The 1709 Edition of Shakespeare from Google Book Search.

• The Nicholas Rowe 1709 Edition of the Works of Shakespeare

THE WORKS OF Mr. William Shakefpear IN SIX VOLUMES. ADORN'D with CUTS Revis'd and Corrected, with an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author. By N. Rowe, Esq. LONDON: Printed for Jacob Tonfon, within Grays-Inn Gate, next Grays-Inn Lane. MDCCIX.

Rowe was the first formal editor of Shakespeare, and his first formal biographer.  His Some Acount of the Life &c. of Mr. William Shakespear, prefaced to his 1709 edition of the Works (based on the Fourth Folio of 1685) became the standard 18th Century biography, and in fact became the foundation document for all subsequent biographies. Though it contains inaccuracies, it also preserves information, as Sidney Lee says, which, were it not for Rowe, would surely have been lost. Rowe acknowledges his debt for "...the most considerable part of the passages relating to this life..." to the actor Thomas Betterton (1634-1710), who made "a journey to Warwickshire on purpose to gather up what remains he could, of a name for which he had so great a veneration."   Rowe includes the apocryphal plays first added to the 1664 Third Folio in his volume VI.

• Volume the First - The Tempest; The Two Gentlemen of Verona; The Merry Wives of Windsor; Measure for Measure; Comedy of Errors; Much Ado About Nothing; Love's Labour's Lost.
• Volume the Second - A Midsummer-Night's Dream; Merchant of Venice; As You Like It; Taming of the Shrew; All's Well That Ends Well; Twelfth Night; What You Will; The Winter's Tale.
• Volume the Third - King John; King Richard II; King Henry IV Part I; King Henry IV Part II; King Henry V; King Henry VI Part I; King Henry VI Part II.
• Volume the Fourth - King Henry VI Part III; Richard III; King Henry VIII; Troilus and Cressida; Coriolanus; Titus Andronicus.
• Volume the Fifth - Romeo and Juliet; Timon of Athens; Julius Cæsar; Macbeth; Hamlet, Prince of Denmark; King Lear; Othello.
• Volume the Sixth - Antony and Cleopatra; Cymbeline; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; London Prodigal; Thomas Lord Cromwell; Sir John Oldcastle; The Puritan; A Yorkshire Tragedy; Locrine.

"As his studies necessarily made him acquainted with Shakspeare, and acquaintance produced veneration, he undertook (1709) an edition of his works, from which he neither received much praise, nor seems to have expected it; yet, I believe, those who compare it with former copies will find that he has done more than he promised ; and that, without the pomp of notes or boasts of criticism, many passages are happily restored. He prefixed a life of the author, such as tradition, then almost expiring, could supply, and a preface; which cannot be said to discover much profundity or penetration. He at least contributed to the popularity of his author."

On Rowe's commentary in Some Acount of the Life &c. of Mr. William Shakespear (1709):

Rowe's comments are both charming and sentimental, as when he says "...the Works of Mr. Shakespear may seem to many not to want a Comment,...", or, in speaking of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, "...tho' the Art of the Poet has skreen'd King Henry from any gross Imputation of Injustice, yet one is inclin'd to wish, the Queen had met with a Fortune more worthy of her Birth and Virtue."  Despairing of much content based on the bare facts of Shakespeare's life, Rowe resorts to criticism for the bulk of the essay. It is a criticism informed by lively 18th Century prejudices:

"That way of Trage-Comedy was the common Mistake of that Age..."

The remarkable (to modern ears) comment:

"If one undertook to examine the greatest part of these by those Rules which are establish'd by Aristotle, and taken from the Model of the Grecian Stage, it would be no very hard Task to find a great many Faults: But as Shakespear liv'd under a kind of mere Light of Nature, and had never been made acquainted with the Regularity of those written Precepts, so it would be hard to judge him by a Law he knew nothing of. We are to consider him as a Man that liv'd in a State of almost universal License and Ignorance: There was no establish'd Judge, but every one took the liberty to Write according to the Dictates of his own Fancy."

And the charmingly superfluous comments on Orestes and Electra that they "ought to have appear'd with more Decency..." and that representing their actions in killing their mother, Clytemnestra, on Stage "...is certainly an Offence against those Rules of Manners proper to the Persons that ought to be observ'd there."

One of the values of examining the criticism of earlier ages is to cause us to reflect on our own reliance on modern prejudices, such as naturalism and 'historical accuracy.' Where Rowe sees Shakespeare's verse as "manly and proper" may we not be equally mistaken in seeing it as empathetic and bisexual?

