What was the layperson’s view of Shakespeare?

John Fiske in Reading Television (Routledge 1978 available on-line) observes
“If we are to go by some of the criticisms made about Elizabethan theatre and dramatists by their own contemporaries, we can see that the those closest to the scene do not always make the best judgements. After all Shakespeare himself was called an ‘upstart crow who supposes he is well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you’. This was in a deathbed letter by a fellow dramatist Robert Green (1558-1592) who asked that it be published and it became part of a play in the pamphlet shown of which only two copies exist. (of the first edition) This picture is from the Folger Shakespeare Library . Don’t you just love the way librarians write all over rare copies.

Fiske goes on .. ‘Some of the most respectable citizens in the country considered that Shakespearean theatre left something to be desired. ‘They are ordinary places for vagrant persons, Maisterless men, thieves, horse stealers, whoremongers, coozeners*, coney catchers, contrivers of treason and other idle and daungerous persons to meet together’.*[Cozeners, coozeners: deceivers or cheats]

Samuel Pepys thought Romeo and Juliet was the worst play he had heard in his life. Then he saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream and considered that worse.