Author
Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Molière were the three authors Fuller singled out from her father’s book collection as a child — “three great authors, all of rich and wide, rather than aspiring genius; all free to the extent of the horizon their eye took in; all fresh with impulse, racy with experience.” Shakespeare was first among them. At eight years old, reading Romeo and Juliet on a Sunday afternoon against her father’s prohibition and being sent to bed for it, she established a relationship that would last her entire life. He appears across the plays and poems, in every phase of her writing life and in every source type. She never wrote a dedicated essay on him — unlike Goethe and Shelley — but invoked him constantly as a standard of comparison. Her most extended Shakespeare criticism appears in the Papers on Literature and Art essays, where she reads Hamlet, Timon of Athens, and King Lear as a linked tragic sequence. A reference to Cloten from Cymbeline appears in passing in Summer on the Lakes — the kind of offhand Shakespearean allusion that shows how deeply he had been absorbed.
Romeo and Juliet, age eight
Fuller’s first Shakespeare encounter is one of the most quoted episodes in the Memoirs: she picked up Romeo and Juliet on a Sunday afternoon, read it openly in defiance of the Sabbath prohibition, and was sent to bed. “I had felt it before,” she wrote later, “but never so fully.”
Cloten, in passing
In Summer on the Lakes a stranger’s remark about a sunset earns the aside “a speech worthy of Shakspeare’s Cloten” — an unannounced allusion to Cymbeline, and evidence of how completely the plays had been absorbed.
Catharine and Petruchio (Garrick’s 1756 adaptation) is catalogued separately — a distinct work Fuller names explicitly, not Shakespeare’s own Taming of the Shrew. Fuller never wrote a standalone Shakespeare essay, unlike Goethe and Shelley.
Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this author is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →
Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had William Shakespeare’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“This Sunday—I was only eight years old—I took from the book-shelf a volume lettered SHAKSPEARE... I held in my hand 'Romeo and Juliet”
Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli · This Sunday—I was only eight years old
Fuller's own vivid first-person account: 'I took from the book-shelf...I held in my hand Romeo and Juliet,' dated to age eight.
“She was but eight years old when the interest of Romeo and Juliet led her to rebel against the discipline”
Mem-4 Margaret Fuller by Julia Ward Howe · She was but eight years old
Howe's memoir gives a specific age (eight years old) and specific title (Romeo and Juliet) tied to a concrete anecdote.
“I taught him Latin orally, and read the History of England and Shakespeare's historical plays in connection.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · [ca. Summer 1837]
Explicit 'read the History of England and Shakespeare's historical plays in connection.'
Books Emerson sent or offered, his secondhand reports, and his own references — never counted in Fuller’s totals.
Emerson: “that can thy light relume”
Emerson quotes from memory · Rusk 2:322
Emerson quotes the line from memory.
1821–1835
Childhood and formation — Romeo and Juliet at age eight; Shakespeare enters the reading life as a family inheritance and a personal discovery through the Cambridge and early teaching years.
1836–1839
Teaching and conversation — used in teaching at the Greene Street School; present in the Boston Conversations as a shared literary touchstone.
1840–1849
Critical maturity — her most extended critical writing on Shakespeare appears in the Papers on Literature and Art essays (1846), where Hamlet, Timon, and Lear are read as a linked tragic sequence. The Tribune years bring the final concentration.
“Have you been reading the play of late? — Yes; hearing Macready, one or two points struck me... Macready gave its just emphasis to the climax.”
“From Hamlet I turned to Timon and Lear... The outraged heart of Timon takes refuge at once in action, in curses, and bitter deeds.”
“From Hamlet I turned to Timon and Lear... the misanthropy of the disappointed affections and wounded trust.”
“By that great vow / Which did incorporate and make us one, / Unfold to me, yourself, your half, / Why you are heavy. [...] Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife." [...] "You are my true and honorable wife, / As dear to me as are the ruddy drops / That visit this sad heart." [...] "Countrymen, / My heart doth joy, that yet in all my life, / I found no man but he was true to me.”
“That Mrs. Siddons even added somewhat of congenial glory to Shakspeare's own conceptions, those who compare the engravings of her in Lady Macbeth and Catherine of Arragon [...]; Shakspeare could not mend the collocation of those words [re Elena's speech]; [also] whose youth was familiar with Shakspeare's Julius Caesar, and Kings of England; [also] In this last, Sterling is as far inferior to Taylor, as Taylor to Shakspeare; [also] Some part of his poem on Shakspeare is no unfit prelude”
“From Hamlet I turned to Timon and Lear... the misanthropy of the disappointed affections and wounded trust. [...] "O Regan, Goneril / Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave you all — / that way madness lies, let me shun that, / No more of that, [***] / I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness / I never gave you kingdom, called you children." [...] Lear has not only one faithful daughter, whom he knew not how to value, but a friend beside.”
