At first highly acclaimed—it made an immediate and powerful impact on the poet John Keats, among others—then brutally criticised, Hazlitt's book lost much of its influence in the author's lifetime, only to re-enter the mainstream of Shakespearean criticism in the late nineteenth century.

His thoughts on Shakespeare's plays as a whole (particularly the tragedies), his discussions of certain characters such as Shylock, Falstaff, Imogen, Caliban and Iago and his ideas about the nature of drama and poetry in general, such as expressed in the essay on Coriolanus, gained renewed appreciation and influenced other Shakespearean criticism.

He insufficiently valued the tragedies; he missed the essence of much of the poetry; and he "reduced everything to the common standard of conventional propriety [...] the most exquisite refinement or sublimity produced an effect on his mind, only as they could be translated into the language of measured prose".

[31] He sees the parallel yet subtly contrasting lines of the story playing against each other "unconsciously" in the mind of the reader as of the author, working by "the force of natural association, a particular train of thought suggesting different inflections of the same predominant feeling, melting into, and strengthening one another, like chords in music.

[49] But Hazlitt goes further, to develop an idea that only much later was seen to have radical implications for literary theory: he claims that it is of the very nature of poetry to glorify the aristocrat, the solitary hero, and the monarch, while being much less suited to represent, in ways that capture the imagination, the social problems of the common people.

"[52] "So we feel some concern for the poor citizens of Rome when they meet together to compare their wants and grievances, till Coriolanus comes in and with blows and big words drives this set of 'poor rats,' this rascal scum, to their homes and beggary before him.

There is nothing heroical in a multitude of miserable rogues not wishing to be starved [...] but when a single man comes forward to brave their cries and to make them submit to the last indignities, from mere pride and self-will, our admiration of his prowess is immediately converted into contempt for their pusillanimity.

The history of mankind is a romance, a mask, a tragedy, constructed upon the principles of poetical justice; it is a noble or royal hunt, in which what is sport to the few is death to the many, and in which the spectators halloo and encourage the strong to set upon the weak, and cry havoc in the chase though they do not share in the spoil.

In conveying his impressions of Falstaff, Hazlitt first emphasises the sheer physical bulk that we remember him by: "We are as well acquainted with his person as his mind, and his jokes come upon us with double force and relish from the quantity of flesh through which they make their way, as he shakes his fat sides with laughter [...].

[24] Of King Lear in general, Hazlitt writes: The passion which he has taken as his subject is that which strikes its root deepest into the human heart [...] This depth of nature, this force of passion, this tug and war of the elements of our being, this firm faith in filial piety, and the giddy anarchy and whirling tumult of the thoughts at finding this prop failing it, the contrast between the fixed, immovable basis of natural affection, and the rapid, irregular starts of imagination, suddenly wrenched from all its accustomed holds and resting-places in the soul, this is what Shakespear has given, and what nobody else but he could give.

"We see the ebb and flow of the feeling, its pauses and feverish starts, its impatience of opposition, its accumulating force when it has had time to recollect itself, the manner in which it avails itself of every passing word or gesture, its haste to repel insinuation, the alternate contraction and dilatation of the soul, and all 'the dazzling fence of controversy' in this mortal combat with poisoned weapons, aimed at the heart, where each wound is fatal.

"[102] He observes, too, in explaining an instance of what later came to be called comic relief, how when the reader's feelings are strained to the utmost, "just as [...] the fibres of the heart [...] are growing rigid from over-strained excitement [...] [t]he imagination is glad to take refuge in the half-comic, half-serious comments of the Fool, just as the mind under the extreme anguish of a surgical operation vents itself in sallies of wit.

Arguing against this practice, Hazlitt brings in a lengthy quote from an article Lamb wrote for Leigh Hunt's Reflector, which concludes: "A happy ending!—as if the living martyrdom that Lear had gone through,—the flaying of his feelings alive, did not make a fair dismissal from life the only decorous thing for him.

[112] Bromwich also noted that for Hazlitt the power of this play is achieved by Shakespeare's unwillingness to soften the harshness of "nature", as expressed in Lear's halting, broken outcries, such as "I will have such revenges on you both, [Goneril and Regan]/That all the world shall——".

[114] Among Shakespeare's four principal tragedies, Macbeth, according to Hazlitt in this chapter, is notable for its wild extremes of action, its preponderance of violence, and its representation of "imagination" strained to the verge of the forbidden and the darker mysteries of existence.

