Falstaff (opera) knight, Sir John Falstaff, to seduce two married women to gain access to their husbands' wealth. Verdi was concerned about working on a new opera at his advanced age, but he yearned to write a comic work and was pleased with Boito's draft libretto. It took the collaborators three years from mid-1889 to complete. Although the prospect of a new opera from Verdi aroused immense interest in Italy and around the world, "Falstaff" did not prove to be as popular as earlier works in the composer's canon. After the initial performances in Italy, other European countries and the US, the
The Plays of William Shakespeare an authoritative text of Shakespeare. Johnson began reading Shakespeare's plays and poetry when he was a young boy. He would involve himself so closely with the plays that he was once terrified by the Ghost in "Hamlet" and had to "have people about him". Johnson's fascination with Shakespeare continued throughout his life, and Johnson focused his time on Shakespeare's plays while preparing "A Dictionary of the English Language", so it is no wonder that Shakespeare is the most quoted author in it. Johnson came to believe that there was a problem with the collections of Shakespearean plays that were available