Analyzed in depth
Further works
Further works documented in the catalogue
Transcribed from originals at Houghton Library, Harvard, and the Boston Public Library. The manuscripts are not supplementary — they are the evidence.
Critical essays and reflections
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“We have no reason to complain of the slow foot of time.”
Inferred Fuller's phrase "slow foot of time" echoes Rosalind's line "the lazy foot of Time" from Shakespeare's As You Like It (III.ii.319), where Rosalind and Orlando exchange witticisms about time's passage.
“Men grow wiser" "every day" but in reality I find a difficulty in imagining myself an infant.”
Inferred Fuller writes "Men grow wiser" "every day" in quotation marks, echoing Touchstone's line from Shakespeare's As You Like It (I.ii): "Thus men may grow wiser every day." The split quotation marks in the manuscript suggest she is citing a familiar phrase, though the expression was also proverbial in early 19th-century usage.
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“mercilessly exhorted us to jump and run, (as it seemed to us), into the very arms of the vasty deep”
Inferred Fuller uses the phrase "vasty deep" as a casual allusion to Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1, Act 3, Scene 1, where Glendower boasts "I can call spirits from the vasty deep."
“I can appear "a ministering angel on such occasions”
Inferred Fuller quotes "a ministering angel," a phrase that most likely echoes Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1, though the expression was widely used in nineteenth-century literature.
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
“He brought me Retsch's Illust. of Hamlet spoiled in copying I presume for they were the weakest burlesque—and one could not trace any talent in the designs either.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Retzsch's illustrations are specifically of Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Fuller's critical evaluation of them as "weakest burlesque" implies familiarity with the play itself as a standard of comparison.
“they are frequent not only in Shakspeare but other dramatists I think I shall retain them”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Inferred Fuller explicitly names Shakespeare as her metrical authority for using anapests in blank verse, defending her translation choices to Clarke and demonstrating broad reading knowledge of his works.
“it would be Elysium to have just performed some great and glorious deed, or to have just finished some beautiful work the Apollo Belvidere for instance or Shakespeare's Tempest”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Vol. I: 1817-1838. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“Love to Sarah and "all your pretty ones”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller places "all your pretty ones" in quotation marks when addressing the Colburn family children, echoing Macduff's lament in Macbeth Act 4, Scene 3: "What, all my pretty chickens and their dam / At one fell swoop?" The quoted phrase signals her use of a recognizable literary allusion that had become something of a commonplace expression.
“How admirably Macduff's grief is in harmony with the whole play! It rends, not dissolves, the heart. The tune of it goes manly.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal December 1836." Houghton Library, Harvard University; MS Am 1086; Box 3.
“I taught him Latin orally, and read the History of England and Shakespeare's historical plays in connection.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller taught "Shakespeare's historical plays" in connection with reading English history to a blind student over ten weeks, using the literary works to help the student connect narrative and historical content. The cycle includes plays such as Richard II, Henry IV (Parts 1–2), Henry V, and Richard III, though no single play is named in the record.
“How flat, stale, and unprofitable are the Morisons &c near these really living beings!”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller adapts a line from Hamlet (1.2.133–34), applying Hamlet's "How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world" to dismiss a dull group of acquaintances. The quotation is woven closely into her prose without explicit attribution.
The quotation is woven closely into her prose without explicit attribution.
“you do not study human nature with the loving eye of a Scott, a Shakspeare, a Cervantes, a Moliere, a Goethe, a Raphael, a Mozart”
Inferred Fuller names Shakespeare as a model of humane literary characterization, invoking him alongside Scott, Cervantes, Molière, Goethe, Raphael, and Mozart to criticize Sturgis's drawings for lacking sympathetic study of human nature.
“he like the base Ethiop threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe”
Inferred Fuller quotes from Othello's dying speech (Act V, scene ii, lines 347–48), paraphrasing the line "Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away / Richer than all his tribe," but substitutes "Ethiop" for "Indian" She applies the quotation to W. (Samuel Ward), characterizing him as one who cast aside Jane Tuckerman's love, though she does not name Shakespeare or the play in her letter.
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“One often thinks of Hamlet as the true representative of idealism in its excess.”
Inferred Fuller names Hamlet as "the true representative of idealism in its excess," characterizing him through his paralyzed will and "deep-searching tendency and desire for poetic perfection." She contrasts this Shakespearean idealist with Julius Caesar and Coriolanus, using the character as a philosophical archetype for the paralysis of reflection.
“than to have it enlightened by worldly sagacity, as in the case of julius Caesar”
Inferred Fuller invokes Julius Caesar as a character type whose will is "enlightened by worldly sagacity," positioning him in philosophical contrast to Hamlet; her reference draws on Shakespeare's dramatic treatment of the historical figure, using the character archetypally to illustrate a particular mode of pragmatic, this-worldly intention.
