The modern democrat, perhaps, will often find it in a form which at first sight is distasteful to him. Shakespeare’s whole reading of history is aristocratic. He concentrates the history of the nation in the doings of its leaders; the people are of small account, and seldom appear upon the scene except to display their fickleness, their stupidity, or their brutality ... In the time at which Shakespeare wrote, no other presentation of fact would have been possible. The people had not yet emerged into political existence, and to present them as other than they were would not only have been a piece of political prescience which can hardly be expected even of the greatest of artists, it would have been a falsification of the truth. Shakespeare was essentially a creature of the time, and he read history with the eyes of his time. He had doubtless a fuller vision and a clearer, but it was his own time that he interpreted and not ours. Ernest de Selincourt, 1870-1943, English Poets and the National Ideal
And one wild Shakespeare, following Nature’s lights,
Is worth whole planets, filled with Stagyrites. Thomas More, The Sceptic
One of the greatest geniuses that ever existed,
Shakespeare, undoubtedly wanted taste. Horace Walpole, Letter to Wren, 1764
Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is a part of an Englishman's constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them every where, one is intimate with him by instinct. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park ch34
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 old novels, 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. Lord Byron, letter to James Hogg
‘I’m always ill after Shakespeare,’ said Mrs Wititterly. ‘I scarcely exist the next day; I find the reaction so very great after a tragedy, my lord, and Shakespeare is such a delicious creature.’ Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
Far from the sun and summer-gale,
In thy green lap was Nature’s Darling laid. Thomas Gray
Children are made to learn bits of Shakespeare by heart, with the result that ever after they associate him with pedantic boredom. If they could meet him in the flesh, full of jollity and ale, they would be astonished, and if they had never heard of him before they might be led by his jollity to see what he had written. But if at school they had been inoculated against him, they will never be able to enjoy him ... Shakespeare did not write with a view to boring school-children; he wrote with a view to delighting his audiences. If he does not give you delight, you had better ignore him. Bertrand Russell, New Hopes for a Changing World p201
The verbal poetical texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has known, and is immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays. Vladimir Nabokov
Dolt & ass that I am I have lived more than 29 years and until a few days ago, never made close acquaintance with the divine William. Ah, he’s full of sermons-on-the-mount, and gentle, aye, almost as Jesus. I take such men to be inspired. I fancy that this moment Shakespeare in heaven ranks with Gabriel, Raphael and Michael. And if another Messiah ever comes twill be in Shakespeare’s person. Herman Melville
This was Shakespeare’s form;
Who walked in every path of human life,
Felt every passion; and to all mankind
Doth now, will ever, that experience yield
Which his own genius only could acquire. Mark Akenside, Inscription IV
When great poets sing,
Into the night new constellations spring,
With music in the air that dulls the craft
Of rhetoric. So when Shakespeare sang or laughed
The world with long, sweet Alpine echoes thrilled
Voiceless to scholars’ tongues no muse had filled
With melody divine. C P Cranch, Shakespeare
Now you who rhyme, and I who rhyme,
Have not we sworn it, many a time,
That we no more our verse would scrawl,
For Shakespeare he had said it all! R W Gilder, The Modern Rhymer
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. William Hazlitt, Table Talk, On the Ignorance of the Learned
Mellifluous Shakespeare, whose enchanting Quill
Commandeth Mirth or Passion, was but Will. Thomas Heywood, Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels
Burgess’s Shakespeare is not a patient empire builder or visionary, but rather an unhappy man caught in an unenviable position, at the midlife crisis age of forty-six ... Burgess’s point may well be that literary quality is not always recognized during one’s lifetime ... due to an ill-advised display of his wit in the presence of the king, Shakespeare is currently out of favor ... Particularly ingenious in Burgess’s story is the way Shakespeare even hides his name in the text of the psalm. As he is forty-six years of age, he chooses Psalm 46; he counts to the forty-sixth word, replaces it by shake then he starts at the end, counts forty-six words backwards (leaving out of the account the cadential selah), and changes that word into speare. The surprising thing is, that the evidence shoring up this highly unlikely scenario is in itself authentic: in Psalm 46 AV, the forty-sixth word really is shake, the forty-sixth word from the end (not counting selah) being spear.
Although Burgess’s Shakespeare revises the psalm for wholly selfish ends, out of defiance and sinful pride, he does not thereby lose our sympathy. Unlike Kipling’s self-confident sahib, he is not a superman that can lead nations; rather, in his everyday struggle with political realities, an unhappy marriage, and uncomprehending neighbors, he is a modern antihero whom we cannot begrudge his one moment of triumph ... For Burgess, art is the result of suffering between the hammer of what is and the anvil of what should be. He projects that vision on Shakespeare, whose drive for self-realization, impeded by his surroundings, finds an outlet in this act of creativity. Paul Franssen
Through his works he wanted to engage us in the Shakespeare authorship question; they’ve become his last will and testament. Last Will and Testament, Sky Arts 2012
Why is there still so much debate about whether Shakespeare actually wrote the plays? ibid.
It’s the greatest literary mystery of all time. ibid.
In 1593 the name William Shakespeare first appeared in print. ibid.
The name was well known but the man was not. ibid.
Almost nothing is known about Shakespeare’s life, but hundreds of books have been written claiming to fill in the blanks. ibid.
The disconnect between the man and the works set into motion the greatest literary manhunt of all time. Over sixty candidates for authorship have been put forward. ibid.
In 1623 Shakespeare’s first folio was printed. ibid.
I am sort of haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practised on a patient world. Henry James
Have you ever studied that picture, that face? It’s totally unreal. Derek Jacobi
And yet not a single manuscript of any kind has ever been found written in Shakespeare’s own hand. Derek Jacobi
It’s a legitimate question to ask. Derek Jacobi
We’ve had this author foisted on us. Derek Jacobi
When Shakespeare died in Stratford it was not an event. Nobody came down from London; there were no lamenting poems ... No national tears – there was merely silence and nothing more. No praiseful voice was lifted for the Lost Bard of Avon; even Ben Jonson waited seven years before he lifted his. Mark Twain
At Stratford a small back settlement which in that day was shabby and unclean and densely illiterate. Mark Twain
Even his will has no literary dimension to it at all ... He never left a letter, memo, anything. Charles Beauclerk, author Shakespeare’s Lost Kingdom
There is so little known about the real William Shakespeare. It is hardly surprising therefore that plenty of theories about our most famous bard and his work have arisen. It was, after all, Mark Twain who said: ‘So far as anybody actually knows and can prove, Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life.’
Not always as easily dismissed as Shakespeare champions would have you believe, here are the most widely known theories about the authorship of the plays.
In 1848 the American Joseph C Hart wrote a book putting forward the argument that the plays were written by several different authors. In 1856 Delia Bacon, another American, wrote an article to support this theory and attributed the authorship to a group of people who were overseen by Sir Francis Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh.