Our myriad-minded Shakespeare.

Coleridge coined the epithet “myriad-minded” in the early nineteenth century as part of his sustained critical engagement with Shakespeare, whom he regarded as the supreme example of imaginative and psychological range. The phrase appears in Coleridge’s literary criticism (later gathered in his critical writings and lecture materials), where he contrasts Shakespeare’s capacious, many-sided intellect with narrower poetic talents. In the Romantic period, Shakespeare was being re-evaluated not merely as a dramatist but as a profound thinker about human nature; Coleridge’s formulation became one of the most influential shorthand characterizations of Shakespeare’s genius in subsequent criticism.

“Myriad-minded” suggests a mind that contains multitudes: an ability to inhabit innumerable perspectives, temperaments, and modes of speech without collapsing them into a single authorial voice. Coleridge’s praise points to Shakespeare’s extraordinary dramatic sympathy—his capacity to render kings and clowns, villains and saints, lovers and skeptics with equal vividness and internal logic. The phrase also implies intellectual abundance: Shakespeare’s imagination is not one-track but generative, flexible, and inexhaustibly various. As a critical tag, it elevates Shakespeare as the poet of comprehensive humanity, whose art seems to think through a whole world of minds rather than a single sensibility.