Description
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Great writers are the makers of nations or, at least, the creators of national imaginations. Many poets and novelists—Wordsworth and Dickens—have contributed to the idea of England, but none has done as much to shape the English national consciousness as William Shakespeare. His sense of landscape and depiction of characters like Falstaff and Henry V helped shape the very idea of England, and his retelling of English history is as important to England and America as Homer was to Greece.