top of page
"We cannot arrive at Shakespeare's whole dramatic way of looking at the world from his tragedies alone, as we can arrive at Milton's way of regarding things, or at Wordsworth's or at Shelley's, by examining almost any one of their important works."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Shakespeare quotes

"I think there's a poet who wrote once a tragedy by Shakespeare, a symphony by Beethoven and a thunderstorm are based on the same elements. I think that's a beautiful line."

"Well, as a kid I did not get Shakespeare. I just never understood it."

"Jacobean plays, before Shakespeare, were particularly visceral."

"I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me."

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

"We were not allowed to say, Screw, but we could say, Hump the hostess, because hump is in Shakespeare."

"Sondheim is the Shakespeare of the musical theater world."

"I think Shakespeare had a lot to contribute with his understanding of the human condition."
Explore more quotes by Andrew Coyle Bradley

"Shakespeare also introduces the supernatural into some of his tragedies; he introduces ghosts, and witches who have supernatural knowledge."

"In Shakespearean tragedy the main source of the convulsion which produces suffering and death is never good: good contributes to this convulsion only from its tragic implication with its opposite in one and the same character."

"Job was the greatest of all the children of the east, and his afflictions were well-nigh more than he could bear; but even if we imagined them wearing him to death, that would not make his story tragic."

"King Lear alone among these plays has a distinct double action. Besides this, it is impossible, I think, from the point of view of construction, to regard the hero as the leading figure."

"In the first place, it must be remembered that our point of view in examining the construction of a play will not always coincide with that which we occupy in thinking of its whole dramatic effect."

"Shakespeare's idea of the tragic fact is larger than this idea and goes beyond it; but it includes it, and it is worth while to observe the identity of the two in a certain point which is often ignored."

"Nor does the idea of a moral order asserting itself against attack or want of conformity answer in full to our feelings regarding the tragic character."

"Both Brutus and Hamlet are highly intellectual by nature and reflective by habit. Both may even be called, in a popular sense, philosophic; Brutus may be called so in a stricter sense."

"Shakespeare very rarely makes the least attempt to surprise by his catastrophes. They are felt to be inevitable, though the precise way in which they will be brought about is not, of course, foreseen."

"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."
bottom of page