This playing both sides seems a characteristic of Shakespeare, and it may contribute both to the roundness of (many of) his characters and to my dissatisfaction with most of the plays as wholes.

I'm helping a friend prepare to direct Henry V next year. Olivier's and Branagh's film versions famously find conflicting messages about war in the play. I should maybe rewatch Branagh's, because I'm feeling that the play presents Henry as a perfect leader--honest, brave, modest, unrelenting in attack, humane in victory, able to make decisions without worrying about bad results. (Admittedly, if overdone, some of those qualities might not be virtues.) And yet, the very first scene suggests that the clergy of his time had mercenary reasons for goading him into the war against France, and a line or two in Henry's first scene can be read as suggesting that he's not really asking for their honest opinions but directing them to argue for war. This undermines the great accomplishments celebrated throughout the play. But--unless I'm missing it--the play never circles back to this; it moves from undermining to celebration.

Honestly, I have to ask: why are we bothering?
I'm serious. If Shakespeare is THAT great, so amazing, so perfect, so above us mere mortals in terms of everything he has done... why do we need poets anymore? What else is there to say he hadn't already perfected? Why are we striving when everything we write is objectively inferior?

There are a million ways to answer this question, including pointing to the many, many posts on this thread that highlight how Shakespeare's great and maybe "the best," but is not some idol to be worshiped. Please. Go read Timon of Athens and tell me it's amazing. I'll wait.

But the easiest way to answer the question is to point out that it's not a competition. "Best" is subjective. I think I said that a few times in this thread as well, but it's worth highlighting. It's not like we're all participants in the literary Olympics and we have no hope of beating the world record at soliloquies. Art's rarely competitive. Just do art for the sake of doing art. If you're good at it, put it out there for others. If you're not, who cares so long as you enjoy it? It's a fool's errand to keep saying "I'll never be better than X so I shouldn't bother." That kind of thinking kills the soul.

Maybe I was just raised on archaic scholarship, but what I gleaned was that literature existed on a hierarchy and some are above others, and Shakespeare ranks above everyone else. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, is below him.

Even that, which you keep returning to, and which people here have suggested doesn't provide a very enriching way of engaging with literature, isn't the same as saying that a purpose of writing (let alone the only purpose) is to find a place in that heirarchy, and that all is lost if you can't be the all-time champ.

I could make a list of activities that I abandoned because I was ashamed of not excelling or afraid that I couldn’t. For example, I didn’t take to swimming as a kid and was so embarrassed by it that I stayed away from the pool. To this day, I’m a poor swimmer. It’s a life-limiting attitude.

Huh?

To anyone holding this view about poetry (or drama, or painting, or music, or tiddlywinks…) – holding it, that is, on the basis of a well-informed and thoughtful consideration of the issues involved rather than as the view represented by some supposed “hierarchy” – I suggest giving attention to a different activity.

Of course, there, too, such a person will encounter the same trap. Since X has already been determined by some supposed authority to have reached the apogee of attainment in that activity, “why are we bothering? … why do we need [participants in that activity] anymore? what else is there to [contribute] that [X] hadn’t already perfected? Why are we striving when everything we [do] is objectively inferior?” (See post 52 above.)

This is an argument for inertia, for not doing anything – in any field of life – in which someone else might be touted by some supposed “authority” as “the best”.

Back at post 24 I began as follows: “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.”

Clive

N, Shakespeare is dead, so you're way ahead of him at this point. He won't write another word that is better than what you write. Just go for it if you feel the call. If not, don't.

I wonder, though, if Casanova and Don Juan are recognized as the best lovers in history, does that mean you plan to give up sex, since what's the use?

One would first have to be able to have sex in order to give up on it.

That's cryptic, N., but it suggests pain, which we should maybe have figured out before now.

A poetry board isn't the best place to find help when you're in pain. I hope you find the help you need.

Be well.