The reliable source for a modern, printed version of Rowe's Account is D. Nichol Smith's Eighteenth Century Essays On Shakespeare (Oxford, 1963). I say "reliable" because in 1725 Alexander Pope issued his own edition of the Works, reprinting Rowe's Account, but editing it without acknowledging that, in fact, Rowe's work had been modified. Pope omitted and modified to suit his taste. Unfortunately, Pope's version became the standard for subsequent reprints, and gained the authority of the great editors such as Steevens and Malone who passed it on uncritically. It is all too easy to find even a modern collection of prefaces to Shakespeare which reprints the Pope version rather than the original.

Pope's Epitaph on Rowe:

Thy reliques Rowe, to this fair urn we trust
And sacred place b Dryden's awful dust
Beneath a rude an2nameless stone he lies
To which thy tomb shall guide enquiring eyes,
Peace to thy gentle shade, and endless rest I
Blessed in thy genius, in thy love too, blest I
One grateful woman to thy fame supplies,
What a whole thankless land to him denies.

The epitaph for Rowe inscribed on his monument in Westminster Abbey is said to be by Pope, but Alfred Jackson gives pursuasive reasons to believe it is not (see The Review of English Studies, Vol. 7, No. 25. (Jan., 1931), pp. 76-79).

Assessment of Rowe's dramatic and poetic work, from The Cambridge History of English Literature (Vol. VIII The Age of Dryden, 1912)

"Nicholas Rowe holds a unique position as forming a link between the late restoration dramatists and those of the Augustan age. For, though all his plays were produced in the early years of the eighteenth century, his work is thoroughly typical of the drama at the close of the restoration period, and he is more at home with Banks and Southerne than with the writers of the age of Pope.

"Born in 1674, in comfortable circumstances, Rowe, in due course, was called to the bar, but soon abandoned law in order to devote himself wholly to literature. His first play, The Ambitious Step-Mother, was produced, in 1700, at Lincoln’s Inn fields by Betterton, and was well received. It is one of the large group of plays in which the scene is laid in conventionally “eastern” surroundings. This was followed by Tamerlane (1702), which, as a drama, is ineffective; it has, however, a certain historic interest, for Louis XIV, the author tells us, was satirised under the name of Bajazet, the villain of the piece, while the high-minded hero, a sort of Admirable Crichton among princes, and much given to improving the occasion, was intended to personify William III. It was revived yearly on 5 November, the anniversary of the landing of William of Orange, until 1815."

"Rowe’s next piece, The Fair Penitent (1703), proved one of the most popular plays of its time. It is borrowed, as to plot, from Massinger and Field’s The Fatal Dowry (1632); but Rowe greatly reduced the older play, omitted its force and flavour, and deluged his version with a moral tone which is all his own. This simple domestic drama, written, like Rowe’s other tragedies, in rather fluent blank-verse, met with extraordinary success and was constantly before the public till 1825, or thereabouts. The author promises in the prologue that “you shall meet with sorrows like your own.” The public found that Rowe kept his word; and, to this fact, and to the rather cheap appeal of the last act, with its accumulated furniture of the charnel-house and the grave, rather than to any depth of tragic power in the play, the longevity of the piece must be attributed. The “haughty, gallant, gay Lothario” of this tragedy has become a familiar synonym for a heartless libertine, and was the model for Lovelace in Richardson’s Clarissa Harlowe. No play was more popular in the eighteenth century.

"Rowe’s solitary comedy, The Biter, produced in 1705, was a failure. According to Johnson, the author’s applause was the only sound of approval heard in the theatre at its production. It was succeeded by the tragedy Ulysses (1706), a tedious and ineffective drama which lacks Rowe’s usual strong appeal to the pity of his audience. Neither this play nor The Royal Convert (1707)—very dull, with a background of mythical British history—calls for special comment. Rowe’s last two plays bear a strong likeness to one another. The Tragedy of Jane Shore “in imitation of Shakespeare’s style,” produced in 1714, has been said to bear no closer resemblance to Shakespeare than is to be found in the fact that like some of his plays it is based upon an episode in the history of England. It is, however, a good acting play, which, even now, has not entirely disappeared from the stage. It afforded Mrs. Siddons one of her most tremendous opportunities for realistic acting. As Jane Shore, drifting half-starved about the streets of London, eye-witnesses report that the audience “absolutely thought her the creature perishing through want”—and “could not avoid turning from the suffering object.”

