“Coleridge’s description of Iago’s actions as "motiveless malignancy" applies in some degree to all the Shakespearian villains. The adjective motiveless means, firstly,… — W.H. Auden Copy Share Image
Shakespeare was the main thing I did in my life from the age of 16 when I first played 'Hamlet' at school.… — Mark Rylance Copy Share Image
“In life,” he said, “there are no essentially major or minor characters. To that extent, all fiction and biography, and most historiography,… — John Barth Copy Share Image
“Shakespeare's bitter play [Troilus and Cressida] is therefore a dramatization of a part of a translation into English of the French translation… — Gilbert Highet Copy Share Image
“No institution of learning of Ingersoll 's day had courage enough to confer upon him an honorary degree; not only for his… — Joseph Lewis Copy Share Image
With acting, I started very young, and I'd performed for a lot of children in boarding schools, late at night after the… — C. C. H. Pounder Copy Share Image
If it really was Queen Elizabeth who demanded to see Falstaff in a comedy, then she showed herself a very perceptive critic.… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
There is in our society a gulf opening up, a kind of cultural apartheid, between those who are brought up to feel… — Richard Eyre Copy Share Image
“In high school, we barely brushed against Ogden Nash, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, or any of the other so-unserious writers who delight… — Bob Harris Copy Share Image
My favorite play is Hamlet. It was my first love when it comes to Shakespeare, and I've read it and seen it… — Ian Doescher Copy Share Image
You would get some fantastic syntactical phenomena. You would hear people talking in Barbados in the exact melody as a minor character… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
“My lord constable, the armor that I saw in your tent to-night, are those stars or suns upon it? Con. Stars, my… — William Shakespeare Copy Share Image
If I had any doubts at all about the justice of my dislike for Shakespeare, that doubt vanished completely. What a crude,… — Leo Tolstoy Copy Share Image
“Shakespeare is getting flyblown; a paternal government might well forbid writing about him, as they put his monument at Stratford beyond the… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare's plays, the first thing the artist has to settle is the best… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
I went to a Jesuit school and they did a William Shakespeare play every year. I got to know Shakespeare as parts… — Gregory Doran Copy Share Image
Why can’t you remember your Shakespeare and forget the third-raters. You’ll find what you’re trying to say in him- as you’ll find… — Eugene O'Neill Copy Share Image
Shakespeare will not make us better, and he will not make us worse, but he may teach us how to overhear ourselves… — Harold Bloom Copy Share Image
If I ever see another Shakespeare production where somebody drives a Jeep on stage, I'm going to run screaming up the aisle.… — Terry Teachout Copy Share Image
There is certainly no one 'type' of writer who deliberately draws on Shakespeare. In fact, there's a strong argument that everyone writing… — Matt Haig Copy Share Image
William Shakespeare was the most remarkable storyteller that the world has ever known. Homer told of adventure and men at war, Sophocles… — Marchette Chute Copy Share Image
For Russians, to whom Pushkin's poem 'Eugene Onegin' is sacred text, the ballet's story and personae are as familiar and filled with… — Robert Gottlieb Copy Share Image
“O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! Dove-feather'd raven!… — William Shakespeare Copy Share Image
“It may take a decade or two before the extent of Shakespeare's collaboration passes from the graduate seminar to the undergraduate lecture,… — James Shapiro Copy Share Image
“God is not an actor within the larger scheme of things. He is not a muscle-bound Jupiter, bullying the littler ones. He… — Douglas Wilson Copy Share Image
“This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirrour of life; that he who has mazed his imagination,… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
The inspiration comes from everywhere, from what I grew up with. There's so much silliness and nonsense in the world that we… — Jasper Fforde Copy Share Image
“Shakespeare's plays do not present easy solutions. The audience has to decide for itself. King Lear is perhaps the most disturbing in… — Ronald Carter Copy Share Image
“Shakespeare was not a genius. He was, without the distant shadow of a doubt, the most wonderful writer who ever breathed. But… — Mark Forsyth Copy Share Image
“What, then, can Shakespearean tragedy, on this brief view, tell us about human time in an eternal world? It offers imagery of… — Frank Kermode Copy Share Image
“In the gravedigger scene in act V, Hamlet looks upon an anonymous skull and jokes that even Alexander the Great decomposed into… — Sarah Vowell Copy Share Image
“We read the pagan sacred books with profit and delight. With myth and fable we are ever charmed, and find a pleasure… — Robert G. Ingersoll Copy Share Image
“We defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if… — Shakespeare, William Copy Share Image
It's extraordinary to think that if you walked into a room and said you had never heard of Hamlet, you would be… — Robert Winston Copy Share Image
When I was in junior high, I would carry around this huge volume of Shakespeare. I just like the romantic vibe. I… — Fefe Dobson Copy Share Image
A third...candidate for Shakespearean authorship was Christopher Marlowe. He was the right age (just two months older than Shakespeare), had the requisite… — Bill Bryson Copy Share Image
![“Shakespeare's bitter play [Troilus and Cressida] is therefore a dramatization of a part of a translation into English of the French translation of a Latin imitation of an old French expansion of a Latin epitome of a Greek romance. (p. 55)” quote by Gilbert Highet](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/8db/gilbert-highet-15158_literature_shakespeare-s-bitter-play-troilus-and-cr_1778602.png)
