* Robert Greene ,( Groatworth of Wit ,1592) : hailed about him..... " for there is an upstart crow , beautiful with his Tygers hart wrapt in a players hyde , supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you : and being an absolute lohannes fac totume , is in his own concert the onely Shakscene in a country".
* Samuel Pepys,(diary entry for 29 september 1662) : "this day my oaths of drinking wine and going to plays are out , and so I do resolve to take a liberty today and then to fall to them again to the King's theatre , where we saw " Midsummer's Night Dream" which .....the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life ".
* Thomas Rymer ,( neo- classical rules and classical unities extremist ,1692): (Rhymer's notorious "attack on Othello " ultimately did Shakespeare's reputation more good than harm by firing up John Dryden , John Dennis and other influential critics into wring eloquent replies).
* Samuel Cobb (Poetica Brittanici ,1700): Cobb provides an example of the diffusion of Jonson's concept of Shakespeare as the child of nature.
*George Brandes hails him as one of the supreme trio with Michaelanglo ;equality 'Cervantes ' in humour.
* Coleridge called him "the morning star , the guide and pioneer of true philosophy".
* Francis Meres, a professor of Rhetoric at Oxford , who was a contemporary of the poet , paid the following tribute to his poems---" As the soul of the Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras , so the sweetwitty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey- tounged Shakespeare. Witness his " Venus and Adonis" , his "lucrece " his sugared sonnets among his private friends ".
* Quiller- Couch says " A Midsummer Night's Dream" is the first play of Shakespeare to show a really careless grace - the best graces of the graces.
*" Of all his woman," says Mrs. Jomieson " considered as individuals rather than as heroines , "Imogen is the most perfect ".
* Samuel Pepys,(diary entry for 29 september 1662) : "this day my oaths of drinking wine and going to plays are out , and so I do resolve to take a liberty today and then to fall to them again to the King's theatre , where we saw " Midsummer's Night Dream" which .....the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life ".
* Thomas Rymer ,( neo- classical rules and classical unities extremist ,1692): (Rhymer's notorious "attack on Othello " ultimately did Shakespeare's reputation more good than harm by firing up John Dryden , John Dennis and other influential critics into wring eloquent replies).
* Samuel Cobb (Poetica Brittanici ,1700): Cobb provides an example of the diffusion of Jonson's concept of Shakespeare as the child of nature.
*George Brandes hails him as one of the supreme trio with Michaelanglo ;equality 'Cervantes ' in humour.
* Coleridge called him "the morning star , the guide and pioneer of true philosophy".
* Francis Meres, a professor of Rhetoric at Oxford , who was a contemporary of the poet , paid the following tribute to his poems---" As the soul of the Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras , so the sweetwitty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey- tounged Shakespeare. Witness his " Venus and Adonis" , his "lucrece " his sugared sonnets among his private friends ".
* Quiller- Couch says " A Midsummer Night's Dream" is the first play of Shakespeare to show a really careless grace - the best graces of the graces.
*" Of all his woman," says Mrs. Jomieson " considered as individuals rather than as heroines , "Imogen is the most perfect ".
