Since William Shakespeare's death in 1616, there has been a great variety of criticism towards Shakespeare's work. Shakespeare's work, in today's society, is mostly admired but over the past 400 years, his work was equally condemned. The early criticism (years not long after Shakespeare's death) was primarily directed towards Shakespeare's form and approach. William Shakespeare was criticized for mixing comedy and tragedy. He was also criticized for failing to follow the rules of the Classical drama. For example, Shakespeare was labeled as the man who corrupted the language with false wit, puns, and ambiguity. Shakespeare was also criticized for failing to observe the unity of time and place. However, critic Samual Johnson defended Shakespeare when it came to Shakespeare's overlooking of the Classical rules. On the issues of unity of time and place, Johnson argued that no one even considered the stage play to be real life anyway.
Later on in the 19th century, two German critics, Gotthold Lessing and Augustus Wilhelm von Schlegal saw Shakespeare more as a romantic poet instead of a classical poet. During this same period of time, another critic by the name of Edward Dowden was trying to disregard and disclaim earlier criticism of Shakespeare's works as moraly incorrect. Dowden, instead, was trying to see the positive moral tendacies in the plays. This particular observation continued to the 20th century.
During the later part of the 20th century, criticism on William Shakespeare began to shift away from earlier studies and criticism that studied both the character as independent personality and the assumption that the morals in Shakespeare's works can be seperated from thier dramatic context.
Eventually, Shakespeare's plays were being viewed in terms of the unity of image, metaphor, and tone. Regardless of the numerous critics' approaches on William Shakespeare's works, Shakespeare was and still is the most famous, as well as the most powerful, playwrite/author/director in the history of Western Civilization.