It is gaol that finally reveals to me the beauty of Shakespeare, the spirit in his words, the jaw-dropping audacity of his language.

Malone’s commentary on Sonnet 93 was a defining moment in the history not only of Shakespeare studies but also of literary biography in general. What has emerged in our time as a dominant form of...

Hamlet’s Cat’s Soliloquy”To go outside, and there perchance to stayOr to remain within: that is the question:Whether ’tis better for a cat to suffer The cuffs and buffets of inclement weatherThat Nature rains on those...

. . . when a woman has a husbandAnd you’ve got none,Why should she take advice from you?Even if you can quote Balzac and ShakespeareAnd all them other highfalutin’ Greeks.

You can’t go by what a girl says, when she’s giving you the devil for making a chump of yourself. It’s like Shakespeare. Sounds well, but doesn’t mean anything.

In the State of Denmark there was the odor of decay…

We occasionally see something on the stage that reminds us a littleof Shakespear. [Oct. 16, 1814, The Champion]

O serpent heart hid with a flowering face!Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave?Beautiful tyrant, feind angelical, dove feather raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of devinest show, just opposite to what thou justly...

But, orderly to end where I begun:Our wills and fates do so contrary runThat our devices still are overthrown;Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.So think thou wilt no second husband wed,But...

How stand I, then,That have a father killed, a mother stained,Excitements of my reason and my blood,And let all sleep, while to my shame I seeThe imminent death of twenty thousand menThat for a fantasy...

By my soul I swear, there is no power in the tongue of man to alter me.

You are full of pretty answers. Have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths’ wives and conned them out of rings?

Shakespeare said, ‘the robbed that smiles steals something from the thief.

Nay, Nay! Try thou not.But do thou or do thou not, For there is no “try.

When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder that such trivial people should muse and thunder in such lovely language.

Everyone in this tale has a rock-solid hamartia: hers, that she is so sick; yours, that you are so well. Were she better or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed,...

You tell me the dead are coming through a crack in my barn, but I shouldn’t worry?

I want to take a trip to Shakespeare’s brain and vacation there with his thoughts may be I also start writing about twisted love and betrayals.

Think of Shakespeare and Melville and you think of thunder, lightning, wind. They all knew the joy of creating in large or small forms, on unlimited or restricted canvases. These are the children of the...

Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

[Thine] face is not worth sunburning.

Who knows himself a braggart, let him fear this, for it will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass.

All causes shall give way: I am in bloodStepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

Give me my Romeo. And when I shall die,Take him and cut him out in little stars,And he will make the face of heaven so fineThat all the world will be in love with nightAnd...

You gotta be cruel to be kind.

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment… We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like...

Peace, freedom and liberty!

He made me feel unhinged . . . like he could take me apart and put me back together again and again.

No one has yet managed to be post-Shakespearean.

even the ones I wrote myself. Here, look, it begins…

to pee or not to pee that is the question

The Arden Shakespeare is intended both as a student text and as a revision of traditional scholarship. If it is to be used in the first way, then the often narrow thread of text above...

Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind.

What if the greatest love story ever told was the wrong one?

By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, but music for the time doth change his...

The sweetest honey is loathsome in its own deliciousness. And in the taste destroys the appetite. Therefore, love moderately.

You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,Knew you not Pompey?

I think he’ll be to Rome as is the osprey to the fish, who takes it by sovereignty of nature.

Who are these people sharing the street with me? What is going on in their worlds, inside their heads? Are they in love? If so, is it the kind that Mum and Dad have? Based...

It was wonderful flirting with him, all the razor-edged literary banter, like Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. A battle of wit, and a test, too.

You know what they say, the bigger the better.

A few people have ventured to imitate Shakespeare’s tragedy. But no audacious spirit has dreamed or dared to imitate Shakespeare’s comedy. No one has made any real attempt to recover the loves and the laughter...

Oh, Blimey O’Riley’s pantyhose….What is the point of Shakespeare? I know he is a genius and so on, but he does rave on. ‘What light doth through yonder window break?’ It’s the bloody moon, for...

As Shakespeare says, if you’re going to do a thing you might as well pop right at it and get it over.

By the power of the Tri-Force, I command you to “——-

I believe…that to be very poor and very beautiful is most probably a moral failure more than an artistic success. Shakespeare would have done well in any generation because he would have refused to die...

Sweets to the sweet.

Fie, fie upon her! There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out at every joint and motive of her body.

We defy augury. There is special providence inthe fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not tocome, it will be now; if it be not now, yet...

They are the books, the arts, the academes,That show, contain and nourish all the world.