{"id":1052,"date":"2023-09-08T16:22:49","date_gmt":"2023-09-08T16:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.english-culture.com\/?p=1052"},"modified":"2025-05-07T16:33:01","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T16:33:01","slug":"william-shakespeares-reputation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.english-culture.com\/william-shakespeares-reputation\/","title":{"rendered":"William Shakespeare’s Reputation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"William
William Shakespeare’s World Reputation quotes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

William Shakespeare’s Reputation, great quotes and opinions by famous writers and authors from Aforismi Geniali edited by Carl William Brown in Italian and English.<\/span><\/p>\n

N.B.<\/strong> This is a short excerpt from William Shakespeare Aphoristic Dictionary<\/a> with essays edited by Carl William Brown, a great book of 600 pages. It includes 8 essays, with hundreds of quotes, a rich preface to explain Shakespeare, his work, his talent and his time; 200 opinions and value judgments on Shakespeare by great authors and scholars; 562 entry words with more than 3,000 aphorisms; 90 famous texts and soliloquies of Shakespeare, extrapolated from the entire corpus of the Bard and a detailed commented biography. As a matter of fact we have, a dedication, a preface, an introduction, the following essays; aphoristic wisdom, Shakespeare time, Shakespeare greatness, Shakespeare reputation, English Renaissance, Shakespeare identity, Shakespeare sources; then we have the Aphoristic dictionary and Shakespeare famous texts, a conclusion text, plus the bibliography, the list of entry words and the Index of contents.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.<\/span>
\nAlbert Einstein<\/span><\/p>\n

Outside of his dramas, Shakespeare isn’t as much alive as the polychrome bust on his grave. <\/span>
\nMario Praz<\/span><\/p>\n

The Shakespeare industry is built upon a vast fictitious fantasy. Many people directly profit from this industry so therefore imagination is not free and conjecture is not cheap.<\/span>
\nCharles Hughes<\/span><\/p>\n

Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare until you can prove with actual documentary evidence that Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare.<\/span>
\nMark Andre Alexander<\/span><\/p>\n

Since Shakespeare had a feel for revolutionary rhetoric, let\u2019s all shout: \u201cPeace, justice and freedom!\u201d<\/span>
\nCarl William Brown<\/span><\/p>\n

The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be. Women have often more of what is called good sense then men. They have fewer pretensions; are less implicated in theories; and judge of objects more from their immediate and involuntary impression on the mind, and, therefore, more truly and naturally. They cannot reason wrong; for they do not reason at all. They do not think or speak by rule; and they have in general more eloquence and wit, as well as sense, on that account. By their wit, sense and eloquence together, they generally contrive to govern their husbands. Their style, when they write to their friends (not for the booksellers), is better than that of most authors. – Uneducated people have most exuberance of invention and the greatest freedom from prejudice. Shakespeare’s was evidently an uneducated mind, both in the freshness of his imagination and the variety of his views; as Milton’s was scholastic, in the texture both of his thoughts and feelings. Shakespeare had not been accustomed to write themes at school in favour of virtue or against vice. To this we owe the unaffected but healthy tone of his dramatic morality. It 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 only study his commentators.<\/span>
\nWilliam Hazlitt 1778-1830, British Writer and Critic<\/span><\/p>\n

If you cannot understand my argument, and declare “It’s Greek to me”, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is farther to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool’s paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you , for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you <\/span>think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then – to give the devil his due – if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then – by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness’ sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! – it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.<\/span>
\nBernard Levin (1928 – 2004) English journalist, author and broadcaster.<\/span><\/p>\n

If the others are wise, then we have to be crazy; also because, as the great Shakespeare said, if the madman seriously thinks he is wise, in reality it is the wise man who knows for sure that he is mad.<\/span>
\nCarl William Brown (1960), Italian teacher, surrealistic reformer and writer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shakespeare is – let us put it this way – the least English of English writers. The typical quality of the English is understatement, saying a little less than what you see. In contrast, Shakespeare tended toward the hyperbolic metaphor, and it would come to us as no surprise to learn that Shakespeare had been Italian, or Jewish, for instance.<\/span>
\nJorge Luis Borges, Borges oral, 1979<\/span><\/p>\n

