Reputation of William Shakespeare book-length prose poem exploring the role of the eye in the plays. In its original printing, a second volume consisting of a setting of "The Tempest" by the poet's wife, Celia Zukofsky was also included. The growth of Shakespeare's reputation is illustrated by a timeline of Shakespeare criticism, from John Dryden's "when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too" (1668) to Thomas Carlyle's estimation of Shakespeare as the "strongest of rallying-signs" (1841) for an English identity. Reputation of William Shakespeare In his own time, William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was rated as merely one among many
Reputation of William Shakespeare became in the 19th century a means of creating a common heritage for the motherland and all her colonies. Post-colonial literary critics have had much to say of this use of Shakespeare's plays in what they regard as a move to subordinate and deracinate the cultures of the colonies themselves. Across the North Sea, Shakespeare remained influential in Germany. In 1807, August Wilhelm Schlegel translated all of Shakespeare's plays into German, and such was the popularity of Schlegel's translation (which is generally regarded as one of the best translations of Shakespeare into any language) that German nationalists were soon starting