“Looking for God—or Heaven—by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare's plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters or Stratford as one of the places. Shakespeare is in one sense present at every moment in every play.”

—  Clive Staples Lewis

"The Seeing Eye", in Christian Reflections (1967), p. 167

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Clive Staples Lewis 272
Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist 1898–1963

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“But what if it turns out, as it just possibly might, that William Shakespeare of Stratford was not the author of the plays ascribed to him? There is a theory, advanced by reputable scholars, seriously and, in my opinion, plausibly, that Shakespeare merely lent his name as a cover for the literary activities of another person, perhaps the Earl of Oxford. If, by some terrible chance, this theory should be proved, then straightway Stratford's tourist business would dwindle. It would become just one more, and honestly not one in the first ten, of England's picturesque small towns.”

Tyrone Guthrie (1900–1971) English actor and director

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“So Bertrand Russell once said to me that the pupil in school should study whatever he liked. I asked whether this was not a crime against the pupil. … Should he be allowed to grow up without knowing Shakespeare? … Lord Russell replied that he would require a boy to read one play of Shakespeare; if he did not like it, he should not be compelled to read any more.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

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“But in my homeboys' high school, it's not like that. They don't have trips to go see this Broadway play, they don't read things we read. They didn't know when I was like: "Yo, Shakespeare's dope."”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

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“If I get to Heaven, which I very much doubt, I will ask of God just one thing, and that is to send Shakespeare back down to earth, and make him sit a University of Madras examination in Shakespeare, just for the pleasure of watching him failing the exam.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

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“Let me stop there, but my God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who else is as mysterious as he is; his language and method are like a brush trembling with excitement and ecstasy. But one must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

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“When I was a boy I knew the Odes of Horace backwards and forwards, and when I came to manhood year by year those odes came knocking at the door of my heart at the most unexpected times and places. So, even if you do not realise it now, the time will come when you will be thankful that you were steeped in Shakespeare as boys. In him we not only have, as Sir Gerald du Maurier said here not long ago, perhaps the greatest man the world has ever seen, but one who had a profound knowledge of human nature and of the world. Shakespeare was one of those few poets in whom we find the magic which comes straight from heaven, and which is the prerogative of the very greatest…Shakespeare's plays, no matter of what country he may be writing, are redolent of our own soil and of our own country people. The habit of thought and the outlook of Shakespeare's country people and of those wise men, Shakespeare's fools, may be found to-day in our rural counties.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

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“Plays by Alan Ayckbourn have been attracting larger audiences in the regional theatres than those of Shakespeare.”

Alan Ayckbourn (1939) English playwright

Press release by the Arts Council of Great Britain, November 2, 1983.
This is said to be the source of the common, but unsubstantiated, statement that Ayckbourn is the second most performed playwright after Shakespeare. http://biography.alanayckbourn.net/BiographyFAQPopularity.htm
Criticism

“To put it one way, a collection of Shakespeare's plays is richer than a phone book that uses the same number of letters; to put it another, the essence of information lies in the relationships among bits, not their sheer number.”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 17, Bioinformatics, Biology meets information technology, p. 145

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