Reputation
His biography, W.G. Wills: Dramatist and Painter, was written by his brother Freeman Wills in 1898. However, even by then Wills' reputation was in decline. His works were very rarely revived or read after his death and have been subject to some scathing criticism. Richard Cordell described Broken Spells as "a flatulent Napoleonic piece", adding that Wills "wavered between uninspired verse plays and noisy melodrama". Peter Thomson calls Eugene Aram "semi poetic drivel".
James Joyce alludes to him and to his play A Royal Divorce (concerning Napoleon's divorce from Joséphine) many times in Finnegans Wake.
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