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
Music in the plays of William Shakespeare Henry Purcell, Matthew Locke, Thomas Arne, William Linley, Sir Henry Bishop, and Sir Arthur Sullivan. Attempts at reconstructing and performing the "original" songs from the plays and related folk songs have been recorded by various musicians, from "Shakespeare Songs" by Alfred Deller (1967), to the recordings of Philip Pickett. Music in the plays of William Shakespeare Music in the plays of William Shakespeare includes both music incidental to the plot, as song and dance, and also additional supplied both by Shakespeare's own company and subsequent performers. This music is distinct from musical settings of Shakespeare's sonnets by later composers. The