“I suppose half the time Shakespeare just shoved down anything that came into his head.”
“A popular speaker, however unpopular and insignificant, has only to wind up his speech with half-a-dozen lines of Shakespeare (and to make it clearly understood that they are Shakespeare's) and he will sit down amid thunders of applause.”
"Unappreciated Shakespeare", Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, Christmas Number, 9 December 1882.
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W. S. Gilbert 67
English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo 1836–1911Related quotes
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
Variant: Today, one of the churches of Tlön Platonically maintains that a certain pain, a certain greenish tint of yellow, a certain temperature, a certain sound, are the only reality. All men, in the vertiginous moment of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare.
Ancient and Modern : A Journey through the Twentieth Century, 1935-45 BBCTV
Monologue, February 1, 2006
The Tonight Show
Source: Ruled Britannia (2002), p. 394
Context: Someone bumped into Shakespeare: Will Kemp. The clown made a leg- a cramped leg, in the crush- at him. "Give you good den, gallowsbait," he said cheerfully. "Go to!" Shakespeare said. "Meseems we are well begun here." "Well begun, ay. And belike, soon we shall be well ended, too." Kemp jerked his head to one side, made his eyes bulge, and stuck out his tongue as if newly hanged. With a shudder, Shakespeare said, "If your wind of wit sit in that quarter, why stand you here and not with the Spaniards?" "Why?" Kemp kissed him on the cheek. "Think you're the only mother's son born a fool in England?"
"Quotations".
Sketches from Life (1846)
“If the public likes you, you're good. Shakespeare was a common, down-to-earth writer in his day.”
Writers on Writing interview (1986)