The revolt against culture is often the last fashion of the cultured.

-Chesterton on Shakespeare (1971)

[...] truth exists whether we like it or not, and [...] it is for us to accommodate ourselves to it.

-Chesterton on Shakespeare (1971)

A dream can commonly be described as possessing an utter discordance of incident combined with a curious unity of mood; everything changes but the dreamer. It may begin with anything and end with anything, but if the dreamer is sad at the end he will be sad as if by prescience at the beginning; if he is cheerful at the beginning he will be cheerful if the stars fail. A Midsummer Night's Dream has in a most singular degree effected this difficult, this almost desperate subtlety. The events in the wandering wood are in themselves, and regarded as in broad daylight, not merely melancholy but bitterly cruel and ignominious. But yet by the spreading of an atmosphere as magic as the fog of Puck, Shakespeare contrives to make the whole matter mysteriously hilarious while it is palpably tragic, and mysteriously charitable, while it is in itself cynical [...] The creation of a brooding sentiment like this, a sentiment not merely independent of but actually opposed to the events, is a much greater triumph of art than the creation of the character of Othello.

-Chesterton on Shakespeare (1971)

So far from freedom following on the decay of the family, what follows is uniformity.

-Chesterton on Shakespeare (1971)

The greatness of Homer consists in the fact that he could make men feel, what they were already quite ready to think, that life is a strange mystery in which a hero may err and another hero may fail. The poet makes men realize how great are the great emotions which they, in a smaller way, have already experienced [...] The great poet exists to show the small man how great he is.

-Chesterton on Shakespeare (1971)

[...] detail by itself means madness. The very definition of a lunatic is a man who has taken details out of their real atmosphere.

-Chesterton on Shakespeare (1971)

Hamlet was only a mild sort of murderer; a more or less accidental and parenthetical murderer; an amateur. But Macbeth was a good, solid, serious, self-respecting murderer; and we must not have any nonsense about him. For the play of Macbeth is, in the supreme and special sense, the Christian Tragedy; to be set against the Pagan Tragedy of Oedipus. It is the whole point about Oedipus that he does not know what he is doing. And it is the whole point about Macbeth that he does know what he is doing. It is not a tragedy of Fate but a tragedy of Freewill. He is tempted of a devil, but he is not driven by a destiny. If the actor pronounces the words properly, the whole audience ought to feel that the story may yet have an entirely new ending, when Macbeth says suddenly, ‘We will proceed no further in this business.’ The incredible confusion of modern thought is always suggesting that any indication that men have been influenced is an indication that they have been forced. All men are always being influenced; for every incident is an influence. The question is, which incident shall we allow to be most influential. Macbeth was influenced; but he consented to be influenced. He was not, like a blind tragic pagan, obeying something he thought he ought to obey. He does not worship the Three Witches like the Three Fates. He is a good enlightened Christian, and sins against the light.

-Chesterton on Shakespeare (1971)

The only test that can be adequately suggested of a critic's work on a masterpiece is whether it freshens it or makes it stale, whether, like the inferior appreciation, it sends us to our hundredth reading of the work, or whether, like the higher appreciation, it sends us to our first reading of it. There is one kind of criticism which reminds us that we have read a book; there is another and better which convinces us that we have never read it.

-Chesterton on Shakespeare (1971)