[Julie Steiner]

The sad irony is that what made Shakespeare's work great was his empathy — his ability to set aside his own ego and inhabit other points of view.

For poets whose only goal is building up their own egos by reaching for Shakespearean "greatness," while ignoring his works' empathy, the only way in which their work COULD resemble Shakespeare's is through cosmetic superficialities like copied quirks of syntax, vocabulary, and typography.