Challenging the long-held view that Johnson's criticism of Shakespeare is of historical interest only, having been assimilated and superseded by later work, this study argues that Johnson's interpretaion of Shakespeare as "the poet of nature" is actually a radical and provocative proposition. Parker provides an illuminating series of contrasts of the leading Romantic critics--Coleridge, Schlegel, and Hazlitt--arguing that the dichotomies that emerge...