William Shakespeare

"Geschwindigkeit wird nie so sehr bewundert als von Saumseligen."

"Mit List ludest Du mir die Gebote auf // die mir das Herz unbezwinglich machten"

"Begegnen wir der Zeit, wie sie uns sucht."

"Ihr, die ihr nicht nach Aussehn wählt, // Wagt und wählt, was wahrhaft zählt."

"Wenn ihr uns stecht, bluten wir nicht? Wenn ihr uns kitzelt, lachen wir nicht? Wenn ihr uns vergiftet, sterben wir nicht? Und wenn ihr uns beleidigt, sollen wir uns nicht rächen?"

"Der Wind, der durch die Welt die Jugend treibt, // Sich Glück wo anders, als daheim, zu suchen, // Wo uns Erfahrung spärlich reift."

"Mein Mund soll meines Herzens Bosheit sagen, // Sonst wird mein Herz, verschweig' ich sie, zerspringen: // Und ehe das geschehe, will ich frei // Und über alles Maß die Zunge brauchen."

"Wir sind aus solchem Stoff wie Träume sind, und unser kleines Leben ist von einem Schlaf umringt."

"Es ist mehr Würde in großmüthiger Vergebung als in Rache."

"O schöne neue Welt, die solche Einwohner hat."

"Die Hölle ist leer, alle Teufel sind hier!"

"Mir Armen war mein Büchersaal als Herzogtum genug."

"Amor ist ein mächtiger Fürst // Und hat mich so gebeugt, daß ich bekenne, // Es gibt kein Weh, das seiner Strafe glich, // Doch gibts nicht größre Lust, als ihm zu dienen."

"Wer stets zu Haus bleibt, hat nur Verstand fürs Haus."

"Die Welt ist meine Auster."

"Gut gebrüllt, Löwe!"

"Was du wirst erwachend sehn, // Wähl es dir zum Liebchen schön, // Seinetwegen schmacht und stöhn, // Sei es Brummbär, Kater, Luchs, // Borst'ger Eber oder Fuchs, // Was sich zeigt an diesem Platz, // Wenn du aufwachst, wird dein Schatz; // Sähst du gleich die ärgste Fratz'!"

"Amor steckt von Schalkheit voll, // Macht die armen Weiblein toll."

"Herr, wie töricht sind doch diese Sterblichen!"

"Ich wollte, es gäbe gar kein Alter zwischen 10 und 23, oder die jungen Leute verschliefen die ganze Zeit; denn dazwischen ist nichts, als den Dirnen Kinder schaffen, die Alten ärgern, stehlen und balgen."

"Weinen kann ich nicht, aber mein Herz blutet."

"Kinder sind ein Segen Gottes."

"Mein` Seel`, dann seid Ihr umso klüger; denn manches Dieners Zunge schwatzt nur seines Herrn Verderben herbei. Nichts sagen, nichts tun, nichts wissen und nichts haben, darin besteht ein großer Teil Eures Guts, das eigentlich ein Nichts ist."

"Gott befohlen, Monsieur! ich habe besser von Euch gesprochen, als Ihr`s um mich verdient habt oder verdienen werdet; aber man soll Böses mit Gutem vergelten."

"Nur Fremd` und Feinde scheiden ungeküsst."

"Den mach ich zum Gespenst, der mich zurückhält!"

"Denn an sich ist nichts weder gut noch schlimm; das Denken macht es erst dazu."

"Der Rest ist Schweigen."

"Doch still! Mich dünkt, ich wittre Morgenluft."

"Ein Stäubchen ist's, des Geistes Aug' zu trüben."

"Es gibt mehr Ding' im Himmel und auf Erden, als Eure Schulweisheit sich träumt"

"Es ist nicht, und es wird auch nimmer gut."

"Etwas ist faul im Staate Dänemark!"

"Ich hege Taubenmut, mir fehlt's an Galle."

"Ist dies schon Tollheit, hat es doch Methode."

"Je weniger eine Hand verrichtet, desto zarter ist ihr Gefühl."

"Kein Borger sei und auch Verleiher nicht."

"Leutselig sei, doch mach dich nicht gemein."

"Mehr Inhalt, weniger Kunst!"

"O Gott, ich könnte in eine Nussschale eingesperrt sein und mich für einen König von unermesslichem Gebiete halten, wenn nur meine bösen Träume nicht wären."

"Schreibtafel her! Ich muss mir's niederschreiben, // Dass einer lächeln kann und immer lächeln // Und doch ein Schurke sein."

"Schwachheit, dein Name ist Weib!"

"Sein oder Nichtsein, das ist hier die Frage."

"Denn Mord, hat er schon keine Zunge, spricht mit wundervollen Stimmen."

"Am meisten Unkraut trägt der fetteste Boden."

"Das Haupt liegt übel, das eine Krone trägt."

"Gerücht verdoppelt, so wie Stimm und Echo // Die Zahl Gefürchteter."

"Ich könnte besser einen Bessern missen."

"Was ist Ehre? Ein Wort. Was steckt in dem Wort Ehre? Was ist diese Ehre? Luft […] Ehre ist nichts als ein gemalter Wappenschild beim Leichenzuge."

"Dieser ist ein Zweig von jenem Siegerstamm, und lässt uns fürchten die angeborene Kraft und sein Geschick."

"Noch einmal stürmt, noch einmal, liebe Freunde!"

"Wir sind nur Krieger für den Werktag, all unsre Festlichkeit und Zier beschmutzt von nassen Märschen im mühseligen Feld […] jedoch mit glühendem und festen Herzen."

"Das erste, was wir tun, laßt uns alle Anwälte töten!"

""Leicht wird ein kleines Feuer ausgetreten, das"

"Ungeduld begleitet wahre Leiden."

"Viel Streich, obwohl von kleiner Axt, // Haun um und fällen selbst die härtste Eich."

"Wer soll bemüht sein, Frieden zu befördern, // Wenn Kirchendiener sich des Haders freun?"

"Grausam ists, den Fallenden zu drängen."

"Handle recht, nichts fürchte; Dein Ziel sei immer Ziel auch deines Landes, Wie deines Gottes und der Wahrheit."

"Lieb und Demut, Lord, ziemt frommen Hirten mehr als Sucht der Ehre."

"Brutus, auch du?"

"Der Feige stirbt schon vielmal, eh er stirbt, die Tapfern kosten einmal nur den Tod."

"Laßt wohlbeleibte Männer um mich sein, Mit glatten Köpfen, und die nachts gut schlafen."

"Mord rufen und des Krieges Hund' entfesseln."

"Kein Stich von allen schmerzte so wie der."

"Nicht euer Herz zu stehlen, komm ich, Freunde."

