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Alexander Pope
An English poet and playwright of the 16th century. Of all the poets Orlando admires, Shakespeare is arguably the poet Orlando admires most. Orlando even finds it difficult to speak Shakespeare’s name because she reveres him so “deeply.” The novel mentions Shakespeare several times, both directly and indirectly. She refers to several of his plays, such as Macbeth and Othello, and the name Orlando is also the name of the lead character in Shakespeare’s play, As You Like It. While Orlando is not aware of it, he encounters Shakespeare as a young man. Woolf implies that Shakespeare is the “shabby man” sitting at the servants’ table in the beginning of the novel, but Orlando has no idea who the man is. Like many of the other poets in the novel, Woolf does not deny Shakespeare’s talent, but she also portrays him as a regular person who is not exceptional in the least. Shakespeare is overweight, his clothes are “shabby” and dirty, and he only rates a seat at the servants’ table, not the main dining room. Woolf at once depicts Shakespeare as the epitome of talent and poetry and as a completely ordinary person who does not seem worthy of such worship and praise.
The Shabby Man / William Shakespeare Quotes in Orlando
The Orlando quotes below are all either spoken by The Shabby Man / William Shakespeare or refer to The Shabby Man / William Shakespeare. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
But there, sitting at the servants’ dinner table with a tankard beside him and paper in front of him, sat a rather fat, rather shabby man, whose ruff was a thought dirty, and whose clothes were of hodden brown. He held a pen in his hand, but he was not writing. He seemed in the act of rolling some thought up and down, to and fro in his mind till it gathered shape or momentum to his liking. His eyes, globed and clouded like some green stone of curious texture, were fixed. He did not see Orlando. For all his hurry, Orlando stopped dead. Was this a poet? Was he writing poetry? “Tell me,” he wanted to say, “everything in the whole world”—for he had the wildest, most absurd, extravagant ideas about poets and poetry—but how speak to a man who does not see you ? who sees ogres, satyrs, perhaps the depths of the sea instead?
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Chapter 6
Quotes
“Ah!” he said, heaving a little sigh, which was yet comfortable enough, “Ah! my dear lady, the great days of literature are over. Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson—those were the giants. Dryden, Pope, Addison—those were the heroes. All, all are dead now. And whom have they left us? Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle!”—he threw an immense amount of scorn into his voice. “The truth of it is,” he said, pouring himself a glass of wine, “that all our young writers are in the pay of booksellers. They turn out any trash that serves to pay their tailor’s bills. It is an age,” he said, helping himself to hors d’oeuvres, “marked by precious conceits and wild experiments—none of which the Elizabethans would have tolerated for an instant.”
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The Shabby Man / William Shakespeare Quotes in Orlando
The Orlando quotes below are all either spoken by The Shabby Man / William Shakespeare or refer to The Shabby Man / William Shakespeare. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
But there, sitting at the servants’ dinner table with a tankard beside him and paper in front of him, sat a rather fat, rather shabby man, whose ruff was a thought dirty, and whose clothes were of hodden brown. He held a pen in his hand, but he was not writing. He seemed in the act of rolling some thought up and down, to and fro in his mind till it gathered shape or momentum to his liking. His eyes, globed and clouded like some green stone of curious texture, were fixed. He did not see Orlando. For all his hurry, Orlando stopped dead. Was this a poet? Was he writing poetry? “Tell me,” he wanted to say, “everything in the whole world”—for he had the wildest, most absurd, extravagant ideas about poets and poetry—but how speak to a man who does not see you ? who sees ogres, satyrs, perhaps the depths of the sea instead?
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Chapter 6
Quotes
“Ah!” he said, heaving a little sigh, which was yet comfortable enough, “Ah! my dear lady, the great days of literature are over. Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson—those were the giants. Dryden, Pope, Addison—those were the heroes. All, all are dead now. And whom have they left us? Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle!”—he threw an immense amount of scorn into his voice. “The truth of it is,” he said, pouring himself a glass of wine, “that all our young writers are in the pay of booksellers. They turn out any trash that serves to pay their tailor’s bills. It is an age,” he said, helping himself to hors d’oeuvres, “marked by precious conceits and wild experiments—none of which the Elizabethans would have tolerated for an instant.”
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