"[116] Further noting Shakespeare's crafting of the play, Hazlitt points to fine touches at the beginning that contribute to a unified effect: "The wildness of the scenery, the sudden shifting of the situations and characters, the bustle, the expectations excited, [all] are equally extraordinary.

But Richard is "naturally incapable of good" and "wades through a series of crimes [...] from the ungovernable violence of his temper and a reckless love of mischief", while Macbeth, "full of 'the milk of human kindness'", "is with difficulty prevailed upon to commit [...] the murder of Duncan" and is filled "with remorse after its perpetration.

[147] When the author instills in the reader or viewer's imagination the sense of power that he must have had in grasping and conveying intertwined passions, he makes us identify with a character such as Othello, and feel in ourselves the way Iago plays upon his mind so that, ironically, his weakness is made to undermine his strength.

"[151] Hazlitt continues: It is in working [Othello's] noble nature up to this extremity through rapid but gradual transitions, in raising passion to its height from the smallest beginnings and in spite of all obstacles, in painting the expiring conflict between love and hatred, tenderness and resentment, jealousy and remorse, in unfolding the strength and the weakness of our nature, in uniting sublimity of thought with the anguish of the keenest woe, in putting in motion the various impulses that agitate this our mortal being, and at last blending them in that noble tide of deep and sustained passion, impetuous but majestic [...] that Shakespear has shewn the mastery of his genius and of his power over the human heart.

Iago is [...] an extreme instance of the kind: that is to say, of diseased intellectual activity, with the most perfect indifference to moral good or evil, or rather with a decided preference of the latter, because it falls more readily in with this favourite propensity, gives greater zest to his thoughts and scope to his actions.

[207] Overall, this play "presents a fine picture of Roman pride and Eastern magnificence: and in the struggle between the two, the empire of the world seems suspended, 'like the swan's down feather,/That stands upon the swell at full of tide,/And neither way inclines.

"[226] It is dominated by the character of King Richard, whom Shakespeare portrays as towering and lofty; equally impetuous and commanding; haughty, violent, and subtle; bold and treacherous; confident in his strength as well as in his cunning; raised high by his birth, and higher by his talents and his crimes; a royal usurper, a princely hypocrite, a tyrant, and a murderer of the house of Plantagenet.

[228] Differing with Dr. Johnson, who found nothing of genius in Henry VIII but the depiction of the "'meek sorrows and virtuous distress'" of Queen Katherine,[229] Hazlitt finds in this play, though not one of Shakespeare's greatest, "considerable interest of a more mild and thoughtful cast, and some of the most striking passages in the author's works.

[238] He notes the incisive psychology of the unfolding of King Leontes's madness,[239] the appealing roguery of Autolycus,[237] and the charm of Perdita's and Florizel's speeches,[240] after wondering how it could be that Pope doubted the authenticity of the play as Shakespeare's.

[284] As critic John Mahoney put it, to both Lamb and Hazlitt, "the performance of Shakespeare in a theatre must always be disappointing to an extent because the slightest departure from the vision conjured by the imagination is so immediately detected and so quickly a source of aesthetic displeasure.

[101] At least partly explaining why both Lamb and Hazlitt felt the inadequacy of Shakespearean stage performances was that the theatres themselves were huge and gaudy, audiences were noisy and unmannerly,[286] and dramatic presentations in the early nineteenth century were sensationalistic, laden with artificial and showy props.

In some cases, as with Edmund Kean (to whom he refers frequently in this book, usually with admiration) and Sarah Siddons (he could "conceive of nothing grander" than her performance as Lady Macbeth),[289] their interpretations of roles in Shakespearean drama left indelible impressions, extending his ideas of the potential of the characters represented.

"[118] Commenting on the "developement of the catastrophe" in Cymbeline, he takes occasion to note that the contention of Dr. Johnson that "Shakespear was generally inattentive to the winding-up of his plots", is so far from being true that in King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet, among "other plays of less moment [...] the last act is crowded with decisive events brought about by natural and striking means.

The Tory British Critic sniped that the book was "stuffed with dull, common-place, Jacobin declamation",[311] and The Quarterly Review, with the same political bias, rebuked Hazlitt for his uncomplimentary portrayal of King Henry VIII.

Hunt, in a fuller review in The Examiner, applauded not only the author's enthusiasm "but the very striking susceptibility with which he changes his own humour and manner according to the nature of the play he comes upon; like a spectator in a theatre, who accompanies the turns of the actor's face with his own.