Tolkien regretted Shakespeare's "disastrous debasement" of "Elves". Shakespeare as a source Tolkien's dislike of Shakespeare The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey suggests that Tolkien may even have felt a kind of fellow-feeling with Shakespeare, as both men were rooted in the county of Warwickshire. He arguably drew on several other plays, including The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV, Part 1, and Love's Labour's Lost, as well as Shakespeare's poetry, for numerous effects in his Middle-earth writings. Tolkien was influenced especially by Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and he used King Lear for "issues of kingship, madness, and succession". Tolkien disapproved in particular of Shakespeare's devaluation of elves, and was deeply disappointed by Shakespeare's prosaic explanation of how Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane Hill in Macbeth. Shakespeare's influence on Tolkien was substantial, despite Tolkien's professed dislike of the playwright. Tolkien derived the characters, stories, places, and languages of Middle-earth from many sources.
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