[W T Clark]

"As For Literature: a living dog is worth more." I don't quite believe this by Clarice Lispector, but it is good to think about in the face of windy praise. Do you think the works of Shakespeare are worth a dog's, a human's life? Depends what day of the week.

[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by N. Matheson

This has not been my experience at all and I am wondering what happened in academia in the past two years apparently. What I was taught was Shakespeare is not merely an artist, but art incarnate. His works are so far removed from us mere mortals that to even think he is capable of being measured is like trying to put a chain around the wind. I recall one quote repeated that said the only person who created more than Shakespeare was God alone. Harold Bloom, who has been mentioned, also relegated every one of his contemporaries to hacks. He dismissed works such as The Spanish Tragedy as nonsense. I fail to see how anything anyone could have written even compares to his on remotely the same level.

Max and Cameron pretty much said the thing, but I'll say it a bit more directly...


Who gives a damn what your professors said? Any professor worth their salt will encourage you to draw your own conclusions. And you are 100% wrong about Bloom. He valued Shakespeare more highly than his contemporaries, true...but that's part of why I created this thread. I value Shakespeare more highly as well, but I insist that it's not a case of Triton among the minnows -- it's more like a great white shark among tiger sharks. All of them are impressive in their own right.

And let me make something very clear: Shakespeare had collaborators. We don't actually know the sheer extent of those collaborators, but at least five of his canonical plays were actually co-written (I mentioned Macbeth above), and some critics have asserted that number can be at least doubled. Middleton, Fletcher, Peele, Marlowe -- all of them wrote sections of plays attributed to Shakespeare. It's a fool's errand to try to separate the Shakespearean wheat from the ostensible collaborator chaff (though many have gamely attempted it), so...where's Shakespeare's overwhelming singular genius in those situations? And what do we make of something like Timon of Athens? I have a soft spot in my heart for the play, and yet it's clearly very flawed -- there is virtually no plot development in the last three acts.

So again, Shakespeare's great. Perhaps the greatest playwright of all time -- you certainly won't find me arguing against that. But bardolatry is pointless idol worship, when there's a world of amazing literature out there that is not by Shakespeare. And you don't want to get me started on the relative quality of Shakespeare's sonnets; I adore them, and they've been my major academic interest for a long time...but are they the "best" ever by any objective measure? Not on your life.

[N. Matheson]

Then what about verse or poetry in general? Who would you rank the highest?

[Clive Watkins]

Thanks for your scholarly introduction, Shaun.

For myself, I confess that I do not find the category “greatness” very useful in my experience of poetry – or of the arts more generally. It is just too diffuse. Without some agreed criteria among the disputants, I find the resulting discussion largely unenlightening. But settling the question of criteria, which seems a prerequisite to any discussion, would be a mighty undertaking indeed.

One aspect of the matter would surely involve exploring the evolution of aesthetic taste in its wider social and economic contexts. In the case of Shakespeare, for example, and just for the UK, this might take in the history of theatre, access to education, the nature of the education available over time to different sections of the population, authority-structures, the rise and fall in the popularity of the different plays in relation to changing historical conditions, and the uses to which Shakespeare has been put, not just by directors but by politicians and others. I merely sketch a few possibilities; there are others. It would also involve a diachronic view of the various genres of composition. Perhaps this way of thinking challenges what seems implicit in some remarks above that “greatness” is an absolute, somehow above time and the contingencies of experience. This is of course a view articulated very early by Ben Jonson in his dedicatory poem in the First Folio of 1623, when he declared his friend was “not of an age but for all time!” It’s a glorious compliment, but, rationally, hard to justify, perhaps.

So, to my mind, it’s a bit too easy to throw out impressionistic claims for the “greatness” of such-and-such a writer, claims which sometimes serve, explicitly or implicitly, as a way of condemning, on equally dubious grounds, those from whom the label is withheld.

Another thing that can be lost sight of when debate becomes especially vaporous is close and attentive consideration of the means particular writers employ and the ends to which they employ them. Given that Eratosphere is, primarily, a board concerned with “workshopping” the poems of its participants, this seems rather a shame.

Clive

[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by N. Matheson

Then what about verse or poetry in general? Who would you rank the highest?