To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.<\/span>
\nSamuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834, British Poet, Critic, Philosopher<\/span><\/p>\n

Our myriad-minded Shakespeare.<\/span>
\nSamuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Biography.<\/span><\/p>\n

He is of no age, nor any religion or party or profession. His works come out of the unfathomable depths of his mind.<\/span>
\nSamuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Biography.<\/span><\/p>\n

And one wild Shakespeare, following Nature’s lights, Is worth whole planets, filled with Stagyrites.<\/span>
\nThomas More (1779-1852), The Sceptic<\/span><\/p>\n

Shakespeare – The nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God.<\/span>
\nLaurence Olivier (1907-1989)<\/span><\/p>\n

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones, The labor of an age in pil\u00e8d stones, Or that his hallowed relics should be hid, Under a star-y-pointing pyramid? <\/span>Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?<\/span>
\nJohn Milton, The Complete Poetry<\/span><\/p>\n

Wonderful women! Have you ever thought how much we all, and women especially, owe to Shakespeare for his vindication of women in these fearless, high-spirited, resolute and intelligent heroines?<\/span>
\nDame Ellen Terry (1848-1928)<\/span><\/p>\n

The Shakespearian oeuvre is that of an authentic, highly cultivated professional, who must have spent his life studying languages and teaching, a professional with all the characteristics of the linguist John Florio.<\/span>
\nLamberto Tassinari Italian writer and teacher<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the greatest geniuses that ever existed, Shakespeare, undoubtedly wanted taste.<\/span>
\nHorace Walpole (1717-1797), Letter to Wren, 1764<\/span><\/p>\n

The composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelting to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity.<\/span>
\nSamuel Johnson, Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Athena
Athena Goddess of Wisdom shakes spear<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerales.<\/span>
\nSamuel Johnson, Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare<\/span><\/p>\n

In reality there is no kind of evidence or argument by which one can show that Shakespeare, or any other writer, is “good”. Nor is there any way of definitely proving that–for instance–Warwick Beeping is “bad”. Ultimately there is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion.<\/span>
\nGeorge Orwell, In Front of Your Nose: 1945-1950<\/span><\/p>\n

If there really is such a thing as turning in one’s grave, Shakespeare must get a lot of exercise.<\/span>
\nGeorge Orwell, All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays<\/span><\/p>\n

Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honours; with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart.<\/span>
\nWilliam Wordsworth (1770-1850), Miscellaneous Sonnets<\/span><\/p>\n

England has two books, one which she has made and one which has made her: Shakespeare and the Bible.<\/span>
\nVictor Hugo (1802-1885), French Poet, Dramatist, Novelist<\/span><\/p>\n

In Shakespeare the birds sing, the bushes are clothed with green, hearts love, souls suffer, the cloud wanders, it is hot, it is cold, night falls, time passes, forests and multitudes speak, the vast eternal dream hovers over all. Sap and blood, all forms of the multiple reality, actions and ideas, man and humanity, the living and the life, solitudes, cities, religions, diamonds and pearls, dung-hills and charnelhouses, the ebb and flow of beings, the steps of comers and goers, all, all are on Shakespeare and in Shakespeare.<\/span>
\nVictor Hugo (1802-1885), William Shakespeare<\/span><\/p>\n

If those gentlemen would let me alone I should be much obliged to them. I would say, as Shakespeare would say… \u201cSweet Friend, for Jesus sake forbear.\u201d<\/span>
\nThomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Scottish Philosopher, Author<\/span><\/p>\n

There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb The crowns o\u2019 the world; oh, eyes sublime With tears and laughter for all time!<\/span>
\nElizabeth Barrett Browning (1806\u20131861), A Vision of Poets<\/span><\/p>\n

