Another great writer, the poet Algernon Swinburne, provided one of my favourite quotes on Shakespeare. It's one of the most accurate in acknowledging the centrality of Shakespeare to every serious writer and/or thinker who came after him:

"There is one book in the world, of which it might be affirmed and argued without fear of derision from any but the supreme and crowning fools among the foolishest of mankind, that it would be better for the world to lose all others and keep this one than to lose this and keep all other treasures bequeathed by human genius to all that we can conceive of eternity - to all that we can imagine of immortality. That book is best known, and best described for all of us, simply by the simple English name of its author. The word Shakespeare connotes more than any other man's name that was ever written or spoken upon Earth."

In honour of Swinburne's astuteness, here's a link to one of his powerfully musical poems, "Hymn to Proserpine": http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2088.html