Talk:The Family Shakespeare

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This is really great work! A few comments: 1. As I read, I found myself wondering who the Bowdlers were beyond being just children with a discerning father. If you have time, you could add a section about their social status, professions, religion, etc. The section might be titled "Personal History" or "Author's Background."

2. I would get rid of the Hamlet subsection of the "Examples of Bowdler's Edits" section, as Bowdler didn't actually edit Hamlet (which you stated). I think it confuses the reader to be expecting examples of Bowdler's censorship, and then find an example of something he *didn't* censor. If you don't want to delete it, you could move the Hamlet piece to a different section.

3. In the "Reception and Commentary" section, it seems like you're planning to add an account of how the Bowdler edition became a best seller *because* of its controversial background, and then a description of how the edition could actually have been beneficial because it allowed Shakespeare to be taught to younger audiences. In addition to those sub-sections, I would also add a more robust account of the negative reception of the Bowdler edition. You could also think about dividing the "Reception and Commentary" section into two sections--Support and Criticism.

Again, this article is really well-written, and the topic is interesting. Good luck finishing it up! --Afgmcdonald (talk) 02:40, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * (ping ) I agree. A very well written article! It relies a smidgen too much on primary and ternary sources for Wikipedia's purposes, but that's just nitpicking. Kudos! --Xover (talk) 05:14, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Planned ref cleanup
I was going to do a pass of cleanup on the article's references, but I find it a bit tedious to do so with full references inline in the text. Would anybody mind if I converted the article to short inline notes (using ) with full references in a separate section at the end? That's the approach we've used to great success on complex articles like Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet and I find it much easier to maintain, and it makes the actual text of the article a lot less cluttered. --Xover (talk) 07:04, 25 May 2019 (UTC)