Improving on Perfection

Improving on Perfection: How Victorian values changed how we look at Shakespeare

By Nolan Rettig

Were a modern reader to travel back and visit a bookstore of the Victorian era, they would be hard pressed to recognize many of the authors on display or parse their writing styles. They would still have found authors like Dickens and Twain, but there wasn’t any name more revered than William Shakespeare’s when it came to English literature. To put it into perspective, his writing style and character building was held to such a high standard that one could have seen them included in church sermons, with the Bible being the only other book with as much authority and prestige as his collected writings. The reason this happened two hundred years after the Bard’s death is because, unlike the Bible, Shakespeare’s plays could include blasphemous, violent and sometimes lewd content. Even in his own day Shakespeare’s plays were controversial, with the Puritans actively petitioning for theaters to be shut down if they performed plays seen as too transgressive.

Above: Dr. Minthorn’s “bowdlerized” copy of Shakespeare’s works, printed in 1889. Below: Dr. Minthorn’s signature within his edition of Shakespeare.

While things were different in a Victorian context, it wasn’t by much. Unlike the Puritans, most Victorians saw the value in Shakespeare’s writings and didn’t believe in suppressing them, but instead sought to remove the raunchier dialogue of his plays. The first such attempt at sanitizing Shakespeare’s work was made by a Dr. Thomas Bowdler, whose 1818 The Family Shakespeare sought to trim and reinterpret Shakespeare’s plays so that readers of all ages could safely read them. Other editions went so far as to include lavish illustrations and modern spelling, all with the intent of making Shakespeare more up to date and easy to read for audiences. While this approach may have had good intentions, it created an impression of Shakespeare that was inoffensive and anachronistic, with it being a rarity by the end of the century for people to realize how different their versions of Shakespeare were from the first editions.

Contemporary Frontispieces for Romeo & Juliet and Henry IV; despite having some of the most iconic characters in Shakespeare’s repertoire, neither are included in Dr. Minthorn’s copy.

Dr H.J. Minthorn, uncle of Herbert Hoover, was no exception when it came to reading bowdlerized versions of Shakespeare. In fact, the 1889 edition that he bought after moving to Salem is more revised than The Family Shakespeare; edited by C.A. Gaskell, only half of Shakespeare’s thirty-eight plays are kept in this edition, half of which survive only in summarized form. Gaskell defends these changes by suggesting that Shakespeare’s perfection as a writer made it impossible for him to have willingly authored things that were so objectionable to a Victorian audience. Verbatim, Gaskell says in the preface that “the passages referred to are almost invariably so distinct from the general plan and text of the original as to appear, for the most part, like interpolations,” although Gaskell does condemn conspiracies that these passages were added by a separate author.

For Dr. Minthorn’s part, he fit Gaskell’s target audience to a T in that he only wanted a condensed version of Shakespeare. Preferring nonfiction and biographies, the only play he showed clear interest in was ‘Hamlet,’ having highlighted some of the more famous passages. Whether this edition was Hoover’s first glimpse of Shakespeare is less certain, though he did have a high opinion of the Bard’s work later in life, even attending the Folger Shakespeare Library’s opening while president. Today, revisions like those in Hoover’s day are next to unheard of, with censorship being structured around the socio-political issues of our time instead of revising the language from another. If anything, though, it’s a hopeful sign that Hamlet can again say ‘for God’s love’ without having to change it to ‘for Heaven’s love’ (Hamlet, 1.2.195) and that the author’s words are accepted for what they are after four hundred years.

The famous ‘To be, or not to be’ monologue, from Dr. Minthorn’s copy. The monologue is highlighted with pencil around the edges.

References

Eschner, Kat. “The Bowdlers Wanted to Clean Up Shakespeare, Not Become a Byword for Censorship.” Smithsonian Magazine, July 11, 2017. Accessed July 1, 2025. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bowdlers-wanted-clean-shakespeare-not-become-byword-censorship-180963945/

“On Viewing Shakespeare’s First Folio.” Hoover Heads. National Archives, September 21, 2016. Accessed July 1, 2025. https://hoover.blogs.archives.gov/2016/09/21/on-viewing-shakespeares-first-folio/

Witmore, Michael, host. Shakespeare Unlimited, podcast. “The Victorian Cult of Shakespeare.” Folger Shakespeare Library, November 20, 2020. Accessed July 1, 2025. https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/victorian-cult-shakespeare/