 Northrop Frye said that the portrait makes Shakespeare " look like an idiot . " Cooper notes that " the art of printmaking in England was underdeveloped and there were relatively few skilled engravers . Yet even by the less exacting standards observed in England , the Droeshout engraving is poorly proportioned . " Benjamin Roland Lewis observes that " virtually all of Droeshout 's work shows the same artistic defects . He was an engraver after the conventional manner , and not a creative artist . " 