"Sehen sollst du mich zu Philippi."

"Wie fällt doch ein Geheimnis den Weibern schwer."

"Durch zerlumpte Kleider sieht man die kleinsten Laster; lange Röcke und Pelzmäntel verbergen alles."

"Ich bin ein Mensch, gegen den man mehr gesündigt hat, als er sündigt."

"Was List verborgen, wird ans Licht gebracht; Wer Fehler schminkt, wird einst mit Spott verlacht."

"Wenn nicht Geburt, schafft Güter mir die List; Mir gilt für gut, was dazu nützlich ist."

"Schön ist wüst, und wüst ist schön. Wirbelt durch Nebel und Wolkenhöhn!"

"Wär`s abgetan, so wie`s getan ist, dann wär`s gut, // Man tät es eilig."

"Wer ist weis' und entsetzt, gefaßt und wütig,// Pflichttreu und kalt in einem Augenblick?// Kein Mensch. Die Raschheit meiner heft'gen Liebe// Lief schneller als die zögernde Vernunft."

"Deswegen kann man sagen, dass vieles Trinken mit der Geilheit wie ein doppelzüngiger Jesuit verfährt: es bewirkt sie, und es vereitelt sie; (...) belügt sie im Schlaf und, indem es die Lügen bestraft, verlässt es sie."

"Im Verzeichnis geht ihr als Männer, so wie Windhunde, Wachtelhunde, Pudel, Möpse, Bullen-Beißer, Schäferhunde, alle unter dem allgemeinen Namen Hund begriffen werden; die besondere Bestimmung unterscheidet den schnellen, den langsamen, den schlauen, den Haushüter, den Jäger, einen jeden durch eine gewisse Gabe der gütigen Natur, die seiner Art eigen ist, und ihn aus der allgemeinen Gattung auszeichnet."

"Nichts ist gewonnen, alles ist dahin, // Stehn wir am Ziel mit unzufriednem Sinn."

"Doppelt plagt euch, mengt und mischt! Kessel brodelt, Feuer zischt."

"So lege festen Grund denn, Tyrannei, Rechtmäßigkeit wagt nicht, dich anzugreifen!"

"Ich will fechten, // Bis mir das Fleisch gehackt ist von den Knochen. // Gebt meine Rüstung mir!"

"Leben ist nur ein wandelnd Schattenbild, // Ein armer Komödiant, der spreizt und knirscht // Sein Stündchen auf der Bühn und dann nicht mehr // Vernommen wird; ein Märchen ist's, erzählt // Von einem Blöden, voller Klang und Wut, // Das nichts bedeutet."

""Dann müsst Ihr melden von einem der nicht klug genug war"

"Die Männer sind nun einmal keine Götter, und wir müssen im Ehestand nicht immer die Zärtlichkeit erwarten, die sie uns vor dem Hochzeitstage zeigen."

""Gedeiht auch schlechtes Unkraut ohne Sonne,"

"So gänzlich dumm sich keine Schöne findt, grad ihre Dummheit hilft ihr noch zum Kind."

"Was wäre denn dabei, wenn sehr schlimme Gedanken in mein Herz gekommen wären! Wo ist der Palast, wo nicht auch einmal Schändliches eindringt?"

"Wir können // Nicht alle Herrn sein, nicht kann jeder Herr // Getreue Diener haben."

""Oh, sagt man doch, daß Zungen Sterbender // Wie tiefe Harmonie Gehör erzwingen; // Wo Worte selten, haben sie Gewicht: // Denn Wahrheit atmet, wer schwer atmend spricht," 2. Akt, 2. Szene / Gaunt http://www.zeno.org/nid/20005688612 Übersetzung August Wilhelm Schlegel"

"Aber man sagt doch, dass die Zungen sterbender Menschen, gleich der zauberischen Harmonie zur Aufmerksamkeit nötigen; sparsame Worte werden selten vergebens aufgewandt, denn diejenigen sagen die Wahrheit, die ihre Worte mit Schmerzen atmen müssen."

"Die Eitelkeit, der nimmersatte Geier, // Fällt nach verzehrtem Vorrat selbst sich an."

"Wo Worte selten sind, haben sie Gewicht."

"Den Eber fliehn, bevor er uns verfolgt, heißt Anreiz zur Verfolgung ihm zu geben."

"Ein Pferd, ein Pferd, mein Königreich für'n Pferd!"

"Selten kommt was Bessres"

"Ach, deine Augen drohn mir mehr Gefahr // als zwanzig ihrer Schwerter; blick' du freundlich, //so bin ich gegen ihren Haß gestählt. […] Durch ihren Haß zu sterben wär' mir besser, als ohne deine Liebe Lebensfrist."

"Der Trübsal süße Milch, Philosophie"

"Es war die Nachtigall und nicht die Lerche."

"O rede noch einmal, glänzender Engel, denn über meinem Haupte erscheinst du mir als ein geflügelter Bote des Himmels."

"O Romeo, Romeo, warum bist du Romeo? Verleugne deinen Vater und entsage deinem Namen; oder willst du nicht, so schwöre mir nur deine Liebe, und ich will keine Capulet mehr sein."

"O Schlangenherz, von Blumen überdeckt! Wohnt' in so schöner Höhl' ein Drache je?"

"Und stirbt er einst, Nimm ihn, zerteil in kleine Sterne ihn: Er wird des Himmels Antlitz so verschönen, Dass alle Welt sich in die Nacht verliebt Und niemand mehr der eitlen Sonne huldigt."

"Wie muntre Jünglinge mit neuem Mut sich freuen, // Wenn auf die Fersen nun der Fuß des holden Maien // Dem lahmen Winter tritt: die Lust steht Euch bevor, // Wann Euch in meinem Haus ein frischer Mädchenflor // Von jeder Seit umgibt."

"Wie arm, Lord Boyet, meine Schönheit sei, // Braucht sie doch nicht der Schminke Eures Lobes. // Schönheit wird nur vom Kennerblick gekauft, // Nicht angebracht durch des Verkäufers Prahlen."

"So bringt ein Zufall Amor oft Gelingen: // Den trifft sein Pfeil, den fängt er sich mit Schlingen."

"Denn Mädchen sind wie Rosen: kaum entfaltet, // ist ihre holde Blüte schon veraltet."

"Narren verhalten sich zu Ehemännern wie Sardellen zu Heringen: Der Ehemann ist der größte von beiden."

"Sie fasst ins Auge mich; für wahr so sehr; als ließ sie ganz die Zunge aus den Augen"

"Wenn Musik die Nahrung der Liebe ist, spielt weiter; gebt mir im Übermaß davon, damit das Verlangen am Überfluß erkranke und so sterbe."

