Group 1 Articles

Goethe Quotes

"Man, whether prince or pauper, sage or simpleton, will tire of everything but living" (163)

"Vague notions and feelings are the most I have been capable of. The first page I read made me a slave to Shakespeare to life. And when I had finished reading the first drama, I stood there like a man blind from birth whom a magic hand has all at once given light." (163)

"The Greek theater, which the French took as their model, was so constituted internally and externally that it would have been easier for a marquis to imitate Alcibiades than for Cornelle to follow Sophocles." (164)

"Whether or not the honor of being the originator falls to Shakespeare, it was he who raised this type of drama to a level that we must still take to be the highest" (164)

"Nothing is so like Nature as Shakespeare's figures." (165)

"I often feel shames by Shakespeare, for it sometimes happens that at first glance I think, 'I would have done that differently.' Later I realize that I am a poor wretch" (165)

Hawkes Quotes

"If there was any 'essential' meaning embodied in The Murder of Gonzago, it has quite dissolved by the time the play confronts its audience at Elsinore." (2)

"The earlier book questioned whether we could have any genuine access to final, authoritative or essential meanings in respect of Shakespeare's plays." (3)

"Bits of its language embed themselves in everyday speech until it starts to seem like a web of quotations." (4)

"A society's dominant presentation of itself will often mask what it derives from" (5)

"Human beings are permanently involved in a continuing process of meaning-making" (7)

"What passes amongst some literary critics for a text's 'real' meaning can only be a temporary pause in this otherwise healthy process" (7)

"We try to make Hamlet mean for our purposes now: others will try to make it mean differently for their purposes then (or now)." (8)