Shakespeare was the most cheery, healthy, and open-air Englishman of them all. Such a man would never even have dreamed of writing up a cynical theme, unless he happened to be out of sorts, sick perhaps, cross, or not himself. And Shakespeare, with all the genius and all the sincere, passionate acrimony which he displays in Timon and in Troilus, has done no more than exhibit the nervous depression of an optimist – a sort of peevishness, very different from the logic, the cruelty, and the perverse beauty of true cynicism.<\/span>
\nJohn Jay Chapman A Glance Toward Shakespeare.<\/span><\/p>\n

With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart’ once more! Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!<\/span>
\nRobert Browning (1812-1899), House<\/span><\/p>\n

The life of Shakespeare is a fine mystery and I tremble every day lest something turn up.<\/span>
\nCharles Dickens (1812 – 1870) English writer, novelist, journalist and social critic.<\/span><\/p>\n

And there are Ben [Jonson] and William Shakespeare in wit-combat, sure enough; Ben bearing down like a mighty Spanish war-ship, fraught with all learning and artillery; Shakespeare whisking away from him – whisking right through him, athwart the big bulk and timbers of him; like a miraculous Celestial Light-ship, woven all of sheet-lightning and sunbeams!<\/span>
\nThomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Historical Sketches of Notable Persons and Events in the Reigns of James I<\/span><\/p>\n

The souls most fed with Shakespeare’s flame Still sat unconquered in a ring, Remembering him like anything.<\/span>
\nG.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), The Shakespeare Memorial<\/span><\/p>\n

We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.<\/span>
\nRobert Wilensky<\/span><\/p>\n

We do not fear censorship for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue – the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word, that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare.<\/span>
\nDavid Wark Griffiths (1875-1948), American Pioneer Film Director<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Florio’s possible involvement with the Folio is that we may never know its true extent. We cannot tell for certain whether the words were written by John Florio or William Shakespeare.<\/span>
\nSaul Frampton<\/span><\/p>\n

\"William
William Shakespeare’s Reputation quotes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He is as a mountain, whose majesty and multitudinous beauty, meaning, and magnitude and impress, must be gotten by slow processes in journeying about it through many days. Who sits under its pines at noon, lies beside its streams for rest, walks under its lengthening shadows as under a cloud, and has listened to the voices of its water falls, thrilling the night and calling to the spacious firmament as if with intent to be heard “very far off,” has thus learned the mountain, vast of girth, kingly in altitude, perpetual in sovereignty. We study a world’s circumference by segments; nor let us suppose we can do other by this cosmopolitan Shakespeare. He, so far as touches our earth horizon, is ubiquitous. Looking at him sum-totally, we feel his mass, and say we have looked upon majesty.
\nWilliam A. Quayle (1860-1925), Some Words on Loving Shakespeare. From A hero and some other folk, 1900<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Find enough clever things to say, and you\u2019re a Prime Minister; write them down and you\u2019re a Shakespeare.<\/span>
\nGeorge Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish-born British Dramatist<\/span><\/p>\n

I have always derived great comfort from William Shakespeare. After a depressing visit to the mirror or an unkind word from a girlfriend or an incredulous<\/span>
\nstare in the street, I say to myself: ‘Well. Shakespeare looked like shit.’ It works wonders.<\/span>
\nMartin Amis, Money<\/span><\/p>\n

No one has yet managed to be post-Shakespearean.<\/span>
\nHarold Bloom (1930) , American literary critic<\/span><\/p>\n

Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which, if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare.<\/span>
\nFrancis Herbert Hedge (1846-1924), British Philosopher<\/span><\/p>\n

There is hardly a pioneer\u2019s hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.<\/span>
\nAlexis De Tocqueville (1805-1859), French Social Philosopher<\/span><\/p>\n

Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don\u2019t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.<\/span>
\nSusan Sontag<\/span><\/p>\n

After Homer and Dante, is a whole century of creating worth one Shakespeare?<\/span>
\nDejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun<\/span><\/p>\n

