Pope's "Dunciad" illustration 1760

This mock-heroic poem was an attack on the dullness of various scholars and artists who had offended Pope, above all the actor-manager Colley Cibber. Shakespeare seems to have shared Pope's contempt for pedants as shown by his satirical treatment of them in his comedies. Nevertheless, in his preface to Shakespeare's Works, Pope says: "Nothing is more evident than that he had a taste of natural philosophy, mechanicks, ancient and modern history, poetical learning, and mythology: we find him very knowing in the customs, rites, and manners of antiquity. . . . Whatever objects of nature, or branch of science, he either speaks of or describes, it is always with competent, if not extensive knowledge: his descriptions are still exact: all his metaphors appropriate, and remarkably drawn from the true nature and inherent qualities of each subject." Courtesy of the Yorck Project, under GNU Free Document License.