"In the following year (1715), Rowe succeeded Tate as poet laureate and produced his last play, The Tragedy of the Lady Jane Gray. This play, as well as its predecessor, and, to some extent, Rowe’s other dramatic works, display a certain nobility of outlook and purity of purpose, in marked and refreshing contrast to the pruriency in which the English drama had for half a century been steeped. The unexceptionably moral and patriotic tone of Rowe’s last play, as well as its protestant spirit, affords a very striking proof of the change that had come over the English stage since the revolution and the publication of Jeremy Collier’s Short View. 47
Like Otway, Rowe attempted to move his audiences to pity and terror; but, with few exceptions, his dramas leave us cold and unmoved. He contrives situations with considerable skill, but he generally fails to make his characters rise to them; nor do they give vent to their feelings in language which is always either touching in itself, or suitable to the surrounding circumstances. His plays are the calm and finished performances of an author who felt but faintly the emotions which he sought to portray, and who, by the introduction of what he very aptly calls “the pomp of horror,” hoped to find his way to the feelings of his readers. Criticism and the public taste, in fact, have alike moved far since Johnson wrote of Rowe’s The Fair Penitent, “There is scarcely any work of any poet at once so interesting by the fable, and so delightful by the language.” He has, however, other claims to the respect of posterity. Of the significance of his edition of Shakespeare’s works (1709), something has been said in an earlier volume; while his translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia, which was first published as a whole in 1718 (shortly after his death), and of which at least nine editions appeared between that date and 1822, is, probably, at the present day, his least forgotten work. He also translated in verse Boileau’s Lutrin (1708). Rowe was an accomplished modern, as well as classical, scholar, and his personality is one of dignity, as well as of interest, in the history of English literature."

On Rowe's 1709 edition of Shakespeare's Works from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature:

"It was fitting that a poet laureate should be the first to give to the world an edition of Shakespeare—whether or not poetic gifts are an advantage to an editor. At all events, Nicholas Rowe (1709) was engaged on a more profitable task when he attempted to edit the works, than when he endeavoured to emulate the style, of Shakespeare. Rowe’s main object, as Johnson says, was to publish an edition of Shakespeare, “like those of his fraternity, with the appendages of a life and a recommendatory preface.” Therefore, it is not surprising that his work shows little critical method. He based his text on the latest and worst copy—the fourth folio. This error affected all editions before Capell, for each of the succeeding editors was as uncritical as Rowe in basing his text on the edition immediately preceding his own. Although Rowe says, “I have taken some care to redeem him from the injuries of former impressions,” and speaks of comparing “the several editions,” he can hardly have possessed any acquaintance with old copies. His corrections of the fourth folio, sometimes, coincide with the readings of the first, as where he reads “dread trident” for “dead trident” of the later folios. In general, however, he follows the fourth, even where the first obviously contains the genuine reading. He occasionally consulted a late quarto: textual evidence shows that he used the quarto of 1676 for the additions in Hamlet. His alterations were made simply with a view to rendering the plays more intelligible, and he did much useful pioneer work to this end. His knowledge of the stage enabled him to add lists of dramatis personae to each play, to supply stage directions and to make divisions into acts and scenes, which, to a large extent, have been followed by modern editors. Many proper names were restored by him (as “Plutus” for “Platus”). Others, which had been manufactured by his predecessors, were unmasked (thus “Cyprus” grove becomes “cypress”). Thanks to his linguistic attainments, he was able to make sense of a good deal of nonsense, which did duty in the folios for French or Italian. Dr. Caius’s “green-a-box” of ointment appears in the folios as “unboyteene” instead of “un boitier,” as in Rowe. But his work for the text rises above that of a proof corrector. Some of his conjectures deserve a place beside those of his more eminent successors. Few quotations are more firmly established than “Some are born great.” (The folios have “are become.”) And “the temple-haunting martlet” in Macbeth is not likely to be ousted from the place occupied in the folios by “Barlet.” 

"No one will dispute Rowe’s modest claim that he has “rendered many places intelligible that were not so before.” It is his unique distinction that he did not stir up any controversy. His emendations were silently introduced into his text, and as silently appropriated by his successors. "

(The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).  Volume V. The Drama to 1642, Part One.  "IX. The Text of Shakespeare, § 10. Rowe’s edition.").

D. Nichol Smith's Introduction to Rowe's Life of Shakespeare (from Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare, 1903, J. MacLehose & Sons).