"Der Narr hält sich für weise, aber der Weise weiß, dass er ein Narr ist."

"Die ganze Welt ist eine Bühne und alle Frauen und Männer bloße Spieler."

"Es sind nur Kletten, die man dir in einer Feyertags-Schaeckerei angeworfen hat; wenn wir nicht auf dem gebahnten Weg gehen, so würden sie uns an den Unter-Roecken kleben bleiben."

"Reiche Ehrbarkeit, Herr, wohnt wie ein Geizhals in einem armen Hause, wie eine Perle in einer garstigen Auster."

"Weibergedanken eilen immer ihren Handlungen voraus."

"Das ist das Ungeheure in der Liebe, meine Teure, daß der Wille unendlich ist und die Ausführung beschränkt; daß das Verlangen grenzenlos ist, und die Tat ein Sklav' der Beschränkung"

"Aus welchem Stoff schuf einst dich die Natur, // Daß so viel fremde Schatten sich dir neigen, // Da jedem sonst ein einziger Schatten nur, // Und dir, dem einen, alle Schatten eigen?"

"Es muss eingestanden werden, dass viele Kriminalromane so voller sensationeller Verbrechen sind wie ein Drama von Shakespeare."

"Autoren taten ihr leid, da Shakespeare alles wichtige schon geschrieben hatte. Jörg Fauser, Die Tournee."

"Nennen wir nun Shakespeare einen der größten Dichter, so gestehen wir zugleich, dass nicht leicht jemand die Welt so gewahrte wie er, daß nicht leicht jemand, der sein inneres Anschauen aussprach, den Leser in höherm Grade mit in das Bewußtsein der Welt versetzt. Sie wird für uns völlig durchsichtig, wir finden uns auf einmal als Vertraute der Tugend und des Lasters, der Größe, der Kleinheit, des Adels, der Verworfenheit, und dieses alles, ja noch mehr, durch die einfachsten Mittel. Fragen wir aber nach diesen Mitteln, so scheint es, als arbeite er für unsre Augen, aber wir sind getäuscht: Shakespeares Werke sind nicht für die Augen des Leibes."

"Shakespeare reicht uns im Gegenteil die volle reife Traube vom Stock, wir mögen sie nun beliebig Beere für Beere genießen, sie auspressen, keltern, als Most, als gegornen Wein kosten oder schlürfen, auf jede Weise sind wir erquickt."

"Unter den heiligsten Zeilen des Shakespeare wünschte ich, dass diejenigen einmal mit Rot erscheinen mögten, die wir einem zur glücklichen Stunde getrunkenen Glas Wein zu danken haben."

"Versuche es aber doch nur einer und bringe mit menschlichem Wollen und menschlichen Kräften etwas hervor, das den Schöpfungen, die den Namen Mozart, Rafael oder Shakespeare tragen, sich an die Seite setzen lasse."

""Viele bedeutende Dramatiker waren auch Schauspieler"

"Wer wirklich ein guter Schauspieler werden will, muss im Theater lernen. Hier kann man sich als Künstler auch am besten ausleben. Wobei Shakespeare selbstverständlich die Kür ist."

"All's well that ends well."

"Give and take is fair play."

"All that glisters is not gold. or All that glitters is not gold."

"Truth seeks no corners."

"Slutet gott, allting gott."

"What cannot be eschewed must be embraced"

"Beauty itself doth of itself persuade The eyes of men without an orator."

"Time's glory is to calm contending kings, To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light."

"That deep torture may be called a hell, When more is felt than one hath power to tell."

"On a day — alack the day! — Love, whose month is ever May, Spied a blossom passing fair Playing in the wanton air"

"Crabbed age and youth cannot live together: Youth is full of pleasure, age is full of care"

"I gyve unto my wief my second best bed with the furniture"

"Good frend for Jesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare Blese be the man that spares these stones And curst be he that moves my bones"

"I was in love with my bed."

"Is she not passing fair?"

"How use doth breed a habit in a man!"

"Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!"

"Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends."

"She's beautiful, and therefore to be woo'd; She is a woman, therefore to be won."

"The fox barks not, when he would steal the lamb."

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

"Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar-school; and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used; and, contrary to the king, his crown, and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill."

"The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on."

"O God! methinks, it were a happy life, To be no better than a homely swain; To sit upon a hill, as I do now, To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, Thereby to see the minutes how they run: How many make the hour full complete, How many hours bring about the day, How many days will finish up the year, How many years a mortal man may live."

"Down, down to hell; and say I sent thee thither."

"Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York."

"Off with his head!"

"A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

"What light through yonder window breaks?"

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet."

"O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?"

"The course of true love never did run smooth."

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind."

"If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces."

"It is a wise father that knows his own child."

"All that glisters is not gold."

"I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"

"The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life."

"A man can die but once."

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

"As merry as the day is long."

"Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever; One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never."

"Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps."

"Beware the ides of March."

"Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once."

"Cry 'Havoc!,' and let slip the dogs of war."

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones."

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts."

"'The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.'"

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine ownself be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

"Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice."

"The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!"

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!"

"To be or not to be, that is the question."

"If music be the food of love, play on."

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em."

"Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit and lost without deserving."

"Of one that lov'd not wisely but too well."

"We have seen better days."

"Nothing can come of nothing."

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child!"

"I am a man, More sinn'd against than sinning."

"The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burnt on the water."

"Come what come may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day."

"Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand?"

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

"All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand."

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date"

"So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments."

"Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust."

"Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange."

"Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows."

"We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep."

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. The saying goes you live by the sword you shall die by the sword...It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."

"Nothing is more common than the wish to be remarkable."

"Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong."

"However wickedness outstrips men, it has no wings to fly from God."

"He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself."

"The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away."

"There is plenty of time to sleep in the grave."

"When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry."

"The vision that impels feminists to action was the vision of the Grandmothers' society, the society that was captured in the words of the sixteenth-century explorer Peter Martyr nearly five hundred years ago. It is the same vision repeated over and over by radical thinkers of Europe and America, from François Villon to John Locke, from William Shakespeare to Thomas Jefferson, from Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels, from Benito Juarez to Martin Luther King, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Judy Grahn, from Harriet Tubman to Audre Lorde, from Emma Goldman to Bella Abzug, from Malinalli to Cherrie Moraga, and from Iyatiku to me. That vision as Martyr told it is of a country where there are "no soldiers, no gendarmes or police, no nobles, kings, regents, prefects, or judges, no prisons, no lawsuits... All are equal and free.""

"when you look for the motivations you always go to the basic instincts, to the basic emotions, the basic things that have moved humankind always. That's what all writers write about, ultimately. What did Shakespeare write about? Jealousy, love, sex, power, greed, the same stuff that soap operas and the Bible are made of. It's always the same."

