shakedsetc.org
  • Home
  • Folios and Quartos
  • 18th Century Editions
  • 19th Century Editions
  • 20th Century Editions
  • The Fifth Folio (1700)
  • Companion Marlowe site!
  • New Variorum I 1871-1955
  • First Arden 1899-1924
  • Red-Letter Shakespeare
  • Women Edit Shakespeare
  • Restoration Adaptations
  • Conjectures and Notes
  • Biography
  • Collier Forgeries
  • Historical Criticism
  • Lexicons and More
  • Furnivall Facsimiles
  • Malone Society Reprints
  • Tudor Facsimile Texts
  • Bibliographia
  • Shakespeare Media Archive
  • Lost Plays Database
  • More
    • Home
    • Folios and Quartos
    • 18th Century Editions
    • 19th Century Editions
    • 20th Century Editions
    • The Fifth Folio (1700)
    • Companion Marlowe site!
    • New Variorum I 1871-1955
    • First Arden 1899-1924
    • Red-Letter Shakespeare
    • Women Edit Shakespeare
    • Restoration Adaptations
    • Conjectures and Notes
    • Biography
    • Collier Forgeries
    • Historical Criticism
    • Lexicons and More
    • Furnivall Facsimiles
    • Malone Society Reprints
    • Tudor Facsimile Texts
    • Bibliographia
    • Shakespeare Media Archive
    • Lost Plays Database
shakedsetc.org
  • Home
  • Folios and Quartos
  • 18th Century Editions
  • 19th Century Editions
  • 20th Century Editions
  • The Fifth Folio (1700)
  • Companion Marlowe site!
  • New Variorum I 1871-1955
  • First Arden 1899-1924
  • Red-Letter Shakespeare
  • Women Edit Shakespeare
  • Restoration Adaptations
  • Conjectures and Notes
  • Biography
  • Collier Forgeries
  • Historical Criticism
  • Lexicons and More
  • Furnivall Facsimiles
  • Malone Society Reprints
  • Tudor Facsimile Texts
  • Bibliographia
  • Shakespeare Media Archive
  • Lost Plays Database

Conjectures and Notes

Products of the variorum commentary tradition

(photos to left: Thirlby's annotations in Pope's 1725 ed.  Beinecke Library, Yale University)


As it became more prestigious to edit Shakespeare and "correct" his play texts to accord with contemporary usage and theory, the cottage industry of conjecture commentary sprung up. It seems to have begun in earnest with Styan Thirlby  (c 1691-1753), an acquaintance of Warburton and Theobald with whom he exchanged letters about Shakespearean emendation. Dr Johnson cited him freely in his 1765 edition. 


Thirlby's annotations in 18th century editions exist in photostat and in ms. but are not in an easily accessible form, such as a printed book or a website.  Some of his correspondence, fortunately, was preserved by John Nichols in letters exchanged with William Warburton and Lewis Theobald. 


The conjecturing tradition continued into the nineteenth century and intensified as the preference for pictorial illustration over the variorum mode of detailed commentary became the norm with the Shakspeare texts produced.  Commentary was an adjunct to the plays, but separate. 

John Upton

Critical Observations on Shakespeare (1748)

Zachary Grey

Critical, Historical, and Explanatory Notes on Shakespeare, 2 vols. (1754)


vol. 1    vol. 2


Remarks upon a Late Edition of Shakespear (1755). A defense of Hanmer and attack on Warburton

Thomas Tyrwhitt

Observations and Conjectures upon Some Passages of Shakspeare (1766)

E. H. Seymour

Remarks, Critical, Conjectural, and Explanatory, upon the Plays of Shakespeare, 2 vols. (1805)


vol. 1   vol. 2

Francis Douce

Illustrations of Shakspeare, and of Ancient Manners, 2 vols. (1807)


vol. 1  vol. 2  

Thomas Davies

Dramatic Miscellanies, Consisting of Critical Observations on Several Plays of Shakespeare (1785)


Vol. 1      Vol. 2      Vol. 3

Benjamin Heath

A Revisal of Shakespear's Text (1765)

Thomas Edwards

The Canons of Criticism and Glossary (1765)

Joseph Ritson

Remarks Critical and Illustrative on the Text and Notes of the Last Edition of Shakespear (1783)

John Monck Mason

Comments on the Last Edition of Shakespeare's Plays (1785)

Henry James Pye

Comments on the Commentators on Shakespear (1807)

Andrew Becket

Shakespeare's Himself Again: Or, the Language of the Poet Asserted (1815)

John Nichols

Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 2 (1817)


Correspondence between Warburton, Thirlby, and Theobald on editing

Zachariah Jackson

A Few Concise Examples of Seven Hundred Errors in Shakspeare's Plays (1818)


Shakspeare's Genius Justitfied (1819)

John Mitford

"Conjectural Emendations on Shakspere," Gentleman's Magazine, v. 22, 1844, pp. 115-36; 451-71.


"Conjectural Emendations on Shakepere"  Gentleman's Magaziine, v. 23, 1845,  pp. 115-32; 571-85.


Wiki entry on Mitford

Josiah Phillips Quincy

Manuscript Corrections from a Copy of the Fourth Folio of Shakespeare's Plays (1854)

William Sidney Walker

A Critical Examination of the Text of Shakespeare, 3 vols. (1860)


vol. 1   vol. 2    vol. 3  

Swynfen Jervis

Proposed Emendations of the Text of Shakspeare's Plays (1861)

Samuel Bailey

On the Received Text of Shakespeare's Dramatic Writings and Its Improvement, 2 vols. (1862)


vol. 1    vol. 2

Robert Cartwright

New Readings in Shakspere: Or, Proposed Emendations of the Text (1866)

Clement M. Ingleby

The Still Lion: An Essay towards the Restoration of Shakespeare's Text  (1874)

Edwin Abbott Abbott

A Shakespearian Grammar (1879)

J. G. Herr

Scattered Notes on the Text of Shakespeare (1879)

Benjamin Gott Kinnear

Cruces Shakespearianae: Difficult Passages in the Works of Shakespeare (1883)

Philip Perring

Hard Knots in Shakespeare (1883)


Revised edition (1885)

Karl Elze

Notes on Elizabethan Dramatists (1889)

John Orger

Critical Notes on Shakspere's Histories and Tragedies (1890)

John Bulloch

Studies on the Text of Shakespeare: With Numerous Emendations and Appendices (1878)

Friedrich August Leo

Shakespeare-Notes (1890)

Copyright © 2018-28  shakedsetc.org - All Rights Reserved.




Powered by