This has not been my experience at all and I am wondering what happened in academia in the past two years apparently. What I was taught was Shakespeare is not merely an artist, but art incarnate. His works are so far removed from us mere mortals that to even think he is capable of being measured is like trying to put a chain around the wind. I recall one quote repeated that said the only person who created more than Shakespeare was God alone. Harold Bloom, who has been mentioned, also relegated every one of his contemporaries to hacks. He dismissed works such as The Spanish Tragedy as nonsense. I fail to see how anything anyone could have written even compares to his on remotely the same level.
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