'Dickens' Dream' by Robert William Buss.

'Dickens' Dream' by Robert William Buss, portraying Dickens at his desk at Gads Hill Place surrounded by many of his characters. As a young child Dickens saw plays such as Richard III and Macbeth at the Theatre Royal, Rochester, and his father showed him a house at Gad's Hill, explaining its connection with Falstaff's robbery in Henry IV, Part 1, a house which Dickens later bought for himself. In reviewing such data, Adrian Poole writes that "no major writer in English has been as obsessed by Shakespeare as Dickens." ("Dickens and Shakespeare's Ghosts," in Shakespeare Without Borders, ed. Christa Jansohn, Newark: U. Delaware Press, 2011, page 322).

Dickens was a friend of leading Shakespeare actors Macready and Maclise and founded the Shakespeare Society. He organized an amateur production and tour of ShakespeareÂ’s comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor (1848) in which he himself took the part of Justice Shallow with great success, but also effectively served as director and stage manager. He wrote many reviews of Shakespeare productions with such stars as Macready and Fechter. He was particularly impressed by Samuel Phelps' series of Shakespeare productions at Saddlers Wells. Much of this experience was reflected in his accounts of the production of Romeo and Juliet in Nicholas Nickleby and of Hamlet in Great Expectations.

The Charles Dickens Museum says of this image: "An unfinished painting by R.W.Buss (1804-75) variously known as "A Souvenir of Dickens" and "Dickens's Dream, and showing Dickens's study in his home at Gad's Hill Place. Attribution-Share- Alike License (Wikipedia).