The Plays of William Shakespeare in perspective, we have only to remind ourselves what Johnson brought to it – an assemblage of almost every qualification we should ideally like to have brought to this kind of work with the single exception of patience... Operating in and through these qualities was his own extensive knowledge of human nature and life. No Shakespearean critic or editor has ever approached him in this respect. John Wain, another of Johnson's biographers, claimed, "There is no better statement of the reason why Shakespeare needs to be edited, and what aims an editor can reasonably set himself" than Johnson's "Proposal". The
Statue of William Shakespeare, Leicester Square a quotation from "Twelfth Night" (Act IV, Scene II), , where the original in Poets' Corner has a misquoted passage from "The Tempest". The Leicester Square statue also differs from its model in omitting portrait reliefs of Henry V, Richard III and Elizabeth I from the plinth on which Shakespeare rests. The inscription on the pedestal in Leicester Square reads: The statue is listed at Grade II. In 2012 it underwent restoration, and the cleaning was completed and new water features added in 2014. Statue of William Shakespeare, Leicester Square A statue of William Shakespeare, sculpted by Giovanni Fontana after