Richard Farmer

Dr Richard Farmer FRS FSA (1735–1797) was a Shakespearean scholar and Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He is known for his Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare (1767), in which he maintained that Shakespeare's knowledge of the classics was through translations, the errors of which he reproduced.

He was born at Leicester on 28 August 1735, the second son of Richard Farmer, a maltster, by his wife Hannah, daughter of John Knibb. He was educated under the Rev. Gerrard Andrewes, in the free grammar school at Leicester, and about 1753 entered as a pensioner at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1757, and was a 'senior optime.' He successfully contested with Wanley Sawbridge for the silver cup given at Emmanuel College to the best graduate of that year. In 1760 he commenced M.A., and succeeded the Rev. Mr. Bickham as classical tutor of his college. For many years, while tutor, he served the curacy of Swavesey.

On 19 May 1763 Farmer was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. In 1765 he was junior proctor of the university. He had already formed an extensive library and had acquired a reputation as a scholar and antiquary. When Samuel Johnson visited Cambridge in 1765 he had a 'joyous meeting' with Farmer at Emmanuel. The two scholars afterwards maintained a correspondence on literary topics; on one occasion Johnson requested Farmer to help George Steevens on translations which Shakespeare might have seen, and on another he himself asked for information from the university registers on Cambridge graduates in the Lives of the Poets.

In 1767 he took the degree of B.D., and on 8 July 1769 Richard Terrick, bishop of London, appointed him one of the preachers at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall. When in London he usually resided at the house of Dr. Anthony Askew, the eminent physician, in Queen Square, Bloomsbury. In 1775, on the death of Dr. Richardson, he was chosen master of Emmanuel College, Henry Hubbard, the senior fellow, having declined the post. He now took the degree of D.D., and was very soon succeeded in the tutorship by Dr. William Bennet, later bishop of Cloyne.

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