[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by Sarah-Jane Crowson

Your post had me running to Heywood's, 'Fair Maid of the West' - as I think context here is so important. Shakespeare arrived at a very precise time and place. And he was surely, sure-footedly, political. And an entertainer, and a great writer. But sometimes I think that we don't read enough of Johnson, and Heywood, and the writers around Shakespeare but instead leap on an easy acceptance of what the past and present deify as mastery.

Honestly, if there's but one thing that anyone takes away from this thread, I hope it's what you just said so concisely. Shakespeare's greatness is beyond question, but he certainly didn't eclipse his peers. He just generally shone a bit brighter, and benefited from duration. Saying as much is not sacrilege, but simply highlights that the 1580s-1610s was a very special time in English literature -- one for which the overused term zeitgeist certainly applies. One could made a compelling speculative argument that had Shakespeare not existed, there are several candidates for playwrights who would have held a similar place in literary history. That does not detract from the fact that Shakespeare is the person in that place, and deservedly so. I just agree that more of his peers deserve to be read and taught, because there's some truly exceptional drama and poetry from that condensed period.

[David Callin]

Originally Posted by E. Shaun Russell

One could made a compelling speculative argument that had Shakespeare not existed, there are several candidates for playwrights who would have held a similar place in literary history.

I think your comments have been a model of good sense throughout, Shaun, but I draw the line at that one. Without Shakespeare, would we have thought of Marlowe, or Webster, or Jonson, as we do of him? (Maybe Marlowe if he'd survived, sure, but not as we have him.)

I think not.

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by David Callin

Maybe Marlowe if he'd survived ...

Ah, but he did survive and wrote Shakespeare’s plays in French exile! That’s my favorite non-Stratfordian theory, though it seems as farfetched as it is colorful. BTW, I’d be interested in knowing what Shaun or anyone else thinks of “The Marlowe Papers,” an award-winning novel in Elizabethan blank verse by Ros Barber, who’s a card-carrying Marlovian.

[Max Goodman]

An interesting theory, Shaun. Thanks for sharing it.

The popularity of his plays during his lifetime undoubtedly helped, but there's been plenty of time for the plays of Marlowe and the others to be reevaluated and claim a larger slice of attention. (Maybe that reevaluation is still to come; maybe you'll play a role in it.)

I suppose your speculation in post 65 suggests some level of agreement with the idea that Elizabethan plays are too similar for there to be room for the work of more than one Elizabethan playwright in the popular/middlebrow consciousness.

Originally Posted by E. Shaun Russell

One could made a compelling speculative argument that had Shakespeare not existed, there are several candidates for playwrights who would have held a similar place in literary history.

I'd learn a lot from that argument. I hope you'll make it on behalf of one more of the candidates. It would be a great subject for a book.

[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.

[Max Goodman]

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.

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.

The more I think about it (and I'm embarrassed not to have thought much about it before) the more amazed I am at what the Elizabethan dramatists accomplished as a group. English drama before them was (I think) rudimentary. Shaun is surely right that even if Shakespeare had never existed, it would be astounding that they went in so short a time from those rudiments to Marlowe.

Can anyone point me toward books about this collective accomplishment?

[Julie Steiner]

Though there doesn't seem to be evidence of direct influence on English drama by Spanish drama, and specifically by Lope de Vega, before or during Shakespeare's time, I have to think that Lope's structural innovations must have trickled over somehow. Maybe through the Netherlands....

Lope probably did actually see England, but didn't set foot there. He was on one of the few ships of the Spanish Armada that made it home after the naval disaster.

A summary of Lope's most notable innovations (from Wikipedia), for the curious:

Lope encountered a poorly organized dramatic tradition; plays were sometimes composed in four acts, sometimes in three, and though they were written in verse, the structure of the versification was left to the individual writer. Because the Spanish public liked it, he adopted the style of drama which was then in vogue. He enlarged its narrow framework to a great degree, introducing a wide range of material for dramatic situations – the Bible, ancient mythology, the lives of the saints, ancient history, Spanish history, the legends of the Middle Ages, the writings of the Italian novelists, current events, and everyday Spanish life in the 17th century. Prior to Lope, playwrights sketched the conditions of persons and their characters superficially. With fuller observation and more careful description, Lope de Vega depicted real character types with language and accouterments appropriate to their position in society.

Lope and his circle were also known for including two or more plot lines and multiple locations in a single play, which had been no-no's according to the previous rules of drama.

TL;DR: Lope's loosening of those limitations clearly benefitted drama far beyond Spain's borders.

[Max Goodman]

You may be right, Julie, (in the implication you tactfully avoid stating) that it's parochial to view this as an English-only accomplishment.

(I was thinking of adding to my post above to avoid any impression that I was ignoring your point about mutual influence (in my comment about how the group's accomplishments might be viewed if had Shakespeare had never existed). The generally-agreed-on chronology, I think, suggests that Marlowe accomplished great work before he could have been influenced by Shakespeare's. I agree with what you say about mutual influence.)

[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.

[Julie Steiner]

Ooh! Thanks for the book reference. (And there we go, influencing each other...)