"Can you imagine if somebody told him in the 16th century, 'Listen, you're going to inspire a black girl in the 20th century in Arkansas, who will be a mute"?"

"I keep saying, Shakspeare, Shakspeare, you are as obscure as life is."

"Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is a part of an Englishman's constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them every where, one is intimate with him by instinct."

"Even if you do not realise it now, the time will come when you will be thankful that you were steeped in Shakespeare as boys. In him we not only have, as Sir Gerald Du Maurier said here not long ago, perhaps the greatest man the world has ever seen, but one who had a profound knowledge of human nature and of the world. Shakespeare was one of those few poets in whom we find the magic which comes straight from heaven, and which is the prerogative of the very greatest: such magic as we find in the poetry of Keats, in the first scene of the last act of The Merchant of Venice and throughout the sonnets."

"Shakespeare's plays, no matter of what country he may be writing, are redolent of our own soil and of our own country people. The habit of thought and the outlook of Shakespeare’s country people and of those wise men, Shakespeare’s fools, may be found to-day in our rural counties."

"Shakespeare will not make us better, and he will not make us worse, but he may teach us how to overhear ourselves when we talk to ourselves. Subsequently, he may teach us how to accept change, in ourselves as in others, and perhaps even the final form of change. Hamlet is death's ambassador to us, perhaps one of the few ambassadors ever sent out by death who does not lie to us about our inevitable relationship with that undiscovered country. The relationship is altogether solitary, despite all of tradition's obscene attempts to socialize it."

"I love that moment in Joyce when his friend, the painter, asks him the desert-island question about which of the two greatest Western writers to keep: "I should like to answer Dante, but I would have to take the Englishman, because he is richer!" He is, it's the truth. He is richer than Homer, which is astonishing. Everybody in The Divine Comedy, except Dante the Pilgrim, has achieved their final form. But Shakespeare is change. In that sense, he always remains an Ovidian poet, and in the same sense, anti-Platonic."

"History adds that before or after dying he found himself in the presence of God and told Him: "I who have been so many men in vain want to be one and myself." The voice of the Lord answered from a whirlwind: "Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like myself are many and no one.""

"Shakespeare is a bard of mass destruction."

"Shakespeare's drama, where ideal women walk in worship, and the baser sort find sympathy."

"There, Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the world. Oh, eyes sublime With tears and laughter for all time."

"If Shakespeare required a word and had not met it in civilized discourse, he unhesitatingly made it up."

"Know the same favour which the former knew, A shrine for Shakspeare—worthy him and you? Yes—it shall be—the magic of that name Defies the scythe of time, the torch of flame."

"Shakespeare's name, you may depend upon it, stands absurdly too high and will go down. He had no invention as to stories, none whatever. He took all his plots from old novels, and threw their stories into dramatic shape... That he threw over whatever he did write some flashes of genius, nobody can deny; but this was all."

"My object has been to dramatise, like the Greeks (a modest phrase), striking passages of history, as they did of history and mythology. You will find all this very unlike Shakspeare; and so much the better in one sense, for I look upon him to be the worst of models, though the most extraordinary of writers."

"Consider now, if they asked us, Will you give up your Indian Empire or your Shakespeare, you English: never have had any Indian Empire, or never have had any Shakespeare? Really it were a grave question. Official persons would answer doubtless in official language; but we, for our part too, should not we be forced to answer: Indian Empire, or no Indian Empire; we cannot do without Shakespeare! Indian Empire will go, at any rate, some day; but this Shakespeare does not go, he lasts forever with us; we cannot give up our Shakespeare!"

"The first play I ever saw was a Shakespeare play... The great rolling emotion somehow comes through. So it was personal. But I think also if you're English and English literature is the thing, you can't help it. In Shakespeare the more I read the more I see the amount of things that come from Shakespeare or come via Shakespeare to the English cannot be exaggerated, and you find it everywhere, it's like the air you breathe. And so one's categories of character are so much the ones that Shakespeare created."

"The souls most fed with Shakespeare's flame Still sat unconquered in a ring, Remembering him like anything."

"The greatest genius that perhaps human nature has yet produced, our myriad-minded Shakespeare."

"He is of no age — nor, I may add, of any religion, or party, or profession. The body and substance of his works came out of the unfathomable depths of his own oceanic mind."

"He was not only a great poet, but a great philosopher."

"The true description of us is the complex, ever-changing pattern of interactions of billions of them [neurons]... The abbreviated and approximate shorthand that we employ every day to describe human behavior is a smudged caricature of our true selves. "What a piece of work is a man!" said Shakespeare. Had he been living today he might have given us the poetry we so sorely need to celebrate all these remarkable discoveries."

"I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me."

"'I'm always ill after Shakespeare,' said Mrs Wititterly. 'I scarcely exist the next day; I find the reaction so very great after a tragedy, my lord, and Shakespeare is such a delicious creature.'"

"But Shakespear's Magick could not copy'd be, Within that Circle none durst walk but he."

"To begin then with Shakespeare; he was the man who of all Modern, and perhaps Ancient Poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the Images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of Books to read Nature; he look'd inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of Mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches; his serious swelling into Bombast. But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of the poets."

"If I would compare him Jonson] with Shakespeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakespeare the greater wit."

"Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets; Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing. I admire him, but I love Shakespeare."

"I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?"

"Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third."

"What point of morals, of manners, of economy, of philosophy, of religion, of taste, of the conduct of life, has he not settled? What mystery has he not signified his knowledge of? What office, or function, or district of man's work, has he not remembered? What king has he not taught state, as Talma taught Napoleon? What maiden has not found him finer than her delicacy? What lover has he not outloved? What sage has he not outseen? What gentleman has he not instructed in the rudeness of his behavior?"

"England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame."

"The passages of Shakespeare that we most prize were never quoted until within this century."

"Ultimately, Anthony Burgess's emphasis on the multiplicity of meanings latent in the text of Shakespeare's life foregrounds his own appropriation of Shakespeare … Clearly this is not an inconsistency on Burgess's part but a deliberate pointer at the inevitability of appropriating any given text, particularly that most irresistible one of Shakespeare's life."

"Do you know how they are going to decide the Shakespeare-Bacon dispute? They are going to dig up Shakespeare and dig up Bacon; they are going to set their coffins side by side, and they are going to get Tree to recite Hamlet to them. And the one who turns in his coffin will be the author of the play."

"I'm thinking "Great English wordsmith," my enemies and crew are thinking: "Shake…spear!""

"But my God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who else is as mysterious as he is; his language and method are like a brush trembling with excitement and ecstasy. But one must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live."

"The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good — in spite of all the people who say he is very good."

