Reputation of William Shakespeare

In his own time, William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was rated as

merely one among many talented playwrights and poets, but since
the late 17th century has been considered the supreme playwright
and poet of the English language.

No other playwright's work has been performed even remotely as

often on the world stage as Shakespeare's. The plays have often
been drastically adapted in performance. During the 18th and 19th
centuries, the era of the great acting stars, to be a star on the British
stage was synonymous with being a great Shakespearean actor.
Then the emphasis was placed on the soliloquies as declamatory
turns at the expense of pace and action, and Shakespeare's plays
seemed in peril of disappearing beneath the added music, scenery,
and special effects produced by thunder, lightning, and wave
machines. The Chandos portrait, commonly
assumed to depict William
Editors and critics of the plays, disdaining the showiness and Shakespeare but authenticity
melodrama of Shakespearean stage representation, began to focus unknown, "the man who of all
on Shakespeare as a dramatic poet, to be studied on the printed Modern, and perhaps Ancient Poets,
page rather than in the theatre. The rift between Shakespeare on the had the largest and most
comprehensive soul" (John Dryden,
stage and Shakespeare on the page was at its widest in the early
1668), "our myriad-minded
19th century, at a time when both forms of Shakespeare were Shakespeare" (S. T. Coleridge,
hitting peaks of fame and popularity: theatrical Shakespeare was 1817).
successful spectacle and melodrama for the masses, while book or
closet drama Shakespeare was being elevated by the reverential
commentary of the Romantics into unique poetic genius, prophet, and bard. Before the Romantics,
Shakespeare was simply the most admired of all dramatic poets, especially for his insight into human nature
and his realism, but Romantic critics such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge refactored him into an object of
almost religious adoration, George Bernard Shaw coining the term "bardolatry" to describe it. These critics
regarded Shakespeare as towering above other writers, and his plays not as "merely great works of art" but
as "phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers" and "with entire submission of
our own faculties" (Thomas De Quincey, 1823). To the later 19th century, Shakespeare became in addition
an emblem of national pride, the crown jewel of English culture, and a "rallying-sign", as Thomas Carlyle
wrote in 1841, for the whole British empire.

17th century

Jacobean and Caroline

It is difficult to assess Shakespeare's reputation in his own lifetime
and shortly after. England had little modern literature before the
1570s, and detailed critical commentaries on modern authors did
not begin to appear until the reign of Charles I. The facts about his
reputation can be surmised from fragmentary evidence. He was
included in some contemporary lists of leading poets, but he seems
to have lacked the stature of the aristocratic Philip Sidney, who
became a cult figure due to his death in battle at a young age, or of
Edmund Spenser. Shakespeare's poems were reprinted far more
frequently than his plays; but Shakespeare's plays were written for
performance by his own company, and because no law prevented
rival companies from using the plays, Shakespeare's troupe took
steps to prevent his plays from being printed. That many of his
plays were pirated suggests his popularity in the book market, and A 1596 sketch of a performance in
the regular patronage of his company by the court, culminating in progress on the platform or apron
stage of the typical circular
1603 when James I turned it into the "King's Men," suggests his
Elizabethan open-roof playhouse The
popularity among higher stations of society. Modern plays (as
Swan.
opposed to those in Latin and Greek) were considered ephemeral
and even somewhat disreputable entertainments by some
contemporaries. Some of Shakespeare's plays, particularly the history plays, were reprinted frequently in
cheap quarto (i.e. pamphlet) form; others took decades to reach a 3rd edition.

After Ben Jonson pioneered the canonisation of modern plays by printing his own works in folio (the
luxury book format) in 1616, Shakespeare was the next playwright to be honoured by a folio collection, in
1623. That this folio went into another edition within 9 years indicates he was held in unusually high regard
for a playwright. The dedicatory poems by Ben Jonson and John Milton in the 2nd folio were the first to
suggest Shakespeare was the supreme poet of his age. These expensive reading editions are the first visible
sign of a rift between Shakespeare on the stage and Shakespeare for readers, a rift that was to widen over
the next two centuries. In his 1630 work 'Timber' or 'Discoveries', Ben Jonson praised the speed and ease
with which Shakespeare wrote his plays as well as his contemporary's honesty and gentleness towards
others.

Interregnum and Restoration

During the Interregnum (1642–1660), all public stage performances were banned by the Puritan rulers.
Though denied the use of the stage, costumes and scenery, actors still managed to ply their trade by
performing "drolls" or short pieces of larger plays that usually ended with some type of jig. Shakespeare
was among the many playwrights whose works were plundered for these scenes. Among the most common
scenes were Bottom's scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream and the gravedigger's scene from Hamlet.
When the theatres opened again in 1660 after this uniquely long and sharp break in British theatrical history,
two newly licensed London theatre companies, the Duke's and the King's Company, started business with a
scramble for performance rights to old plays. Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and the Beaumont and Fletcher
team were among the most valuable properties and remained popular after Restoration playwriting had
gained momentum.
In the elaborate Restoration London playhouses, designed by
Christopher Wren, Shakespeare's plays were staged with music,
dancing, thunder, lightning, wave machines, and fireworks. The
texts were "reformed" and "improved" for the stage. A notorious
example is Irish poet Nahum Tate's happy-ending King Lear (1681)
(which held the stage until 1838), while The Tempest was turned
into an opera replete with special effects by William Davenant. In
fact, as the director of the Duke's Company, Davenant was legally
obliged to reform and modernise Shakespeare's plays before
performing them, an ad hoc ruling by the Lord Chamberlain in the
battle for performance rights which "sheds an interesting light on
the many 20th-century denunciations of Davenant for his
adaptations".[1] The modern view of the Restoration stage as the
epitome of Shakespeare abuse and bad taste has been shown by
Hume to be exaggerated, and both scenery and adaptation became
The Restoration playhouses had
more reckless in the 18th and 19th centuries. elaborate scenery. They retained a
shortened version of the apron stage
The incomplete Restoration stage records suggest Shakespeare, for actor/audience contact, although
although always a major repertory author, was bested in the 1660– it is not visible in this picture (the
1700 period by the phenomenal popularity of Beaumont and artist is standing on it).
Fletcher. "Their plays are now the most pleasant and frequent
entertainments of the stage", reported fellow playwright John
Dryden in 1668, "two of theirs being acted through the year for one of Shakespeare's or Jonson's". In the
early 18th century, however, Shakespeare took over the lead on the London stage from Beaumont and
Fletcher, never to relinquish it again.

