Best Quotes About Shakespeare

"If Shakespeare were alive today, wouldn't he have written, 'All the world is a game,' because isn't it just a better metaphor for how we think about interactivity in the world?"

"He unlocks levels of Shakespeare he never knew he had in him just to describe how beautiful he thinks Lorraine is and calm her down."

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves."

"One of the greatest creatives in the world, Shakespeare, he only slept for 2 hours a day."

"Our thinking is especially important. Will Shakespeare said, 'There's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.'"

"Shakespeare is robust... it's not so fragile and delicate but we have to stage it in this way or that way; it can handle it, it's powerful stuff."

"Shakespeare was an excellent critic of his era."

"Shakespeare reproduced himself through his plays... yet we know about Shakespeare today, not through his children."

"Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream marked a turning point in the representation of fairies."

"To be or not to be. That is hilarious, I love it!"

"This is Shakespeare level writing in terms of its density its complexity the beautiful external internal rhymes."

"It's a juicy performance right out of Shakespeare."

"Jules hops in the pool and then recites Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet,' specifically Juliet's line from Act 2, Scene 2."

"Shakespeare had no problem with depicting women as wiser, smarter, funnier."

"Written in 1595 or 1596 and often called the greatest love story of all time."

"But what makes Shakespearean tragedy so interesting is the complexity he introduces to that Aristotelian structure."

"He says no one of woman born can hurt me and Macduff’s like, 'I was a C-section baby!'"

"It's probably one of the best adaptations in terms of taking what Shakespeare wrote and then just refashioning that and keeping the heart of Macbeth intact."

"Shakespeare is not meant to be read, Shakespeare is meant to be performed."

"Shakespeare was a businessman who understood how to get butts in seats."

"A tale told by idiots full of sound and fury signifying nothing."

"We are learning Shakespeare today because on August 10th, we are gonna be putting on a live stream show of 'Romeo and Juliet'."

"Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble."

"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury."

"Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds." - Shakespeare

"Hamlet himself has some of the best monologues."

"What exactly have you lost by actually following your conscience and the evidence and saying you know what I think I can do better."

"Stop waiting for us to show up and rescue you."

"A pound of flesh": The court awards it and the law doth give it.

"Shakespeare just kind of opened my eyes to how beautiful language can be."

"You can't read Shakespeare without knowing the Bible."

"There's more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, that are dreamt of in your philosophy."

"House of Cards draws on the spirit of Shakespearean history and tragedy to imbue its drama with hyper real grandeur and intrigue."

"She's just so layered and complex and takes this power on stage which is so unusual for Shakespeare characters."

"It's about like playing king lear and hamlet you know you're you're the young prince and you're the wise old king."

"Hundreds of love letters and keys were found inside a bronze statue of Juliet from Shakespeare's most famous tragedy."

"Shakespeare had a deep knowledge and love of the night sky."

"He's universal, isn't he? He just shows everybody, he shows all possibilities."

"One of the most profound reading years of my own life was the year in which I read all of Shakespeare in chronological order."

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." - Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet Act 2 Scene 2.

"There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune."

"Neil Gaiman takes that idea and adds the meta-level of Shakespeare having based his play on fictional events as well."

"It is one of the greatest and most moving, devastating even, insights into us as human beings."

"The whole point of Shakespeare is that his body of work demonstrates all the different highs and lows and in comedies and tragedies of the human condition."

"Look at his diversity, first of all, of locations, geographical diversity."

"All my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop."

"All hail Macbeth, hail to thee Thane of Glamis!"

"The sum of two fourth powers can't be a fourth power."

"So this movie is actually based on the Shakespeare play called the Twelfth Night."

"All the world's a stage." - William Shakespeare

"Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds."

"Shakespeare's signature: only six exist that we know of."

"Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more."

"We went to the Globe Theater once to watch Shakespeare."

"There's a strong argument in favor of saying that Englishman William Shakespeare was the greatest writer who ever lived."

"Shakespeare introduced 1,200 words to the English language."

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends."

"Shakespeare has been credited by the Oxford English Dictionary for introducing around 3,000 words to the English language."

"...Shakespeare has a curse etched into his Tombstone."

"Listening to her Ophelia, one wondered if Shakespeare had left his resting place in the Elysian field to help her rehearse Hamlet."

"Academics come to Shakespeare with scorn and pre-loaded ideologies, and they come to try to damn him; this is a shame."

"You don't study history the way you study Shakespeare because of its innate beauty."

