Stardate 20010817.1543 (On Screen): Shakespeare may well have been the best playwright to ever live. Not every work was perfect but he has a long line of towering achievements which is awesome to behold. Many authors would sell their souls to write just
one work as great as
King Lear. Alas, few even come close. Yet Shakespeare's work is disturbing, and intended to be such. In 1818, a man named
Thomas Bowdler took Shakespeare's works and, well, "edited" them to make them more acceptable for polite company. He toned down the sex and raw language and removed ugly ideas.
Bowdler gave us an eponymous word, in the long tradition of "lynch" and "boycott": to "bowdlerize" means to mutilate a work of art in order to make it morally acceptable. This kind of thing has been going on for a long time. (discussion in progress)