By contrast to the stage history, in literary criticism there was no lag time, no temporary preference for other
dramatists: Shakespeare had a unique position at least from the Restoration in 1660 and onwards. While
Shakespeare did not follow the unbending French neo-classical "rules" for the drama and the three classical
unities of time, place, and action, those strict rules had never caught on in England, and their sole zealous
proponent, Thomas Rymer, was hardly ever mentioned by influential writers except as an example of
narrow dogmatism. Dryden, for example, argued in his influential Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668) – the
same essay in which he noted that Shakespeare's plays were performed only half as often as those of
Beaumont and Fletcher – for Shakespeare's artistic superiority. Though Shakespeare does not follow the
dramatic conventions, Dryden wrote, Ben Jonson does, and as a result Jonson lands in a distant second
place to "the incomparable Shakespeare", the follower of nature, the untaught genius, the great realist of
human character.

18th century

Britain
In the 18th century, Shakespeare dominated the London stage, while Shakespeare productions turned
increasingly into the creation of star turns for star actors. After the Licensing Act of 1737, a quarter of plays
performed were by Shakespeare, and on at least two occasions rival London playhouses staged the very
same Shakespeare play at the same time (Romeo and Juliet in 1755 and King Lear the next year) and still
commanded audiences. This occasion was a striking example of the growing prominence of Shakespeare
stars in the theatrical culture, the big attraction being the competition and rivalry between the male leads at
Covent Garden and Drury Lane, Spranger Barry and David Garrick. There appear to have been no issues
with Barry and Garrick, in their late thirties, playing adolescent Romeo one season and geriatric King Lear
the next. In September 1769 Garrick staged a major Shakespeare Jubilee in Stratford-upon-Avon, which
was a major influence on the rise of bardolatry.[2][3] It was at the Shakespeare Jubilee that Garrick thanked
the Shakespeare Ladies Club for saving Shakespeare from obscurity: "It was You Ladies that restor'd
Shakespeare to the Stage you form'd yourselves into a Society to protect his Fame, and Erected a
Monument to his and your own honour in Westminster Abbey."[4]

As performance playscripts diverged increasingly from their originals, the

publication of texts intended for reading developed rapidly in the opposite
direction, with the invention of textual criticism and an emphasis on fidelity
to Shakespeare's original words. The texts that are being read and
performed today were largely settled in the 18th century. Nahum Tate and
Nathaniel Lee had already prepared editions and performed scene divisions
in the late 17th century, and Nicholas Rowe's edition of 1709 is considered
the first truly scholarly text for the plays. It was followed by many good
18th century editions, crowned by Edmund Malone's landmark Variorum
Edition, which was published posthumously in 1821 and remains the basis
of modern editions. These collected editions were meant for reading, not
staging; Rowe's 1709 edition was, compared to the old folios, a light
pocketbook. Shakespeare criticism also increasingly spoke to readers, rather David Garrick as Benedick
than to theatre audiences. in Much Ado About Nothing,
1770.
The only aspects of Shakespeare's plays that were consistently disliked and
singled out for criticism in the 18th century were the puns ("clenches") and
the "low" (sexual) allusions. While a few editors, notably Alexander Pope, attempted to gloss over or
remove the puns and the double entendres, this was quickly reversed, and by mid-century the puns and
sexual humour were (with only a few exceptions, notably Thomas Bowdler) restored permanently.

Dryden's sentiments about Shakespeare's imagination and capacity for painting "nature" were echoed in the
18th century by, for example, Joseph Addison ("Among the English, Shakespeare has incomparably
excelled all others"), Alexander Pope ("every single character in Shakespeare is as much an Individual as
those in Life itself"), and Samuel Johnson (who scornfully dismissed Voltaire's and Rhymer's neoclassical
Shakespeare criticism as "the petty cavils of petty minds"). The long-lived belief that the Romantics were
the first generation to truly appreciate Shakespeare and to prefer him to Ben Jonson is contradicted by praise
from writers throughout the 18th century. Ideas about Shakespeare that many people think of as typically
post-Romantic were frequently expressed in the 18th and even in the 17th century: he was described as a
genius who needed no learning, as deeply original, and as creating uniquely "real" and individual characters
(see Timeline of Shakespeare criticism). To compare Shakespeare and his well-educated contemporary Ben
Jonson was a popular exercise at this time, a comparison that was invariably complimentary to Shakespeare.
It functioned to highlight the special qualities of both writers, and it especially powered the assertion that
natural genius trumps rules, that "there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature" (Samuel
Johnson).

Opinion of Shakespeare was briefly shaped in the 1790s by the "discovery" of the Shakespeare Papers by
William Henry Ireland. Ireland claimed to have found in a trunk a goldmine of lost documents of
Shakespeare's including two plays, Vortigern and Rowena and Henry II. These documents appeared to
demonstrate a number of unknown facts about Shakespeare that shaped opinion of his works, including a
Profession of Faith demonstrating Shakespeare was a Protestant and that he had an illegitimate child.
Although there were many believers in the provenance of the Papers, they soon came under fierce attack
from scholars who pointed out their numerous inaccuracies. Vortigern had only one performance at the
Drury Lane Theatre before Ireland admitted he had forged the documents and written the plays himself.[5]

In Germany
English actors started visiting the Holy Roman Empire in the late 16th century to work as "fiddlers, singers
and jugglers", and through them the work of Shakespeare had first become known in the Reich.[6] In 1601,
in the Free City of Danzig (modern Gdańsk, Poland), which had a large English merchant colony living
within its walls, a company of English actors arrived to put on plays by Shakespeare.[7] By 1610, the actors
were performing Shakespeare in German as his plays had become popular in Danzig.[7] Some of
Shakespeare's work was performed in continental Europe during the 17th century, but it was not until the
mid-18th century that it became widely known. In Germany Lessing compared Shakespeare to German
folk literature. In France, the Aristotelian rules were rigidly obeyed, and in Germany, a land where French
cultural influence was very strong (German elites preferred to speak French rather than German in the 18th
century), the Francophile German theatre critics had long denounced Shakespeare's work as a "jumble" that
violated all the Aristotelian rules.[8]

As a part of an effort to get the German public to take Shakespeare more seriously, Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe organised a Shakespeare jubilee in Frankfurt in 1771, stating in a speech on 14 October 1771 that
the dramatist had shown that the Aristotelian unities were "as oppressive as a prison" and were
"burdensome fetters on our imagination". Goethe praised Shakespeare for liberating his mind from the rigid
Aristotelian rules, saying: "I jumped into the free air, and suddenly felt I had hands and feet...Shakespeare,
my friend, if you were with us today, I could only live with you".[8] Herder likewise proclaimed that
reading Shakespeare's work opens "leaves from the book of events, of providence, of the world, blowing in
the sands of time".