"Far from the sun and summer-gale, In thy green lap was Nature's Darling laid."

"For there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and beeing an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey."

"Shakespear has in this play shewn himself well versed in history and state-affairs. Coriolanus is a store-house of political commonplaces. Any one who studies it may save himself the trouble of reading Burke's Reflections, or Paine's Rights of Man, or the Debates in both Houses of Parliament since the French Revolution or our own. The arguments for and against aristocracy or democracy, on the privileges of the few and the claims of the many, on liberty and slavery, power and the abuse of it, peace and war, are here very ably handled, with the spirit of a poet and the acuteness of a philosopher. Shakespear himself seems to have had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question, perhaps from some feeling of contempt for his own origin; and to have spared no occasion of baiting the rabble. What he says of them is very true: what he says of their betters is also very true, though he dwells less upon it."

"This figure that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut, Wherein the graver had a strife With Nature, to out-do the life: O could he but have drawn his wit As well in brass, as he has hit His face; the print would then surpass All that was ever writ in brass: But since he cannot, reader, look Not on his picture, but his book."

"Soul of the Age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare... Thou art a monument, without a tomb, And art alive still while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read, and praise to give."

"He was not of an age, but for all time!"

"I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted a thousand"."

"There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned."

"He was honest, and of an open and free nature[, and] had an excellent fantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions."

"He that tries to recommend him by select Quotations, will succeed like the Pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his House to Sale, carried a Brick in his Pocket as a Specimen."

"Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind but in one composition. Almost all his plays are divided between serious and Ludicrous characters and they sometimes produce sorrow and sometimes laughter. That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature."

"Yet it must be at last confessed, that as we owe every thing to him [Shakespeare], he owes something to us; that, if much of his praise is paid by perception and judgment, much is likewise given by custom and veneration. We fix our eyes upon his graces, and turn them from his deformities, and endure in him what we should in another loath or despise."

"I never quite despair and I read Shakspeare — indeed I shall I think never read any other Book much [...] I am very near Agreeing with Hazlit that Shakspeare is enough for us."

"He has left nothing to say about nothing or any thing."

"At once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."

"Shakespeare led a life of Allegory; his works are the comments on it."

"The sense of place has to do with everything. One of the mottos that has given me a lot of help and inspiration is remembering that somewhere I think it's in The Tempest-Shakespeare said that one of the goals of the writer and the artist is to give to airy nothing local habitation and a name. The Tempest is a play about a place, about finding a Brave New World. And it's about human beings maybe getting another chance again and going off to an island where they could figure out what it means to start community, or find out what it is to love. So, that phrase-to give to airy nothing local habitation and a name. I've decided that what that means is that abstract ideas and values are nothing. They're invisible, they're not dramatic, and they're not interesting unless you can localize them, can give them physical manifestation, can write about an actual place. You have to ground your ideas. We have to embody ideas in our characters and act them out in life. Ideas about altruism or a vision about a Brave New World. In art, what I think he's saying is to write about an actual place, write flesh-and-blood people, give them all ideas and standards. And then see whether they can take the test of a physical place, see whether their ideas hold up as they try to live in real life."

"England must be true to herself: that is the burden of Shakespeare's unsentimental patriotism."

"Such evil is often in Shakespeare felt as inhuman and bestial; it is—or should be—un-English; and the central symbolism to which Shakespeare's English warriors regularly appeal before battle is Saint George, the dragon-vanquisher. In Henry VI Talbot in a speech of national daring boasts he will celebrate Saint George's feast in France, and in the civil warfare of the second and third parts both sides cry on God and Saint George before battle."

"Shakespeare, after a long line of outwardly non-historical plays, plays not obviously concerned with England's destiny at all, yet each...closely concerned with the deepest and darkest issues raised by consideration of that destiny in his earlier work, after all this, Shakespeare writes, as his last play, Henry VIII. His bark has come to harbour. He returns to a national theme, set nearer his own day than any previous attempt, and deeply loads it with orthodox Christian feeling. Here the extravagances and profundities of the great sequence come, at last, to rest."

"Shakespeare, at the youth of Great Britain's imperial history, is necessarily fascinated by the accomplished imperialism of ancient Rome. He feels England now as inheriting the great destiny of Rome... You can feel Shakespeare's sense of Rome's supremacy beside the new strength of Britain; which strength, however, must pay due honour to that Roman greatness which is its prototype. The meaning is clearer if we return to the Soothsayer's vision: he saw the Roman eagle as dissolving into the sunbeams of Britain."

"Shakespeare is steadily preparing a synthesis of religious mysticism with national purpose; and this synthesis is not actually accomplished in the King himself, but rather in the royal child, Elizabeth... [T]he massive play [Henry VIII] ends with the christening ceremony of the baby Elizabeth, over whom Cranmer speaks the final prophecy, Shakespeare's last word to the England he loved... Every tragic insight, every penetrating sting of satire, every deepest religious intuition, orthodox or otherwise, of the greater plays, every lyric love of England's natural sweetness, is subdued within this last, almost ritualistic, offering by Shakespeare of himself and his deepest poetic wisdom to Elizabeth and her successor James I... [S]urely here, if never elsewhere, we can feel that this prophecy is offered...to the essential sovereignty, the golden thread in England's story, that line of kings in Macbeth stretching out "to the crack of doom", handed down from his day to ours. Macbeth was recalled, and Cranmer's lines forecast, by the "emblems" used at Anne Bullen's coronation: holy oil, Edward the Confessor's crown, the rod and the "bird of peace"... The conclusion to Henry VIII is no mere record of an historic past, but rather the one comprehensive statement in our literature of that peace towards which the world labours and for which Great Britain fights."

"Shakespeare has throughout sounded, as has no other great poet or dramatist on record, the note of royalty. His is a royal world. Shakespeare's royalistic thinking is, for the most part, patriotic, and his work from time to time spreads its wings in national prophecy. Royalty and England tend to involve each other, and these in turn involve strenuous themes of war and peace, order and disorder, conflicts of personal ambition and communal necessity, contrasts of tyranny and justice, the whole stamped by the chivalric symbol of Saint George and aspiring to Christian sanctions. This Shakespearian royalty, conceived in the reign of Elizabeth I, is not dead; it has lived since, within the story of Great Britain, and it is alive today, in the reign of Elizabeth II."

"Shakespeare's drama, with its fanfares and ceremonial, abounds in kingly ritual; and his people speak, move, act royally. Villains or heroes, it is no matter; it all lies deeper than ethic. We have for long talked of the Crown as the link binding an empire of free communities: that is true, and it is a great conception, herald and pattern, it may be, of a yet greater."

"We have watched kings falling in country after country, and it is likely that the works of Shakespeare have themselves done much to preserve our own intuition and understanding of royalty."