"...with 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and the plays that he collaborated on, Shakespeare wrote an average of 1.5 plays a year since he first started in 1589."

"Four hundred years ago there were people standing exactly where we are, watching Shakespeare."

"Shakespeare is everybody and nobody simultaneously."

"Literature is universal. Shakespeare has meaning for all of us. He is not of any age, he is for all ages. He's not for any people, even though the British claim him as their own."

"Every age creates its own Shakespeare."

"Shakespeare didn't write good fantasy because Shakespeare didn't write fantasy."

"Shakespeare's influence, both direct and indirect, on all works made in the English language cannot be overstated."

"Is it really fall if you are not reading about our favorite group of tragic Shakespearean thespians?"

"Just by referencing Shakespeare's famous characters Romeo and Juliet, he immediately sets the bar for our expectations."

"Sweet bodements, good! Rebellion's head, rise never till the wood of Burnham rise, and our high-placed Macbeth shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath to time and mortal custom."

"Macbeth, I think, might be usurping my favorite Shakespeare play."

"It is almost as if Shakespeare seeks to paint Lady Macbeth in a light in which we can feel some sorrow for her... her guilt has consumed her and made her even more demented than her husband."

"Hamlet, prince of Denmark, a character written though perhaps not created by William Shakespeare around 1601. Since that time it's been not only the subject of most scholastic debate but also the most performed and the most coveted of all parts in the classical repertoire."

"Assume a virtue if you have it not." - William Shakespeare

"Shakespeare is the great teacher of how meaning gets started."

"Of the six hundred surviving plays from the period, the only ones to mention the counties of Warwickshire and Gloucestershire are Shakespeare's."

"Shakespeare used 31,000 different words."

"It's fascinating. All the comedies were written before his son's death, and all the tragedies were written afterwards."

"To get the opportunity of doing Shakespeare in other places, to return again and again to Shakespeare, it's thrilling."

"At the age of 18 Shakespeare married his teenage sweetheart Anne Hathaway."

"Shakespeare's works are still performed now and not just in theatres."

"It's almost as if at the end of his life Shakespeare finally worked out how to write something really good."

"The great thing about Shakespeare... Shakespeare is so adaptable and so different and varied in the approach you could take."

"I was always quite interested in where this stuff's coming from. So, like, mentions of Arden, what was Ireland like, so all I just want to find out more about this area in the 16th century, how it shaped Shakespeare in his writing and what was going on at that time."

"I've seen Shakespeare plays in theater before actors take them very seriously but in this movie, I just know that these actors were having so much fun with it."

"You remember in high school not understanding and and the thing is is that learning to love Shakespeare is one of the greatest GI gifts you can give yourself it is the genius of humanity."

"Whoever the real Shakespeare was what went down behind the curtain in the life of this legendary icon was more dramatic, more dangerous than any of his most controversial plays."

"These violent delights have violent ends."

"Which of the following plays was written by William Shakespeare? A Midsummer Night's Dream."

"...the king and queen of Fairyland are Oberon and Titania respectively and if you're well-read in English literature, fine literature, playwrites, you might remember that that's a Shakespearean reference."

"In a phrase originating from Shakespeare's 'As You Like It', someone who exaggerates is said to 'lay it on' with which tool? A trowel is absolutely right."

"Whoreson... it's an archaic word used in Shakespeare for an unpleasant fellow."

"What four words follow 'I summon up' in the second line of Shakespeare's sonnet number thirty?"

"In the NATO phonetic alphabet, the letter 'R' is represented by the name of which Shakespearean character? Romeo."

"All my best says Shakespeare is dressing old words new, spending again what is already spent."

"Families are always rising or falling in America, am I right Hawthorn? A smart ass, you don't know any Shakespeare?"

"Sandman number 19 based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was the first comic to win a World Fantasy Award."

"Shakespeare remained for him a unique and abiding strength and inspiration."

"It would have been impossible for any woman in Shakespeare's day to have written the plays of Shakespeare."

"Unfold yourself when you read Shakespeare."

"...Shakespeare has insights into what it is to be human that are some of the most perceptive ever written."

"Like 5 Seconds of Shakespeare, philosophy, politics, culture, Society all wrapped up into 5 Seconds of mayhem."

"Here Disney goes full Shakespeare and the results are fantastic."

"Ultimately Shakespeare praises lovers who kind of come together with no gameplay, you know, he values the fact that a relationship can thrive on trust and understanding."

"That's just [__] homie Shakespeare, always speaking that [__]."

