The year 1774 marked a pivotal moment in the history of adapting Shakespeare's work to align with social norms and moral sensibilities of the time. A drama critic, Francis Gentleman, undertook the task of editing Shakespeare's plays for Bell's publication, aiming to render them "more instructive and intelligible, especially to the ladies and to youth." Gentleman found fault with certain "vulgarisms"—such as Macbeth's harsh words to his servant and Cleopatra's threat to her maid—that he deemed unworthy of characters of royal or even middle status. Bell’s edition walked a curious line of inconsistency; while it completely omitted some "glaring indecencies," it merely italicized minor ones in Othello, signaling to the sensitive reader, particularly women and the young, to skip over such parts. Occasionally, Gentleman opted to criticize the offensive lines in footnotes, offering a more subtle form of expurgation.

The most renowned effort in the realm of censored literature came with Dr. Thomas Bowdler's The Family Shakspeare, published in 1807. This edition sought to excise "everything that can raise a blush on the cheek of modesty," and its popularity inspired a wave of similar expurgations. Among these was the Reverend J. Pitman's School-Shakspere in 1822, which aimed to outdo Bowdler's efforts with even stricter censorship. Pitman achieved this by drastically reducing potentially offensive content, cutting the drunken Porter's speech in Macbeth from twenty lines down to three, a more severe edit than Bowdler's reduction to six lines. Pitman went further, at times removing entire characters, such as Touchstone and Audrey in As You Like It, who he believed contributed nothing beneficial to young minds.