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.<\/span>
\nMartin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), American Black Leader, Nobel Prize Winner, 1964<\/span><\/p>\n

If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There\u2019s a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you\u2019re dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they\u2019re the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not.<\/span>
\nAnthony Burgess (1917-1993), British Writer, Critic<\/span><\/p>\n

Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum. What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop this consciousness throughout his career.<\/span>
\nWhat happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.\u201d<\/span>
\nT.S Eliot (1888-1965), essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic and “one of the twentieth century’s major poets.<\/span><\/p>\n

I do not believe that any writer has ever exposed this bovarysme, the human will to see things as they are not, more clearly than Shakespeare.<\/span>
\nT. S. Eliot (1888-1965), Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca<\/span><\/p>\n

The modern democrat, perhaps, will often find it in a form which at first sight is distasteful to him. Shakespeare’s whole reading of history is aristocratic. He concentrates the history of the nation in the doings of its leaders; the people are of small account, and seldom appear upon the scene except to display their fickleness, their stupidity, or their brutality…[But] in the time at which Shakespeare wrote, no other presentation of fact would have been possible. The people had not yet emerged into political existence, and to present them as other than they were would not only have been a piece of political prescience which can hardly be expected even of the greatest of artists, it would have been a falsification of the truth. Shakespeare was essentially a creature of the time, and he read history with the eyes of his time. He had doubtless a fuller vision and a clearer, but it was his own time that he interpreted and not ours.<\/span>
\nErnest De Selincourt (1870-1943), English Poets and the National Ideal<\/span><\/p>\n

A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapours are to the traveller: he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way and sure to engulf him in the mire.<\/span>
\nBen Jonson (1573-1637) Preface to the First Folio<\/span><\/p>\n

Soule of the Age! The applause! delight! The wonder of our stage!<\/span>
\nBen Jonson (1573 – 1637), Preface to the First Folio<\/span><\/p>\n

Sweet Swan of Avon!<\/span>
\nBen Jonson (1573 – 1637), Preface to the First Folio<\/span><\/p>\n

He was not of an age, but for all time!<\/span>
\nBen Jonson (1573-1637), Preface to the First Folio<\/span><\/p>\n

\"William
William Shakespeare’s Reputation from Aforismi Geniali<\/span><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good – in spite of all the people who say he is very good.<\/span>
\nRobert Graves (1895-1985) William Shakespeare in Poets Corner Westminster London<\/span><\/p>\n

I am the owner of the sphere Of the seven stars and the solar year, Of Caesar’s hand, and Plato’s brain Of Lord Christ’s heart, and Shakespeare’s strain.<\/span>
\nRalph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), The Absorbing Soul<\/span><\/p>\n

Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare\u2019s wit.<\/span>
\nRalph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), May-Day and Other Pieces<\/span><\/p>\n

When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies, \u201cYet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life.\u201d<\/span>
\nRalph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Letters and Social Aims<\/span><\/p>\n

We shall never overestimate Shakespeare, because we can not. Some men and things lie beyond the danger of hyperbole. No exaggeration is possible concerning them, seeing they transcend all dreams. Space can not be conceived by the most luxuriant imagination, holding, as it does, all worlds, and capable of holding another universe besides, and with room to spare. Clearly, we can not overestimate space. Thought and vocabulary become bankrupt when they attempt this bewildering deed. Genius is as immeasurable as space. Shakespeare can not be measured. We can not go about him, since life fails, leaving the journey not quite well begun. Yet may we attempt what can not be performed, because each attempt makes us worthy, and we are measured, not by what we achieve, but by what we attempt.<\/span>
\nWilliam A. Quayle (1860-1925), Some Words on Loving Shakespeare. From A hero and some other folk, 1900<\/span><\/p>\n

