[Shaun J. Russell]

After a conversation on Shakespeare arose out of a workshop thread, I figure it can't hurt to explore how and why Shakespeare is considered one of the unrivaled masters of English literature. Full disclosure: I'm an early modernist, an English professor, and am currently writing a monograph on Shakespeare's sonnets. Early modern poetry has been my main research interest for a decade. I make that mildly self-indulgent disclaimer because I obviously have strong and informed opinions on the matter. But they're still just opinions.

A few thoughts to get the ball rolling. Shakespeare is probably considered to be the best playwright in the English language. He's credited with a veritable boatload of neologisms (many of which actually weren't neologisms, but that's another story), and his command of character, meter, plotting have fostered literally thousands of books over the past four centuries. Yet in terms of drama, I very much believe that Shakespeare's overwhelming stature over all other drama is part of a feedback loop. Shakespeare is considered great, therefore professors and teachers teach that he is great, and students learn that he is great. Meanwhile, his contemporaries (Marlowe, Jonson, Fletcher, Beaumont, Kyd, Webster, and many, many others) are taught far more infrequently, even though they, too, are arguably "great," and also have a strong command of character, meter, and plotting...though perhaps a bit less consistently. This is a subjective comment, but the "worst" of Shakespeare's plays are indeed worse than the best of his contemporaries. Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Jonson's The Alchemist and Volpone... All excellent plays that Shakespeare would love to have written. None of that detracts from Shakespeare being great -- it just highlights that even his contemporaries could sometimes "do it better."

But what about poetry? The Sonnets were published in a quarto edition in 1609, potentially without Shakespeare's involvement. We know that some of his individual sonnets circulated in manuscript form in the 1590s, and a small handful were published before Q (the standard name for the 1609 quarto)...but that's about it. There were no reprintings of Q, and the next time the sonnets were seen, they were mostly stripped of their distinction as sonnets, and reordered, repackaged, and retitled in 1640 by a stationer named John Benson. The original order didn't return (in print) until late in the 18th century, and it was only in the 19th century that it became vogue to deem Shakespeare as a master of poetry as well as drama.

We now consider Shakespeare's sonnets to be among the best in the language, and we even call sonnets with that rhyme scheme (ABABCDCDEFEFGG) "Shakespearean Sonnets," even though it was used extensively (and likely created) by Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey half a century earlier, with other contemporaries using it as well. The big heyday of Elizabethan sonnet sequences came in the 1580s and 90s, with Sir Philip Sidney receiving enormous accolades for his Astrophil and Stella, written and circulated in manuscript form (among friends and courtiers) before he died in 1586. It was published in the 1590s, right around when Shakespeare started penning his sonnets. But there were many, many sonneteers, and many, many sonnet sequences around that time. It was a literary trend. Shakespeare was part of it, but he had quite a few "clunkers" among the 154 sonnets that eventually made it to print, just as his contemporaries had quite a few "exceptional" sonnets among other poems that were arguably "clunkers" as well.

The point of all of this is that there is no denying that Shakespeare is great. Claiming he is not is like spitting into the wind on a blustery day. No one will ever take the mantle from the Bard of Avon, or whatever people want to call him. However, any mastery Shakespeare has should be considered in the context of his contemporaries, and to really feel the relative greatness of his poems, it's worth reading them alongside Sidney, Daniel, Spenser and other sonneteers of the time. When doing so, it becomes clear that maybe Shakespeare was "better," but if so, he wasn't so much better that a strong counterpoint couldn't be made for others. Holding him up as "unrivaled" is a choice we can make, but it can't truly be an informed choice unless we familiarize ourselves with what his peers were writing. I adore Shakespeare's work and love teaching, researching, and writing about it...but any claims there are no rivals to its greatness (especially in poetry) is misguided at best, and uninformed at worst.


Thoughts?

[Nick McRae]

I'll tread carefully into this thread as I'm far from an expert (or even informed) on Shakespeare, but I've often wondered if what you've stated was the case. He was undoubtedly an exceptional writer, but there's the feedback loop you mentioned.

I don't think it's too far out of left field to consider it a similar phenomenon to what happened with The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Their names have echoed to such a large extent that their popularity reinforces itself. Many artists were just as talented, but not considered as great.

Another element of it is that Shakespeare also popularized a few timeless themes before anyone else did. Hamlet. Some phenomenal lines there, but poets can't just write them over and over again. To follow the Dylan analogy, you can't just keep writing 'Blowin' in the Wind' and 'Like a Rolling Stone'.

Once we have the capacity to preserve art for posterity there's always going to be someone who did it first, and who overtakes the collective consciousness of a given culture. What could a poet or playwright write about in the 20th or 21st century that could even come close to rivalling Shakespeare's footprint? The only analogue I can think of is Cohen's Hallelujah.

[Max Goodman]

My disclaimer will be more self-indulgent than Shaun's: I'm an amateur admirer of Shakespeare, but one that's spent a lot of time with his work, and written about and with it.

The sonnets interest me far less than the plays, and (probably because our view of story has changed since Elizabethan times) the plays impress me less as complete works than as holders of extraordinary things: characters, lines, thoughts, passages, scenes, actions.

Originally Posted by E. Shaun Russell

his contemporaries ... also have a strong command of character...

Character may be even more subjective and harder to talk about than the other qualities under discussion. Harold Bloom credited Shakespeare with "the invention of the human." If I understood and remember well, he meant that Shakespeare's were the first fictional characters capable of change.

It seems to me that most of Shakespeare's characters are more lifelike than most fictional characters I encounter elsewhere. It's possible, of course, that this impression results from the feedback loop Shaun mentions; there are few or no non-Shakespearean characters I've spent as much time with.

[Roger Slater]

I don't think the "feedback loop" concept explains why only a handful of artists have fallen into that loop and been declared to be among the greatest ever. I think it's far more plausible to conclude that Shakespeare's plays are actually, by and large, better than those of his contemporaries, and that these other writers were not, as you say, equally talented. I would make the same claim for Dylan and the Beatles. This doesn't mean that others have not written truly great plays or songs, but I am certain that my response to Shakespeare, Dylan, and the Beatles is one that is true to my sense of great art and not because I have been subject to the feedback loop that tells me what to think and how to feel. As evidence for that, I observe that there are many other "greats" I've never taken to in nearly the same way. For example, I have never fallen deeply into the feedback loop of Tennyson or Hardy, though each has written poems that I admire.

[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by Nick McRae

Another element of it is that Shakespeare also popularized a few timeless themes before anyone else did. Hamlet. Some phenomenal lines there, but poets can't just write them over and over again. To follow the Dylan analogy, you can't just keep writing 'Blowin' in the Wind' and 'Like a Rolling Stone'.

What's interesting is that while you're certainly not wrong about Shakespeare's popularizing of timeless themes, those themes were themselves popular before Shakespeare was writing. Thinking specifically of his sonnets, there's a strong Petrarchan streak throughout (which is true of most Elizabethan sonnet sequences) -- the idea of loving someone who is unattainable, and barely regards you in return. It's pretty much a commonplace of sonnets until we get into the 17th century. Sidney's sonnets were much admired in his time, and a decided influence on Shakespeare. So were Samuel Daniel's sonnets in Delia, which was published in 1592. Spenser's Amoretti? Most likely. And we can definitively see the strong influence of Richard Tottel's collection of Songes and Sonnettes (popularly called Tottel's Miscellany) published in 1557, which contained the posthumous sonnets of Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey among others. Wyatt, of course, is credited for introducing the sonnet form to the English language, and writing many translations of Petrarch. Tottel's collection was massively popular, going through eleven editions by the time Shakespeare was active. Its influence can never be overstated, and it's an easy argument to make that we wouldn't have Shakespeare's sonnets (and their timeless themes) without the popularity of Tottel's collection. Sonnets about time? Check. Sonnets about wanting to be remembered through verse? Check. Sonnets about loving someone who doesn't recognize you exist? Check, check, check.