"Always in Shakespeare royalty aspires to be a Christian power; it is, or symbolizes, Christ in power."

"Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's; Therefore on him no speech!"

"When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder That such trivial people should muse and thunder In such lovely language."

"Some of Shakspeare's plays I have never read; while others I have gone over perhaps as frequently as any unprofessional reader. Among the latter are Lear, Richard Third, Henry Eighth, Hamlet, and especially Macbeth. I think nothing equals Macbeth. It is wonderful. Unlike you gentlemen of the profession, I think the soliloquy in Hamlet commencing "O, my offence is rank surpasses that commencing "To be, or not to be." But pardon this small attempt at criticism."

"This vision comes to me when I unfold The volume of the Poet paramount, Whom all the muses loved, not one alone;— Into his hands they put the lyre of gold, And, crowned with sacred laurel at their fount, Placed him as Musagetes on their throne."

"I spoke of women teaching women's literature courses who said that they could not teach Black women's poetry because it was so totally outside of their experience. That's bullshit because you teach Shakespeare and, God knows, that's outside of your experience. But you have to have learned to enter the work. You must delve into it and see what it tells you about yourself."

"On this planet the reputation of Shakespeare is secure. When life is discovered elsewhere in the universe and some interplanetary traveler brings to this new world the fruits of our terrestrial culture, who can imagine anything but that among the first books carried to the curious strangers will be a Bible and the works of WIlliam Shakespeare."

"Dolt & ass that I am I have lived more than 29 years, & until a few days ago, never made close acquaintance with the divine William. Ah, he's full of sermons-on-the-mount, and gentle, aye, almost as Jesus. I take such men to be inspired. I fancy that this moment Shakspeare in heaven ranks with Gabriel, Raphael and Michael. And if another Messiah ever comes twill be in Shakespeare's person."

"And so sepulchr'd, in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die."

"For some reason, I really enjoyed the histories and tragedies of Shakespeare not the comedies. Today, I marvel at the fact that we never questioned Shakespeare's deification of the ruling class, or his marginalization of the masses either as gullible crowds or as jesters. We had enough intelligence to do so, but we were, ideologically, under the captivity of colonial educational propaganda."

"Of all English literature I was exposed to, Shakespeare's tragedies moved most. I could recite soliloquies by Macbeth, Hamlet, Portia, Shylock, King Lear, Cordelia with great feeling. I think it was the music of the lines, the sound of the words, that excited me."

"The verbal poetical texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has known, and is immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays."

"Were Shakespeare around to write a play about our times, perhaps his opening line to the Plutocracy would be "Get thee to the Oligarchy. Blend yourselves together and thou shalt rule invincible forever after.""

"The best thing I could say in honour of Shakespeare, the man, is that he believed in Brutus and cast not a shadow of suspicion on the kind of virtue which Brutus represents! It is to him that Shakespeare consecrated his best tragedy—it is at present still called by a wrong name,—to him and to the most terrible essence of lofty morality. Independence of soul!—that is the question at issue! No sacrifice can be too great there: one must be able to sacrifice to it even one's dearest friend, though he be also the grandest of men, the ornament of the world, the genius without peer,—if one really loves freedom as the freedom of great souls, and if this freedom be threatened by him:—it is thus that Shakespeare must have felt! The elevation in which he places Cæsar is the most exquisite honour he could confer upon Brutus; it is thus only that he lifts into vastness the inner problem of his hero, and similarly the strength of soul which could cut this knot!—And was it actually political freedom that impelled the poet to sympathy with Brutus,—and made him the accomplice of Brutus? Or was political freedom merely a symbol for something inexpressible? Do we perhaps stand before some sombre event or adventure of the poet's own soul, which has remained unknown, and of which he only cared to speak symbolically? What is all Hamlet-melancholy in comparison with the melancholy of Brutus!—and perhaps Shakespeare also knew this, as he knew the other, by experience! Perhaps he also had his dark hour and his bad angel, just as Brutus had them!—But whatever similarities and secret relationships of that kind there may have been, Shakespeare cast himself on the ground and felt unworthy and alien in presence of the aspect and virtue of Brutus:—he has inscribed the testimony thereof in the tragedy itself. He has twice brought in a poet in it, and twice heaped upon him such an impatient and extreme contempt, that it sounds like a cry,—like the cry of self-contempt. Brutus, even Brutus loses patience when the poet appears, self-important, pathetic, and obtrusive, as poets usually are,—persons who seem to abound in the possibilities of greatness, even moral greatness, and nevertheless rarely attain even to ordinary uprightness in the philosophy of practice and of life. "He may know the times, but I know his temper,—away with the jigging fool!"—shouts Brutus. We may translate this back into the soul of the poet that composed it."

"When we speak of the aim and Art observable in Shakespeare's works, we must not forget that Art belongs to Nature; that it is, so to speak, self-viewing, self-imitating, self-fashioning Nature. The Art of a well-developed genius is far different from the Artfulness of the Understanding, of the merely reasoning mind. Shakspeare was no calculator, no learned thinker; he was a mighty, many-gifted soul, whose feelings and works, like products of Nature, bear the stamp of the same spirit; and in which the last and deepest of observers will still find new harmonies with the infinite structure of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the higher powers and senses of man. They are emblematic, have many meanings, are simple and inexhaustible, like products of Nature; and nothing more unsuitable could be said of them than that they are works of Art, in that narrow mechanical acceptation of the word."

"Shakespeare — the nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God."

"EDMUND (sits down opposite his father - contemptuously). Yes, facts don't mean a thing, do they? What you want to believe, that's the only truth! (Derisively.) Shakespeare was an Irish Catholic, for example. TYRONE (stubbornly). So he was. The proof is in his plays."

"Children are made to learn bits of Shakespeare by heart, with the result that ever after they associate him with pedantic boredom. If they could meet him in the flesh, full of jollity and ale, they would be astonished, and if they had never heard of him before they might be led by his jollity to see what he had written. But if at school they had been inoculated against him, they will never be able to enjoy him. [...] Shakespeare did not write with a view to boring school-children; he wrote with a view to delighting his audiences. If he does not give you delight, you had better ignore him."

"Shakespearean language is a bizarre super-tongue, alien and plastic, twisting, turning, and forever escaping. It is untranslatable, since it knocks Anglo-Saxon root words against Norman and Greco-Roman importations sweetly or harshly, kicking us up and down rhetorical levels with witty abruptness. No one in real life ever spoke like Shakespeare's characters. His language does not "make sense," especially in the greatest plays. Anywhere from a third to a half of every Shakespearean play, I conservatively estimate, will always remain under an interpretive cloud. Unfortunately, this fact is obscured by the encrustations of footnotes in modern texts, which imply to the poor cowed student that if only he knew what the savants do, all would be as clear as day. Every time I open Hamlet, I am stunned by its hostile virtuosity, its elusiveness and impenetrability. Shakespeare uses language to darken. He suspends the traditional compass points of rhetoric, still quite firm in Marlowe, normally regarded as Shakespeare's main influence. Shakespeare's words have "aura." This he got from Spenser, not Marlowe."

