Brennan Center for Justice, April 18, 2005
By Marjorie Heins

In 1807, an Englishman named Thomas Bowdler published the first, sanitized edition of The Family Shakespeare. He promised that he had removed from Shakespeare's works "everything that can raise a blush on the cheek of modesty." Certainly, there was plenty of sexual innuendo, vulgar language, and stomach-churning violence to excise from Shakespeare.

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