William Shakespeare/Quotes

"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."

—Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814), Ch. 34.

"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."

—Lord Byron, letter to James Hogg (24 March 1814), as quoted in Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (1997), p. 221.

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

—G. K. Chesterton, "Shakespeare Memorial" (1915).

"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."

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. II (1835), p. 301.

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

—Charles Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. I (1860), as quoted in Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations (2005), p. 253.

"'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.'"

—Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1838–1839), Ch. 27.

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

—T. S. Eliot, "Dante" (1929), from Selected Essays (1932).

"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?"

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men (1850), Shakespeare.

Chorus: A play by William Shakespeare always stimulates your thought;
Because you spent two hours trying to figure out the plot.
He wrote famous lines and phrases for his dog like "Out Damned Spot!"
Spot: I'm a victim of circumstance!
Chorus: So who is this guy whom the critics praise,
Who's famous for his turn of phrase,
Wrote thirty-seven different plays,
And lived in Elizabethan days,
World's Oldest Woman: And made Lawrence Oliver's career!
Mike Tyson: Lend me your ear!
Chorus: He lived in Stratford von Avon, Apartment 2B,
Was it 2B or not 2b?
Pepper Mills: I really don't know, it's confusing to me,
How do you understand Shakespeare with all of the
Harks and the hos, and the flowery prose that he writes?
For men wearing tights?
Thomas Jefferson: You go to the theater and pay them your money,
To listen to actors who talk really funny,
Then say to your date, "Are you getting this honey?
‍'‍Cause I'm really lost so explain it to me!"

—'Histeria!, "The Story That's Told by the Bard" (paraphrased)