To be clear, none of this means that Shakespeare wasn't "original" in his own way. But let's not forget that only two or three of his 38 plays were not adapted from earlier works, some of his plays were collaborations with other playwrights (next time you think of "Double double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble" you're actually quoting Thomas Middleton), and most themes had been played on stage before. Hamlet's great, but playgoers would have been very familiar with most of its tropes having seen Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy (complete with its revenge-urging ghost) performed repeatedly to high acclaim a decade earlier. So we certainly can love Shakespeare for popularizing themes, but it brings us back to the question of mastery. Maybe he "perfected" some themes/tropes/ideas that were out there...but make no mistake that most of them were indeed out there.

[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

I don't think the "feedback loop" concept explains why only a handful of artists have fallen into that loop and been declared to be among the greatest ever. I think it's far more plausible to conclude that Shakespeare's plays are actually, by and large, better than those of his contemporaries, and that these other writers were not, as you say, equally talented.

So before I respond, I must first say that I do believe that Shakespeare is one of the best writers in the English language. I can say it quite confidently about his plays, though I'd probably say he's "among" the best sonneteers. There's a certain subjectivity there, of course, but I think there's always a slight danger in conflating endurance and popularity with concepts like "best" and "greatest." Endurance is one metric we can use to say someone's work is great...but it's not the only one (and yes, I know that wasn't your claim).

I've been in the academic game for long enough now that my thoughts on the matter have generally settled...but here's an illustrative anecdote. When I was still a Ph.D. student, I had to get through the hurdle of "comprehensive exams," which is quite a misnomer. For my field of early modern literature, you have to create a list of pertinent text of around 130-150 works -- about 2/3 of those being primary sources (plays, poetry collections, some prose), and the other 1/3 being critical texts on various elements of the field. I think I had eight Shakespeare plays on my list, and perhaps thirty by other playwrights. Since poetry was and is my specialty, I already knew most worthwhile works by early modern poets, but still had a few to discover. Going into the process, I expected to read a bunch of early modern non-Shakespeare plays and come out of the process saying "Yes, Shakespeare's unquestionably better." Instead, I came out of the process saying "Yes...Shakespeare's better. Usually." This is a subtle but important distinction, and it surprised me. There is a certain je nais ce quois to Shakespeare, and I'll never try to pretend that there isn't usually some superiority to his language/characterization/plotting etc. over his contemporaries. And yet when you start to read through the various works by said contemporaries, it's remarkable how strikingly similar they often are in most respects. Again, I'm talking about the plays here, as I think the poetry question is a lot thornier.

What I hope my posts have conveyed (and perhaps I've done a lousy job of it) is that Shakespeare is certainly great, and for plays, perhaps the greatest. However, it's not a case of him being so far ahead of the rest that there's not room for discussion. This semester I happen to be teaching Marlowe's Doctor Faustus as well as Shakespeare's The Tempest, and I fully plan on informally asking my class at the end which of the two they thought was "better." I'll be shocked if some don't choose the Marlowe. That won't mean that "Marlowe is better than Shakespeare," but rather that there's a lot more nuance to the idea that "Shakespeare is the greatest ever."

[Yves S L]

I will talk about Johann Sebastian Bach. During my teenage years, I fell asleep listening to his keyboard music. I was not much swayed by the mythology that grew around his genius, as I was not myself socially immersed within the culture of European classical music that might have challenged me to conform to what other people might say (I did not care how I might appear to other people who are socially immersed in that culture). I had not done a comparative study of his peers to judge how much he pushed against the established conventions of his time versus how much he innovated or was simply a better technician: to compress without speaking of any details, the music strongly spoke to my own sense of aesthetics. The talk about Shakespeare is as if someone can mandate that everyone find the same face beautiful, so strongly is the topic settled, and sure enough, the Europeans will choose a European face or similar, and likewise with other cultures.

