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
English National Opera to stage full performances of operas. In the 1914–1915 season, Baylis staged 16 operas and 16 plays (13 of which were by Shakespeare). In the years after the First World War, Baylis's Shakespeare productions, which featured some of the leading actors from London's West End, attracted national attention, as her shoe-string opera productions did not. The opera, however, remained her first priority. The actor-manager Robert Atkins, who worked closely with Baylis on her Shakespearean productions, recalled, "Opera, on Thursday and Saturday nights, played to bulging houses." By the 1920s, Baylis concluded that the Old Vic no longer sufficed to house