“or made intense by pride alone, as in that of Coriolanus?”
Inferred Fuller invokes Coriolanus as a literary-philosophical archetype to illustrate will intensified by pride alone, contrasting the aristocratic solipsism of Shakespeare's character with Hamlet's idealistic paralysis in her broader analysis of Shakespearean types of human will.
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“Old Signior, walk aside with me. I have studied eight or nine wise words to speak with you, which these hobby horses must not hear.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Inferred Hudspeth identified this passage from Much Ado About Nothing (III.ii.70–73) appears nearly verbatim in Fuller's text, where she quotes Benedick's words to illustrate how audiences and public opinion are captured in Shakespeare's term "hobby horses." Fuller extends the reference into her own analysis, applying it to gatherings "in hall of state, saloon, or lecture-room."
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“this time I held in my hand Romeo and Juliet long enough to get my eye fastened to the page.”
“he, who could understand the Roman, yet expressed in Hamlet a deeper thought.”
“My author could read the Roman nature too, — read it in the stern- ness of Coriolanus, and in the varied wealth of Csesar.”
Inferred Margaret Fuller engages with Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Coriolanus (1623) by citing the title character as an embodiment of the playwright's insightful portrayal of Roman temperament. Fuller observes that Shakespeare could "read the Roman nature too," exemplified by the "sternness of Coriolanus," thereby highlighting the dramatic character's quintessential Roman qualities. The editors identify this reference as specific to Shakespeare's play rather than a general mention of the Roman figure.
The editors identify this reference as specific to Shakespeare's play rather than a general mention of the Roman figure.
“I greatly enjoyed his readings in Hamlet, and have reviewed in connexion what Goethe and Coleridge have said.”
Inferred This entry is identified by editors as concerning Shakespeare's seminal tragedy.
“I received no more pleasure from Miss K's acting out the part than I have done in reading it”
“in particular, Richard the Third,—about which we had actually a fight.”
“her English reading was incomplete; and, while she knew Molière... she was little read in Shakspeare”
Inferred This entry pertains to William Shakespeare's works, a body of literature Margaret Fuller encountered with limited familiarity early in her reading life. Ralph Waldo Emerson documented that he had "the pleasure of making her acquainted" with esteemed English authors, noting Fuller "was little read in Shakspeare" when they first met, suggesting an intentional effort to expand her knowledge of the playwright.
“Thou wouldst forgive me, master, that I have not been true to my eventual destiny, and therefore have suffered on every side 'the pangs of despised love.”
Inferred Here, Margaret Fuller directly quotes the evocative phrase "the pangs of despised love" from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
“I have done as Timon did, for these last eight years... Like Timon, I have loved to give, perhaps not from beneficence, but from restless love.”
Inferred Like Timon, I have loved to give, perhaps not from beneficence, but from restless love." This invocation suggests Fuller identified with Timon's complex motivations for generosity, hinting at a self-reflection on the source of her own philanthropic impulses.
“because bigotry is now afraid to exact the pound of 'flesh as well as the ducats”
Inferred In her writings, Margaret Fuller directly evokes William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice through the memorable phrase “bigotry is now afraid to exact the pound of ‘flesh as well as the ducats.’” This quotation clearly alludes to the central conflict of Shylock's bond and highlights Fuller's perception of contemporary intolerance. The specific pairing of "pound of flesh" with "ducats" serves as a strong indicator for identifying this particular Shakespearean work.
“will palsied like Hamlet, by a deep-searching tendency...”
Inferred Margaret Fuller engages with William Shakespeare's The Tragedie of Julius Caesar (1623) as a foil to Hamlet and Coriolanus in her analysis of will. She casts Shakespeare's Caesar as exemplifying a will "enlightened by worldly sagacity," distinguishing this mode of agency from Hamlet's "deep-searching tendency" and Coriolanus's pride.
“made intense by pride alone, 'as in that of Coriolanus?”
Inferred Margaret Fuller draws upon Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Coriolanus as a character study of will intensified by pride.
“Were man but constant, he were perfect.”
Inferred In her December 1847 letter from Rome, Margaret Fuller cites Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1623) with the observation that "Were man but constant, he were perfect." This direct quotation, from Act 5, Scene 4, serves Fuller's commentary on the perceived wavering of American youth from their espoused ideals.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“Thus she did with Shakspeare, a fine edition which her Providence scholars had presented to her, and Wordsworth, made precious by her marks of emphatic approbation. These books I now have.”
Fuller, Richard Frederick. Recollections of Richard F. Fuller. Boston: privately printed, 1936.
Inferred Richard Fuller states that Margaret placed her own 'fine edition' of Shakespeare in his hands 'as tenant-in-common,' a copy presented to her by 'her Providence scholars.'