William Shakespeare as a sign that his acting career was nearing its end. The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays", some of which were first staged after "Volpone", although we cannot know for certain which roles he played. In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in "As You Like It", and the Chorus in "Henry V", though scholars doubt the sources of
Characters of Shakespear's Plays he was also a dramatic critic who paid attention to staging and dramatic form. And even his character criticism transcended the focus on individual characters to create "a larger study of the ways of dramatic "imagination"". In the course of his study of Shakespeare, Hazlitt, as Kinnaird points out, also shows how it is Shakespeare's "art" that enables him to represent "nature", dismissing the older critical view that Shakespeare was a "child of nature" but deficient in "art". Kinnaird further delves into the ideas in "Characters of Shakespear's Plays", especially that of "power" as involved in Shakespeare's plays and as