Describe Shakespeare's popularity and reputation in Elizabethan England.

William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, was a popular and
"respected" writer during his lifetime, but his rise to pre-eminence as the greatest of
all English-speaking authors did not come until several centuries later. Shakespeare's
works became idolized by Victorian England in the 19th century, and his stature has
never been questioned since.

Shakespeare "was never revered
in his lifetime," and he received his share of negative criticism. He was generally
regarded "below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson," but other critics rated him as equal to
Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser. However, Shakespeare's standing was not totally
lost on his contemporaries. Jonson himself called him the "soul of the age... a wonder
of our stage." Poet/critic John Dryden admired Jonson, but "I love Shakespeare." King
James I must have felt a likewise sentiment, installing Shakespeare's plays as the core
of his royal company, the King's Men.