Shakespeare was familiar with seven foreign languages and often quoted
them directly in his plays. His vocabulary was the largest of any
writer, at over twenty-four thousand words. According to James Davie
Butler, "the total vocabulary of Milton's poetical remains is more
nearly seventeen than eighteen thousand (17,377); and that of Homer,
including the hymns as well as both
Iliad and Odyssey, is scarcely nine thousand. Five thousand eight hundred and sixty words exhaust the vocabulary of Dante's
Divina Comedia." (
The Once Used Words in Shakespeare)
Famous Quotations About William Shakespeare
There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb
The crowns o’ the world; oh, eyes sublime
With tears and laughter for all time!
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861), A Vision of Poets
With this same key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart' once more!
Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!
Robert Browning (1812-1899), House
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!
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Historical Sketches of Notable Persons and Events in the Reigns of James I
The souls most fed with Shakespeare's flame
Still sat unconquered in a ring,
Remembering him like anything.
G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), The Shakespeare Memorial
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.
George Dawson (1821-1876), Shakespeare and other lectures
Our myriad-minded Shakespeare.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Biography. Chap. xv
He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.
John Dryden (1631-1700), Essay of Dramatic Poesy
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.
John Dryden (1631-1700), Essay on Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age
But Shakespeare’s magic could not copied be;
Within that circle none durst walk but he.
John Dryden (1631–1700) Essay of Dramatic Poesy
He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature. He looked inwards, and found her there.
John Dryden (1631–1700) Essay of Dramatic Poesy
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.
Ernest De Selincourt (1870-1943), English Poets and the National Ideal
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.
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca
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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), The Absorbing Soul
Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of Shakespeare’s wit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), May-Day and Other Pieces
When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies,
“Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead
bodies and brought them into life.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Letters and Social Aims
The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good - in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
Robert Graves (1895-1985)
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.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885), William Shakespeare
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.
Ben Jonson (1573-1637) Preface to the First Folio
Soule of the Age!
The applause! delight! The wonder of our stage!
Ben Jonson (1573 - 1637), Preface to the First Folio
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