"For us to understand Elizabethan England, read Shakespeare. I don't believe in this historic introduction. And the greatest proof for me is that really great works of art get this universal dimension."

"Shakespeare's last plays or his final plays... they do appear to be the last plays he wrote on his own."

"The Tempest appears to be his own farewell to the theatre."

"Shakespeare is saying something about the political realm: it often demands that we cover over human difference."

"Shakespeare loves to take our expectations turn them on our head and cause us to question ourselves and question our world views and values."

"Go on, great Bard, and shake the electric Rod till fools grow wise and atheists own a God."

"The world is a stage and all the men and women merely players."

"Although we thank the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery for giving the world Shakespeare's first folio, we grieve that they allowed its preface to foster the greatest hoax in literature."

"The Shakespeare plays, therefore, were controlled by others in 1609, not by the great author."

"By turning Shakespeare into a man of humble origins with no court connections meant he could not write satirically about real courtiers like the powerful Lord Burley."

"The Stratford man as the great author would decontextualize everything Shakespeare wrote, including the sonnets."

"If Francis Bacon did not write Shakespeare's Works, he missed the opportunity of a lifetime."

"In writing Hamlet possibly 1600 as in Julius Caesar Shakespeare had the aid and challenge of an earlier play on the theme."

"In the end, it is Shakespeare's theatrical instinct that distinguishes him, his plays show his expertise in how to use suspense and surprise, how to orchestrate vivid characterizations and styles of speech."

"Shakespeare's long time friend Ben Johnson's tweet that Shakespeare was not of an age but for all time immediately went viral."

"Shakespeare's authorship of the plays is not an arbitrary belief but the best reading of the available evidence."

"There is more evidence linking Shakespeare to the authorship of his plays than is the case for any contemporary playwright."

"The statement that no play survives in Shakespeare's hand is actually false."

"Shakespeare's life and accomplishments I argue are much more interesting and inspirational if we see them against this bustling commercial world within which he worked."

"One of the things that the myth obscures is the persistent and sheer hard work that must have made up Shakespeare's working life."

"The Shakespeare that emerges from her work is above all a craftsman, hardworking with a good ear, a capacious memory, a keen alertness to potential material."

"Shakespeare's much-enormous vocabulary might be a result as much of his longevity as a writer in the number of different subjects upon which he wrote."

"What better place to watch a Shakespeare play Than in Stratford upon Avon"

"Shakespeare is most often referred to as a playwright of the Elizabethan era, but his most popular plays were written after Elizabeth's death."

"Viola’s name is halfway between the Shakespearean name and the string instrument."

"It's not that Shakespeare shouldn't be taught, it's that we've been teaching him all wrong."

"I think a whole new universe of appreciation and understanding of Shakespeare opens up for us."

"Pretentious vocabulary allows this. William Shakespeare had a pretentious vocabulary of 30,000 different words."

"Shakespeare uses commonplaces learned at grammar school in his speeches, tapping into shared knowledge and understanding."

"Um, yes I'm aware of all the yeah I'm aware of the Shakespeare stuff all that Francis Bacon it's all nonsense it's just like paranoia gone crazy."

"I shall be of age in less than a year, and then I can do what I like. I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays?"

"Shakespeare and performing in Shakespeare is something very close to a kind of salvation."

"Florizel, the son, falls in love with Perdita, the shepherdess."

"These are our own notions of what this classical heritage might be like and to a certain extent that our taste in these things is shaped by Shakespeare."

"I think I'll take the whole week on 'As You Like It'."

"Shakespeare has a sense that the ordinary people can appreciate goodness."

"The strange, difficult, contradictory man who emerges as the real William Shakespeare is not just plausible but fascinating and wholly believable."

"If you don't believe Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, then there are some awfully funny coincidences to explain away."

"The works of J. Thomas Looney and Charlton Ogburn alone provide thoughtful people with sufficient data and analysis to cause the most resistant truth seeker to adopt the earl's cause."

"Stratfordians have never been able to explain why their candidate could not even write his own name."

"We've all heard that Shakespeare is the greatest author of all time or at least the greatest in the English language."

"Your admiration of Shakespeare will go up, and when your admiration of something goes up, your appreciation follows."

"Just by going through this little speech, you're going to say 'ah, I understand that bit of Shakespeare.'"

"Your mind is opened up for it and it will mean that after this video you will likely enjoy going and reading a little bit of Shakespeare for yourself."

