, in which it appeared as a mere expletive; and it is changed into the sacred word Heaven in a still greater number” (1827, xvii). In fact, the work was more of a family enterprise, since Bowdler’s sister Harriet (Henrietta Maria, 1750–1830) had already produced an earlier edition in 1807 and she continued to be the major collaborator. She

“endeavoured to remove everything that could give just offence to the religious and virtuous mind.” The first edition, which included only twenty of the thirty-seven plays, appeared without an editor’s name, and only after a few years did Bowdler’s “authorship” begin to be known.

The Family Shakespeare was to become the most famous, subsequently the most notorious, of all expurgated books. The excisions from the first edition were drastic, including the whole of Romeo and Juliet as well as large sections of Hamlet and Timon of Athens . Although Thomas Bowdler included all the plays, like most censors he was inconsistent. In Othello he retained, somewhat surprisingly, such powerful condemnations as “impudent strumpet,” “cunning whore of Venice,” and “demi-devil,” although he predictably excised “an old black ram is tupping your white ewe” (I i 88-89). Oddly, Lady Macbeth’s famous line “Out damned spot!” is retained, while in Hamlet an old word for prostitute, drab , is deleted but whore is kept. In the following savage curse upon Athens by Timon as he leaves the city for good, the lines in italics were excised from The Family Shakespeare . They indicate the rationale for expurgation and retention: Bowdler’s clear policy was to excise sexual references, but he has kept alarming images of violence and social disintegration:

Let me look back upon thee. O thou wall,
That girdlest in those wolves, dive in the earth,
And fence not Athens! Matrons turn incontinent [promiscuous]!
Obedience fail in children! slaves and fools,
Pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the bench,
And minister in their steads! To general filths
Convert, o’ the instant, green [innocent] virginity!
Do’t in your parents’ eyes! Bankrupts, hold fast;
Rather than render back; out with your knives,
And cut your trusters’ throats! Bound servants, steal!
Large-handed robbers your masters are,
And pill by law. Maid to thy master’s bed;
Thy mistress is o’ the brothel! Son of sixteen,
Pluck the lin’d crutch from thy old limping sire,
With it beat out his brains!
( Timon of Athens IV i 1-15)

The Family Shakespeare proved highly popular, generating five editions in twenty years. When the copyright lapsed (in 1860), a rival edition was immediately brought out by another publisher, and by 1894 there were some forty expurgated editions of Shakespeare on the market. The Bowdlers became something of an institution. Thomas went on to produce with even less justification a “purified” text of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1826), “with the careful omission of all passages of an irreligious or immoral tendency.” When young Thomas wrote his uncle’s obituary in the 1825 edition, he made two predictions, one reassuring, the other disturbing:

the readers of Shakespeare will henceforth probably increase tenfold; the Family Shakespeare will be the edition which will lie on the table of every drawing-room; and the name of the editor will be remembered, as one who has contributed more than any other individual to promote the innocent and rational enjoyment of well-educated families.