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
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