How and why did the discipline of criticism emerge in England in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century? Modern surveys typically trace the development of English criticism as a tidy succession of poet-critics from John Dryden to Samuel Johnson. But this narrative assumes all critics writing during this period practiced the same kind of criticism and that "criticism" was a stable, uncontested term. Focusing on dramatic criticism, this study recovers the dynamic and experimental nature of early English criticism by exploring the self-authorizing strategies writers such as Ben Jonson, Dryden, Aphra Behn, Thomas Rymer, Jeremy Collier, and Joseph Addison employed to establish themselves as critics and to demonstrate the need for, and usefulness of, criticism. Emphasizing the diversity of critics and critical methodologies provides specialists and students with a better sense of how criticism in England evolved from an obscure fad into a recognizable institution and a richer understanding of critical practice today.