In Shakespeare the birds sing, the bushes are clothed with green, hearts love, souls suffer, the cloud wanders, it is hot, it is cold, night falls, time passes, forests and multitudes speak, the vast eternal dream hovers over all. Sap and blood, all forms of the multiple reality, actions and ideas, man and humanity, the living and the life, solitudes, cities, religions, diamonds and pearls, dung-hills and charnelhouses,<\/span>
\nthe ebb and flow of beings, the steps of comers and goers, all, all are on Shakespeare and in Shakespeare.<\/span>
\nVictor Hugo (1802-1885), William Shakespeare<\/span><\/p>\n

Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.<\/span>
\nOscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) Irish writer and poet. Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories<\/span><\/p>\n

When I heard the word \u201cstream\u201d uttered with such a revolting primness, what I think of is urine and not the contemporary novel. And besides, it isn\u2019t new, it is far from the dernier cri. Shakespeare used it continually, much too much in my opinion, and there\u2019s Tristam Shandy, not to mention the Agamemnon.<\/span>
\nJames Joyce (1882-1941), Irish Author<\/span><\/p>\n

You ask whether I have ever been in love: fool as I am, I am not such a fool as that. But if one is only to talk from first-hand experience, conversation would be a very poor business. But though I have no personal experience of the things they call love, I have what is better – the experience of Sappho, of Euripides, of Catallus, of Shakespeare, of Spenser, of Austen, of Bronte, of anyone else I have read.<\/span>
\nC. S. Lewis (1898-1963), British Academic, Writer, Christian Apologist<\/span><\/p>\n

Here Greek and Roman find themselves alive along these crowded shelves; and Shakespeare treads again his stage, and Chaucer paints anew his age.<\/span>
\nJohn Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), American Poet, Reformer, Author<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember your saying that you had notions of a good Genius presiding over you. I have of late had the same thought – for things which I do half at Random are afterwards confirmed by my judgment in a dozen<\/span>
\nfeatures of Propriety. Is it too daring to fancy Shakespeare this Presider?<\/span>
\nJohn Keats (1795-1821), Letter to B.R. Haydon, May 1817<\/span><\/p>\n

I believe it was Shakespeare, or possibly Howard Cosell, who first observed that marriage is very much like a birthday candle, in that ‘the flames of passion burn brightest when the wick of intimacy is first<\/span>
\nignited by the disposable butane lighter of physical attraction, but sooner or later the heat of familiarity causes the wax of boredom to drip all over the vanilla <\/span>frosting of novelty and the shredded coconut of romance.’ I could not have phrased it better myself.<\/span>
\nDave Barry (1947) Pulitzer Prize-winning American author and columnist.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder That such trivial people should muse and thunder In such lovely language.<\/span>
\nD. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)<\/span><\/p>\n

We can say of Shakespeare, that never has a man turned so little knowledge to such great account.<\/span>
\nT.S. Eliot<\/span><\/p>\n

I do not believe that any writer has ever exposed this bovarysme, the human will to see things as they are not, more clearly than Shakespeare.<\/span>
\nT.S. Eliot<\/span><\/p>\n

But Shakespeare knows what the sphinx thinks, if anybody does. His genius is penetrative as cold midwinter entering every room, and making warmth shiver in ague fits. I think Shakespeare never errs in his logical sequence in character. He surprises us, seems unnatural to us, but because we have been superficial observers; while genius will disclose those truths to which we are blind.<\/span>
\nWilliam A. Quayle (1860-1925), Some Words on Loving Shakespeare. From A hero and some other folk, 1900<\/span><\/p>\n

The fact is, Shakespeare was not sectarian; he pleaded nobody’s mission, he stated nobody’s cause. He has written with a view to be a mirror of things as they are; and shows the office of the true poet and literary man, which is to re-create the soul of man as <\/span>God has created it, and human society as man has made it.<\/span>
\nGeorge Dawson (1821-1876), Shakespeare and Other Lectures<\/span><\/p>\n

