Characters of Shakespear's Plays Merry Wives of Windsor". The bulk of Hazlitt's commentary on the two history plays is devoted to Falstaff, whom he considers to be "perhaps the most substantial comic character ever invented". Falstaff had been of interest to Shakespearean commentators for years. Forty years earlier, a full-length book had appeared, "An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff" (1777), by Maurice Morgann, often taken as the beginning of that school of Shakespearean criticism which considers the characters of Shakespeare's plays as though they were real people. Hazlitt, who seems to have had little acquaintance with Morgann's work, is careful
Characters of Shakespear's Plays of Shakespeare's plays, placing Hazlitt with Schlegel and Coleridge as one of the three most notable Shakespearean critics of the Romantic period. On 26 January 1814, Edmund Kean debuted as Shylock in Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" at London's Drury Lane theatre. William Hazlitt, drama critic for the "Morning Chronicle" since the previous September, was in the audience. He wrote a stunning review, followed by several others applauding (but sometimes censuring) Kean's performances in other Shakespearean tragedies, including "King Richard II", "King Richard III", "Hamlet", "Macbeth", "Romeo and Juliet", and, what Hazlitt considered the best of Kean's performances, "Othello". (These were