Even Lewis Theobald, whom some would consider Shakespeare’s greatest friend in this century, believed in the rules. He complied with the taste of the town when he wrote pantomimes, but he was a sterner man when he posed as a critic. He would then speak of the “general absurdities of Shakespeare,” and the “errors” in the structure of his plays. He passed this criticism both in his edition of Shakespeare and in the early articles in the _Censor_ on _King Lear_, which are also of considerable historical interest as being the first essays devoted exclusively to an examination of a single Shakespearian play. His complacent belief in the rules prompted him to correct _Richard II._ “The many scattered beauties which I have long admired,” he says naïvely in the Preface, “induced me to think they would have stronger charms if they were interwoven in a regular Fable.” No less confident is a note on _Love’s Labours Lost_: “Besides the exact regularity of the rules of art, which the author has happened to preserve in some few of his pieces, this is demonstration, I think, that though he has more frequently transgressed the unity of Time by cramming years into the compass of a play, yet he knew the absurdity of so doing, and was not unacquainted with the rule to the contrary.”(10) Theobald was a critic of the same type as Gildon. Each had profound respect for what he took to be the accredited doctrines. If on certain points Theobald’s ideas were liable to change, the explanation is that he was amenable to the opinions of others. We do not find in Theobald’s criticism the courage of originality.