cles through which "the world's greatest playwright" has passed, in the chapter headings of his book, The Cult of Shakespeare: Shakespeare has been eclipsed, reformed, refined, restored, celebrated, fabricated, illustrated, eviscerated, incorporated, commemorated, disintegrated, unmasked, identified, and, ultimately, reintegrated. Halliday's chronicle is historical, but occasionally Shakespeare has completed the entire cycle within a single era, as academics, directors, and others have attempted to brand his writing obsolete and, finally, been forced to reacknowledge his greatness.
Halliday observes that, less than 50 years after the playwright's death, "he was remembered not very vividly as a once-popular dramatist who wrote before the age of enlightenment." Actor/producer William Davenant, who was "licensed to perform and reform" Shakespeare's works, was one of the few keepers of the playwright's flame during this time. This brief period marked the only time since the creation of the original texts that Shakespeare was in real danger of being forgotten.
As this period also included the 18 years when the theater was closed in England, Shakespeare was not supplanted by other dramatists. Theater in general was out of favor for the moment, as the ruling powers saw it as a frivolous art, unworthy of a serious society. Since this time, even in the face of the development of radio, film, and TV, theater has continued to play an important role in society in every succeeding age. Theater offers the live, human element in an immediate and compelling way that no form of mass communications has yet been able to duplicate. Although a number of film and TV adaptations of Shakespeare's writings have enjoyed success with audiences, Muir observes, "Everyone now agrees that Shakespeare's plays belong primarily to the theatre, and most of us believe that in all his mature plays Shakespeare was professionally as competent as modern d...