t acknowledged the gift thus:

TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER.

_Shakespear_, thy Gift, I place before my sight;
With awe, I ask his Blessing ere I write;
With Reverence look on his Majestick Face;
Proud to be less, but of his Godlike Race.
His Soul Inspires me, while thy Praise I write,
And I, like _Teucer_, under _Ajax_ fight.

Writers of Charles II's reign of such opposite temperaments as Margaret
Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle, and Sir Charles Sedley vigorously argued
for Shakespeare's supremacy. As a girl the sober duchess declares she
fell in love with Shakespeare. In her 'Sociable Letters,' which were
published in 1664, she enthusiastically, if diffusely, described how
Shakespeare creates the illusion that he had been 'transformed into every
one of those persons he hath described,' and suffered all their emotions.
When she witnessed one of his tragedies she felt persuaded that she was
witnessing an episode in real life. 'Indeed,' she concludes,
'Shakespeare had a clear judgment, a quick wit, a subtle observation, a
deep apprehension, and a most eloquent elocution.' The profligate
Sedley, in a prologue to the 'Wary Widdow,' a comedy by one Higden,
produced in 1693, apostrophised Shakespeare thus:

Shackspear whose fruitfull Genius, happy wit
Was fram'd and finisht at a lucky hit
The pride of Nature, and the shame of Schools,
Born to Create, and not to Learn from Rules.

Restoration adaptations.

Many adaptations of Shakespeare's plays were contrived to meet current
sentiment of a less admirable type. But they failed efficiently to
supersede the originals. Dryden and D'Avenant converted 'The Tempest'
into an opera (1670). D'Avenant single-handed adapted 'The Two Noble
Kinsmen' (1668) and 'Macbeth' (1674). Dryden dealt similarly with
'Troilus' (1679); Thomas Duffett with 'The Tempest' (1675); Shadwell with
'Timon' (1678); Nahum Tate with 'Richard II' (1681), 'Lear' (1681), and
'Coriolanus' (1682); John Crowne with 'Henry VI' (1681); D'Urfey with
'Cymbeline' (1682); Ravenscroft with 'Titus Andronicus' (1687); Otway
with 'Romeo and Juliet' (1692), and John Sheffield, duke of Buckingham,
with 'Julius Caesar' (1692). But during the same period the chief actor
of the day, Thomas Betterton, won his spurs as the interpreter of
Shakespeare's leading parts, often in unrevised versions. Hamlet was
accounted that actor's masterpiece. {332a} 'No succeeding tragedy fo