This claim that Shakespeare's work breaks through all creative boundaries to reveal a chaotic, teeming,
contradictory world became characteristic of Romantic criticism, later expressed by Victor Hugo in the
preface to his play Cromwell, in which he lauded Shakespeare as an artist of the grotesque, a genre in
which the tragic, absurd, trivial and serious were inseparably intertwined. In 1995, the American journalist
Stephen Kinzer writing in The New York Times observed: "Shakespeare is an all-but-guaranteed success in
Germany, where his work has enjoyed immense popularity for more than 200 years. By some estimates,
Shakespeare's plays are performed more frequently in Germany than anywhere else in the world, not
excluding his native England. The market for his work, both in English and in German translation, seems
inexhaustible."[9] The German critic Ernst Osterkamp wrote: "Shakespeare's importance to German
literature cannot be compared with that of any other writer of the post-antiquity period. Neither Dante or
Cervantes, neither Moliere or Ibsen have even approached his influence here. With the passage of time,
Shakespeare has virtually become one of Germany's national authors."[9]

In Russia
Shakespeare, as far as can be established, never went any further from Stratford-upon-Avon than London,
but he made a reference to the visit of Russian diplomats from the court of Tsar Ivan the Terrible to the court
of Elizabeth I in Love's Labour's Lost in which the French aristocrats dress up as Russians and make fools
of themselves.[10] Shakespeare was first translated into Russian by Alexander Sumarokov, who called
Shakespeare an "inspired barbarian", who wrote of the Bard of Avon that in his plays "there is much that is
bad and exceedingly good".[10] In 1786, Shakespeare's reputation in Russia was greatly enhanced when the
Empress Catherine the Great translated a French version of The Merry Wives of Windsor into Russian
(Catherine did not know English) and had it staged in St. Petersburg.[10] Shortly afterwards, Catherine
translated Timon of Athens from French into Russian.[10] The patronage of Catherine made Shakespeare an
eminently respectable author in Russia, but his plays were rarely performed until the 19th century, and
instead he was widely read.[10]

In France
Shakespeare and his works began to circulate in France from the beginning of the 18th century. Until this
moment, the most admired English poets were Alexander Pope, John Milton, James Thomson and Thomas
Gray and their texts had already been translated into French. In the first half of the century, French
intellectuals who had visited or sojourned in England for a period of time and, therefore, had had the
opportunity to see theatrical representations of English plays, began to express their opinions and judgments
on Shakespeare and his theatre.[11] Voltaire was a prominent figure in this debate. In Essai sur la poésie
épique (1728), he declared himself to be an admirer of the English theatre, especially of its tragedies, which
he considered to be superior to all the other genres brought to the English stage.[12] Voltaire's appreciation
for the English theatre was so sincere that he tried to import some of its characteristics into France. The
adoption of such features was not immediate or easy. In Discours sur la tragédie (1731), Voltaire had
analysed all the rules that had to be categorically respected in French theatres, all the events that could be
represented and those that were absolutely forbidden. As a result, «la delicatesse», la «bienséance» e la
«coutume»[12] dominated the French plays and they constituted an obstacle to the introduction of any
innovation. Such mutations were scarcely appreciated by the playwrights, actors and audiences.[13]Voltaire
showed his will to partly abandon such conventions, mainly because they were an impediment for the
realisation of some scenes he was working on, firstly the death of Julius Caesar. The main impediment for
this scene was the rule that in French tragedies, characters could commit suicide, but not murder. Voltaire
fought to change this convention, supporting his thesis with examples from Ancient Greek theatre and the
contemporary English theatre, where assassinations were regularly represented on stage. However, Voltaire
also stated that English tragedies could turn into « un lieu de carnage».[13] What he wanted to achieve was
a compromise between tradition and innovation. Eventually, innovations infiltrated into French theatre and
when Voltaire presented La Mort de Cèsar to his audience in 1743, he was able to represent Caesar's death
as he had originally imagined it.[13] Voltaire also lamented that no one among his fellow countrymen had
tried to translate Shakespeare.[14] He personally translated the speech of Brutus in Julius Caesar, becoming
the first Frenchman to translate a passage from a Shakespearean play. His translation was included in
Discours sur la tragedie, published in 1730.[15] Some years later, he translated Hamlet's monologue, which
was published in Les Lettres philosophiques (1734).[16] Shakespeare's popularity steadily increased during
the century and others tested themselves with translating the Bard. The appearance of numerous translations
points out a change in the taste of French playwrights and audiences. In 1746 Pierre-Antoine La Place
published eight volumes containing summaries of every Shakespearean play and partial translations of some
of them. Between 1776 and 1782 Pierre Letourner translated the complete corpus of Shakespeare's plays.
His work also included comments on Shakespeare, particularly on his ability to depict human emotions and
make characters talk in a language close to that used in everyday life. Letourner's translations do not lack
errors, but his work was fundamental in spreading the knowledge of Shakespeare and the English theatre in
France.[17]

In Italy
Shakespeare remained almost unknown in Italy until the beginning of the 18th century. The most translated
and admired English poets were Alexander Pope, John Milton, Thomas Gray and James Thomson. The
knowledge of Shakespeare spread in the peninsula in two different ways. On one hand, Italian intellectuals
who sojourned for a period of time in England had the possibility to witness theatrical representations and to
write about their experiences; their texts, then, travelled back to Italy. On the other hand, many English
people travelled to Italy in the 18th century, since it was one of the many destinations on the Grand Tour.
The occasions for interactions between English and Italian people were numerous. Moreover, English
people who migrated or were banished from England, often chose Italy as their new home. However, many
French translations and adaptations of Shakespearean plays began to circulate in Europe in this period, and
the majority of Italian writers started to read Shakespeare in French.[18] Few people knew English and
dictionaries were not widely available. For Italians, their first approach towards English plays was often
through French renditions and, even though they presented substantial differences from the originals, they
introduced the knowledge of English theatre and its rules into Italy. One of the most famous and most-read
French adaptations was La mort de César by Voltaire, based on Julius Caesar by Shakespeare.[13]
Shakespearean plays began to be staged in Italian theatres in the second half of the century, and they were
nearly always adaptations or rewrites.[19] In 1705, Apostolo Zeno wrote Ambleto, which was staged in
Venice the following year. Ambleto was not a translation of Hamlet, not even an adaptation. The only
similarity with Hamlet was its source of inspiration, and it has now been verified that the author did not
know Shakespeare. The production was so successful that it was brought to the stage of the Haymarket
Theatre in London in 1712. The play was staged again in Italy in 1750, but it had not been influenced by
the Shakespearean Hamlet. As a matter of fact, it was identical to the first version of 1706. This is a signal
of how there was no real interest for the English theatre and its characteristics in Italy, yet.[15]

The first Italian melodrama which was inspired by a tragedy by Shakespeare dates to 1789: Amleto by
Gimbattista Zanchi. He, however, worked with the help of a French rendition. It is possible, then, that he
did not know the original version of the tragedy.[19] The only melodrama which took inspiration directly
from an original work by Shakespeare was Rosalinda (1744) by Paolo Rolli. His source of inspiration was
As you like it and it was the only theatrical production that took inspiration from a Shakespearean comedy
instead of a tragedy.[19] From the beginning of the century, however, some intellectuals attempted to
translate some passages from Shakespeare's plays, even if these were often via French translations. Antonio
Conti lived in London from 1715 to 1718 and he composed two tragedies during his sojourn: Julius Caesar
and Marcus Brutus, both inspired by Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. In the preface to the tragedies, Conti
praised Shakespeare and expressed his surprise at the fact that no Italian writer had attempted a translation
of the Bard sooner. He also noted how Shakespeare did not respect the Aristotelian units. Italian
playwrights, on the other hand, were still observing these principles and Conti was no exception. Therefore,
the action of his tragedies takes place in one location and it only lasts a few hours.[20] In 1729, Paolo Rolli
published an Italian translation of the first six books of Paradise Lost. In the preface, he praised
Shakespeare and compared him to Dante. In 1739 he published a translation of one of Hamlet's
monologues.[21] The first complete Italian translation of a Shakespearean tragedy was Giulio Cesare by
Domenico Valentini, printed in 1756. Valentini used the English edition of the tragedy printed in 1733 by
Lewis Theobald for his translation. In his preface, he stated that he did not understand English, therefore, he
asked for the help of some knights, whose identity is still unknown. It is probable that they were English
knights who were visiting Siena as part of The Grand Tour. It was common for Italian and English people
to meet in social and cultural gatherings. Probably, this is how Valentini met them and asked them to assist
him in the process of translation. Other intellectuals worked on Shakespeare towards the end of the century.
Giuseppe Baretti published Discours sur Shakespeare et M.r de Voltaire in 1777; Alessandro Verri
translated Hamlet and Othello between 1769 and 1777; Francesco Algarotti, who did not appreciate
English theatre, changed his mind when he saw a representation of Julius Caesar in London. He also
translated the passages he thought were the most salient in Brutus's speech.[22] Giustina Renier Michiel
translated Othello, Macbeth and Coriolanus between 1798 and 1801. It is still uncertain whether she
worked alone. Letters exchanged with Cesarotti lead scholars to think that she may have been helped by
another Italian writer. It is also possible that she worked alone, using a French rendition to help with the
translations. The question is still unsolved.[23]

In Spain
The knowledge of Shakespeare and his works in European countries, including Spain, arrived centuries
after his death and not always easily. Even if some folios containing Shakespearean plays managed to arrive
in Spain as soon as the end of the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century, they did not have an
impact on the theatre and its audience. There is evidence that a First Folio and a Second Folio containing
historical dramas arrived in the country after 1632, the year in which they were both published in England.
There is also evidence of a third Folio imported in Spain in 1742 but it is now lost. However, these editions
alone were not sufficient to spark the interest of Spanish writers and critics. Shakespeare's works began to
be read by a larger number of intellectuals in the 18th century; however, Shakespeare did not arrive to Spain
in his original language, but he began to be studied thanks to French adaptations and rewritings. Spanish
scholars rarely read Shakespeare in English. The arrival of Shakespeare in the country brought with it the
debate on theatre, its rules, its virtues and vices. The classical rules of Spanish, French and Italian theatre,
derived from the classical theatre, were often an obstacle for the introduction of innovations coming from
different theatrical traditions. English theatre, for instance, did not respect classical rules. This provoked
admiration but, at the same time, rejection for Shakespeare and his works: on one hand his imagination was
admired but on the other he used too many features that did not find their place in the Spanish tradition.
Those critics who expressed their judgment on the Bard in the 18th century judged him from a classical
perspective and since he did not comply with the classical rules of theatre, he was not worth of appreciation.
As a consequence, his works began to be translated only at the end of the 18th century. The first Spanish
translation of Shakespeare dates to 1798, when Leandro Fernandéz de Moratìn translated Hamlet.
However, the first tragedy to be translated directly from the original English version, without the mediation
of a French text, dates to 1838 and it was Macbeth translated by José García de Villalta. Shakespearean
plays began to be represented in Spanish theatres only at the beginning of the 19th century but they were
often neoclassic adaptations derived from French rewritings. Between 1808 and 1817 Othello, Romeo and
Juliet and Macbeth were brought to the stage. Shakespeare began to be appreciated more with the advent of
Romanticism. [24]

19th century

Shakespeare in performance
Theatres and theatrical scenery became ever
more elaborate in the 19th century, and the
acting editions used were progressively cut and
restructured to emphasise more and more the
soliloquies and the stars, at the expense of pace
and action.[25] Performances were further
slowed by the need for frequent pauses to
change the scenery, creating a perceived need
for even more cuts to keep performance length
within tolerable limits; it became a generally
accepted maxim that Shakespeare's plays were
too long to be performed without substantial
cuts. The platform, or apron, stage, on which The Theatre Royal at Drury Lane in 1813. The platform
stage is gone, and note the orchestra cutting off the actors
actors of the 17th century would come forward
from the audience.
for audience contact, was gone, and the actors
stayed permanently behind the fourth wall or
proscenium arch, further separated from the audience by the orchestra, see image right.