It is sometimes suspected that the enthusiasm for Shakespeare’s works shown by some students is a fiction or a fashion. It is not so. The justification of that enthusiastic admiration is in the fact that every increase of knowledge and deepening of wisdom in the critic or the student do but show still greater knowledge and deeper wisdom in the great poet. When, too, it is found that his judgment is equal to his genius, and that his industry is on a par with his inspiration, it becomes impossible to wonder or to admire too much.<\/span>
\nGeorge Dawson (1821-1876), Shakespeare and other lectures<\/span><\/p>\n

The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said. Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer have all written about the same things, and if they had lived one thousand or two thousand years longer, the publishers wouldn\u2019t have needed anyone since.<\/span>
\nWilliam Faulkner 1897-1962, American Novelist<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Shakespeare's
Shakespeare’s authorship debate<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost everywhere two faces; and you have scarce begun to admire the one, ere you despise the other.<\/span>
\nJohn Dryden (1631-1700), Essay on Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age<\/span><\/p>\n

But Shakespeare\u2019s magic could not copied be; Within that circle none durst walk but he.<\/span>
\nJohn Dryden (1631\u20131700) Essay of Dramatic Poesy<\/span><\/p>\n

Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.<\/span>
\nT.S. Eliot<\/span><\/p>\n

Gradually we come to admit that Shakespeare understands a greater extent and variety of human life than Dante; but that Dante understands deeper degrees of degradation and higher degrees of exaltation.<\/span>
\nT.S. Eliot<\/span><\/p>\n

He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature. He looked inwards, and found her there.<\/span>
\nJohn Dryden (1631\u20131700) Essay of Dramatic Poesy<\/span><\/p>\n

He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.<\/span>
\nJohn Dryden (1631-1700), Essay of Dramatic Poesy<\/span><\/p>\n

But Shakespeare\u2019s magic could not copied be; Within that circle none durst walk but he.<\/span>
\nJohn Dryden (1631\u20131700) Essay of Dramatic Poesy<\/span><\/p>\n

He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.<\/span>
\nJohn Dryden (1631-1700), Essay of Dramatic Poesy<\/span><\/p>\n

Playing Shakespeare is really tiring. You never get to sit down, unless you\u2019re the king.<\/span>
\nJosephine Hull Actress<\/span><\/p>\n

In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.<\/span>
\nHubert H. Humphrey (1911-1978), American Democratic Politician, Vice President<\/span><\/p>\n

It is sometimes suspected that the enthusiasm for Shakespeare’s works shown by some students is a fiction or a fashion. It is not so. The justification of that enthusiastic admiration is in the fact that every increase of knowledge and deepening of wisdom in the critic or the student do but show still greater knowledge and deeper wisdom in the great poet. When, too, it is found that his judgment is equal to his genius, and that his industry is on a par with his inspiration, it becomes impossible to wonder or to admire too much.<\/span>
\nGeorge Dawson (1821-1876), Shakespeare and other lectures<\/span><\/p>\n

Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child, Warble his native wood-notes wild.<\/span>
\nJohn Milton (1608-1674), L’Allegro<\/span><\/p>\n

What needs my Shakespeare for his honour\u2019d bones, The labour of an age in piled stones, Or that his hallow\u2019d relics should be hid Under a star-y-pointing pyramid? Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,<\/span>
\nWhat need\u2019st thou such weak witness of thy name?<\/span>
\nJohn Milton (1608-1674), Epitaph on Shakespeare<\/span><\/p>\n

And so sepulchered in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.<\/span>
\nJohn Milton (1608- 1674), Epitaph<\/span><\/p>\n

Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare it is simply disgraceful.<\/span>
\nAldous Huxley (1894-1963), British Author<\/span><\/p>\n

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.<\/span>
\nOrson Welles (1915-1985), American Film Maker<\/span><\/p>\n

A remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good in spite of all the people who say he is very good.<\/span>
\nRobert Graves (1895-1985), British Poet, Novelist<\/span><\/p>\n

And one wild Shakespeare, following Nature’s lights, Is worth whole planets, filled with Stagyrites.<\/span>
\nThomas More (1779-1852), The Sceptic<\/span><\/p>\n

Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Lincoln never saw a movie, heard a radio, or looked at a TV They had loneliness and knew what to do with it. They were not afraid of being lonely because they knew that was when the creative mood in them would mark.<\/span>
\nCarl Sandburg (1878-1967), American Poet<\/span><\/p>\n

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus<\/span>
\nsails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.<\/span>
\nRalph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American Poet, Essayist<\/span><\/p>\n

I am the owner of the sphere Of the seven stars and the solar year, Of Caesar’s hand, and Plato’s brain Of Lord Christ’s heart, and Shakespeare’s strain.<\/span>
\nRalph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), The Absorbing Soul<\/span><\/p>\n

Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare\u2019s wit.<\/span>
\nRalph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), May-Day and Other Pieces<\/span><\/p>\n

When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies, \u201cYet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life.\u201d<\/span>
\nRalph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Letters and Social Aims<\/span><\/p>\n

Young women… you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays by Shakespeare are <\/span>not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse?<\/span>
\nVirginia Woolf (1882-1941), British Novelist, Essayist<\/span><\/p>\n

The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life: try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!<\/span>
\nRobert Browning (1812-1889) British Poet<\/span><\/p>\n

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players, and Tennessee Williams has about 5, and Samuel Beckett one – and maybe a clone of that one. I have 10 or so,<\/span>
\nand that\u2019s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.<\/span>
\nGore Vidal<\/span><\/p>\n

The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything.<\/span>
\nWilliam Hazlitt (1778-1830) British Writer and Critic<\/span><\/p>\n

Just a mere glance at [his] pathetic efforts to sign his name (illiterate scrawls) should forever eliminate Shakspere from further consideration in this question – he could not write.<\/span>
\nMortimer J. Adler (1902 \u2013 2001) University of Chicago philosophy professor, prolific author.<\/span><\/p>\n

Academics err in failing to acknowledge the mystery surrounding ‘Shake-speare’s’ identity \u2026 They would do both liberal education and the works of ‘Shake-speare’ a distinguished service by opening the question to the judgment of their students, and others outside the academic realm.<\/span>
\nMortimer J. Adler (1902 \u2013 2001) University of Chicago philosophy professor, prolific author.<\/span><\/p>\n

The [doubters] have presented a very strong \u2014 almost fully convincing \u2014 case for their point of view. The debate continues and it is well it does. We need this enlightenment in these otherwise somewhat<\/span>
\ndismal days. If I had to rule on the evidence presented, it would be in favor of the [doubters].<\/span>
\nHarry A. Blackmun (1908 \u2013 1999) \u2014 Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1970 to 1994.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think [an alternative candidate] wrote Shakespeare. If you don’t, there are some awfully funny coincidences to explain away.<\/span>
\nOrson Welles (1915 \u2013 1985) – American radio, theater and film producer, director and actor.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"William
William Shakespeare quotes dictionary<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I am ‘sort of’ haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practiced on a patient world.<\/span>
\nHenry James (1843 \u2013 1916) – American-born author, literary critic, and major figure in trans-Atlantic literature.<\/span><\/p>\n

So far as anybody actually knows and can prove, Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life.\u201d \u2026 \u201cShall I set down the rest of the Conjectures which constitute the giant Biography of William Shakespeare? It would strain the Unabridged Dictionary to hold them. He is a Brontosaur: nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster of Paris.<\/span>
\nMark Twain (1835 \u2013 1910) – Pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the famous American writer, humorist, satirist, lecturer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Isn’t it odd, when you think of it, that you may list all of the celebrated Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotchmen \u2026 clear back to the first Tudors – a list of five hundred names, shall we say? – and you can \u2026 learn the particulars of the lives of every one of them. Every one of them except one – the most famous, the most renowned – by far the most illustrious of them all – Shakespeare!<\/span>
\nMark Twain (1835 \u2013 1910) – Pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the famous American writer, humorist, satirist, lecturer.<\/span><\/p>\n

