He still had his glorious sense of words drawn from the special reservoir from which Lincoln also drew, fed by Shakespeare and thoseTudor critics who wrote the first Prayer Book of Edward VI and their Jacobean successors who translated the Bible.

-Acheson, Dean Gooderham
  Of  Winston Churchill. Sketches from Life of Men I Have Known.

Whaur's yer Wullie Shakespeare noo?

-Anonymous
  Shout from an enthusiastic member of the audience at the first production of  John Home's Douglas at the Canongate Theatre, Edinburgh.

Shakespeare onegets acquainted with without knowing how. It is part of an Englishman's constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them everywhere, one is intimate with him by instinct.

-Austen,Jane
  Mansfield Park, ch.34.

The vital accessories to my work are my reference books, such as the complete Shakespeare and a prayer book, and a large refuse bin.

-Bainbridge, Dame Beryl Margaret
  In The Guardian, 8  Aug.

I have infused life, glowing eloquence, philosophy, taste, sentiment, wit, and humor into the daily newspaper† Shakespeare is the great genius of the dramaöScott of the novelöMilton and Byron of the poemöand I mean to be the genius of the daily newspaper press.

-Bennett,James Gordon, Snr
c.1836  Quoted in Oliver Carlson The Man Who Made News: James Gordon Bennett (1942), ch.10.

Glory is to God what style is to an artist† To behold God's glory, to sense his style, is the closest you can get this side of Paradise, just as to read King Lear is the closest you can get to Shakespeare. 165

-Buechner, (Carl) Frederick
  Wishful Thinking.

Rome's just a city like anywhere else. Avastly overrated city, I'd say. It trades on belief just as Stratford trades on Shakespeare.

-Wilson
  Inside Mr Enderby, pt.2, ch.1.

Shakespeare's name, you may depend upon it, stands absurdly too high and will go down.He had no invention as to stories, none whatever. He took all his plots from oldnovels, and threw their stories into dramatic shape† That he threw over whatever he did write some flashes of genius, nobody can deny; but this was all.

-Rochdale
  Letter to  James Hogg, 24 Mar.

When he speaks, I hear Shakespeare think.

-Callow, Simon Phillip Hugh
On Sir  John Gielgud. Quoted in The Guardian,14  Apr 2004.

The souls most fed with Shakespeare's flame Still sat unconquered in a ring, Remembering him like anything.

-Chesterton, G(ilbert) K(eith)
  'Shakespeare Memorial'.

Kean is original; but he copies from himself. His rapid descents from the hyper-tragic to the infra-colloquial, though sometimes productive of great effect, are often unreasonable. To see him act, is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.

-Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
  Of Edmund Kean. Table Talk (published1835), entry for 27  Apr.

It is as if Homer not only chronicled the siege of Troy, but conducted the siege as well. As if Shakespeare set his play writing aside to lead the English against the Armada.

-Cuomo, Mario Matthew
  Tribute to Lincoln's literary and political genius. In the New York Times,18 Nov.

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.

-Darwin, Charles Robert
  The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol.1.

Old Mother Wit, and Nature gave Shakespeare and Fletcher all they have; In Spenser, and in Jonson, Art Of slower Nature got the start.

-Denham, SirJohn
  'On Mr  Abraham Cowley'.

Shakespeare†was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them, not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there† He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great.

-Dryden,John
  An Essay of Dramatic Poesy,'Shakespeare and Ben  Jonson Compared'.

If I would compare [Jonson] with Shakespeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakespeare the greater wit.

-Dryden,John
  An Essay of Dramatic Poesy,'Shakespeare and Ben  Jonson Compared'.

Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets;Jonson was theVirgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakespeare.

-Dryden,John
  An Essay of Dramatic Poesy,'Shakespeare and Ben  Jonson Compared'.

The English have Shakespeare, the Russians have Chekhov, the French Molie'  re but we have the western.

-Duvall, Robert
  In the Sunday Times, 21 Mar.

   For thof ye had as wise a snout on As Shakespeare or Sir Isaac Newton, Your judgement fouk wou'd hae a doubt on, I'll tak myaith, Till they cou'd see ye wi'a suit on O'gude Braid Claith.

-Fergusson, Robert
  'Braid Claith', stanza 9.

Mr Creston Clarke played King Lear at theTabor Grand last night. All through five acts of Shakespeare's tragedy he played the king as though under momentary apprehension that someone else was about to play the ace.

-Field, Eugene
c.1880   Attributed review in the Denver Post.