History of the Shakespeare authorship question theatre audiences, and Shakespeare's status as a "great writer" shifted. Dryden's sentiments about Shakespeare's matchless genius were echoed without a break by unstinting praise from writers throughout the 18th century. Shakespeare was described as a genius who needed no learning, was deeply original, and unique in creating realistic and individual characters (see Timeline of Shakespeare criticism). The phenomenon continued during the Romantic era, when Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, William Hazlitt, and others all described Shakespeare as a transcendent genius. By the beginning of the 19th century Bardolatry was in full swing and Shakespeare was universally celebrated as an unschooled
William Shakespeare Burton William Shakespeare Burton William Shakespeare Burton (1 June 1824 – 26 January 1916) was an English genre and historical painter of the Victorian era. He is now remembered mainly for "The Wounded Cavalier" (1855). Burton's grandfather was a printer, and his father was William Evans Burton, a comic actor and playwright who found popular success in the United States — while leaving his wife and son behind in London, with little money. An only child, the younger Burton worked at copying prints as a teenager. The dramatist and critic Tom Taylor was his sponsor and patron. Taylor helped the teen