Rowe has the double honour of being the first editor of the plays of Shakespeare and the first to attempt an authoritative account of his life. The value of the biography can best be judged by comparing it with the accounts given in such books as Fuller's Worthies of England (1662), Phillips's Theatrum Poetarum (1675), Winstanley's English Poets (1687), Langbaine's English Dramatick Poets (1691), Pope Blount's Remarks upon Poetry (1694), or Jeremy Collier's Historical and Poetical Dictionary (1701). Though some of the traditions—for which he has acknowledged his debt to Betterton—are of doubtful accuracy, it is safe to say that but for Rowe they would have perished.

The Account of Shakespeare was the standard biography during the eighteenth century. It was reprinted by Pope, Hanmer, Warburton, Johnson, Steevens, Malone, and Reed; but they did not give it in the form in which Rowe had left it. Pope took the liberty of condensing and rearranging it, and as he did not acknowledge what he had done, his silence led other editors astray. Those who did note the alterations presumed that they had been made by Rowe himself in the second edition in 1714. Steevens, for instance, states that he publishes the life from " Rowe's second edition, in which it had been abridged and altered by himself after its appearance in 1709." But what Steevens reprints is Rowe's Account of Shakespeare as edited by Pope...

Pope omitted passages dealing only indirectly with Shakespeare, or expressing opinions with which he disagreed. He also placed the details of Shakespeare's later years immediately after the account of his relationship with Ben Jonson, so that the biography might form a complete portion by itself. With the exception of an occasional word, nothing occurs in the emended edition which is not to be found somewhere in the first.

A seventh and supplementary volume containing the Poems was added in 1710. It included Charles Gildon's Remarks on the Plays and Poems and his Essay on the Art, Rise, and Progress of the Stage in Greece, Rome, and England.

The "Seventh" unauthorized volume of the Rowe edition:

As Smith points out above, there was a seventh unauthorized volume added to the Rowe edition in 1710, published by the unscrupulous printer-publisher Edmund Curll.  Because Rowe's edition did not include the poetry, Curll seized upon the opportunity to issue a volume with the same appearance of the original Tonson volumes.  He employed Charles Gildon to "edit" the volume, with long-lasting consequences for subsequent editions of the Sonnets.  The "rapacious" Gildon was the quintessential eighteenth century hack.  He worked quickly, with liberal invention and little regard for factuality.  To pad the volume, Gildon added his own "An Essay on the Art, Rise and Progress of the Stage in Greece, Rome and England;" and "Remarks on the Plays of Shakespeare."  "Charles Gildon thus became the first critic to write an extended critical commentary on all the works of Shakespeare..." (Brian Vickers, William Shakespeare the Critical Heritage 1693-1733, p. 216).

For reasons known only to Gildon, and perhaps not to him, he used the 1640 Benson text for the Sonnets, rather than the 1609 Thorpe text  [i.e., POEMS: VVRITTEN BY WIL. SHAKESSPEARE. Gent. Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, and are to be sold by John Benson dwelling in St. Dunstans Church-yard. 1640; a copy is available at the Rare Book Room].  The Benson text "...combined most of Shakespeare's sonnets (numbers 18, 19, 43, 56, 75, and 76 are omitted), mingled with poems from The Passionate Pilgrim (the corrupt 1612 edition), plus A Lover's Complaint, The Phoenix and the Turtle, Milton's poem to Shakespeare from the Second Folio, poems by Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont, Robert Herrick and others, and miscellaneous pieces" (Wikipedia).  Benson also rearranged some of the sonnets and gave them fanciful titles: 

"Why Benson omitted eight sonnets remains a mystery, but perhaps they were simply lost in the shuffle: Benson did not print them in the familiar numerical sequence (still used today) of the 1609 edition, but regrouped them under new titles. Benson does, however, include many poems not written by Shakespeare at all, but by his contemporaries ChristopherMarlowe (“Come live with me and be my love”), Ben Jonson, Thomas Heywood, John Fletcher, Sir Walter Raleigh, and several latter-day authors of light, witty, amorous verse, known as the “Cavalier” poets" (from the Octavo introduction to the Benson 1640 edition).

Because Curll's venture succeeded, this became the standard arrangement of the Sonnets until the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century:

"Until 1780 no edition of the collected poems printed in England...contained the genuine Sonnets in their original form.  During most of the 18th century, therefore, the only form in which a person could buy the Sonnets was in the deformed Benson version, which would have died quietly in 1640 if Curll had not dug it up and given it a new life" (Giles Dawson, Four Centuries of Shakespeare Publication, p. 9, quoted in Andrew Murphy, Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakespeare Publishing, p. 63).

