Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825) was a notable and wealthy English physician who had a second career as a writer and editor. He is best known for the publication of the book ‘The Family Shakespeare.’ This was first published in 1807 and contained 24 of Shakespeare’s plays and was successful enough to go through several editions. in 1818, a version appeared in ten volumes which included all of the plays then attributed to the dramatist. As Bowdler explained, ‘nothing is added to the original text but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.’ In other words, Bowdler’s work reflected a period of history in which literature (and knowledge generally) was disseminated to women and children by men, who were empowered (by God, ultimately as revealed through whatever religious scripture was deemed appropriate) to decide what those women and children should be allowed to hear. Much, therefore, was omitted: Ophelia’s suicide becomes an accident, exclamations deemed scandalous were replaced by milder phrases (one thinks of Ned Flanders) and some people in low social positions such as sex workers were excised altogether.

Bowdler’s work was so popular that his name has entered into general usage in the English language: to bowdlerize something, therefore, means to make some act of censorship to a work of literature or some other cultural artifact. It is often used as a term of criticism or of satire, meaning that the censor has little sense of artistic merit or is of an overly prurient nature. On the other hand, there are some scenes in Shakespeare which one might hesitate before showing to a young child: for example, the baking of children into a pie, the cutting off a raped woman’s hands and tongues and the appearance of the devil himself as the third assassin. Just because censorship is commonly used to suppress free thought and to maintain power in the elite classes does not necessarily mean that censorship can never be justified.

The impact of Bowdler’s work seen as an act of criticism is to re-present Shakespeare’s work as a form of morally improving dramas and to limit the scope of Shakespeare’s social inclusivity. The dramatist was always careful to include people from all walks of life in his plays to show the universality of the moral and political problems his characters faced. By removing some of them, Bowdler is suggesting that some people are outside society, should not be considered and even that they should indeed be blamed for their own situation.