An Attempt to Rescue Shakespeare that Ancient English Poet and Playwright, Master William Shakespeare From the Maney Errors, Falsely Charged on Him by Certain New-Fangled Wittes […] by a Gentleman Formerly of Grey’s-Inn (1749): this is a title that starts strong and then falls off, to the point that Arthur Freeman (the editor of my edition) can no longer be sure who the titular “Gentleman Formerly of Grey’s Inn” is. Most people to take it to be one John Holt, and I will here, but there is no evidence for his existence at the Inns of Court. The main thrust of this mysterious man’s text is against Theobald (1733) and Warburton’s (1747) editions of The Tempest, and thus is largely occupied with questions of textual emendation. That said, Holt distinguishes himself from other editors (not least those he criticises) by including some praise of actors. I’ll concentrate here on this small aspect of what is ultimately a small book, one of the first ever to be devoted to a single play.

One brief passage on the dating of The Tempest shows Holt following the eighteenth-century identification of Heminge and Condell as actors first and publishers second. For most, this is a problem, but Holt uses the First Folio publishers as a tool for dating this play.

it will appear, ’twas one of the last Plays wrote by our Author, though it has stood the first, in all the printed Editions since 1623, which Preeminence given it by the Players is no bad Proof of its being the last, this Author furnished them with.

Heminge and Condell also appear as examples of Warburton’s unjust methods.

if this Gentleman [Warburton] had remembered some of his own Notes, he would not sure have charged Shakespeare, or the Player Editors, with Impertinence, fr making any one ask Questions merely for the Sake of answering them himself.

Such critique of Warburton is very similar to that found in the Canons of Criticism, based on the hypocrisy of disparaging Player Editors when proving an incompetent editor oneself.

As well as the defence of those actors involved with the First Folio, however, Holt also proves himself willing to use theatrical practice as a source of information for correcting Theobald and Warburton. He does it first when criticising Theobald’s division of Juno’s song into two voices, as “the Author might have his Reasons, as well as the Player Editors, for giving the whole to Juno in the Performance, viz, the having but one Voice that could execute it”. Holt then goes on to point out that if we wish to preserve Shakespeare’s intentions above all else, then we must take such oddities (apparently employed because of theatrical limitations) into the text, “the author not appearing to have given himself much trouble, as to the Figure his Offspring made on the outside of the Theatre”.

This methodology rebounds in two ways. First, it again increases the value of the ‘Player Editor’ who could recall Shakespeare’s stagings when preparing the plays for publication. As Holt puts it unethusiastically, the “first Editors” were “obliged, for want of better Guides, to govern themselves by what they saw and heard, whether they stole from the Stage by Memory, or otherwise, or even printed from the Stage Copies”. The second consequence of this method is that it tends to the belief that Shakespeare was a master of staging as well as writing. This appears in Holt’s response to Warburton’s questioning of the reasons behind Prospero ordering that the “trumpery” be brought out as a trap.

[if it were not done] the Stage must have stood still during that Time, and which this Trumpery alone, totally prevents, as it diverts them from their main Design, and yet keeps the Scene busy, and shews Shakespeare perfectly understood the Jeu du theatre.

So there you have it, Shakespeare rescued not just as a writer but as a dramatist; and, rescued with him, at least in a little way, the actors too.