N. Matheson, You seem to think that poetry is, not a way of communicating, but a competition for a winner-take-all championship. Reminds me, in a way, of Harold Bloom, who also had a penchant for ranking poets like heavyweight boxers; and he, too, was a professed bardolator, putting Shakespeare in a category by himself. But Bloom loved poetry, & was richly appreciative of many poets. E.g., Whitman and Dickinson, our great American poetic geniuses, who did wonderful things that Shakespeare never could have done. The more wonderful things, the better. Poetry is like God’s house, it has “many mansions.”
As for Marlowe: I agree with Shaun that Shakespeare isn’t “so much” better that Marlowe “isn’t worthwhile.” But I do think Shakespeare is an order of magnitude better. Marlowe had a huge impact, and Shakespeare is, in a sense, organized around that impact, but with a dimension of intelligence Marlowe had no inkling of. Marlowe remains of vital interest, in part, because of what Shakespeare made of him. But he is also intrinsically interesting, as an exemplar of the cultural explosion that separated medieval from modern worlds. If you have any interest in history, you want to keep all the poets, not just one.
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