English dramatic literature is, of course, dominated by Shakespeare; and it is almost inevitable that an English reader should measure the value of other poetic drama by the standards which Shakespeare has already implanted in his mind.
quote by Lytton Strachey
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Related quotes
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.
quote by Lafcadio Hearn
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A lot of American actors when they do Shakespeare put on a phoney English accent and it drives me crazy. You're always fighting against the idea that only the British know how to do Shakespeare.
quote by Ethan Hawke
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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I'd probably want to teach at university, because children would drive me insane. I suspect it would be English literature, Shakespeare and so forth. I've always been deeply, deeply in love with that kind of thing.
quote by Stephen Fry
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I acknowledge Shakespeare to be the world's greatest dramatic poet, but regret that no parent could place the uncorrected book in the hands of his daughter, and therefore I have prepared the Family Shakespeare.
quote by Thomas Bowdler
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Dramatic Finale
Shakespeare loved a corpse
strewn Globe Theatre stage.
As audience universal appeal; twas
all Elizabethan; dramatic finale rage.
Shakespeare loved a corpse strewn stage.
Dramatic methods made a single scene,
carry multiple meanings, beyond mere action,
echo tragic ruin; vibrating dust porous lives.
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Longing for Shakespeare!
(Today is anniversary of the man who make us love, fine aspects of english language!)
Poetic world
Looks forlorn
May another
Shakespeare be born
Alas, Prose and poetry
Exude curses!
We read
Drab verses!
Soap operas
Have replaced plays!
Eclipsed sun shines
And fools make hay!
No husband
Can tame his shrew!
Merchants of Venice
Can hardly argue!
The passionate pilgrim
Always thinks
-That Brutus, Macbeth and shylocks
Are new age kings
With dubious Romeos
and equally corrupt Juliet’s,
Its a measure for measure
In our new age 'tempest'
Yes, its much ado about nothing
Because life is a midsummer night’s dream
As tragic as Julius Caesar
May be it is the comedy of errors!
Will his birth a love’s labour lost
Or a literary gift!
All’s well that ends well!
As you like it!
poem by Ashish Dimri
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Shakespeare, Where Are You? (For Harold Bloom)
SHAKESPEARE, WHERE ARE YOU? (FOR HAROLD BLOOM)
Shakespeare, where are you?
You should be living at this hour.
Literature has need of you.
We have become a fen of stagnant voices
A parody of noble and great lines
All our efforts have become a deriding
Of our own spirit.
We need your Beauty and your Magnitude
The Metaphoric motions of your Incredible most awkward Lines
We need Your Richness and Your Song
Your Endless Entertainment of our own Emotions
Your deep play of Character and Feeling
We need you now Shakespeare
To remind us that to be Human
Is still to be the Glory Jest and Riddle
And that our voices somehow can still say
In Times beyond our own knowing
The wisdom and the way
To what is best within and beyond us
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Knowledge Dwarfs Mountains Distanced A Cubit High
an academic with aged masters
readings in English Literature
read a new poet in comparisons
blinkered in rules rigid time set
points fix of similarity difference
comparisons define what is not
lacks insight to see embryo what is
blinded eyes cannot see flame sun
blinded blink sight error shadow eyes
Petrarchan sonnet is Italian Literature
Shakespeare did not mirror fashions
inward journeys dwarf summit Everest
consider mark wonder soul penance
range human contemplation in reverence
poem by Terence George Craddock
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The Sister's Expostulation On The Brother's Learning Latin
Shut these odious books up, brother;
They have made you quite another
Thing from what you used to be:
Once you liked to play with me,
Now you leave me all alone,
And are so conceited grown
With your Latin, you'll scarce look
Upon any English book.
We had used on winter eves
To con over Shakespeare's leaves,
Or on Milton's harder sense
Exercise our diligence-
And you would explain with ease
The obscurer passages,
Find me out the prettiest places,
The poetic turns, and graces,
Which, alas! now you are gone,
I must puzzle out alone,
And oft miss the meaning quite,
Wanting you to set me right.
All this comes since you've been under
Your new master. I much wonder
What great charm it is you see
In those words, musa, musæ;
Or in what they do excel
Our word, song. It sounds as well
To my fancy as the other.
Now believe me, dearest brother,
I would give my finest frock,
And my cabinet, and stock
Of new playthings, every toy,
I would give them all with joy
Could I you returning see
Back to English and to me.
poem by Charles Lamb
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Everybody gets a little dose of Shakespeare. He's the greatest playwright in the English language, but his politics are fairly square.