Nobody. Even with my comments above about Shakespeare perhaps being the "greatest playwright of all time," I frankly think that ranking artists of any kind is pointless. To do so, we would first need to come up with a widely agreed upon set of criteria, which would be challenging enough on its own. What constitutes "greatest"? The most enduring impact? How often the poet has been republished? How many translations there have been? How many people have shed tears over the words, or been driven to laughter, or been inspired to social change? Does name recognition equal greatness? Mastery of form or language? None of those things are really objective measures, and by that same token, none really get into what makes poetry (indeed, art) meaningful...which is to say the personal connection. Sure, some lovers of poetry will absolutely adore poets/poems for any of those ad-hoc criteria above, but art isn't like a sport where you can make a convincing argument that the highest point-earner is clearly the GOAT. Instead, it's better to just like what you like and not care about its relative merits according to some nebulous, indefinite criteria.

For me, Auden has been my "favorite" poet since I was 17. I could rattle off all the reasons why I personally love Auden's poetry, but none of them should really matter to anyone else because it's not about anyone else. I would rank Auden the highest among poets...to me. But I would never dream of trying to impose that personal ranking on others, or making some nonsensical claim that because I love Auden, he is somehow objectively "the greatest" poet. And if I'm being honest, even "favorite" doesn't quite do art justice. I recall as an undergraduate asking my old, curmudgeonly Shakespeare professor what his favorite Shakespeare play was. He scowled a bit at the question and couldn't really answer -- he found some aspects of one play intellectually gratifying, and some aspects of some other play productive for his research etc., but he couldn't just say "Oh, King Lear is my favorite" or "I just love Measure for Measure." Having a "favorite" wasn't really a metric he'd ever considered. And that, too, is perfectly fine! We all approach art in our own ways, and one of the great things about any of the arts is that we can spend all the time we want talking about objective measures of greatness (or mastery, given this forum), but the subjective, personal experience of what resonates, and why -- that is what matters most, in my view.


Edited to add: cross-posted with Clive who said much the same thing.

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Clive Watkins

This is of course a view articulated very early by Ben Jonson in his dedicatory poem in the First Folio of 1623, when he declared his friend was “not of an age but for all time!” It’s a glorious compliment, but, rationally, hard to justify, perhaps.

Note that Ben Jonson didn’t consider his friend to be above criticism:

“I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, ‘Would he had blotted a thousand,’ which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candor, for I loved the man, and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped. ‘Sufflaminandus erat,’ as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things, could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him: ‘Caesar, thou dost me wrong.’ He replied: ‘Caesar did never wrong but with just cause;’ and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.”

[N. Matheson]

Jonson would have been crucified with an albatross around his neck if he'd written that today.

[Nick McRae]

Originally Posted by E. Shaun Russell

None of those things are really objective measures, and by that same token, none really get into what makes poetry (indeed, art) meaningful...which is to say the personal connection.

The bolded gets to the heart of it, IMO.

Poetry and literature are interesting because they're artforms, but with an emphasis on language. And knowing that, it's worthwhile recognizing that linguistic skill is probably one of the central, if not the central, visceral marker we use to measure the intellect and character of other people.

So you get this odd situation in the poetry world where we're trying to produce worthwhile art, but at the same time we often use that art to judge and compete. It misses the point of the written word entirely.

If you can read the scribblings of an inexperienced twenty-something, and think to yourself - this is a bunch of dross - then there's an element of the written word that you're not seeing. To me, the core of poetry is about expression. I truly believe that every fragment of the written word has value. But if you're always trying to measure it in terms of quality, you're very likely to miss that.

[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by N. Matheson

Jonson would have been crucified with an albatross around his neck if he'd written that today.

Hardly. It might have raised eyebrows and made some minor news (if we're imagining Jonson to have the same stature now as he did then), but it would be chalked up as a professional opinion that is mildly salacious and most would disagree with, nothing more.

But I do find it amusing that you mention the albatross. I'm trying to think of a more enduring symbol from Shakespeare's sonnets than that famous symbol from Coleridge. I can't.

[N. Matheson]

Not all poetry is going to be an interrgoation of the human condition. Shakespeare wrote plays more than anything. They're scripts. They're characters describing things happening because they had almost no sets. And if someone was stabbed, they have to explain that to you because the idea of showing not telling in acting didn't exist yet.