Quote:
Originally Posted by Susan McLean
Shaun, Shakespeare's plays mostly consist of poetry. I can't imagine limiting myself to his sonnets and a few longer poems to show what he could do as a poet. And the level of the poetry in his plays is mainly good, but frequently exquisite. I like Milton a lot, but he just doesn't have the range that Shakespeare has. I've read many other Renaissance dramatists with great pleasure, and I am sorry that so many excellent ones, such as Marlowe, Webster, Tourneur, Middleton, and Ford, are overlooked because of Shakespeare's preeminence. Shakespeare stands out for having greater depth to his characterization, a really astonishing grasp of human psychology, a sound sense of what works dramatically, but it is his poetry that has always knocked me out.
Susan
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If we're ignoring generic distinctions -- play versus poetry -- then it's a different question entirely...though that gets to the heart of my earlier refrain about establishing objective criteria for the "greatest" being nigh on impossible. Technically, you're right: Shakespeare's plays are predominantly in blank verse. Of course, so are those of most of his contemporaries. Calling Shakespeare's plays "poetry" widens the goalposts considerably, meaning we would have to look at the "poetry" of any contemporaneous play (or masque, for that matter). But if you're using poetry in the broader, more imprecise sense of "beautiful language," that's naturally a subjective concern that is tantamount to an opinion. An educated one, an informed one, and a viable one...but if we're playing the game of "greatest poet," I don't know if calling the plays poetry is fair play.
Also, I'm not quite sure what you mean by Milton's range. He is someone who has written the most notable and studied epic in our language, as well as works ranging from sonnets to masques to elegies to poems in a variety of forms, short and long. That's not even factoring in his prose tracts and dramas like
Samson Agonistes, which are chock full of poetic language. Topically, I will concede that Milton rarely writes about love on the interpersonal level of many poets...but when he does, it's gutting. Case in point: Sonnet 23.
Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescu'd from death by force, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom wash'd from spot of child-bed taint
Purification in the old Law did save,
And such as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind;
Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin'd
So clear as in no face with more delight.
But Oh! as to embrace me she inclin'd,
I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.
Knowing that he is blind, and had a beautiful -- visual -- dream of his dead wife, only to awaken to a sightless, wifeless world... That has an emotional depth I have never seen in Shakespeare. Add to that the clever allusion to
Petrarch via Spenser via Raleigh, and the poem is a figurative powerhouse as well.