Through the 19th century, a roll call of legendary actors' names all but drown out the plays in which they
appear: Sarah Siddons (1755–1831), John Philip Kemble (1757–1823), Henry Irving (1838–1905), and
Ellen Terry (1847–1928). To be a star of the legitimate drama came to mean being first and foremost a
"great Shakespeare actor", with a famous interpretation of, for men, Hamlet, and for women, Lady
Macbeth, and especially with a striking delivery of the great soliloquies. The acme of spectacle, star, and
soliloquy Shakespeare performance came with the reign of actor-manager Henry Irving at the Royal
Lyceum Theatre in London from 1878 to 1899. At the same time, a revolutionary return to the roots of
Shakespeare's original texts, and to the platform stage, absence of scenery, and fluid scene changes of the
Elizabethan theatre, was being effected by William Poel's Elizabethan Stage Society.

Shakespeare in criticism
Thomas De Quincey: "O, mighty
poet! Thy works are... like the
phenomena of nature, like the sun
and the sea, the stars and the
flowers".
The belief in the unappreciated 18th-century Shakespeare was
proposed at the beginning of the 19th century by the Romantics, in
support of their view of 18th-century literary criticism as mean,
formal, and rule-bound, which was contrasted with their own
reverence for the poet as prophet and genius. Such ideas were most
fully expressed by German critics such as Goethe and the Schlegel
brothers. Romantic critics such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and
William Hazlitt raised admiration for Shakespeare to worship or
even "bardolatry" (a sarcastic coinage from bard + idolatry by
George Bernard Shaw in 1901, meaning excessive or religious
worship of Shakespeare). To compare him to other Renaissance
playwrights at all, even for the purpose of finding him superior,
began to seem irreverent. Shakespeare was rather to be studied
without any involvement of the critical faculty, to be addressed or
apostrophised—almost prayed to—by his worshippers, as in
Thomas De Quincey's classic essay "On the Knocking at the Gate
in Macbeth" (1823): "O, mighty poet! Thy works are not as those
of other men, simply and merely great works of art; but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun
and the sea, the stars and the flowers,—like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which are
to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties...".

As the concept of literary originality grew in importance, critics were horrified at the idea of adapting
Shakespeare's tragedies for the stage by putting happy endings on them, or editing out the puns in Romeo
and Juliet. In another way, what happened on the stage was seen as unimportant, as the Romantics,
themselves writers of closet drama, considered Shakespeare altogether more suitable for reading than
staging. Charles Lamb saw any form of stage representation as distracting from the true qualities of the text.
This view, argued as a timeless truth, was also a natural consequence of the dominance of melodrama and
spectacle on the early 19th-century stage.

Shakespeare became an important emblem of national pride in the 19th century, which was the heyday of
the British Empire and the acme of British power in the world. To Thomas Carlyle in On Heroes, Hero-
Worship, & the Heroic in History (1841), Shakespeare was one of the great poet-heroes of history, in the
sense of being a "rallying-sign" for British cultural patriotism all over the world, including even the lost
American colonies: "From Paramatta, from New York, wheresoever... English men and women are, they
will say to one another, 'Yes, this Shakespeare is ours; we produced him, we speak and think by him; we
are of one blood and kind with him'" ("The Hero as a Poet"). As the foremost of the great canonical writers,
the jewel of English culture, and as Carlyle puts it, "merely as a real, marketable, tangibly useful
possession", Shakespeare became in the 19th century a means of creating a common heritage for the
motherland and all her colonies. Post-colonial literary critics have had much to say of this use of
Shakespeare's plays in what they regard as a move to subordinate and uproot the cultures of the colonies
themselves.

Across the North Sea, Shakespeare remained influential in Germany. In 1807, August Wilhelm Schlegel
translated all of Shakespeare's plays into German, and such was the popularity of Schlegel's translation
(which is generally regarded as one of the best translations of Shakespeare into any language), that German
nationalists were soon starting to claim that Shakespeare was actually a German playwright who had just
written his plays in English.[26] By the middle of the 19th century, Shakespeare had been incorporated into
the pantheon of German literature.[26] In 1904, a statue of Shakespeare was erected in Weimar, showing the
Bard of Avon staring into the distance, becoming the first statue built to honor Shakespeare on the mainland
of Europe.[9]

Romantic icon in Russia

In the Romantic age, Shakespeare became extremely popular in Russia.[10] Vissarion Belinsky wrote he
had been "enslaved by the drama of Shakespeare".[10] Russia's national poet, Alexander Pushkin, was
heavily influenced by Hamlet and the history plays, and his novel Boris Godunov showed strong
Shakespearean influences.[10] Later on, in the 19th century, the novelist Ivan Turgenev often wrote essays
on Shakespeare with the best known being "Hamlet and Don Quixote".[10] Fyodor Dostoevsky was greatly
influenced by Macbeth with his novel Crime and Punishment showing Shakespearean influence in his
treatment of the theme of guilt.[10] From the 1840s onward, Shakespeare was regularly staged in Russia,
and the black American actor Ira Aldridge, who had been barred from the stage in the United States on the
account of his skin color, became the leading Shakespearean actor in Russia in the 1850s, being decorated
by the Emperor Alexander II for his work in portraying Shakespearean characters.[10]

20th century
Shakespeare continued to be considered the greatest English writer of all time throughout the 20th century.
Most Western educational systems required the textual study of two or more of Shakespeare's plays, and
both amateur and professional stagings of Shakespeare were commonplace. It was the proliferation of high-
quality, well-annotated texts and the unrivalled reputation of Shakespeare that allowed for stagings of
Shakespeare's plays to remain textually faithful, but with an extraordinary variety in setting, stage direction,
and costuming. Institutions such as the Folger Shakespeare Library in the United States worked to ensure
constant, serious study of Shakespearean texts, and the Royal Shakespeare Company in the United
Kingdom worked to maintain a yearly staging of at least two plays.

Shakespeare performances reflected the tensions of the times, and early in the 20th century, Barry Jackson
of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre began the staging of modern-dress productions, thus starting a new
trend in Shakespearean production. Performances of the plays could be highly interpretive. Thus, play
directors would emphasise Marxist, feminist, or, perhaps most popularly, Freudian psychoanalytical
interpretations of the plays, even as they retained letter-perfect scripts. The number of analytical approaches
became more diverse by the latter part of the century, as critics applied theories such as structuralism, New
Historicism, Cultural materialism, African American studies, queer studies, and literary semiotics to
Shakespeare's works.[27][28]

In the Third Reich

In 1934 the French government dismissed the director of the Comédie Française over a controversial
production of Coriolanus that had been the occasion for right-wing violence, amidst the Stavisky affair. In
the international protests that followed, came one from Germany, from none other than Joseph Goebbels.
Although productions of Shakespeare's plays in Germany itself were subject to 'streamlining', he continued
to be favoured as a great classical dramatist, especially so as almost every new German play since the late
1890s onwards was portrayed by German government propaganda as the work of left-wingers, of Jews or
of "degenerates" of one kind or another. Politically acceptable writers had simply been unable to fill the
gap, or had only been able to do so through producing propaganda. In 1935, Goebbels was to say "We can
build autobahns, revive the economy, create a new army, but we... cannot manufacture new dramatists."
With Schiller suspect for his radicalism, Lessing for his humanism and even Goethe for his lack of
patriotism, the legacy of the "Aryan" Shakespeare was reinterpreted for new purposes.

Rodney Symington, Professor of Germanic and Russian Studies at the University of Victoria, Canada, deals
with this question in The Nazi Appropriation of Shakespeare: Cultural Politics in the Third Reich (Edwin
Mellen Press, 2005). The scholar reports that Hamlet, for instance, was reconceived as a proto-German
warrior rather than a man with a conscience. Of this play, one critic wrote: "If the courtier Laertes is drawn
to Paris and the humanist Horatio seems more Roman than Danish, it is surely no accident that Hamlet's
alma mater should be Wittenberg." A leading magazine declared that the crime which deprived Hamlet of
his inheritance was a foreshadowing of the Treaty of Versailles, and that the conduct of Gertrude was
reminiscent of the "spineless" Weimar politicians.
Weeks after Hitler took power in 1933, an official party publication appeared, entitled Shakespeare – a
Germanic Writer, a counter to those who wanted to ban all foreign influences. At the Propaganda Ministry,
Rainer Schlosser, given charge of German theatre by Goebbels, mused that Shakespeare was more German
than English. After the outbreak of the Second World War, the performance of Shakespeare was banned,
though this ban was quickly lifted by Hitler in person, a favour extended to no other playwright. Not only
did the regime appropriate the Bard, but it also appropriated Elizabethan England itself. To the Nazi leaders,
Elizabethan England had been a young, vigorous nation, much like the Third Reich itself, quite unlike the
decadent British Empire of the then present day.

There were some exceptions to the official approval of Shakespeare, as the great patriotic plays, most
notably Henry V, were shelved. The reception of The Merchant of Venice was at best lukewarm (Marlowe's
The Jew of Malta was suggested as a possible alternative), because it was not anti-Semitic enough for Nazi
taste (the play's conclusion, in which the daughter of the Jewish antagonist converts to Christianity and
marries one of the Gentile protagonists, particularly violated Nazi notions of racial purity). Hamlet was by
far the most popular play, along with Macbeth and Richard III.

In the Soviet Union

Given the popularity of Shakespeare in Russia, there were film versions of Shakespeare that often differed
from western interpretations, usually emphasizing a humanist message that implicitly criticized the Soviet
regime.[29] Othello (1955) by Sergei Yutkevich celebrated Desdemona's love for Othello as a triumph of
love over racial hatred.[29] Hamlet (1964) by Grigori Kozintsev portrayed 16th century Denmark as a dark,
gloomy and oppressive place, with recurring images of imprisonment, these marking the film from the focus
on the portcullis of Elsinore to the iron corset Ophelia is forced to wear as she goes insane.[29] The tyranny
of Claudius was made to resemble the tyranny of Stalin with gigantic portraits and busts of Claudius being
prominent in the background of the film, suggesting that Claudius had engaged in a "cult of personality".
Given the emphasis on images of imprisonment, Hamlet's decision to avenge his father becomes almost
subsidiary to his struggle for freedom, as he challenges the Stalin-like tyranny of Claudius.[30] Hamlet in
this film resembles a Soviet dissident who—despite his own hesitation, fears and doubts—can no longer
stand the moral rot around him. The film was based on a script written by the novelist Boris Pasternak, who
had been persecuted under Stalin.[29] The 1971 version of King Lear, also directed by Kozintsev, presented
the play as a "Tolstoyan panorama of bestiality and courage" as Lear finds his moral redemption amongst
the common people.[29]

Acceptance in France
Shakespeare, for a variety of reasons, had never caught on in France, and even when his plays were
performed in France in the 19th century, they were drastically altered to fit in with French tastes, with, for
example, Romeo and Juliet having a happy ending.[31] It was not until 1946 that Hamlet, as translated by
André Gide, was performed in Paris and "ensured Shakespeare's elevation to cult status" in France.[31] The
philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that French intellectuals had been "abruptly reintegrated into history" by
the German occupation of 1940–44 as the old teleological history version of history with the world getting
progressively better (as led by France) no longer held, and as such the "nihilist" and "chaotic" plays of
Shakespeare finally found an audience in France.[31] The Economist observed: "By the late 1950s,
Shakespeare had entered the French soul. No one who has seen the Comédie-Française perform his plays
at the Salle Richelieu in Paris is likely to forget the special buzz in the audience, for the bard is the darling
of France."[31]

In China
In the years of tentative political and economic liberalization after the death of Mao in 1976, Shakespeare
became popular in China.[32] The very act of putting on a play by Shakespeare, formerly condemned as a
"bourgeois Western imperialist author" whom no Chinese could respect, was in and of itself an act of quiet
dissent.[33] Of all Shakespeare's plays, the most popular in China in the late 1970s and 1980s was Macbeth.
It has been posited that Chinese audiences saw in this play, first performed in England in 1606 and set in
11th century Scotland, a parallel with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s.[33] The
violence and bloody chaos of Macbeth reminded Chinese audiences of the violence and bloody chaos of
the Cultural Revolution, and furthermore, the story of a national hero becoming a tyrant, complete with a
power-hungry wife, was seen as a parallel with Mao Zedong and his wife, Jiang Qing.[34] Reviewing a
production of Macbeth in Beijing in 1980, one Chinese critic, Xu Xiaozhong, praised Macbeth as the story
of "how the greed for power finally ruined a great man".[34] Another critic, Zhao Xun, wrote: "Macbeth is
the fifth Shakespearean play produced on the Chinese stage after the smashing of the Gang of Four. This
play of conspiracy has always been performed at critical moments in the history of our nation".[34]

