You know, when it has been a span of time since I have read or seen a Shakespeare play I begin to wonder why he is considered the pinnacle of English literature. I mean surely there have been other writers who are his equal? And I think and think and no names pop into my head, but I still believe there should be at least one writer, but who? Eventually I get distracted and am left with only a vague sense of I’m not sure what — disbelief perhaps — that there is no one else? Or is it unease? Because really, in 400 years for there never to have been a writer in English as good, as inventive, as influential seems impossible and rather sad for literature as though we’ve been in a state of slow decline ever since. And while I am sure there are plenty of people who would say English literature has gone downhill from Shakespeare, I am not among them. I hope I never find myself in old age, sitting in a rocking chair with my teeth in a glass on the table next to me telling some young whipper-snapper that literature just ain’t what it used to be, and when I was your age blah blah blah. Please, if this happens to me, someone hit my over the head with The Luminaries or other equally large tome.
Where was I? Oh yes, I forget, after being away from Shakespeare for awhile, how marvelous he is. I began reading King Lear the other day and have been reminded — My God! This man is brilliant! In the first two scenes he effortlessly sets everything in motion, Cordelia, her sisters, Lear, Edmund. Yes, yes, France takes Cordelia for his wife even without a dowry — so romantic! — but you know, even if you have never read/seen the play before, you know that things are going to go wrong, that Lear has thrown away everything he holds most dear and there will be no happy ending. And it is delicious, this knowing, this dread, this watching and not being able to look away, and always hoping that maybe something will happen and disaster will be narrowly averted.
It’s good stuff.
Is there any other English writer the equal of Shakespeare? I don’t know. Does it really matter?
No. Absolutely none.
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Grad, well that settles it then 😉
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To avoid any confusion, I was answering the question whether any other English writer is equal to Shakespeare. Obviously, there is none – at least none that I can think of.
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Yup, that’s how I understood you 🙂
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I was just listening to NPR today and they were doing a story about the search for Cervantes burying place and they said something to the effect of Cervantes being the Shakespeare of the Spanish-speaking world. Unfortunately, I’ve tried to get through Don Quixote twice and haven’t made it through. Maybe on the third attempt. Anyway, Shakespeare is indeed wonderful!
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Iliana, yes, I’ve heard about the search for Cervantes’ bones. Don Quixote is a fantastic book that has everything in it including the kitchen sink. But it is definitely not easy going. It took me two tries to get through and it helped that on that second try I was reading it with two other people. May your next attempt be a success!
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Of course, Shakespeare read and loved Cervantes. He probably picked his copy up from the book stalls outside St Pauls just after it was published and then reworked part of it with John Fletcher for the lost ‘Cardenio’. And, they died on the same day.
In respect of Shakespeare’s greatness I saw ‘The Roaring Girl’ by Middleton and Dekker on Saturday, written at about the same time as ‘The Winter’s Tale’ and ‘The Tempest’ and was reminded yet again how remarkable a writer Shakespeare was in comparison with the rest of his generation.
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Alex, yes, I read somewhere that Shakespeare read Cervantes which is such an interesting piece of information, those two great writers working at the same time keeling over on the same day. A rich time for literature. I can’t say that I have read much of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, his shadow is so large that nothing else from the time seems as worthwhile.
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I’ve had the same thought process as you regarding Shakespeare, sometimes after seeing a play I didn’t like much. But I’ve not been able to come up with a writer who hits so many different kinds of notes, and who does it so well. Plus, most of the time, if I see a Shakespeare play I don’t like, the fault seems more with the production than the text.
I did just see some wonderful productions of his Henry IV plays, and it got me to thinking about how great some of his less frequently performed plays are. I always think of Hamlet and Lear and Twelfth Night as the great ones, but I’ve been blown away recently by the Henry plays and by Coriolanus and even the Two Gentlemen of Verona. It’s an impressive body of work!.
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Teresa, I know what you mean about blaming the production and not the play when you see one you don’t like, I do the same thing! The Henry plays are wonderful! The relationship between Hal and Falstaff is both funny and heartbreaking. Kenneth Branagh made a good film version of Henry V a long time ago. I’ve not read Coriolanus but I’ve heard much about it since Tom Hiddleston is currently acting in it and it sounds excellent. Once I finish Lear I might have to give it a go!
You are right about his less frequently performed plays. The biggies get done so often it makes it seem like they are the only ones worth the time and effort. But there is so much amazing stuff to explore in all of the plays.
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Wait, Grad, c’mon, for literary history it matters a lot. English-language poetry reinvigorated itself multiple times by turning to Shakespeare, each time focusing on something different. They didn’t turn to Ben Jonson, even though Jonson wrote several plays as good as and quite different than Shakespeare’s. Nor did they turn to John Webster, who wrote a couple of plays as good as and much like Shakespeare’s.
As if this were not enough, German Classicists and Romantics did the same thing, as did French Romantics, although that did not stick as well, as did mid-century Russians. Then there are the significant 20th century responses in Japanese literature, which I do not know enough about to describe.
In this sense, there is no other modern writer in the world who is the equal of Shakespeare.
