In the literature of France Moliere occupies the same kind of position as Cervantes in that of Spain, Dante in that of Italy, and Shakespeare in that of England. His glory is more than national - it is universal.
Lytton Strachey

It is no exaggeration to say that the English Bible is, next to Shakespeare, the greatest work in English literature, and that it will have much more influence than even Shakespeare upon the written and spoken language of the English race.
Lafcadio Hearn

It is not that Shakespeare's art is in technicolor and fancy, and that real life is black and white and tedious. The life that Shakespeare was living was the only life he had, and he had to use it to create what he was doing.
Stephen Greenblatt

It is true that there are few plays of Shakespeare that I haven't done.
Judi Dench

It took three years to put Shakespeare's words together, there were a lot of words to be studied and a lot of words to be sorted out, and it proved to be a major project.
David Crystal

It was easier to do Shakespeare than a lot of modern movie scripts that are so poorly written.
Jessica Lange

It's a perfectly valid position to not like Shakespeare.
Ted Rall

It's amazing how, age after age, in country after country, and in all languages, Shakespeare emerges as incomparable.
M. H. Abrams

It's an intuitive exercise to do a Shakespeare play and to go through a Shakespeare play.
Mark Rylance

It's incredibly moving to hear some of our greatest actors performing Shakespeare.
Judi Dench

It's not that Shakespeare is frivolous, but you spend your time just getting people to dress up in other people's costumes and pretending to be people that they're not, and you think, after the years go by, well, what on earth was all that about?
Jonathan Miller

Jacobean plays, before Shakespeare, were particularly visceral.
Christopher Eccleston

Most of my career has been spent with the RSC doing Shakespeare, and the thing you learn from Shakespeare is that his historical plays don't bear anything other than a basic resemblance to history.
Antony Sher

Most people don't know that I am an accomplished dramatic actor... But I've performed in several Shakespeare productions including Hamlet, except in this version, Hamlet lives in an apartment with two women, and has to pretend he's gay so that the landlord won't evict him.
John Ritter

Most people, even among those who know Shakespeare well and come into real contact with his mind, are inclined to isolate and exaggerate some one aspect of the tragic fact.
Andrew Coyle Bradley

My background is somewhat unusual, as I trained to be a ballet dancer. I worked in the theatre for eight or nine years as a contemporary dancer. But as an actor one does read Shakespeare and does try to learn the classics.
William Kempe

My writing improved the more I wrote - and the more I read good writing, from Shakespeare on down.
Dick Schaap

No poem, not even Shakespeare or Milton or Chaucer, is ever strong enough to totally exclude every crucial precursor text or poem.
Harold Bloom

Nobody knows anything about Shakespeare the person. It's all legend, it is all rumor.
Jeanette Winterson

Normally, I could hit hard enough, as anyone who studied my fights might have known. But the impression was that I was essentially defensive, the very reverse of a killer, the prize fighter who read books, even Shakespeare.
Gene Tunney