William Shakespeare

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Standard Name: Shakespeare, William
The "Chandos" portrait of William Shakespeare, perhaps by John Taylor, c. 1610. Its claims to authenticity are doubtful, but better than most. It was the first portrait acquired by the National Portrait Gallery, 1856. An oval frame is painted round Shakespeare, who looks inscrutably at the viewer, with a bald forehead, moustache and small beard, wearing a black coat with white collar and a hoop earring in his left ear.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Robert Browning
Critical response was very positive. Gerald Massey in the Athenæum proclaimed Browning a great dramatic poet and felt that Shakespeare would have approved. Walter Bagehot characterized his style as grotesque, a judgement which has stuck.
qtd. in
Irvine, William, and Park Honan. The Book, the Ring, and the Poet: A Biography of Robert Browning. McGraw-Hill, 1974.
397
Literary responses Rudyard Kipling
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge , reviewing Puck of Pook's Hill for the Times Literary Supplement, saw Kipling as a realist who in later life had learned to represent the dreaminess of life. Though his Puck...
Literary responses Kate Clanchy
Deryn Rees-Jones , reviewing for The Independent, expressed admiration for KC 's technique, language, imagery, and her success in capturing the bewilderment, and scratchy impatience, of being a parent. Her supple, textured writing is...
Literary responses Josephine Tey
The play garnered high praise from contemporary theatre critics, and was immensely popular with audiences, some of whom reputedly went to see it thirty or forty times.
Gielgud, Sir John. Early Stages. Rev. ed., Falcon, 1948.
178
It brought its author fame and recognition...
Literary responses Joanna Baillie
The Critical Review called this volume a work of such great and original merit,
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
2d ser. 37: 201
though it also said that JB 's initial success had been fed by her anonymity. Anna Letitia Barbauld
Literary responses Ethel Lilian Voynich
Overall, however, The Gadfly was a success to a degree that not one of ELV 's subsequent novels could achieve.
Garlick, Barbara. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Editor Mitchell, Sally, Garland Publishing, Inc., 1988, p. 837.
837
She did not learn about its popularity in Europe, especially in the Soviet Union...
Literary responses Anna Brownell Jameson
Critic Samuel Schoenbaum wrote contemptuously of this book in Shakespeare 's Lives, 1970, while getting its title wrong and offering a simplistic account of ABJ 's life. He ascribes her choice of subject to...
Literary responses Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins
Anne Grant was particularly enthusiastic. She said she could give a whole summer to this novel: they will tell you it is dry at first, and long throughout. The first volume you will find sterile...
Literary responses Mercy Otis Warren
Her biographer, Katharine Anthony , finds her plays influenced by the classic models of Molière and Shakespeare ; astonishingly confident, if sometimes crass, in their satirical realism; and written with feeling as well as thought.
Anthony, Katharine Susan. First Lady of the Revolution: The Life of Mercy Otis Warren. Kennikat Press, 1972.
82-3
Literary responses Joanna Baillie
When Baillie re-read her own Witchcraft as a work in progress she wrote: I am inclined to think well of it. Renfrew witches upon a polite stage! Will such a thing ever be endorsed!
qtd. in
Witchcraft by Joanna Baillie. Finborough Theatre, 2008.
The...
Literary responses Anna Steele
The Academy gave Condoned a largely negative review, arguing that Steele had with the odd lack of judgment which not seldom distinguishes lady novelists, done nearly all she could to spoil her book.
The Academy.
11 (3 February 1877): 91
Literary responses Anna Brownell Jameson
Characteristics of Women was well received as a work of Shakespeare criticism: reviewers and literary critics placed it alongside the work of Hazlitt , Coleridge , and Schlegel .
Desmet, Christy. “’Intercepting the Dew-Drop’: Female Readers and Readings in Anna Jameson’s Shakespearean Criticism”. Women’s Re-Visions of Shakespeare, edited by Marianne Novy, University of Illinois Press, 1990, pp. 41-57.
41
Literary responses Ann Radcliffe
Anna Seward , in letters which were to be published in AR 's lifetime, mixed her praise of her gothic oeuvre with some trenchant criticism.
Norton, Rictor. Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. Leicester University Press, 1999.
221-2
Nathan Drake called Radcliffe the Shakespeare of Romance Writers...
Literary responses Helen Maria Williams
A respectful review by Mary Wollstonecraft in the Analytical praised Williams's calm domestic scenes,
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Editors Todd, Janet and Marilyn Butler, Pickering, 1989, 7 vols.
7: 251
her landscapes, and her convincing characters from nature, as well as the feminine sweetness in her style and...
Literary responses Joanna Baillie
The Chief Justice of Ceylon, Sir Alexander Johnstone , asked that two of JB 's last plays be translated into Singalese.One—The Bride, A Tragedy (published in summer 1828), had a Singalese subject.
Quarterly Review. J. Murray.
38 (1828): 602

Timeline

Texts

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