Quotes About Shakespeare

I find Shakespeare terrifying. When Simon Russell Beale does a speech, I understand every word of it, but if I did the same speech, people would be going, 'Huh? What?'

First of all, there was a volcano of words, an eruption of words that Shakespeare had never used before that had never been used in the English language before. It's astonishing. It pours out of him.

I went to drama school for four years at Carnegie Mellon, conservatory training before television comedy. I was doing Shakespeare and Chekov plays. It's about delivering on the promise of a $100,000 education and taking the shackles off and trying the hand at my craft. I'm thrilled with what I've seen so far.

I'm as thrilled watching Mark Rylance do Shakespeare as I am watching 'The Book of Mormon.'

Playing Mark Antony in Julius Caesar was the most thrilling thing I've done. You get these speeches that were written for men, and you're running around like an action hero, climbing scaffolding and beating people up. It was very freeing.

I've always been entranced when it came to musical comedy; it's probably my favorite thing. It's a real true American form, and it's big, like Shakespeare big, when it's right. It's loud, and it's big: you have to be ready vocally and physically. It can bring people to their feet and can be as thrilling as a circus.

We read too much Shakespeare at school, and view our parliamentary politics as dynastic drama, in which an impatient crown prince frets at his long subordination and begins to scheme for the throne he knows he merits, was promised and has earned.

Historically, Macbeth is one of the greatest kings Scotland ever had. He was on the throne for 19 years, and he simply has this dreadful reputation because Shakespeare manipulated history for the benefit of James I, who was paying him to write the play to blacken Macbeth's name.

Throughout my career, even as a very young actor, people have always said to me that they would like to see my Othello. They could see something of him in me, I suppose.

When Shakespeare begins his exposition thus he generally at first makes people talk about the hero, but keeps the hero himself for some time out of sight, so that we await his entrance with curiosity, and sometimes with anxiety.

When learning's triumph o'er her barb'rous foesFirst rear'd the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose;Each change of many-color'd life he drew,Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new:Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.

While [Shakespeare] darts himself forth and passes into all the forms of human character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood, [Milton] attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own Ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakespeare becomes all things, yet for ever remaining himself.

The greatest tragedies were written by the Greeks and Shakespeare...neither knew chocolate.

Shakespeare, who is probably the greatest writer and poet of the English language, lived in a time that was politically very conservative and it's reflected in his writings.

I wasn't always such a great fan of Shakespeare, mind you. I can guess we all at one time had it rammed down our necks at school, which tends to take the edge off it.

If Shakespeare had been in pro basketball, he never would have had time to write his soliloquies. He would have always been on a plane between Phoenix and Kansas City.

Sweet, Dan thought. This is actually poetry I understand right away. And something that will be fun to do! Shakespeare was asking them to dig up his grave.

If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There's a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you're dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they're the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not.

If Shakespeare required a word and had not met it in civilised discourse, he unhesitatingly made it up.

Shakespeare wrote sculduddery because he liked it, and for no other reason; his sensuality is the measure of his vitality.

I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him.

Going seventy miles an hour but not going anywhere—not enough imagination to want to go anywhere! Getting their music by turning a dial. Getting their phrases from the comic strips instead of from Shakespeare and the Bible and Veblen and Old Bill Sumner. Pap-fed flabs!

Reading old Gray?  That's right.  Physician's library just three books:  'Gray's Anatomy' and Bible and Shakespeare.  Study.  You may become great doctor.

Que otros se lamenten de que los tiempos son malos; yo me quejo de su mediocridad, puesto que ya no se tienen pasiones. ...Por eso mi alma se vuelve siempre al Viejo Testamento y a Shakespeare. Aquí se siente en todo caso la impresión de que son hombres los que hablan, aquí se odia y se ama de veras, se mata al enemigo, y se maldice a su descendencia por todas las generaciones; aquí se peca.