Shakespeare

>>9013688
It isn't fair. It's a really englishcentrist thing to say.

He is, without a doubt, one of the greatest. Whether he is the greatest or not is a debate that really doesn't matter. It's just a dick-waving contest.

>>9013701
What if he didn't write all of those plays

I don't think it's possible to read and analyze every literary work of the Western canon and go "Wow, this guy is absolutely the best." Same applies for any other author.

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>>9013688
What do YOU think, anon? As much as I hate coming to terms with the idea that I need to judge these things and come to these conclusions myself, I know it's for the best. After reading enough Shakespeare, I can confidently say he's the best writer I have ever read. Even when it comes to other big names that can possibly compete and that I am comfortably familiar with (Joyce, Dante, etc.), I still side with Shakespeare.

All you have to do is read him enough, and you'll more than likely come to the same conclusion.

>>9013706
I'll side with bardolatry. It gives me hope.

Pic unrelated, I think.

If all you read are /lit/ memes and what (((they)) push in schools then you can't comment ITT.

Shakesqueer is memed hard in schools starting from about age 12-14 all the way into librarian phd courses.

I think y'all need to stfu and write your own stuff and stop busting your balls over what (((they))) want you to buy. There's enough good stuff to read from any 50 year time period to last a lifetime but if it's not memed constantly on /lit/ you won't touch.

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>>9014035
This post is fucking pathetic.

>>9014035
Jesus Christ, kid...

I can't tell if you're trolling, or the CIA disinfo campaigns on /pol/ are working..

>>9013688
>No proof of Shakespeare even ever being alive
>Wrote in a time when less than 1% was even literate, so the royalty controlled media overhyped him for centuries.

>James Joyce was on the shoulders of giants
>lived in extreme poverty his whole life and faced more hardships than silver spoon Shitspeare could've ever imagined

You're a fucking faggot OP

>>9014035
He's right. Shakespeare was actually a black jewish women and (((they))) use Romeo and Juliet to convert kids into gay atheists.

>>9014128
This. Most of the people in the 1200's couldn't even read Shakesqueers novels cuz they were too dumb and illeterate.

James is really good tho because he was like, really poor

>>9015022
>shakesqueers novels
Kek

>>9013688
I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium... Several times I read the dramas and the comedies and historical plays, and I invariably underwent the same feelings: repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment. At the present time, before writing this preface, being desirous once more to test myself, I have, as an old man of seventy-five, again read the whole of Shakespeare, including the historical plays, the "Henrys," "Troilus and Cressida," "The Tempest", "Cymbeline", and I have felt, with even greater force, the same feelings,—this time, however, not of bewilderment, but of firm, indubitable conviction that the unquestionable glory of a great genius which Shakespeare enjoys, and which compels writers of our time to imitate him and readers and spectators to discover in him non-existent merits,—thereby distorting their esthetic and ethical understanding,—is a great evil, as is every untruth.

>>9015042
tolstoy pls go and stay go

>>9015061
Prove him wrong.

>>9013688
He's a really good writer, I certainly wouldn't look down on someone who says he's their favorite, but I don't really get what sets him apart to the point that his name is synonymous with "good writer." I think there are plenty of contemporary books, plays and films that you could credibly put on the same level as Shakespeare. I also find it weird how many of the people idolize Shakespeare and look down on pop culture when Shakespeare was pretty pop himself. He was writing for the plebs as well as the elites.

>>9015070
He is entitled to his opinion. He is just advancing his point of view, not making an argument.

>>9015042
Not sure if pasta, baiting or just retarded

>>9015110
found the retard

>>9013688
No, but it'd be fair to say he was one of the greatest English writers ever.

How could writing be a competition? What would the goal be? Juggling words? Writing is something so common, it is also of the animals, n only the increment differs. You're being silly. (aemelia is best btw, yes, hihihihi.)

>>9013688
He's the "best writer ever" in English from a quantitive standpoint of the sheer volume of phrases, idioms, colloquials, insults, etc. he introduced to the language. We call him great for the same reason we call Ghengis Khan terrible: the memetic/genetic material they propagated through writing or sex is irretrievably embedded in the foundations of our ideology and biology.

You could also make the case that Shakespeare covered such universal themes that everything else in the English tradition is somewhat of an afterthought; that he was the first to give form to the anxiety, indecisiveness and ambivalence of modern consciousness; that he was really a secret collective of a number of Elizabethan writers. But that's going further than we need to.

>>9014035
Oh shit it's a pleb with no taste.