[Richard Meyer]

Bill:

Well of course no one is born in a vacuum. It goes without saying that Shakespeare was born in England, that he inherited his mother tongue, that he followed the established genre of writing plays in blank verse, that he snatched plots wherever he could, that he this and he that and …

So, what's your point? Not much of one as far as I can see. What you've been saying is not all that controversial; it's just trivial, in my opinion. I find it curious in this discussion that when a particular point about the original or creative language usage of a great writer has arisen and someone supplies specifics that contradict some attitude of yours, you just ignore the point. Borrowing a plot has nothing to do with telling or retelling the story by using language in a new or superlative way. Good writing, as Alexander Pope tells us, is "what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed."

Your attitude toward Shakespeare makes me wonder if you've read his contemporaries, looked at his writing next to theirs. And it was later admirers, not Dante himself, who added the word Divine to his Comedy. Apparently no one at the time had enlightened them with your view that focusing on exceptional individual creativity and talent when studying literature is simply a convenient trope.

Your seemingly dismissive attitude toward individual writers of genius and their contributions reminds me of that old absurdity: give a monkey a typewriter and enough time to plunk away at the keys and in a few millennia he'll turn out Hamlet by sheer chance.

Richard