"The characters in this play are either impersonated out of Shakspeare’s own multiformity by imaginative self-position or out of such as a country town and schoolboy’s observation might supply,—the curate, the schoolmaster, the Armado (who even in my time was not extinct in the cheaper inns of North Wales) and so on."

"If we were to part with any of the author’s comedies, it should be this. Yet we should be loth to part with Don Adriano de Armado, that mighty potentate of nonsense, or his page, that handful of wit; with Nathaniel the curate, or Holofernes the schoolmaster, and their dispute after dinner on “the golden cadences of poesy”; with Costard the clown, or Dull the constable."

"It is this foppery of delicate language, this fashionable plaything of his time, with which Shakspere is occupied in Love's Labours Lost. He shows us the manner in all its stages; passing from the grotesque and vulgar pedantry of Holofernes, through the extravagant but polished caricature of Armado, to become the peculiar characteristic of a real though still quaint poetry in Biron himself, who is still chargeable even at his best with just a little affectation. As Shakspere laughs broadly at it in Holofernes or Armado, so he is the analyst of its curious charm in Biron; and this analysis involves a delicate raillery by Shakspere himself at his own chosen manner."

"As happens with every true dramatist, Shakspere is for the most part hidden behind the persons of his creation. Yet there are certain of his characters in which we feel that there is something of self-portraiture. And it is not so much in his grander, more subtle and ingenious creations that we feel this — in Hamlet and King Lear — as in those slighter and more spontaneously developed figures, who, while far from playing principal parts, are yet distinguished by a peculiar happiness and delicate ease in the drawing of them; figures which possess, above all, that winning attractiveness which there is no man but would willingly exercise, and which resemble those works of art which, though not meant to be very great or imposing, are yet wrought of the choicest material. Mercutio, in Romeo and Juliet, belongs to this group of Shakspere’s characters — versatile, mercurial people, such as make good actors, and in whom the “Nimble spirits of the arteries,” the finer but still merely animal elements of great wit, predominate. A careful delineation of minor, yet expressive traits seems to mark them out as the characters of his predilection; and it is hard not to identify him with these more than with others. Biron, in Love’s Labours Lost, is perhaps the most striking member of this group. In this character, which is never quite in touch, never quite on a perfect level of understanding, with the other persons of the play, we see, perhaps, a reflex of Shakspere himself, when he has just become able to stand aside from and estimate the first period of his poetry."

"And why anybody should ever say that Love’s Labour’s Lost is a bad play, the Lord He knoweth; for to my mind it is one of the most réussi things of its kind ever made."

"I take more unmixed pleasure from Love’s Labour’s Lost than from any other Shakespearean play. ... [It] is a festival of language, an exuberant fireworks display in which Shakespeare seems to seek the limits of his verbal resources, and discovers that there are none."

"Nor woo in rhyme, like a blind harper’s song!"

"I had rather than forty shillings I had my book of Songs and Sonnets here."

"O base Gongarian wight! wilt thou the spigot wield?"

"Convey, the wise it call: steal! foh; a fico for the phrase!"

"For it so falls out That what we have we prize not to the worth Whiles we enjoy it; but being lack’d and lost, Why, then we rack the value, then we find The virtue that possession would not show us Whiles it was ours."

"I have mark’d A thousand blushing apparitions To start into her face; a thousand innocent shames In angel whiteness beat away those blushes."

"The idea of her life shall sweetly creep Into his study of imagination; And every lovely organ of her life Shall come apparell’d in more precious habit, More moving-delicate and full of life, Into the eye and prospect of his soul."

"O, what authority and show of truth Can cunning sin cover itself withal!"

"A good old man, sir; he will be talking: as they say, When the age is in, the wit is out."

"I never tempted her with word too large; But, as a brother to his sister, show’d Bashful sincerity and comely love."

"I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?"

"I know that Deformed."

"They that touch pitch will be defiled."

"Borachio: Seest thou not, I say, what a deformed thief this fashion is? how giddily a’ turns about all the hot bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty? sometimes fashioning them like Pharaoh’s soldiers in the reeky painting, sometime like god Bel’s priests in the old church-window, sometime like the shaven Hercules in the smirched worm-eaten tapestry, where his codpiece seems as massy as his club? Conrade: All this I see; and I see that the fashion wears out more apparel than the man."

"You shall comprehend all vagrom men."

"Are you good men and true?"

"2 Watch: How if a’ will not stand? Dogberry: Why, then, take no note of him, but let him go; and presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God you are rid of a knave."

"I thank God I am as honest as any man living that is an old man and no honester than I."

"Is our whole dissembly appeared?"

"A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age."

"Sits the wind in that corner?"

"Shall quips, and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour? No, the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married."

"If we can do this, Cupid is no longer an archer: his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods."

"Don Pedro: Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you; for, out of question, you were born in a merry hour. Beatrice: No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born."

"I will tell you my drift."

"I was born to speak all mirth and no matter."

"It keeps on the windy side of care."

"Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much."

"It is the witness still of excellency To put a strange face on his own perfection."

"Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constant never: Then sigh not so, but let them go, And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into Hey nonny, nonny. Sing no more ditties, sing no moe, Of dumps so dull and heavy; The fraud of men was ever so, Since summer first was leavy: Then sigh not so, &c."

"Bait the hook well; this fish will bite."

"Happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending."

"From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he is all mirth."

"Every one can master a grief but he that has it."

"To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature."

"The most senseless and fit man."

"Is most tolerable, and not to be endured."

"Dogberry: Well, you are to call at all the ale-houses, and bid those that are drunk get them to bed. Watch: How if they will not? Dogberry: Why, then, let them alone till they are sober: if they make you not then the better answer, you may say they are not the men you took them for."

"The most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is to let him show himself what he is, and steal out of your company."

"Verges: If you hear a child cry in the night, you must call to the nurse and bid her still it. Watch: How if the nurse be asleep and will not hear us? Dogberry: Why, then, depart in peace, and let the child wake her with crying; for the ewe that will not hear her lamb when it baes will never answer a calf when he bleats."

"Comparisons are odorous."

"If I were as tedious as a king, I could find it in my heart to bestow it all of your worship."

"O, what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do, not knowing what they do!"

"He was wont to speak plain, and to the purpose."