A Folger collection second folio (1632) went under the pen of a censor for the Holy Office in Spain, Guillermo Sanchez, who, similar to the Bowdlers, focused on redacting sensitive material; however, unlike the Bowdlers, he blacked out and redacted large swaths of Shakespeare's verses with little care for maintaining the integrity of the works, even going so far as to cut Measure for Measure out entirely.

[5] Others took more creative liberty in sanitising the Bard's works: In 1681, Nahum Tate as Poet Laureate rewrote the tragedy of King Lear with a happy ending.

[8] They later realised that their father had been omitting or altering passages he felt unsuitable for the ears of his wife and children: In the perfection of reading few men were equal to my father; and such was his good taste, his delicacy, and his prompt discretion, that his family listened with delight to Lear, Hamlet, and Othello, without knowing that those matchless tragedies contained words and expressions improper to be pronounced; and without reason to suspect that any parts of the plays had been omitted by the circumspect and judicious reader.

[12] In the preface, Harriet describes her editorial goal as to endeavour "to remove every thing that could give just offence to the religious and virtuous mind", and to omit "many speeches in which Shakespeare has been tempted to 'purchase laughter at the price of decency.

[15] In addition to the reworkings and a new preface, Thomas also included introductory notes for a few of the plays—Henry IV, Othello, and Measure for Measure—to describe the advanced difficulty associated with editing them.

In his preface to Othello, Bowdler commends the tragedy as "one of the noblest efforts of dramatic genius that has appeared in any age or in any language"; however, "the subject is unfortunately little suited to family reading.

"[16] He concedes the difficulty of adapting Othello for a family audience due to "the arguments which are urged" and themes of adultery, which are so intrinsic to the play itself that they cannot be removed without fundamentally changing the characters or plot and, "in fact, destroying the tragedy".

[16] Indeed, at the conclusion of the preface, Bowdler recommends that "if, after all that I have omitted, it shall still be thought that this inimitable tragedy is not sufficiently correct for family reading, I would advise the transferring it from the parlour to the cabinet, where the perusal will not only delight the poetic taste, but convey useful and important instruction both to the heart and the understanding of the reader.

[17] He bemoans the boldness with which characters commit these "crimes" and the fact that they suffer no punishment for their doings; rather, states Bowdler, the women of the story gravitate to the men who have been, as they describe it, "a little bad".

"There speak and strike, brave boys, and take your turns, There serve your lust, shadow'd from heaven's eye, And revel in Lavinia's treasury."

Prominent modern literary figures such as Michiko Kakutani (in The New York Times) and William Safire (in his book, How Not to Write) have accused Bowdler of changing Lady Macbeth's famous "Out, damned spot!"

But virtue, as it never will be mov'd, Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven; So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd Will sate itself in a celestial bed, And prey on garbage.

[13][12] However, between 1821 and 1822 The Family Shakespeare found itself in the middle of a dispute between Blackwood's Magazine and the Edinburgh Review, the leading literary journals at the time.

[13][23] While Blackwood's scorned Bowdler's work as "prudery in pasteboard", the Edinburgh commended his expurgations as saving readers from "awkwardness" and "distress".

With this free publicity via controversy, interest in the book spiked and sales of The Family Shakespeare soared, with new editions consistently published every few years through the 1880s.

[24][13] In 1894 the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne declared that "More nauseous and more foolish cant was never chattered than that which would deride the memory or depreciate the merits of Bowdler.

[23][26] In the scathing and oft-sarcastic piece, Whiteing utterly denounces Bowdler and his expurgations, calling the changes "inconsistent" and scorning the prefaces to the more difficult-to-edit plays as "mealy-mouthed attempts to right himself".

[26] The inconsistencies in what Bowdler changed versus what remained deeply perturbed Whiteing, who declares that "There is no end to it, except the in the limits of human patience.

[26] He concludes his heated review with a warning, that Bowdlerization could easily become overzealous and create an even larger Index of banned literature than that of the Catholic Church at its prime, and a question: "Should there be any age of innocence?

Public favor turned against Bowdlerized editions of books and expurgation for the sake of "appropriateness", and The Family Shakespeare began to be cited as an example of negative literary censorship.

[27] Taking a much more moderate stance than Whiteing, the opinion of whom The National describes as "flagrant exaggeration", they instead suggest that The Family Shakespeare is a relic of a bygone, pre-Victorian time, and that "As public taste moved on towards broader standards of literary propriety, the verb 'to bowdlerize' suffered corresponding degradation.

Perrin attributes the fall of bowdlerization and literary expurgation to the rise of Freudian psychology, feminism, and the influence of mass media.

[2][29] Editions of The Family Shakespeare continue to be published, printed, and read today, largely to observe what exactly Bowdler removed and why.