What made Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s lectures on Shakespeare popular?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s lectures on William Shakespeare, particularly those delivered during the winter of 1811–12, gained popularity because they offered fresh and exciting psychological interpretations of the playwright’s chief characters.1

Unlike earlier critics who focused on prescribing rigid rules or forms, Coleridge’s approach to literary criticism sought to discern the underlying creative principles of a work and bring them into conscious awareness. By analyzing Shakespeare’s characters through this psychological lens, Coleridge provided his contemporaries with a new way to understand the depth and complexity of the plays. His work was further informed by his deep fascination with Shakespeare’s "organic" approach to drama—which prioritized the "variety" of human nature over the mechanical regularity of Neoclassical unities—and was influenced by the innovative scholarship he encountered while studying in Germany.213