ABSTRACT
playwright and textual scholar Lewis Theobald (1688-1744) offended Pope by finding fault with his edition of Shakespeare in a book provocatively entitled Shakespeare Restored: or, A Specimen of the Many Errors, as well Committed, as Unamended, by Mr. Pope in his late Edition of this Poet. This came in the context of Pope’s already substantial experience of concerted and bitterly hostile attacks on his character and writing in newspapers and pamphlets (Guerinot 1969: xxi-xxiii). A year later, in 1727, came the coronation of George II, an episode of pomp and pageantry which offered a focus for dissatisfaction with the continuing Hanoverian regime and its effect on the national culture (Rogers 1985: 120-50). In the Dunciads Pope is obviously angry about what could be described as personal issues (the success of writers he considers unworthy, and media hostility to his own career); but he is also, from an early stage in the development of the Dunciads, angry about wider issues (the state of contemporary literature, culture and politics).