Likewise, a 1982 production of King Lear was hailed by the critics as the story of "moral decline", of a
story "when human beings' souls were so polluted that they even mistreated their aged parents", an allusion
to the days of the Cultural Revolution when the young people serving in the Red Guard had berated,
denounced, attacked and sometimes even killed their parents for failing to live up to "Mao Zedong
thought".[35] The play's director, the Shakespearean scholar Fang Ping, who had suffered during the
Cultural Revolution for studying this "bourgeois Western imperialist", stated in an interview at the time that
King Lear was relevant in China because King Lear, the "highest ruler of a monarchy", created a world full
of cruelty and chaos where those who loved him were punished and those who did not were rewarded, a
barely veiled reference to the often capricious behavior of Mao, who punished his loyal followers for no
apparent reason.[35] Cordelia's devotion and love for her father—despite his madness, cruelty and rejection
of her—is seen in China as affirming traditional Confucian values, where love of the family counts above
all, and for this reason, King Lear is seen in China as being a very "Chinese" play that affirms the
traditional values of filial piety.[36]

A 1981 production of The Merchant of Venice was a hit with Chinese audiences, as the play was seen to
promote the theme of justice and fairness in life, with the character of Portia being especially popular, as she
is seen as standing for, as one critic wrote, "the humanist spirit of the Renaissance" with its striving for
"individuality, human rights and freedom".[37] The theme of a religious conflict between a Jewish merchant
vs. a Christian merchant in The Merchant of Venice is generally ignored in Chinese productions of The
Merchant of Venice, as most Chinese find do not find the theme of Jewish-Christian conflict relevant.[37]
Unlike in Western productions, the character of Shylock is presented very much as an unnuanced villain,
capable only of envy, spite, greed and cruelty, a man whose actions are only motivated by his spiritual
impoverishment.[37] By contrast, in the West, Shylock is usually presented as a nuanced villain, a man who
has never held power over a Christian before, and lets that power go to his head.[37] Another popular play,
especially with dissidents under the Communist government, is Hamlet.[37] Hamlet, with its theme of a man
trapped under a tyrannical regime is very popular with Chinese dissidents, with one dissident Wu Ningkun,
writing about his time in internal exile between 1958 and 1961 at a collective farm in a remote part of
northern Manchuria, that he understood all too well the line "Denmark is a prison!"[37]

Film
The divergence between text and performance in Shakespeare continued into the new medium of film. For
instance, both Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet have been filmed in modern settings, sometimes with
contemporary "updated" dialogue. Additionally, there have been efforts (notably by the BBC) to ensure the
existence of a filmed or videotaped version of every Shakespeare play. The reasoning for this was
educational, as many government initiatives recognised the need to get performative Shakespeare into the
same classrooms as the plays being read.

Poetry
Many English-language Modernist poets drew on Shakespeare's
works, interpreting him in new ways. Ezra Pound, for instance,
considered the Sonnets as a kind of apprentice work, with
Shakespeare learning the art of poetry through writing them. He Bunting's edits to the opening lines
also declared the history plays to be the true English epic. In of Shakespeare's Sonnet 86.[38]
Tradition and the Individual Talent, T. S. Eliot wrote that "Some
can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it.
Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British
Museum." Basil Bunting rewrote the sonnets as modernist poems by simply erasing all the words he
considered unnecessary.[38] Louis Zukofsky had read all of Shakespeare's works by the time he was eleven,
and his Bottom: On Shakespeare (1947) is a book-length prose poem exploring the role of the eye in the
plays. In its original printing, a second volume consisting of a setting of The Tempest by the poet's wife,
Celia Zukofsky, was also included.

21st century
Shakespeare's reputation continues to have an influence on the film industry, with new versions of his
works, such as The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021), directed by Joel Coen, being put into production. Regular
performances of Shakespeare's plays continue to be held globally, with Shakespeare's works often
appreciated by the younger generation of students, the liberal, progressive Gen Z. Critics continue to regard
Shakespeare as the greatest writer and poet of the English Language. Shakespeare's plays (especially A
Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice and Julius Caesar) are taught in nearly every English
speaking school globally and are repeatedly translated into different languages.

Critical quotations
The growth of Shakespeare's reputation is illustrated by a timeline of Shakespeare criticism, from John
Dryden's "when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too" (1668) to Thomas Carlyle's
estimation of Shakespeare as the "strongest of rallying-signs" (1841) for an English identity.

