Introduction: Shakespeare and the Theatre Critic;
c.1700 Colley Cibber on Thomas Betterton as Hamlet;
c.1738-9 Thomas Davies on Cibber as Justice Shallow in 2 Henry IV;
(?1744-68) Thomas Davies and James Boaden on David Garrick and Mrs Pritchard in Macbeth; (uncertain date) Thomas Davies on Garrick as King Lear;
1774-5 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg on Garrick as Hamlet;
22 May 1776 Henry Bate on Garrick as King Lear;
(uncertain date) Charles Lamb on Robert Bensley as Malvolio and James William Dodd as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night;
(uncertain date) Sir Walter Scott on John Philip Kemble as Macbeth and in Coriolanus's death scene;
(uncertain date) Julian Charles Young on Kemble as Coriolanus and Sarah Siddons as Volumnia in Coriolanus; 15 Feb. 1814 William Hazlitt on Edmund Kean as Richard III;
27 Feb. 1814 Thomas Barnes on Kean as Richard III;
14 Mar. 1814 Hazlitt on Kean as Hamlet; 21 Jan. 1816 Hazlitt on A Midsummer Night's Dream, adapted by Frederic Reynolds, with music by Sir Henry Bishop;
4 Nov. 1816 Leigh Hunt on Kean as Timon of Athens;
21 Dec. 1817 John Keats on Kean as a Shakespearian actor; with John Hamilton Reynolds on Kean as Richard Duke of York (in the Merrivale adaptation of the three Henry VI plays);
4 Oct. 1818 Leigh Hunt on Kean as Othello;
31 Oct. 1819 Leigh Hunt on William Charles Macready as Richard III;
5 Dec. 1819 Leigh Hunt on Macready as Coriolanus;
25 Apr. 1820 anon. review of Kean as King Lear;
c.1832 James E. Murdoch on Kean as Posthumus in Cymbeline;
c.1837 Helena Faucit on herself as Hermione, with Macready as Leontes, in The Winter's Tale;
14 Fen. 1838 John Forster on Macready as King Lear;
18 Mar. 1838 Forster on Macready as Coriolanus; 1844 James Robinson Planche's description on Ben Webster's neo-Elizabethan The Taming of the Shrew;
15 Oct. 1853 Henry Morley on A Midsummer Night's Dream produced by Samuel Phelps;
3 Sept. 1854 Morley on Phelps's Pericles;
1856 Theordor Fontane on Kean's production of The Winter's Tale; 24 Apr. 1858 anon. review of Kean's production of (and performance in) King Lear;
(uncertain date) Henry Austin Clapp on Charlotte Cushman as Queen Katharine in Henry VIII;
10 Apr. 1875 Joseph Knight on Tommaso Salvini as Othello; Jan. 1879 Edward Dutton Cook on Henry Irving as Hamlet;
(uncertain date) William Winter on Irving as Shylock;
8 Nov. 1880 anon. Times review of Edwin Booth as Hamlet;
6 July 1895 Bernard Shaw on The Two Gentlemen of Verona, produced by Augustin Daly;
15 July 1895 Shaw on Daly's A Midsummer Night's Dream; (uncertain date) Winter on Ada Rehan as Kate in The Taming of the Shrew;
2 Oct. 1897 Shaw on Johnston Forbes-Robertson as Hamlet;
1898 William Archer on Julius Caesar produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree;
5 Feb. 1898 St John Hankin on Julius Caesar produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree;
30 Sept. 1899 Max Beerbohm on Beerbohm Tree's production of King John;
13 Nov. 1899 anon. review of Richard II produced by William Poel;
4 De. 1899 C. E. Montague on Frank Benson as Richard II;
30 May 1903 Beerbohm on Much Ado About Nothing with Ellen Terry as Beatrice and designs by Gordon Craig;
7 Nov. 1903 Beerbohm on The Tempest at the Court Theatre, London;
8 Apr. 1905 Beerbohm on H. B. Irving as Hamlet;
28 Sept. 1912 John Palmer on The Winter's Tale directed by Harley Granville-Barker;
1 Jan. 1922 Granville-Barker on Twelfth Night directed (in French) by Jacques Copeau;
20 Nov. 1922 Stark Young on John Barrymore as Hamlet;
1923 Herbert Farjeon on Nigel Playfair's production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, with Edith Evans as Mistress Page;
30 Aug. 1925 Hubert Griffith on Hamlet directed by Barry Jackson;
30 Sept. 1933 Virginia Woolf, on Twelfth Night directed by Tyrone Guthrie;
18 Nov. 1934 James Agate on John Gielgud as Hamlet in his own production;
17 Oct. 1935 Agate on Gielgud's production of Romeo and Juliet, with Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft, Laurence Olivier, and Edith Evans;
12 Nov. 1937 John Mason Brown on Orson Welles's production of Julius Caesar;
1944 Ronald Harwood on Donald Wolfit as Lear;
1947 Kenneth Tynan on Olivier as Richard III;
1947 Tynan on Olivier and Ralph Richardson in Henry IV, Parts One and Two;
1947 T. C. Worsley on Guthrie's production of Henry VIII;
1950 Richard David on Measure for Measure directed by Peter Brook, with Gielgud and Barbara Jefford;
1955 Evelyn Waugh on Titus Andronicus directed by Brook, with Olivier as Titus;
1959 John Russell Brown on All's Well that Ends Well directed by Guthrie;
1959 Laurence Kitchin on Olivier as Coriolanus, directed by Peter Hall;
1962 Kitchin on Brook's production of King Lear with Paul Scofield as Lear;
1964 Ronald Bryden on Olivier as Othello;
27 Aug. 1965 Bryden on Peter Hall's production of Hamlet with David Warner as Hamlet;
1970 Robert Speaight on Brook's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream;
1973 Peter Thomson on Richard II directed by John Barton;
1976 Roger Warren on Macbeth, directed by Trevor Nunn, with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench;
1978 Warren on Love's Labour's Lost, directed by Barton;
29 June 1984 Stanley Wells on Antony Sher as Richard III, directed by Bill Alexander;
1985 Nicholas Shrimpton on a production of the first quarto version of Hamlet;
1985 Warren on Howard Davies's production of Troilus and Cressida at Stratford-upon-Avon;
1986 Wells on Henry IV, Parts One and Two, and Henry V, directed by Michael Bogdanov;
11 Apr. 1987 Michael Billington on Antony and Cleopatra directed by Peter Hall;
1987 Wells on Titus Andronicus, directed by Deborah Warner at Stratford-upon-Avon;
1989 R. L. Smallwood on Othello, directed by Trevor Nunn at Stratford-upon-Avon;
3 Oct. 1990 Paul Taylor on The Tempest, directed by Brook;
6 Dec. 1991 Taylor on As You Like It, directed by Declan Donellan for Cheek by Jowl;
1993 Peter Holland on Richard III, directed by Barrie Rutter for The Northern Broadsides;
1996 Smallwood on The Comedy of Errors, directed by Tim Supple; Index