Harry Rowe (c. 1726–1799) was an English showman and puppeteer, now remembered as a satirical "emendator of Shakespeare" for a work that appeared under his name. Harry Rowe Croft

Life

Rowe was born at York. He served as trumpeter to the Duke of Kingston's light horse, and was present at the

battle of Culloden The Battle of Culloden took place on 16 April 1746, near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. A Jacobite army under Charles Edward Stuart was decisively defeated by a British government force commanded by the Duke of Cumberland, thereby endi ...

in 1746, after which he attended the

high sheriffs of Yorkshire High may refer to: Science and technology * Height * High (atmospheric), a high-pressure area * High (computability), a quality of a Turing degree, in computability theory * High (tectonics), in geology an area where relative tectonic uplift to ...

in the capacity of trumpeter to the

assizes The assizes (), or courts of assize, were periodic courts held around England and Wales until 1972, when together with the quarter sessions they were abolished by the Courts Act 1971 and replaced by a single permanent Crown Court. The assizes ex ...

, for 40 years. He was an itinerant puppet showman, travelling in Scotland and the north of England, and he operated a summer theatre in York for many years.

Works

John Croft, a wine merchant of York, got up a subscription for Rowe, and caused to be printed for his benefit ''Macbeth, with Notes by Harry Rowe, York, printed for the Annotator'' (1797, second edition, with a portrait of Rowe, 1799). The so-called "emendations" were intended to raise a laugh at the expense of scholarly commentators. In 1797 also appeared, in Rowe's name, ''No Cure No Pay; or the Pharmacopolist, a musical farce'', York, in which sarcasm is levelled against

empirics In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological view which holds that true knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience and empirical evidence. It is one of several competing views within epistemology, along ...

with diplomas, who are represented by Drs. Wax, Potion, and Motion, and the journeyman Marrowbone. Annotations were again furnished by "a friend", probably Croft. Shortly after Rowe's death in York poorhouse, Croft issued ''Memoirs of Harry Rowe, constructed from materials found in an old box after his decease'', with profits to the York Dispensary. A copy of Rowe's ''Macbeth'' in the Boston Public Library contained some manuscript notes by its former owner

Isaac Reed Isaac Reed (1 January 1742 – 5 January 1807) was an English writer and Shakespearean scholar. He is best known for collaborating with Samuel Johnson and George Steevens to edit ''The Plays of William Shakespeare'' and publishing a critical edit ...

including an erroneous ascription of the annotations to Andrew Hunter.

References

* ;Attribution

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rowe, Harry 1720s births 1799 deaths English puppeteers