Notes
 1. (Hume, p. 20)
2. McIntyre, Ian (1999). Garrick. London: Penguin. p. 432. ISBN 0-14-028323-4.
3. Pierce pp. 4–10
4. Dobson, Michael (1992). The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and
Authorship, 1660–1769. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press. p. 148. ISBN 0198183232.
5. Pierce pp. 137–181
6. Buruma, Ian Anglomania: A European Love Affair, New York: Vintage Books, 1998 p. 52.
7. Easton, Adam (19 September 2014). "Gdansk theatre reveals Poland's ties to Shakespeare"
(https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29250459). The BBC. Retrieved 8 May 2018.
8. Buruma, Ian Anglomania: A European Love Affair, New York: Vintage Books, 1998 p. 57.
9. Kinzer, Stephen (30 December 1995). "Shakespeare, Icon in Germany" (https://www.nytime
s.com/1995/12/30/movies/shakespeare-icon-in-germany.html). The New York Times.
Retrieved 13 March 2016.
10. Dickson, Andrew (May 2012). "As they like it: Shakespeare in Russia" (https://www.calvertjo
urnal.com/features/show/2321/shakespeare-in-russia#.Wu4UKogvyUk). The Calvert
Journal. Retrieved 13 March 2016.
11. Crinò, Anna Maria (1950). Le Traduzioni di Shakespeare in Italia nel Settecento. Roma:
Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.
12. Voltaire (1728). Essai sur la poésie épique, traduit de l'anglois de M. Voltaire, par M***
[Desfontaines]. Paris.
13. Alfonzetti, Beatrice (1989). Il corpo di Cesare. Percorsi di una catastrofe nella tragedia del
Settecento. Modena: Mucchi.
14. Voltaire (1734). Lettres philosophiques. Par M. de V…. Amsterdam.
15. Crinò, Anna Maria (1950). Le traduzioni di Shakespeare in Italia nel Settecento. Roma:
Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.
16. Voltaire (1734). Lettres philosophiques. Par M.de V…. Amsterdam.
17. Crinò, Anna Maria (1950). Le traduzioni di Shakespeare in Italia nel Settecento. Rome:
Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.
18. Bertolazzi, Ghibellini (2017). Shakespeare: un Romantico Italiano. Firenze.
19. Viola, Corrado (2017). Approcci all'opea di Shakespeare nel Settecento Italiano. Firenze.
20. Crinò, Anna Maria (1950). Le Traduzioni di Shakespeare nell'Italia del Settencento. Roma:
Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.
21. Crinò, Anna Maria (1950). Le traduzioni di Shakespeare nell'Italia del Settecento. Rome.
22. Crinò, Anna Maria (1950). Le traduzioni di Shakespeare nell'Italia del Settecento. Rome:
Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.
23. Bianco, Francesca. "Shakespeare: le traduzioni italiane, il caso Padova-Venezia. Giustina
Ranier Michiel e Melchiorre Cesarotti" (https://www.academia.edu/14362213).
24. Pujante, Ángel-Luis (2020). Shakespeare llega a España: illustración y Romanticismo.
25. See, for example, the 19th century playwright W. S. Gilbert's essay, Unappreciated
Shakespeare (https://math.boisestate.edu/gas/gilbert/short_stories/shakespeare.htm), from
Foggerty's Fairy and Other Tales
26. Buruma, Ian Anglomania: A European Love Affair, New York: Vintage Books, 1998 p. 51.
27. Grady, Hugh (2001). "Modernity, Modernism and Postmodernism in the Twentieth Century's
Shakespeare". In Bristol, Michael; McLuskie, Kathleen (eds.). Shakespeare and Modern
Theatre: The Performance of Modernity. New York: Routledge. p. 29. ISBN 0-415-21984-1.
28. Drakakis, John (1985). Drakakis, John (ed.). Alternative Shakespeares (https://archive.org/de
tails/alternativeshake0000unse/page/16). New York: Meuthen. pp. 16–17, 23–25 (https://arch
ive.org/details/alternativeshake0000unse/page/16). ISBN 0-416-36860-3.
29. Howard, Tony "Shakespeare on film and video" pp. 607–619 from Shakespeare An Oxford
Guide, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003 p. 611.
30. Howard, Tony "Shakespeare on film and video" pp. 607–619 from Shakespeare An Oxford
Guide, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003 page 611.
31. "French hissing" (https://www.economist.com/node/3809488). The Economist. 31 March
2002. Retrieved 8 May 2018.
32. Chen, Xiaomei Occidentalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995 pp. 51–52.
33. Chen, Xiaomei Occidentalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995 p. 51.
34. Chen, Xiaomei Occidentalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995 p. 52.
35. Chen, Xiaomei Occidentalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995 p. 54.
36. Chen, Xiaomei Occidentalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995 pp. 54–55.
37. Chen, Xiaomei Occidentalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995 p. 55.
38. Bacigalupo, Massimo (2016), "Poets in Rapallo: Bunting & Pound" (https://lingue.unige.it/sit
es/lingue.unige.it/files/pagine/Poets%20in%20Rapallo.%20Bunting%20%26%20Pound.pdf)
(PDF), Quaderni di Palazzo Serra: 59, ISBN 978-88-88626-65-9, ISSN 1970-0571 (https://w
ww.worldcat.org/issn/1970-0571)

References
Hawkes, Terence. (1992) Meaning by Shakespeare. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-07450-
9.
Hume, Robert D. (1976). The Development of English Drama in the Late Seventeenth
Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-812063-X.
Lynch, Jack (2007). Becoming Shakespeare: The Strange Afterlife That Turned a Provincial
Playwright into the Bard. New York: Walker & Co.
Marder, Louis. (1963). His Exits and His Entrances: The Story of Shakespeare's Reputation.
Philadelphia: JB Lippincott.
Pierce, Patricia. The Great Shakespeare Fraud: The Strange, True Story of William-Henry
Ireland. Sutton Publishing, 2005.
Sorelius, Gunnar. (1965). "The Giant Race Before the Flood": Pre-Restoration Drama on the
Stage and in the Criticism of the Restoration. Uppsala: Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia.
Speaight, Robert. (1954) William Poel and the Elizabethan revival. Published for The
Society for Theatre Research. London: Heinemann.

External links

Audiobook
Tolstoy on Shakespeare (1906) (https://librivox.org/tolstoy-on-shakespeare-by-leo-tolstoy/)

E-texts (chronological)
Ben Jonson on Shakespeare (1630) (http://ise.uvic.ca/Library/SLTnoframes/drama/jonson1.h
tml#fn_more)
 John Dryden, Essay of Dramatic Poesy, (1668) (http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/d
rampoet.html)
Thomas Rhymer's notorious attack on Othello, 1692 (at Angelfire website) (http://www.angelfi
re.com/oh5/spycee/rymer.html) , which in the end did Shakespeare's reputation more good
than harm, by firing up John Dryden, John Dennis and other influential critics into writing
eloquent replies.
Alexander Pope, Preface to his Works of Shakespear (1725) (http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~
jlynch/Texts/pope-shakespeare.html)
Thomas De Quincey, "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth" (1823) (http://www.4literatur
e.net/Thomas_De_Quincey/On_the_Knocking_at_the_Gate_in_Macbeth/)
Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841) (http://onlinebo
oks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=1091)

Other resources
PeoplePlay UK Shakespeare performance timeline (https://web.archive.org/web/200412142
14411/http://www.peopleplayuk.org.uk/timelines/shakespeare.php)
Shakespeare biography and online resources at NoSweatShakespeare (http://www.nosweat
shakespeare.com/)
The Shakespeare Resource Center (http://www.bardweb.net/) A directory of Web resources
for online Shakespearean study. Includes a Shakespeare biography, works timeline, play
synopses, and language resources.

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