Now, it is true that the Elizabethan and Jacobean period is the greatest in English literature, even without Shakespeare, but it is certainly not a story of steady decline after that. Civil war and closed theaters caused not a decline but a crash. The Restoration restored literature, however decadently, the 18th century classicized Shakespeare, young punks Wordsworth and Coleridge pulled Shakespeare their way and blew poetry open; meanwhile the English theater had died again, only to be etc. etc.
There are other ways to tell the story, but “state of slow decline” – no way, no way. Wild ups and downs; constant surprises.
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Tom, you are right, it does matter in terms of literary history. Shakespeare’s influence is everywhere including the language we speak every day and most people don’t even know that. He’s a deep well that we return to again and again, always pulling up something new. It is really fascinating to see how every era goes back to him and reimagines/reinvents/makes him current. But of course he is always current that’s one reason why we always return to him. Loved you historical summary!
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Tom, I was answering the question, “Is there any other English writer the equal of Shakespeare?’ And my response was, “No. Absolutely none.”
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Ha! Really? Not the last question? Boy did I misread that!
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Tom, that’s okay. I am always so misunderstood. :>
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The National Theater in London is doing King Lear on movie screens in this country. It’s on May 1st. Perhaps it is in a nearby local theater.
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Richard, thanks for reminding me! It will be playing 10 minutes away on June 1st and I will be there to see it!
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Of course I’m no lit scholar/critic to offer any relevant opinion, but just from crude personal observation, from both quantity and quality, and the number of adaptations in numerous forms, no other names come to mind. Now almost 400 years after his death, Shakespeare still exists in our popular culture, not just among the scholastic elite. According to IMDb, more than 10 movie productions are in development for 2014-15, so far, yes, including King Lear.
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Arti, interesting line-up of film productions! I so love how the stories are continually updated!
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Even my students wanted to read Hamlet aloud. No equal in this language (and probably no equal in any other).
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jenclair, that’s saying something! Definitely no equal in language and probably no equal in storytelling either.
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I think there is something to the idea that in art forms the earliest rather defines the medium and is looked back upon as the “greatest”, time serving that epithet as well as work. For psychological insight, epigrammic brilliance, and the conveyance of chivalric honor and classical values, “Shakespeare” is unmatched by later writers, in the eyes of later viewers and readers. For reasons of their own, the authorities, political and educational, have made him a national institution. This may be too much for another author to equal by mere literary status. As Whitman wrote, there is also a persistent puzzle in “Shakespeare”–how the works even came about at all. “Some born knower or descendant” was his surmise, himself being an unprecedented power in the language. This of course was not the nearly illiterate Shakspere of Stratford with no pretensions to education or art in his lifetime or known as that by anyone who knew him from the family and town of Stratford. Instead, a ruse seems the explanation fitting the facts, which expediently solved the taboo against a high noble creating the works in enforced anonymity or pseudonymity. Such a plan also later provided an open slate for political power to set up a sui generis example of rags to riches for an English lad suddenly sounding like an English noble, ergo, keep your nose clean, don’t cause trouble, and you can be rich and famous just like “Shakespeare”. Art does not work like that, as we know. “The gods make it an implacable law, that men will learn from their suffering”, according to Aeschylus. The anguish of the life begot the works. This appears to me closest to understanding the greatness of “Shakespeare”: his surpassing work defining the language and his tragic fate, to be eaten alive by Power. He knew too much and threatened the legitimacy of the tyrannous state, which he tried to affect with his artistic wisdom. His family (the Herbert brothers to whom the First Folio was dedicated) could only get the works out by hoaxing them as a harmless countryman’s. And so it stands today.
William Ray
wjray.net
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I feel a bit like Andre Gide when he was asked who the best French writer was and he said ‘Victor Hugo, helas!’ I do admire Shakespeare, and can see how incredibly influential he was…. but (and don’t shoot me! 🙂 ) I’d rather pick up just about any other author. Yeah, yeah and me an ex-prof and all. I know!
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Litlove, I’m all aghast! I thought you were required to love Shakespeare in the UK. Can’t they revoke your citizenship if you don’t? 😉
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We-ell, I should like to nominate Chaucer as an equal, but (a) although very influential up to and upon Shakespeare he declined in influence thereafter so hasn’t had WS’s effect upon literary history, (b) nobody except first-year undergraduates and university professors reads him any more and (c) I’m scared you’ll all beat me up. 🙂
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Helen, no one will beat you up or even bully you for liking Chaucer more 🙂 You are right though, hardly anyone reads him anymore and when they do it is usually “in translation.” Chaucer is great but I think English has changed so much that Chaucer’s English is too foreign for people to read without help whereas Elizabethan English is still comprehensible.
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I like Shakespere, i read him at the University and was blessed with teachers who helped see his writings in a whole new paradigm….having said that, I do think that Marlowe was more gifted…I do believe that had he lived longer, his work would have outdone what Shakespere did; however there is a but and the but is that Marlowe did not live and Shakespere did live to write some marvellous stuff… I know Teresa commented about the wide range of notes that he hits and I know he is an exception to such variety of depth, but I can think of another author/poet in another era and another land who had an equal if not greater spectrum of emotions that were poured into words – for every human emotion and depth, Rabindranath Tagore had a song/poem/play/novel. So while I do agree Shakespere was great, he was one of the greats among others like Marlowe and Tagore!
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