[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

Are you saying that there are plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries that are as great as Lear, Hamlet, or The Tempest? I hope the answer is yes, since it would be wonderful to discover new plays that are as good as Shakespeare at his very best. I'm skeptical, but open-minded.

Originally Posted by Max

I think Shaun means that the work of his contemporaries is good enough that if we didn't have Lear and Hamlet to measure it against, we would venerate it the way we venerate those plays.

Yes, Max has the gist of what I was going for. Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy was written before Shakespeare was active, and possibly/probably before Shakespeare's first play was performed as well. There is an undeniable influence of Kyd's play on Hamlet, even though there's a suspected Ur-Hamlet out there too. Imagine the Ghost sitting on the side of the stage for the entire performance, openly wondering from time to time when he's going to be avenged. I would never say that The Spanish Tragedy is "better" than Hamlet, but it seems to have been a very popular play at the time (performed well into the 1590s), and had there not been a Hamlet, who's to say that we wouldn't be lauding it as the preeminent revenge tragedy? Pure speculation, I know, but most modern readers would now read The Spanish Tragedy long after they were familiar with Hamlet, and it's hard not to come away from that experience thinking "Wow, so much of that is reminiscent of Hamlet!"...even though that line of thought should rightly be the other way around.

My opinion is that Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, The Tempest, and perhaps a few others by Shakespeare are "better" than the best of his contemporaries. But I can't help but suspect that part of why I think that way is that I read and studied all of them before I read much Marlowe, or any Middleton, Ford, Webster, Fletcher, Heywood, Kyd etc. There's a formative familiarity to Shakespeare that colors my perception a bit. Then again, the only play I can recall making me truly tear up when reading it (I'm not the tearing-up type) is Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness. For whatever that's worth. But one of my strong feelings, which I expressed somewhere earlier in this thread, is that if we're not just judging by the best of Shakespeare, and judging by works beyond his "greatest hits," there are certainly many better plays and playwrights. Comedy is a flexible category that includes a lot of plays that aren't necessarily "funny," but I think I'd feel comfortable saying that several other contemporaries did humor better than Shakespeare. Jonson and Fletcher in particular, and someone mentioned Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle, the text of which evokes uproarious hilarity -- you can picture the absurdity on the stage, aided by a pair of low-born "audience members" who are actually actors, constantly urging the playing company to change the script to accommodate the talents of Rafe, the grocer's apprentice.

Originally Posted by Julie

Weren't most of Shakespeare's contemporary playwrights* influenced by him, and he by them? So if he hadn't existed, they might have written different plays than they did. (Likewise, he would have written differently if they hadn't existed to influence him.)

Yes! And this is an important point that goes both ways. When we try to elevate Shakespeare to the level of a god among mortals, we have to ignore the extensive network of influences and collaborations that were a part of Shakespeare's cultural fabric. And vice versa. History has often pulled Shakespeare free of that network, which is a shame. As I've said probably a dozen times, Shakespeare really was great, "the greatest," or whatever encomium you wish to apply...but it's best to see that greatness in context, and recognize that so many parts and pieces of what made him great are evident in his contemporaries. And yes, some of their works do seem to trump some of his. Volpone and The Alchemist have come up a couple of times, but they really have such fantastic plotting that it's a wonder they're not household titles. The Duchess of Malfi is a phenomenal tragedy, as is The Renegado (technically a "tragi-comedy"). I could just keep throwing worthwhile titles out there, but you get the gist. Maybe most of these plays couldn't exist without Shakespeare's influence, but in many cases, Shakespeare's plays couldn't exist without the influence of other great dramas.


P.S. Transnational influences on the English Renaissance are beyond my scope, but I have read (and own) an excellent academic book on the matter for anyone interested in what Julie says about Spanish influences. Eric Griffin's English Renaissance Drama and the Specter of Spain is worth checking out.