[Roger Slater]

But Shakespeare wrote, "“I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety.” (Henry V)

[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by N. Matheson

I'm sorry, but I think this mentality is entirely wrong. The most important thing anyone can have is legacy. And legacy cannot exist where there is no more room. Only one person will ever be remembered as THE definitive in any field. If you can't achieve that, then I can't even fathom how anyone could justify existing.

Well, if you have your answer, then why are you here on a poetry board? I'm asking sincerely. You have decided that no one is better than Shakespeare, and therefore there's no point in writing -- and by logical extension, anyone who came after Shakespeare is inferior, and were all fools for even trying. If you want to cling to that impossibly limited worldview, you are more than welcome to do so. But it makes it rather hard to have any kind of enlightening discussion when one person just sits there stubbornly repeating dogma very few would agree with. Honestly, if this were a Turing test, I think you would have failed awhile ago, because holding to this idea of "there can be only one!" is strange, especially when so many of us have shown that there can be many greats among the greatest. It's weird and foreign to me that anyone can think otherwise, but whatever floats your boat!

[N. Matheson]

Because I had hoped there were people here who shared my view that someone needs to become a better poet than Shakespeare. Evidently, I was wrong.

[Christine P'legion]

I'll become a better poet than Shakespeare, if it takes the pressure off you. Happy to help.

[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by N. Matheson

Because I had hoped there were people here who shared my view that someone needs to become a better poet than Shakespeare. Evidently, I was wrong.

There are many "better" poets than Shakespeare. This thread has largely become about Shakespeare's plays, and that's the context in which I've passively acknowledged that he's potentially "the greatest" playwright in the English language. There's no established criteria, and it's likely folly to try to come up with some that can be universally applied, but sure -- I can't think of anyone else who I could claim is a greater overall playwright than Shakespeare. If we start breaking it down into categories, I would feel quite comfortable saying there's likely no better English tragedian than Shakespeare. I wouldn't argue against his largely unrivaled excellence with history plays either (but let's not forget that Marlowe had a hand in much of the three parts of VI Henry). Comedies? I think there could be some strong arguments in favor of others...even among his contemporaries. But all of this is pretty arbitrary and falls in the realm of "informed opinion" because (for the millionth time), we can't really apply objective measurements to a subjective field.

Shakespeare's Sonnets have been my academic specialty for awhile now. I've published academic articles on them, have presented at conferences on them, am writing a book on them, had a dissertation chapter on them... I don't have the Sonnets memorized, and can't claim to know all 154 of them inside and out, but I do feel I can talk confidently about their relative merits. And as I said earlier in this thread (an ever-increasing refrain here, I find), I don't think Shakespeare is the greatest poet. He's a great one, sure. Venus and Adonis garnered Shakespeare his original notability as a writer -- it was far more popular then than it is now (which is saying something). But the more I think about what kind of criteria would constitute "greatest," I can comfortably shuffle a few others above him. Milton and Donne, surely. Probably Sidney. And if we're going beyond the Renaissance, there are many 19th and 20th century poets I could see getting the mantle of "greatest" -- or at least have reasonable claims I couldn't really deny. I still think it's a stupid and pointless endeavor to seriously pursue the idea that there can and should be only one greatest that the rest must aspire to, but if we're playing that game (and it truly IS a game)...let's actually play it.

I'll start. I claim that Milton is the greatest poet of all time. From his formative years through to his death, he carefully curated his development as a poet, even as he became a fervent anti-Royalist parliamentarian, often marked by his political pamphlets. His 1645 Poems is a brilliant document of his poetic development to that point, and contains arguably one of the best elegies (and "monodies") of all time in "Lycidas." His sonnets are frequently exceptional, often channeling Spenser and Shakespeare, but improving upon both. But what makes Milton the greatest is his 10565-line masterpiece, Paradise Lost. The sheer depth and breadth of this work made it essentially the final epic poem -- not in fact, perhaps, but certainly in legacy. His Satan is the archetype of most Satans (or other devils) in modern media. Paradise Lost is frequently quoted by people who have never read it, or don't even know the provenance of what they're quoting. And to cap it all off, Milton was blind when he wrote it. Sure, Shakespeare had 154 sonnets, the popular-in-its-time Venus and Adonis and the slightly-less-popular Rape of Lucrece among others...but can those really measure up to the legacy of Milton and his ubiquitous Paradise Lost?

[Max Goodman]

I've been searching for ways of thinking about the speed with which European drama went from morality plays (which I--wrongly?--think primitive; or, maybe more accurately, from the plays of Ancient Greece) to the masterpieces of Marlowe (and Lope?) and then Shakespeare.

What might have been a more expected rate of development? How might we know?

Comparisons will be imperfect for lots of obvious reasons, but I haven't come up with a better way of thinking about this.

Are there other Renaissance accomplishments worth thinking about in this context? I think I mean artistic accomplishments. Am I wrong to think scientific development too different an animal to be helpful here?

The Greeks took longer to go from their first one-actor drama competitions to the masterpieces of Aeschylus and co. that they preserved.

Film has been offered in this thread as a basis for comparison. The development from the first sound feature to Citizen Kane was relatively quick. Silent film might give a stronger analogy--certainly for comparison with the Greeks, in terms of creating a genre out of whole cloth.

Are there other comparisons worth thinking about? Is there a better way than comparison to think about this?

[Christine P'legion]

If we're not limiting ourselves to artistic endeavours I think there are a lot of technological comparisons that one could make:

- 66 years from the first airplane flight to the moon landing

- ~850 years from gunpowder to the Gatling gun; ~80 years from the Gatling gun to the atomic bomb

- the first computers in the 1950s; the first web browser in 1991; the first smartphone in the mid-late aughts; generative AI in the early 2020s

[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

[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by E. Shaun Russell

There are many "better" poets than Shakespeare. ...

... if we're playing that game (and it truly IS a game)...let's actually play it.

I would take Larkin's poems over anyone's, including Shakespeare's (though not over the poetry in Shakespeare's plays).

Larkin's "Aubade" (the best of many strong poems) captures the terror of death--a basic feature of life for many of us--more strongly than any other piece of writing I know. Shakespeare's sonnet 73, lovely as it is, can't hold a candle to it.

*

Thanks, Christine, for that thought-provoking list, including

Originally Posted by Christine P'legion

- the first computers in the 1950s; ... generative AI in the early 2020s

Maybe in a generation, people will start such a list with: X years from the creation of generative AI to the first AI-written masterpiece.

I hope others will add to the list or otherwise share thoughts.

[Shaun J. Russell]

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

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.