President Lincoln, who kept a volume of Shakespeare on his desk at the Executive Mansion, recited Shakespeare in the woods as a boy.
Abraham Lincoln and his friend Jack Kelso would perform Shakespeare from the river rocks as they fished. Although Lincoln didn’t like fishing, he loved reciting Shakespeare.
F.B. Carpenter, an artist who lived at the White House for six months, often overheard the president reciting Shakespeare aloud. He said Mr. Lincoln was good enough to be employed as a Shakespearian actor if he didn’t already have a job.
Shakespeare was so popular in Lincoln’s time that people would use his quotes without quotation marks, thinking that everyone would know a line from Shakespeare when they saw one.
Source: James Dickey, UCLA at Folger Shakespeare Library’s site folger.edu