Sam Wanamaker Quotes

The 16th-century theatre witnessed the particularly English manifestation of 'the history play.' There can be no doubt that Shakespeare's presentations of 'Henry V' and 'Richard III' have been incalculably more influential than any more sober historical study.

I think that there is a basic goodness in the Australian community. I believe there is a widespread and genuine wish and willingness to come to grips with the process of reconciliation. One way of helping is for as many people as possible to join study groups—to study history and learn what Aboriginals have gone through and how they were dispossessed. We're not on a guilt trip here. I'm not on about trying to make people feel guilty. But there needs to be a general acknowledgment of what has happened.

Shakespeare is practically our only link with the classic and the past. The future of education has much to do with whether we will be able to cling to him or not.

When I first went to London to do a film in 1949, I naturally went to visit the site of the Globe. There was this small plaque on the side of a grimy brewery wall in a derelict alley near the riverfront. I was shocked.

What I want is an international monument to the world's greatest playwright. It would be an attraction that would be both educational and an automatic sight for tourists, like St Paul's and the Tower of London. It would be built with honesty and integrity not another Disneyland, but as nearly as possible a replica of the original Globe Theatre.

Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare.

My parents insisted that we should always be respectful, never forget where we come from and that we are part of the challenges facing our people

I always have felt that elders are really important. I think it's because, in my little Southern black culture, elders really were respected. Everybody listened to them. They may not have agreed - that's a whole different story - but they would totally listen and consider what the elder had to say.

Why can’t you remember your Shakespeare and forget the third-raters. You’ll find what you’re trying to say in him- as you’ll find everything else worth saying. 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with sleep.'' - 'Fine! That’s beautiful. But I wasn’t trying to say that. We are such stuff as manure is made on, so let’s drink up and forget it. That’s more my idea.

Don't forget where you came from and treat people a certain way.

Because men really respect only that which was founded of old and has developed slowly, he who wants to live on after his death must take care not only of his posterity but even more of his past.

Horace, in a particularly boastful mood, once said his verse would last as long as the vestal virgins kept going up the Capitoline Hill to worship at the temple of Jupiter. But Horace's poetry has lasted longer than Jupiter's religion, and Jupiter himself has only survived because he disappeared into literature.

I won't say he [Shakespeare] 'invented' us, because journalists perpetually misunderstand me on that. I'll put it more simply: he contains us. Our ways of thinking and feeling-about ourselves, those we love, those we hate, those we realize are hopelessly 'other' to us-are more shaped by Shakespeare than they are by the experience of our own lives.

I was born to a woman I never knew and raised by another who took in orphans. I do not know my background, my lineage, my biological or cultural heritage. But when I meet someone new, I treat them with respect.... For after all, they could be my people.

On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for he would haveheld up his head in their company.

Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.

Literature usually begets literature.

It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad.

We can say of Shakespeare, that never has a man turned so little knowledge to such great account.

Subtract from many modern poets all that may be found in Shakespeare, and trash will remain.

Let's say there was a burning building and you could rush in and you could save only one thing: either the last known copy of Shakespeare's plays or some anonymous human being. What would you do?

William Shakespeare sounds to me like some kind of faggot.

History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?

We are forced to respect the gifts of nature, which study and fortune cannot give.