Surely there has to be someone that comes close, right?

Only the big N and he had too short of a productive lifespan to achieve his power level.

Marlowe
Cervantes
Chaucer
Virgil
Homer
Milton
Ariosto
Proust

>>7825399

Who is the big N?

>>7825399
The Big N is Nintendo. Please find another nickname for whatever you're referring to.

>>7825491
nigger

>>7825491
the big N tasty

Goethe

>>7825491
Nick Smith

>>7825396
What's a good reading order for Shakespeare?

Yes. Plato.

>>7825733
chronological faggot

use any of the major chronologies there are some discrepancies but overall experience should be fine

just read the sonnets in numbered order without regard for chronology since god knows that's hard to ascertain

>>7825750
God isn't real

>>7825753
mein gott, pure ideology -sniff-

>>7825396
Chaucer is extremely impressive. The Canterbury tales are a blast to read a will dramatically improve your understanding of the English language if you haven't read anything else from that period.

>>7825396

Tolstoy

Dostoevsky

>>7825735
>comparing Plato to Shakespeare

What are you doing

>>7826045
You'll understand when you're older

>>7825399
He clearly means Nick Land.

>>7825414
Flaubert before Proust here.

>>7825414
No Dostoevsky or Tolstoy?

Pushkin's drama Boris Godunov is infinitively better than all shakespeare's shit put together

And he wasn't even a play writer

>>7826327
>better than all shakespeare's shit put together

Says the guy who have read only the 4 main tragedies (or even less)

>>7825414
Proust on Shakespeare's level? Nah.
And even Milton acknowledged that he saw Shakespeare as his better:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175750
though I think that is debatable.

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>>7825396

Elliot Rodger is 2nd only to shakespeare

Dante

>>7826327

Idiot.

>>7826566
this.

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>>7825414
>tfw Marlowe showed just as much potential as Shakespeare but died young in a barroom brawl

Joyce

>>7827955
I think about this all the time.

In English, I really do think it's just Chaucer. Milton has definite moments of greatness but he's too partisan (politically, theologically) to have that universal status - too directly involved in topical affairs to have a good critical distance from them (his political pamphlets are depressingly petty at times.)

Other languages? Dante and Cervantes come close, but I don't think either knock Willie off the top spot. Maybe Moliere is at least on this tier?

Also sprach zarathustra>shakespeare

>>7827955

>Implying they weren't the same person

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>>7825396

Step aside you earring wearing, shepherd's pie eating faggot. True GOAT coming through

>>7827957

>>7827955
Are you kidding me? Marlowe was clearly inferior. There are countless essays on this subject. I believe Greenblatt explains in his biography how each of Marlowe's plays have a Shakespearean counterpart that is better in every way (Tamurlaine vs. Richard III, The Jew of Malta vs. The Merchant of Venice). Surely Shakespeare was inspired by Marlowe, but you can't compare a genius with someone so inferior.

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>>7825396
don't call me shirley you fucking piece of shit.

>implying the greeks don't 'rape' him.

>>7825396
Kendrick Lamar
Young Dolph
Gucci Mane

>>7825396
Drake
Nikki Minaj
Kanye West

The pic isn't loading for me.

But I assume it's David Foster Wallace (AKA DWF, Big Dave), right?