Do you know how they are going to decide the Shakespeare^Bacon dispute? Theyare going to dig up Shakespeareand dig up Bacon; theyaregoing toget Tree to recite Hamlet to them. And the one who turns in his coffin will be the author of the play.

-Gilbert, Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck)
Letter.

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very goodöin spite of all the people who say he is very good.

-Graves, Robert von Ranke
   Attributed.

Corneille is to Shakespeare†as a clipped hedge is to a forest.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
Quoted in Mrs Piozzi  Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson (1786).

I remember that the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been,Would he had blotted a thousand: which they thought a malevolent speech†[but] I loved themanand do honour hismemory, on thisside idolatry, as much as any.

-Jonson, Ben
Timber: or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter (published 1640).

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

-Lawrence, D(avid) H(erbert)
  'When I Read Shakespeare'.

coarse jocosity catches the crowd shakespeare and i are often low browed

-Marquis, Don(ald Robert Perry)
  archy and mehitabel,'archy confesses'.

   What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones The labour of an age in pile'  d stones, Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a star-y-pointing pyramid? Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a livelong monument.

-Milton,John
  'On Shakespeare'.

Shakespeareöthe nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God.

-Olivier, Laurence Kerr, Baron
Quoted in Kenneth Harris Talking To†,'Sir Laurence Olivier'.

: (sits down opposite his fatheröcontemptuously).Yes, facts don't mean a thing, do they? What you want to believe, that's the only truth! (Derisively.) Shakespeare was an Irish Catholic, for example. : (stubbornly). So he was. The proof is in his plays.

-O'Neill, Eugene Gladstone
EDMUNDTYRONE1939^41 Long Day's Journey Into Night, act 4 (published1956).

Where do you get your taste in authorsöThat damned library of yours! (He indicates the small bookcase at rear.) Voltaire, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Ibsen! Atheists, fools, and madmen! And your poets! This Dowson, and this Baudelaire, and Swinburne and O'Neill Oscar Wilde, and Whitman and Poe! Whoremongers and degenerates! Pah! When I've three good sets of Shakespeare there (he nods at the large bookcase) you could read.

-O'Neill, Eugene Gladstone
^41  Tyrone. Long Day's Journey Into Night, act 4 (published 1956).

England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much- quoted passage, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons.

-Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair
The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, pt.3,'Shopkeeper at War'.

Long life to thy fame and peace to thy soul, Rob Burns! When I want to express a sentiment which I feel strongly, I find the phrase in Shakespeareöor thee. The blockheads talk of my being like Shakespeareönot fit to tie his brogues.

-Scott, Sir Walter
  Journal,11 Dec.

[a character in Mr Puff's play within a play,'The Spanish Armanda'] Perdition catch my soul but I do love thee. : Haven't I heard that line before? : No, I fancy not.öWhere pray? :Yes, I think there is something like it in Othello. : Gad! now you put me in mind on't, I believe there isöbut that's of no consequence; all that can be said is, that two people happened to hit upon the same thoughtöand Shakespeare made use of it first, that's all.

-Sheridan, Richard Brinsley
BEEFEATER:SNEERPUFFDANGLEPUFF1779  The Critic, act 3, sc.1.

A strange, horrible business, but I suppose good enough for Shakespeare's day.

-Victoria in full  Alexandrina Victoria
Attributed comment after watching a performance of King Lear.

One of the greatest geniuses that ever existed, Shakespeare, undoubtedly wanted taste.

-Walpole, Horace, 4th Earl of Orford
  Letter to ChristopherWren,9 Aug. InTheCorrespondence of HoraceWalpole (Yale edition,1937^8).

He was a practical electrician but fond of whisky, a heavy, red-haired brute with irregular teeth.He doubted the existence of the Deity but accepted Carnot's cycle, and he had read Shakespeare and found him weak in chemistry.

-Wells, H(erbert) G(eorge)
  'The Lord of the Dynamos'.