And Shakespeare himself takes liberties which only his genius justifies; liberties which Dante, with an equal genius, does not take. To pass on to posterity one\u2019s own language, more highly developed, more refined, and more precise than it was before one wrote it, that is the highest possible achievement of the poet as poet. <\/span>
\nT.S. Eliot<\/span><\/p>\n

I am firm against Shaksper – I mean the Avon man, the actor.<\/span>
\nWalt Whitman (1819 \u2013 1892) – American Romantic poet, essayist, journalist and humanist.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have never thought that the man of Stratford-on-Avon wrote the plays of Shakespeare. I know of no admissible evidence that he ever left England or was educated in the normal sense of the term. One must wonder, for example, how he could have written The Merchant of Venice.<\/span>
\nLewis F. Powell, Jr. (1907 \u2013 1998) – Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1972 to 1987.<\/span><\/p>\n

Conceived out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism – personifying in unparall’d ways the medieval aristocracy, its towering spirit of ruthless and gigantic cast, its own peculiar air and arrogance (no mere imitation) – only one of the ‘wolfish earls’ so plenteous in the plays themselves, or some born descendent and knower, might seem to be the true author of those amazing works – works in some respects greater than anything else in recorded history.<\/span>
\nWalt Whitman (1819 \u2013 1892) – American Romantic poet, essayist, journalist and humanist.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the work of the greatest geniuses, humble beginnings will reveal themselves somewhere, but one cannot trace the slightest sign of them in Shakespeare \u2026 I am not concerned with who wrote the works of Shakespeare \u2026 but I can hardly think it was the Stratford boy. Whoever wrote them had an aristocratic attitude.<\/span>
\nCharles \u201cCharlie\u201d Chaplin (1889 \u2013 1977) \u2014 Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr., was one of the most creative, famous and influential personalities of the silent film era.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although not at all unaware of the problems and feelings of Elizabethan England, Shakespeare’s works deal with superior themes, universally acceptable and specifically suitable to any period. He detected human mind and deeply analyzed passions and foibles of the men of yesterday like the men of today. <\/span>
\nMonica Beretta<\/span><\/p>\n

It is a great comfort, to my way of thinking, that so little is known concerning the poet. The life of Shakespeare is a fine mystery and I tremble every day lest something turn up.<\/span>
\nCharles Dickens (1812 \u2013 1870) – Foremost novelist of the Victorian era, and widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Egyptian verdict of the Shakespeare Societies comes to mind, that he was a jovial actor and manager. I cannot marry this fact to his verse: Other<\/span>
\nadmirable men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man in wide contrast.<\/span>
\nRalph Waldo Emerson (1803 \u2013 1882) – American essayist, poet, and original formulator of the philosophy of Transcendentalism.<\/span><\/p>\n

But what if it turns out, as it just possibly might, that William Shakespeare of Stratford was not the author of the plays ascribed to him? There is a theory, advanced by reputable scholars, seriously and, in my opinion, plausibly, that Shakespeare merely lent his name as a cover for the literary activities of another person \u2026 If, by some terrible chance, this theory should be proved, then straightaway Stratford’s tourist status would dwindle.<\/span>
\nSir William Tyrone Guthrie (1900 \u2013 1971) – Tony Award-winning British theatre director<\/span><\/p>\n

I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him.<\/span>
\nSigmund Freud (1856 \u2013 1939) – Viennese doctor and psychotherapist, commonly referred to as \u201cthe father of psychoanalysis.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It is undeniably painful to all of us that even now we do not know who was the author of the Comedies, Tragedies and Sonnets of Shakespeare, whether it was in fact the untutored son of the provincial citizen<\/span>
\nof Stratford, who attained a modest position as an actor in London \u2026<\/span>
\nSigmund Freud (1856 \u2013 1939) – Viennese doctor and psychotherapist, commonly referred to as \u201cthe father of psychoanalysis.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Read the complete text in the original book, you can download it for free<\/a>;<\/span><\/p>\n

Shakespeare dictionary<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n