对他那个时代的人们来说,莎士比亚只不过是一位大众喜爱的伦敦剧作家。没有人认为他是英国曾产生的一位最伟大的天才。许多年过去了,文学评论家才逐渐认识到他的剧作的真正价值。甚至在17世纪末,在莎士比亚已去世75年多的时候,许多人还认为他写得拙劣。他们说,他写作是为了取悦观众,而没有遵循那些为剧作家们规定的写作准则。一位英国评论家托马斯·赖默,在1692年写了一本书,试图证明莎士比亚并不懂得如何写悲剧。他以戏剧《奥瑟罗》为例。首先,赖默认为莎士比亚不应该用诗体来写最重要的一些情节。赖默认为,通过删去一些词句也能使那些情节得到完善。奥瑟罗不该说话时,莎士比亚却让他说了这样一些台词: For the people of his time, Shakespeare was nothing more than a popular London playwright. Nobody thinks he is one of the greatest geniuses ever born in Britain. Many years later, literary critics gradually realized the true value of his plays. Even more than 75 years after Shakespeare’s death, at the end of the 17th century, many thought he was poorly written. They said that he was writing to please the audience without following the writing guidelines that were set for playwrights. A British critic, Thomas Rimer, wrote a book in 1692, trying to prove that Shakespeare did not know how to write a tragedy. He takes the drama Othello as an example. First, Reimer thinks Shakespeare should not write the most important episodes in verse. Reimer believes that those episodes can be refined by deleting some words. When Othello should not speak, Shakespeare made him say something like this: