Pope, Alexander
Pope, Alexander (1688–1744),poet and Shakespearian editor. Pope's six-volume edition of Shakespeare's Works (1725) was the product of a poet rather than a specialized philologist or dedicated Shakespearian scholar. Though Pope carried out some textual collation, and made innovative use of the Shakespearian quartos, he was less concerned to explain difficulties and resolve variance on rational or critical grounds than to mediate his author for what were perceived to be more cultivated contemporary tastes. Pope's text is in part constructed and presented according to aesthetic criteria. The ‘most shining passages’ are pointed out by marginal quotation marks, or preceded by an asterisk. Some lines which Pope thought ‘excessively bad’, on the basis of their verbal quibbles or conceits, he ‘degraded’ from the text itself to the foot of the page. Pope's preface is an important document of early 18th-century English criticism,...
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