"Who can measure the worth of a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo or Beethoven in dollars and cents?"

"I sent for some dinner and there dined, Mrs. Margaret Pen being by, to whom I had spoke to go along with us to a play this afternoon, and then to the King's Theatre, where we saw 'Midsummer's Night's Dream', which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life."

"He is not so much an imitator, as an instrument, of nature; and 'tis not so just to say that he speaks from her as that she speaks through him."

"had all the speeches been printed without the very names of the persons, I believe one might have applied them with certainty to every speaker."

"'tis plain he had much reading at least, if they will not call it learning. Nor is it any great matter, if a man has knowledge, whether he has it from one language or from another."

"The shape of the Globe gives words power, but you're the wordsmith! The one true genius; the only one clever enough to do it. … Trust yourself. When you're locked away in your room, the words just come, don't they, like magic. Words, the right sound, the right shape, the right rhythm, words that last forever. That's what you do, Will. You choose perfect words. Do it. Improvise!"

"He seems to have been sent essentially to take universal and equal grasp of the human nature; and to have been removed, therefore, from all influences which could in the least warp or bias his thoughts. It was necessary that he should lean no way; that he should contemplate, with absolute equality of judgment, the life of the court, cloister, and tavern, and be able to sympathize so completely with all creatures as to deprive himself, together with his personal identity, even of his conscience, as he casts himself into their hearts. He must be able to enter into the soul of Falstaff or Shylock with no more sense of contempt or horror than Falstaff or Shylock themselves feel for or in themselves; otherwise his own conscience and indignation would make him unjust to them; he would turn aside from something, miss some good, or overlook some essential palliation. He must be utterly without anger, utterly without purpose; for if a man has any serious purpose in life, that which runs counter to it, or is foreign to it, will be looked at frowningly or carelessly by him. Shakespere was forbidden of Heaven to have any plans. To do any good or get any good, in the common sense of good, was not to be within his permitted range of work. Not, for him, the founding of institutions, the preaching of doctrines, or the repression of abuses. Neither he, nor the sun, did on any morning that they rose together, receive charge from their Maker concerning such things. They were both of them to shine on the evil and good; both to behold unoffendedly all that was upon the earth, to burn unappalled upon the spears of kings, and undisdaining, upon the reeds of the river."

"The English stage might be considered equally without rule and without model when Shakspeare arose. The effect of the genius of an individual upon the taste of a nation is mighty; but that genius, in its turn, is formed according to the opinions prevalent at the period when it comes into existence. Such was the case with Shakspeare. Had he received an education more extensive, and possessed a taste refined by the classical models, it is probable that he also, in admiration of the ancient Drama, might have mistaken the form for the essence, and subscribed to those rules which had produced such masterpieces of art. Fortunately for the full exertion of a genius, as comprehensive and versatile, as intense and powerful, Shakspeare had no access to any models of which the commanding merit might have controlled and limited his own exertions. He followed the path which a nameless crowd of obscure writers had trodden before him; but he moved in it with the grace and majestic step of a being of a superior order; and vindicated for ever the British theatre from a pedantic restriction to classical rule. Nothing went before Shakspeare which in any respect was fit to fix and stamp the character of a national Drama; and certainly no one will succeed him, capable of establishing, by mere authority, a form more restricted than that which Shakspeare used."

"As divinest Shakespeare's might Fills Avon and the world with light, Like omniscient power, which he Imaged 'mid mortality."

"We not only open the classics to re-create the past; we also use them to calibrate the present. Look at Shakespeare. I dream of doing a Restless Shakespeare; in fact, the name of this series is already a mission statement. There is arguably no more reprinted author in the English language. Do we need another Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, and The Tempest? No doubt we do. He is a kaleidoscope that fluctuates depending on who is looking through it. There is the Elizabethan Shakespeare, the Victorian, the modern, the postmodern, the postcolonial, and so on. And there is also a restless Shakespeare, capable of conveying the perspective of a world always in transit and reorganized at all times—and at all costs—by outsiders. That’s the Shakespeare I’m after, one that lives in English but becomes an emblem of a world without a center."

"The two main Pillars of our Civilization, Jesus and Shakespeare said: "Nothing shall be impossible to Humans" (Jesus) "Impossibility is only seemingly impossible" (Shak.)"

"Æschylus is above all things the poet of righteousness. "But in any wise, I say unto thee, revere thou the altar of righteousness": this is the crowning admonition of his doctrine, as its crowning prospect is the reconciliation or atonement of the principle of retribution with the principle of redemption, of the powers of the mystery of darkness with the coeternal forces of the spirit of wisdom, of the lord of inspiration and of light. The doctrine of Shakespeare, where it is not vaguer, is darker in its implication of injustice, in its acceptance of accident, than the impression of the doctrine of Æschylus. Fate, irreversible and inscrutable, is the only force of which we feel the impact, of which we trace the sign, in the upshot of Othello or King Lear. The last step into the darkness remained to be taken by "the most tragic" of all English poets. With Shakespeare — and assuredly not with Æschylus — righteousness itself seems subject and subordinate to the masterdom of fate: but fate itself, in the tragic world of Webster, seems merely the servant or the synonym of chance."

"Why Shakespeare lends itself so well to film is because he wrote movies."

"Knowing the theory of anything is contrasted with know-how in all the arts...Beethoven..Michelangelo..Shakespeare, all great exponents of know-how, probably knew how to manipulate their instruments to achieve the desired results long before they knew the theory of their art. Perhaps some of them never bothered to learn the theory. On the other hand, there are many who know the theory better than these, but who lack know-how....Although we acquire the skill of understanding words by experience, so that we know the correlations between them and things, between words and other words, and between words and feelings and actions, we do not do it by inductive reasoning. Nor must we think that we do it by deductive reasoning... In the main, words are cues rather than clues."

"Shakespeare is a savage with sparks of genius which shine in a horrible night."

"The poet of England, he gave to the love of country, to patriotism as nowadays we call it, a voice which never shall be stilled. His histories are, and will ever be, the epic of our race."

"This Booke When Brasse and Marble fade, shall make thee looke Fresh to all Ages."

"This was Shakespeare's form; Who walked in every path of human life, Felt every passion; and to all mankind Doth now, will ever, that experience yield Which his own genius only could acquire."

"Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask—Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge."

"Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie A little nearer Spenser, to make room For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb."

""With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart," once more! Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!"

"If I say that Shakespeare is the greatest of intellects, I have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakespeare's intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it than he himself is aware of."

"Voltaire and Shakespeare! He was all The other feigned to be. The flippant Frenchman speaks: I weep; And Shakespeare weeps with me."

"When great poets sing, Into the night new constellations spring, With music in the air that dulls the craft Of rhetoric. So when Shakespeare sang or laughed The world with long, sweet Alpine echoes thrilled Voiceless to scholars' tongues no muse had filled With melody divine."

"Now you who rhyme, and I who rhyme, Have not we sworn it, many a time, That we no more our verse would scrawl, For Shakespeare he had said it all!"

"If we wish to know the force of human genius we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning we may study his commentators."

"Mellifluous Shakespeare, whose enchanting Quill Commandeth Mirth or Passion, was but Will."

"The stream of Time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakspere."

"Then to the well-trod stage anon If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native woodnotes wild."

"What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones The labors of an age in piled stones? Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid Under a starre-y-pointing pyramid? Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hath built thyself a livelong monument."

"Shakspeare (whom you and every playhouse bill Style the divine! the matchless! what you will), For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight, And grew immortal in his own despite."

"Few of the university pen plaies well, they smell too much of that writer Ovid and that writer Metamorphosis and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down. Aye, and Ben Jonson too. O that B. J. is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace giving the poets a pill, but our fellow, Shakespeare, hath given him a purge that made him beray his credit."

"Shikspur, Shikspur! Who wrote it? No, I never read Shikspur. Then you have an immense pleasure to come."

"Scorn not the Sonnet. Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honours; with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart."

"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge."

"The occasionally expressed popular belief that Shakespeare must have helped prepare the translation of the Bible completed for King James in 1610 is based solely on the circumstances that a few famous passages from the translation and from Shakespeare's tragedies are the only specimens of Jacobian English most people ever hear. Rudyard Kipling, however, composed a whimsical short story, Proofs of Holy Writ, in which one of the translators consults Shakespeare and Jonson, and in 1970, Anthony Burgess pointed out that in the King James Bible the 46th word of the 46th psalm, translated in Shakespeare's 46th year, is "shake", while the 46th word from the end (if one cheats by leaving out the last cadential word "", is "spear"."

"Over the past two centuries, there has hardly been an author, certainly in the English-speaking world, who has commanded greater reverence than Shakespeare. … There is only one text in the English language that carries comparable prestige to the works of Shakespeare: the Bible, in particular in its most renowned version, the King James Bible, otherwise known as the Authorized Version, of 1611. … In view of the persistent juxtaposition of these two Anglophone cultural icons … it is hardly surprising that they also feature together in a number of fictions of Shakespeare's life, in the form of the fantasy of the Bard as co-translator of the Authorized Version. The originator of this motif seems to have been Rudyard Kipling. In his story "Proofs of Holy Writ," Kipling imagines Shakespeare in the process of revising parts of the Authorized Version with the help of Ben Jonson."

"Burgess's Shakespeare is not a patient empire builder or visionary, but rather an unhappy man caught in an unenviable position, at the midlife crisis age of forty-six. … Burgess's point may well be that literary quality is not always recognized during one's lifetime … due to an ill-advised display of his wit in the presence of the king, Shakespeare is currently out of favor. … Particularly ingenious in Burgess's story is the way Shakepeare even hides his name in the text of the psalm. As he is forty-six years of age, he chooses Psalm 46; he counts to the forty-sixth word, replaces it by "shake"' then he starts at the end, counts forty-six words backwards (leaving out of the account the cadential "'"), and changes that word into "speare." The surprising thing is, that the evidence shoring up this highly unlikely scenario is in itself authentic: in Psalm 46 AV, the forty-sixth word really is "shake", the forty-sixth word from the end (not counting "selah") being spear. Although Burgess's Shakespeare revises the psalm for wholly selfish ends, out of defiance and sinful pride, he does not thereby lose our sympathy. Unlike Kiping's self-confident sahib, he is not a superman that can lead nations; rather, in his everyday struggle with political realities, an unhappy marriage, and uncomprehending neighbors, he is a modern antihero whom we cannot begrudge his one moment of triumph. … For Burgess, art is the result of suffering between the hammer of what is and the anvil of what should be. He projects that vision on Shakespeare, whose drive for self-realization, impeded by his surroundings, finds an outlet in this act of creativity."

"To me, Shakespeare lives if we keep performing his plays. He dies, when we stop performing them."

"I can tell thee where that saying was born."

"A coward dies a thousand times before his death. The valiant never taste of death but once."

"Every why hath a wherefore."

"Fast bind, fast find; A proverb never stale in thrifty mind."

"God save the mark!"

"Harp not on that string."

"Here's metal more attractive."

"Honey of Hybla."

"I have you on the hip."

"Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none."

"That was laid on with a trowel."

"The short and the long of it."

"Though last, not least in love."

"'Tis in grain, sir, 'twill endure wind and weather."

"'Tis neither here nor there."

"Westward-ho!"

"Købe katten i sækken."

"Η γλώσσα κόκαλα δεν έχει, αλλά κόκαλα τσακίζει."

"There's such divinity doth hedge a king, That treason can but peep to what it would."

"Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own."

"Ay, every inch a king."

"The king-becoming graces, As justice, verity, temperance, stableness, Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude, I have no relish of them."

"A substitute shines brightly as a king Until a king be by, and then his state Empties itself, as doth an inland brook Into the main waters."

"Let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings: How some have been depos'd, some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd, Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd; All murder'd."

"Yet looks he like a king; behold, his eye, As bright as is the eagle's, lightens forth Controlling majesty."

"The king's name is a tower of strength, Which they upon the adverse party want."

"A beastly ambition, which the gods grant thee t' attain to! If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee; if thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat three: if thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee, when peradventure thou wert accused by the ass: if thou wert the ass, thy dulness would torment thee, and still thou livedst but as a breakfast to the wolf: if thou wert the wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee, and oft thou shouldst hazard thy life for thy dinner: wert thou the unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury: wert thou a bear, thou wouldst be killed by the horse: wert thou a horse, thou wouldst be seized by the leopard: wert thou a leopard, thou wert german to the lion and the spots of thy kindred were jurors on thy life: all thy safety were remotion and thy defence absence. What beast couldst thou be, that were not subject to a beast? and what a beast art thou already, that seest not thy loss in transformation."

"And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies."

"When daisies pied and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver-white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men; for thus sings he, Cuckoo! Cuckoo, cuckoo!—O word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear!"