In 1818, Dr Thomas Bowdler decided the world needed a version of Shakespeare’s complete works guaranteed not to offend the sensibilities of women and children. Bowdler’s urge to edit Shakespeare extended to the spelling of his name, and his Family Shakspeare featured a Hamlet in which Ophelia drowned instead of taking her own life, and a world in which the exclamation “God” was replaced by “Heavens”. Bowdlerise – to take away the punch of literature. Bowderlise – to emasculate emotion.
Having taken much of the tragedy, the poetry and the fun out England’s greatest dramatist, Bowdler went on to censor Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In editing out most of Gibbon’s religious references, Bowdler will have confused not only his readers but also Rome’s lions, which were presumably left wandering the Coliseum with no Christians to attack.
Some 10 years after Bowdler’s onslaught on originality in the name of decency, the word bowdlerisation or bowdlerise was being used, often ironically, to describe the practice of doctoring text in the name of some specific belief. The fact that Bowdler’s name has survived a full two centuries suggests that taking the fun out of literature can be just as sure a route to immortality as creating it.
