Shakespeare's Novels: Charlotte Lennox Illustrated

Abstract

In 1753, Andrew Millar published one of the earliest critical books on Shakespeare, entitled Shakespear Illustrated: or the and Histories, On Which the Plays of Shakespear are Founded, Collected and Translated from the Original Authors. The title page also announces that the Novels and Histories are offered With Remarks and that the work is By the Author of the Female Quixote. Charlotte Lennox's novel of the previous year was already sufficiently celebrated to be used in the advertising of Shakespear Illustrated. The first two volumes of this work deal with ten plays; the appearance of Volume III in 1754 brought the number of plays considered to twenty-two, but the treatment of the history plays in Volume III is less careful than the analysis of the chief comedies and tragedies and their sources. Volumes I and II were obviously in some sort a labor of love, and the writing, especially in the Critical Remarks, is lively, engaged, and emphatic. Lennox's work is a pioneer of its kind, an original and scholarly Shakespeare study. Hitherto, what scholarly comment existed on the subject of Shakespeare was largely to be found in editions. Larger-scale criticism, such as that of Rymer, was not concerned with producing new contextual material. It has been suggested that Charlotte Lennox might have been urged by Samuel Johnson to perform the task of presenting the sources, as it would have eased his editing of Shakespeare if he did not have to go into such matters himself, but could simply direct readers to another book.1 But in 1752-53 Johnson's Shakespeare project was neither imminent nor certain. It is true that in his own long-delayed edition of Shakespeare (1765) Johnson alludes to Lennox three times (he is one of the very few editors to draw on her work). That Samuel Johnson admired what Shakespear Illustrated achieved can be accepted without our having to believe that his suggestion or his interest was necessarily the only or the strongest motive for the production