The Works of Mr William Shakespeare

Editor Peter Holland is Director of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Birmingham. His publications include an edited edition of A Midsummer Nights Dream (Oxford 1994) and English Shakespeares: Shakespeare on the English Stage in the 1990s (CUP, 1997)

The Plays Rowe worked hard on the edition, recognising that the text needed some serious attention. As he said in his preface: 'I have taken some Care to redeem him [Shakespeare] from the Injuries of former Impressions. I must not pretend to have return'd this Work to the Exactness of the Author's Original Manuscripts: Those are lost, or, at least, are gone beyond any Inquiry I could make; so that there was nothing left, but to compare the several Editions, and give the true Reading as well as I could from thence.' The Poems Tonson had in 1707 bought the copyright to Shakespeare's plays but not to the poems. In 1710 a rival publisher, Edmund Curll, published an additional volume, designed to look like the six volumes of Rowe's edition and titled 'Volume the Seventh'. Charles Gildon edited the poems but he also provided a glossary of obscure words, an essay on the history of drama, a commentary on the plays and numerous other features that Rowe had, in his view, failed to provide. Gildon's work is a vital addition to Rowe's edition, completing the presentation of the text with the poems but also adding to Rowe's way of making the plays available and understandable.