In the last few years, using subtitles, I watched a historical Korean drama of many episodes which spoke to me emotionally much more than I have ever experienced of the English tradition as expressed through what I have gleaned of Shakespeare. It is obvious in the different music of different religions that different cultures do not express or are touched by similar emotions. The focus on the surface of language does not touch why different works of art evoke different responses in different people. To hint at what I am talking about, the English translation of the drama, and the voices of the English voice actors left me totally cold, and not wanting to dirty my lovely memories of my original experience watching the series (bear in mind I don't know Korean).

Now it might just be that the kind of folk who go deep into academia are such that they intellectualy/emotionally respond to Shakespeare's English. And that is fine.

Addendum: A person's use of English exhibits a person's cognitive/emotional patterns. Call it mental music. What is Shakespeare's mental music, and how does it correspond to the typical mental music of academicians?

[Glenn Wright]

Most countries claiming a national character have adopted one writer as being emblematic of that character. Italy has Dante, Germany has Goethe, America has Twain, and England has Shakespeare. I think the most telling proof of Shakespeare’s greatness is the fact that his pre-eminence as a dramatist has been acknowledged by every generation in the last 450 years. His ability to remain relevant and fresh makes him unique among authors writing in English. He would have been surprised to discover that his plays were what established his unparalleled fame. As a theater owner, he had to write plays that would make money. Thus he followed the trends and fads of his day, often stealing plots from other authors and “ripping them from the headlines,” producing Macbeth to flatter the family tree of the new king, James I, and to pander to his interest in the occult, producing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice to capitalize on the wave of anti-Semitism that followed the trial of Dr. Rodrigo Lopez, Queen Elizabeth’s Portuguese Jewish physician, for treason by attempting to poison her. Marlowe’s Jew of Malta was occasioned by this scandal as well. But Shakespeare showed a fearlessness in bending the rules. He took a risk by giving Shylock his “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech and by portraying him with sympathy and his Christian adversaries as shallow fools. It is interesting that Shakespeare was never, to my knowledge, accused of infidelity to his Queen or faith for his sympathetic portrayal of Shylock. In both Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice, he starts his play as a comedy and ends it as a tragedy. In The Tempest he throws out the rules altogether. Of course, being a risk taker means being willing to face failures. Shakespeare gave us Hamlet, but also Pericles. This passionate originality, I think, is largely what has has enabled every generation to find new interpretations of his plays.

[Roger Slater]

Glenn, The Merchant of Venice is a comedy. No one dies and there's a wedding at the end. But I agree it's not a very light comedy.

[Nick McRae]

Originally Posted by E. Shaun Russell

What's interesting is that while you're certainly not wrong about Shakespeare's popularizing of timeless themes, those themes were themselves popular before Shakespeare was writing.

This also fits with the Dylan analogy to some extent. Many of the themes were around, but Dylan presented them in a way that pervaded public consciousness. And he was the first to do it in popular, modern music.

Maybe what we're looking at with Shakespeare is a marriage of poetic quality and mass appeal. He was good, but he also wrote many accessible and infectious lines. And he did it at the right time and place. Nowadays it's difficult to emulate the popularity of either Shakespeare or Dylan in sheer numbers because it's all been done, so to speak. This rings true in many art forms, we're experiencing a regression to the mean across the board.

So many very good artists have existed after Shakespeare, but it's gotten harder to find those accessible and infectious lines and also bring them to a wide audience. Cohen did it with Hallelujah and to a lesser extent Suzanne, but those were rarities. What other poet has had the reach of Cohen? Shakespeare had theatre.

I can think of a number of poems that have brought me to tears, usually by acclaimed poets, but I could likely ask about 10 000 random people who the poet was and I'd get blank stares at a near 100% success rate.