For the 1714 "second edition" of Rowe's Shakespeare (known as "Rowe 3") Tonson brought Curll into the venture, making it nine volumes rather than eight, "and including Curll's name on the imprint" (Murphy, p. 63).

Gildon's unscrupulous activities, numerous works, and incessant conflicts with eighteenth century literati make a fascinating story, but go well beyond the scope of Shakespeare studies.  More to the point, a very entertaining review of Gildon's Shakespearean "edition" of the poetry can be found in Samuel Butler's Shakespeare's Sonnets.  (Yes, author of Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh).

The Illustrations in the Rowe Edition of 1709

The first illustrated edition of the plays of Shakespeare, indeed the first "modern" edition of any kind, was that of Nicholas Rowe, 1709, printed by Jacob Tonson.  As can be seen from the title page, it was "Adorn'd with Cuts." 

I have assembled here the major cuts, which taken together form a baseline by which future illustrated editions might be evaluated.

The first is the frontispiece which precedes the title page based in part on the funerary monument in Stratford and more fancifully illustrating the dominant themes of the poet's life.  It has him surrounded by his muses, the instruments of his trade beneath his plinth.  The portrait is obviously based on the Chandos portrait:

The second appears on the dedication page, Dedication to the Duke of Somerset.

Throughout the volume a collection of block capitals are used to begin each play or each prominent section, for example:

The next illustration is the printer's headpiece to Some Account of the Life, &c. of Mr.William Shakespear

Headpieces are also used throughout.  In fact, each play has its own pseudo-title page, ornamented with a printer's device, like one of the following, for example:

followed by a headpiece on the page which begins the text of each play, for example:

and a block capital illustrating the first word of dialog in each play, like those given above.  The ornaments and headpieces are duplicated several times throughout the three volumes, with the favorite being the basket of flowers in an ornamental mounting:

The next major illustration is the much discussed funerary monument from Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, placed after mention of Shakespeare's burial in the Account:

A printer's device showing a Phoenix surrounded by ornamental foliage in bloom is placed after the Account:

The first major illustartion of the plays is for The Tempest, being the first and most important of the plays from the prospective buyer's point of view--as it was in the folios.  A good deal of detail has been lost in the Google Scan of this illustration, so I have brightened it somewhat to draw out the detail:

Volume II contains no major illustration, but repeats the pattern of ornaments, headpieces and printers' devices to begin each play, with the basket of flowers to end the volume. Volume III, which prints seven of the history plays is rife with illustrations, English history, as Shakespeare discovered and promoted, was a theme near and dear to nascent English self identity.  Each of the plays in Volume III is preceded by its own illustration.  The Life and Death of King John displays the following.  Again, I have brightened the picture to bring out lost detail lost in the original display.

The Life and Death of King Richard II is also preceded by a major illustration.  This scan is so dark that two of the combatants are nearly obscured.  I have brightened it considerably:

The First Part of Henry IV with the Life and Death of Henry Sirnam'd Hot-Spur is illustrated with Shakespeare's most famous creation, Sir John Falstaff, surprised and in full flight from the robbery at Gadshill.  Slight brightening has been applied.  An unfortunate over-exposure occurred in the original scan, leaving a pale band on the right.

The Second Part of Henry IV Containing His Death and the Coronation of King Henry V shows the fat Knight in a more congenial setting:

The Life of King Henry V is decorated with a stirring picture of knights in single combat before amassed armies clashing outside, one supposes, Agincourt:

The First Part of King Henry VI is preceded by cheering and subservient citizens welcoming their overlords.

The illustration for The Second Part of King Henry VI with the Death of Good Duke Humphry shows a distinctly neoclassical bed chamber anachronistically placed in fifteenth century England, with personages dressed in Elizabethan-age costume.

Volume IV reprints the remaining history plays, Henry VI part 3, Richard III and Henry VIII, and then begins the printing of the tragedies with Troilus and Cressida (inherited in this order from the First Folio), Coriolanus and Titus Andronicus.  Each play in the volume is preceded with its own illustration.

  The Third Part of King Henry VI with the Death of the Duke of York is prefaced with this illustration:

Richard's haunting spirits are too good an opportunity to pass up for the illustrator of The Life and Death of Richard III : with the Landing of the Earl of Richmond, and the Battel at Bosworth Field:

The Famous History of the Life of King Henry VIII is illustrated with an anachronistic court scene with courtiers in full 18th century bewigged splendor.