"One puzzle about William Shakespeare's life is he appears to stop writing around sixteen eleven and he doesn't die till sixteen sixteen."

"As a man think or so is he. To thy own self be true," said Shakespeare.

"We writers have great vanity from the great Shakespeare down to me."

"These and many other moments like them rescued from the black bin bag of time thanks to the bootleggers are the musical equivalent of peering over Shakespeare's shoulder as he mumbled to himself."

"Assembling, I love Assembling because it's like a combination of all other Shakespeare plays put together."

"...this is a good way to sort of brush up your Shakespeare before you move forward with the next act of it."

"I think oftentimes, at least growing up, Shakespeare's words seemed like something very hard to understand, not very much for me. And I think what I appreciate about what happens here in this film is that the language doesn't feel unattainable in that way."

"The egotistical sublime of Wordsworth and the negative capability of Shakespeare."

"For this reason and also because of what you see, part of what Melville thinks he is doing in writing Moby Dick is to bring a Shakespearean project finally to American culture, a modern Shakespearean project."

"Overall Lady Macbeth is a fascinating character who is both sympathetic and morally ambiguous her complexities add depth and Nuance to the play and makes her as I said in my opinion one of Shakespeare's most Vivid and fascinating characters."

"What would you have called the play if you were Shakespeare?"

"Cymbeline's country and government has been hijacked by forces that are maybe even smarter than he is."

"It's true that Cymbeline as a character seems to be inept at the beginning, to be overborne by this just kind of stereotypically wicked queen or stepmother."

"if Shakespeare was around today he'd be trying to combine his words his flow with some mad beats to reach his desired audience and who his desired audience be his desire audience would be you guys right that's my boy Shakespeare what it looked like today"

"Shakespeare's works are full of scandalous and salacious references would be quite at home in the works of folks like Ludacris and little Wayne"

"Shakespeare's very worse is peaked number 10."

"it's like a Shakespearean play because it genuinely is"

"The political community for Shakespeare is the middle, where people meet, compromise, and give up their greatest hopes and aspirations."

"Why should a horse, a dog, a rat have life and thou no breath at all?"

"If thou didst intend to make this creature fruitful, into her womb convey sterility."

"Prospero's farewell to what he calls his art, his magic, has often been taken as Shakespeare's farewell to the stage."

"Politics is central to Shakespeare."

"Politics becomes the focus of life in Coriolanus."

"In the words of the bard: 'Row.'" (This could be a fun one, especially out of context!)

"'True, I talk of dreams which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy which is as thin of substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind.'"

"...Romeo sees Juliet for the first time and pretty much falls in love with her."

"The plays are Shakespeare and Shakespeare is the plays."

"Shakespeare supposed to have said, 'time must have a stop?'"

"I really want people to know about this. I want them to know that Shakespeare was not using a cliche when he talked about wedding and wiving. I want people to know that his concern for this issue was alive one in his time."

"I want them to understand the vibrancy of the words that he used and the concepts that he used in his early plays."

"A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing."

"Unpopularized by the Shakespeare play, many people think Julius Caesar's last words were 'I knew Brutus'; in reality, he said, 'You too, my child.'"

"Another goal of mine is to read more Shakespeare in 2022."

"I was known for performing The Tempest on the front lines and bringing the enemies to their feet sobbing."

"I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes."

"This is such a good book by the way it's kind of like a Shakespeare retelling and I have been really really really thoroughly enjoying it so far."

"I do the wrong and first begin to brawl."

"Seem a saint when most I play the devil."

"If we have unearned luck now to escape the serpent's tongue, we make amends ere long; else the Puck a liar call. So good night until you all give me your hands. If we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends in the morning."

"Shakespeare is a very great necessity for actors to start in."

"Hell is empty and all the devils are here." - William Shakespeare

"There's comfort yet, they are assailable."

"Better be with the dead, whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace."

"Can such things be, and overcome us like a summer's cloud, without our special wonder?"

"The gracious Duncan was pitied of Macbeth: marry, he was dead."

"The cloudy messenger turns me his back, and hums, as who should say 'You'll rue the time that clogs me with this answer.'"

"Much Ado About Nothing is a great comedy... the banter between Beatrice and Benedict is unmatched."

"Love's Labour's Lost is Shakespeare's best poetry... it is peak Shakespeare rhythm and rhyme."

"The rock of Shakespeare's reputation stands Foursquare against the winds of time but the waves of criticism beat perpetually about its base."

Shakespeare Quotes