Bardolatry is excessive admiration of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare has been known as "the Bard" since the eighteenth century. One who idolizes Shakespeare is known as a bardolator.
The term bardolatry, derived from Shakespeare's sobriquet "the Bard of Avon" and the Greek word latria "worship", was coined by George Bernard Shaw in the preface to his collection Three Plays for Puritans published in 1901. Shaw professed to dislike Shakespeare as a thinker and philosopher because Shaw believed that Shakespeare did not engage with social problems as Shaw did in his own plays.
Engraving of the sculpture of Shakespeare at the entrance to the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery. The sculpture is now in the former garden of Shakespeare's home New Place in Stratford.
George Romney's The infant Shakespeare attended by Nature and the Passions, c. 1791–1792, representing the Romantic idea of Shakespeare's natural genius
Thomas Nast, study for The Immortal Light of Genius, 1895.
Stratford-upon-Avon, commonly known as just Stratford, is a market town and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon district, in the county of Warwickshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It is situated on the River Avon, 91 miles (146 km) north-west of London, 22 miles (35 km) south-east of Birmingham and 8 miles (13 km) south-west of Warwick. The town is the southernmost point of the Arden area on the edge of the Cotswolds. In the 2021 census Stratford had a population of 30,495.
Image: Stratford Upon Avon, High Street, geograph 3969622 by Lewis Clarke
Image: Bust of Shakespeare at Shakespeares funerary monument
Image: Shakespeare's birthplace Stratford upon Avon panoramio
Image: Holy Trinity Church Stratford upon Avon
