No, Claudia, I don't think Dylan is doing the equivalent of what Shakespeare did. There are plenty of singer/songwrters like Dylan. I, for instance, think Bert Jansch's 'Needle of Death' is better than anything Dylan did in that line.
But Shakespeare was not just like Marlowe and Jonson and Webster. In one play, say MacBeth which every Scottish boy has studied he produced more poetry than they managed in all their works put together.
Consider just one speech:
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life' but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is herd no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Sgnifying nothing.
No-one else can do anything like that.
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