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Nicholas Rowe's Account of the Life, etc., of Mr. William Shakespear forms the introduction to his edition of Shakespeare's plays (1709, 6 vols., 8vo).

Rowe has the double honour of being the first editor of the plays of Shakespeare and the first to attempt an authoritative account of his life. The value of the biography can best be judged by comparing it with the accounts given in such books as Fuller's Worthies of England (1662), Phillips's Theatrum Poetarum (1675), Winstanley's English Poets (1687), Langbaine's English Dramatick Poets (1691), Pope Blount's Remarks upon Poetry (1694), or Jeremy Collier's Historical and Poetical Dictionary (1701). Though some of the traditions—for which he has acknowledged his debt to Betterton—are of doubtful accuracy, it is safe to say that but for Rowe they would have perished.

The Account of Shakespeare was the standard biography during the eighteenth century. It was reprinted by Pope, Hanmer, Warburton, Johnson, Steevens, Malone, and Reed; but they did not give it in the form in which Rowe had left it. Pope took the liberty of condensing and rearranging it, and as he did not acknowledge what he had done, his silence led other editors astray. Those who did note the alterations presumed that they had been made by Rowe himself in the second edition in 1714. Steevens, for instance, states that he publishes the life [pg xxxix] from “Rowe's second edition, in which it had been abridged and altered by himself after its appearance in 1709.” But what Steevens reprints is Rowe's Account of Shakespeare as edited by Pope. In this volume the Account is given in its original form for the first time since 1714.

Pope omitted passages dealing only indirectly with Shakespeare, or expressing opinions with which he disagreed. He also placed the details of Shakespeare's later years (pp. 21–3) immediately after the account of his relationship with Ben Jonson (p. 9), so that the biography might form a complete portion by itself. With the exception of an occasional word, nothing occurs in the emended edition which is not to be found somewhere in the first.

A seventh and supplementary volume containing the Poems was added in 1710. It included Charles Gildon's Remarks on the Plays and Poems and his Essay on the Art, Rise, and Progress of the Stage in Greece, Rome, and England.