It is commonly asserted and accepted that Paradise Lost is among the two or three greatest English poems; it may justly be taken as the type of supreme poetic achievement in our literature.
quote by John Drinkwater
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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What we know is that Shakespeare wrote perhaps the most remarkable body of passionate love poetry in the English language to a young man.
quote by Stephen Greenblatt
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Shakespeare, who is probably the greatest writer and poet of the English language, lived in a time that was politically very conservative and it's reflected in his writings.
In fact, it is Shakespeare who gives us the map of the mind. It is Shakespeare who invents Freudian Psychology. Freud finds ways of translating it into supposedly analytical vocabulary.
quote by Harold Bloom
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Charles: On what submissive message art thou sent?
Lucy: Submission, Dauphin! 'tis a mere French word;
We English warriors wot not what it means.
line from Henry VI, Act IV, Scene 7, script by William Shakespeare (1590)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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yes, what if God does not speak english at all?
you were not born yesterday
and probably heard it before
that if your God does not speak english
then he must not be God
of course, something arrogant
hangs in the air
of this effortless superiority that
'englishers'
'english-plongplangs'
clai m, which, of course, we
always oppose and dub
as prettry dumb silly
but anyhow, yes, we are asked again
what if?
what if, this God, does not really speak English?
well, of course, he is still God
and he must not have considered the english language
that important
and i agree, even if i speak it,
i still have this language
of my soul,
albeit, in english, for you,
who does not speak my own language,
yes, of course, for you to perhaps
understand,
but i like it though, this thought
that God does not speak
the english language, lest, he may sound
so englishly, oh well,
arrogant.....
dear God
do you really...not speak english?
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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First of all, there was a volcano of words, an eruption of words that Shakespeare had never used before that had never been used in the English language before. It's astonishing. It pours out of him.
quote by Stephen Greenblatt
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Judgement Of A Word
Global internet on line
American spelling machine?
When searching online
will flag British judgement
as spelling incorrect
will insist on US judgment
yet is this judgement correct?
Both judgment and judgement
occur with equal frequency set?
One spelling English one American
what a bother when both are correct?
Will you your online dictionary update?
Your own personal ‘judgment call' abridgment?
This choice spelling inconsistencies will assist?
Still wondering why the two spellings resist?
To this question trade English American
politics dark flavours a colonial twist?
War of 1812 sabres parent British patron.
Oxford English Dictionary preferred
judgement a war of words is absurd.
1812 fosters nationalism independent.
Judgement remained form sanctioned
in the Bible in new Revised Version.
Older English spelling recommended.
Shakespeare plays judgment US spelt.
Judgement rules British English text.
Rule is spell consistently either is best.
poem by Terence George Craddock
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The English Teacher
I bumped into my grandson's English teacher yesterday
at the football, and in between shouting like teenagers
I moaned about the state of A's Eng. Lit. not to mention Eng. Lang. -
you know, you've heard it all before... in my day.....never regretted....
he agreed, but said go easy on the lad he's only thirteen
they all want to be fifteen and grown up at that age,
they can't be seen by their peer-group to be 'for' anything too much
so they ridicule everything, it's either pretentious crap if it's modern
or stupid ancient crap if it's more than a generation ago...
they even call Shakespeare a sad loser until
someone says he wrote the screenplay for that film
though they're fascinated by the idea that Marlowe
was a spy as well as a crap writer not that they've read him anyway
but you know what he said
put them up on stage in the annual Shakespeare and make them
speak his lines, and they'll never forget it,
they'll not say anything about it to me except in private but
they'll remember it to their dying day it's things like that
he said that keep me in this bloody job.
poem by Michael Shepherd
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Alankar(Decor) -104
O' This English..(Quaternion)
The Quaternion is:
a poem in 12 lines made up of 3 quatrains.
metered at the discretion of the poet.
rhymed, aabb ccdd abcd.
O' This English..
O' this English how I wonder
Defends me despite my blunder
Forgives my flaws and faults and fall
Applauds as much from fall I haul
And as I hard haul to poem
Easy it helps rhyming with them
Admires my somewhat metaphors
So so similes so adores
So my heart in beats of thunder
Cautions my mind never to fall
But to effort high in rhythm
Sincere with all poetic chores
poem by Indira Renganathan
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