PG TRB ENGLISH- POET’S QUOTES ON SHAKESPEARE
- Robert Greene
• “an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers” - Ben Jonson
•“Sweet Swan of Avon!”
• “He was not of an age, but for all time!”
•.”Thou hadst small Latin and less Greek.” - John Dryden
• “He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.
• But Shakespeare’s magic could not copied be; Within that circle none durst walk but he.
• He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature. He looked inwards, and found her there.” - Samuel Jhonson
• “Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life.
• Shakespeare has no heroes; his scenes are occupied only by men, who act and speak as the reader thinks that he should himself have spoken or acted on the same occasion
• He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose. - Jhon Milton
• “Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild. - William Wordsworth
• “Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart.” - S.T. Coleridge
• “Our myriad-minded Shakespeare.” - Matthew Arnold
• “I keep saying, Shakspeare, Shakspeare, you are as #obscure as life is.”
•”Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask — Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge.” - John Ruskin
• “Shakespeare has no heroes, but only heroines.” - Elizabeth Barret Browning
• “There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb
The crowns o’ the world; oh, eyes sublime
With tears and laughter for all time!” - William Hazlit
• “If we wish to know the force of human genius we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning we may study his commentators.” - T. S. Eliot
• “We can say of Shakespeare, that never has a man turned so little knowledge to such great account.”
• “Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them, there is no third one” - Robert Graves
•Remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good – in spite of all the people who say he is very good.” - D. H. Lawrence
•“When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder that such trivial people should muse and thunder in such lovely language.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
•“He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life. Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare’s wit.” - Harold Bloom
•”Shakespeare is the Canon. He sets the standard and the limits of literature.”
