Victorian Appropriations of Shakespeare: George Eliot, A. C. Swinburne, Robert Browning, and Charles Dickens

This work argues that Shakespeare can be appropriated by both dominant and marginal groups to lend cultural currency to their own works. While his cultural status may be used to subvert traditional ideas of politics and letters in Eliot and Swinburne, it may also be used to promote more conservative policies and literary interpretations in other writers such as Browning and Dickens.