The costuming and staging—the illustrations in this volume seem to assume a staged display—present interesting features in Troilus and Cressida, especially Cressida's gown and coif, the hanging lamps, and the surrounding draperies.

Volume V continues the tragedies.  Romeo and Juliet, Timon of Athens, and Julius Caesar are without major illustrations, but the witches with their boiling cauldron and the parade of ancient kings is too dramatically compelling to leave unillustrated in The Tragedy of Macbeth, apparently.  Note Macbeth's feather-fringed three-cornered hat.

One would image the appearance of the ghost in Hamlet or Lear with the dead Cordelia, or Othello smothering Desdemona would be equally irresistible, but not so.  There are no further major illustrations in volume V.

Volume VI contains Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline, and the apocryphal plays.  The final seven plays in this volume were first "added to the Shakespeare canon" in the second impression of the Third Folio (1664), were reprinted in the Fourth Folio, upon which Rowe based his text, but were excluded by later 18th century editors beginning with Pope (though they do appear in Pope's second edition of 1728).  Only Pericles was finally readmitted to the canon, under the influence of Malone (1790).

Antony and Cleopatra is given an illustration to commence the volume.  This is a much more naturalistic illustration than are those in Volume IV, which all seem to be staged, with surrounding draperies.

The illustration for Cymbeline continues the naturalistic representation but opts for neoclassical trappings.  Note the printed and bound book on the table:

Pericles, Prince of Tyre, by Shakespeare and (most likely) George Wilkins, was one of the most popular plays of its day, being printed in six quarto editions (two in its first year of publication, 1609) before it was finally included in the Third Folio.  Here, illustrated in gully classical representation, we see the revival of Thaisa.

Though it would seem unthinkable to us to leave Hamlet, Lear and Othello unillustrated, while lavishing care on a play like The London Prodigal, not so Tonson.

The illustration for The Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell is of a similar style, as are the remainder of the illustrations to volume VI:

An author less likely than Shakespeare for a play titled The History of Sir John Oldcastle, the Good Lord Cobham is hard to imagine, but nevertheless it found its way into the Third Folio, and through the Fourth Folio into Rowe.

Illustration preceding The Puritan : or, the Widow of Watling-Street.  This illustration was particularly dark, and I did the best I could to lighten it without losing too many of the details.

A Yorkshire Tragedy is a lurid tale of domestic murder and mayhem, illustrated fully here.  Of all the apocryphal plays, it has most claim to having at least portions of it written by Shakespeare.

Finally, there is an illustration preceding The Tragedy of Locrine the Eldest Son of King Brutus, to complete volume VI. An illustration of a bare-breasted woman, especially one with a dagger, never hurt the sales of a volume, one supposes.

According to Andrew Murphy (Shakespeare in Print) the text of Rowe's edition "...was now accompanied by forty-five engraved illustrations..."  I have examined the entirety of the six volumes scanned by Google Book Search and have not been able to find that many, unless he counts the printers devices or some of the elaborate headpieces as engraved illustrations.  More disturbing, he makes reference specifically, quoting Peter Holland, to illustrations accompanying Hamlet and Othello, neither of which appear in the volumes scanned by Google.  It is true there is a page preceding Othello that might have had an illustration, but now appear online as blank, but no such page in Hamlet appears.  Perhaps Murphy and Holland refer to the 1714 second Rowe edition, or illustrations that may have appeared in the second, large paper format printing in 1709.  That would at least explain the discrepancy.

Works by Rowe

• The Works of Nicholas Rowe, Volume the First (1766) - The Ambitious Step-Mother; Tamerlane; The Fair Penitent; Ulysses.
• The Works of Nicholas Rowe, Volume the Second (1766) - The Royal Convert; Jane Shore; Jane Gray; Poems on Several Occasions.
• Lucan's Pharsalia, translated into English verse by Nicholas Rowe (1722).

Evaluations of Rowe's Edition.

• Johnson, Charles F.  Shakespeare and His Critics (1909), full view and PDF from Google Book Search, see pp. 78-86.
• On Gildon's supplement to Rowe's edition (the seventh volume of the Poetry added in 1710) in Shakespeare's Sonnets, ed. Samuel Butler, 1899 (yes, THE Samuel Butler), from Google Book Search, full view and PDF.
• Robert B. Hamm, Rowe's Shakespear (1709) and the Tonson House Style.