How much of Shakespeare's legacy is manufactured

>>9394767
Most great artists achieve the height of their game posthumously. It doesn't make it manufactured in a disengenuous sense. It just means that it takes time to realize the true power of someone's work. Work that hits home with audiences year after year generation after generation, that's special.

>>9394780
Fame not game.

>>9394780

maybe not manufactured, but i heard Shakespeare had a much more modest legacy in the 18th century

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>>9394767
>whitewashing Will-I-Am Shakaspear
shig de la dig

>>9394767
My only problem is that his sonnet's overshadows Sir Phillip Sidney's, which is crazy.

>>9394788
He probably did. He was no doubt famous and monied and his plays were watched by Elizabeth, but then again lots of play writes could lay claim to the same thing. But people through the centuries have preferred his stories over others. His prose over others. He just had that knack that separates genius from talent and it takes a long view for that to shake out sometimes.

>>9394767
>>9394788
18th century poets were shit and unironically thought that Ben Jonson was better than Shakespeare.

The Romantic Age came and people started having more appreciation for the psychological depth and poetic richness of Shakespeare, long after the fashionable pap of the Elizabethans (like Kyd, Jonson, Marlowe, Spenser) had passed into obscurity. Great poets can have their reputations mislaid, especially a writer as bawdy and immoral as Shakespeare. But he was pre-eminent in his own time and always popular; Ben Jonson famously wrote that "he is not for this age, but for all time".

It should be noted that the greatest writer of the 18th century, William Blake, was an ardent admirer of Shakespeare.

Wasn't it confirmed that Francis Bacon is the real shakespeare, i heard that somewhere before?

>>9394810
No, that's a conspiracy theory

>>9394788
yeah, and Homer was less popular during the Bronze Age Collapse than he was in 400 B.C., your point?

>>9394809
I love William Blake, dude was amazing

a religious nutbag, but still amazing

>>9394810
No, it's thought he wrote Titus though.

isn't the only competition that Shakespeare has for "greatest english writer" is Milton

in terms of consensus

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>>9394810
Then who wrote all of Francis Bacon's works?

>>9394820
T.S. Eliot

>>9394822
Marlowe.
>>9394826
Eliot was american ya nutbag.

>>9394826
James Joyce is up there as well

>>9394820
Milton is so far behind Shakespeare it's not even funny. Chaucer is probably in second place in terms of English lit though

>>9394829
i meant english the language not english the country

>>9394820
Do we mean English ethnicity or English language?

>>9394820
No, not really.
From what I've seen the question has not been greatest english writer but greatest writer, and only a few like Dante and Cervantes compete.

>>9394839
Tolstoy as well

>>9394831
Joyce doesn't have something like cats, though.

>>9394844
Yeah but Joyce has bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonne
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-
nuk!

>>9394839
I'll just clear things up real quick and say Dante is better than Cervantes by a decent margin, the competition is just Shakespeare and him.

>>9394852
Four Quartets is T.S. Eliot's complex late-in-life critical failure.

>>9394853
>>9394839
Homer? Ovid? you guys are forgetting the golden gods here.

>>9394853
Just pointing out what consensus usually is. Spanishfags love to but Cervantes as the greatest ever.

>>9394838
Does it even make a difference with respect to the answer?

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>>9394809
>Spenser
>fashionable pap

Cervantes is kind of overrated, he is often called the first novelist but Japanese and Chinese writers as well as Islamic writers had novels before him

>>9394856
Four Quartets are not a failure. Read Husserl you pleb.

>>9394866
It fails at the end when he stretches so hard to tie a bow that just doesn't work.

>>9394857
They suck. You're supposed to start with the Greeks not stop there.

>>9394864
Modern novelist*

There is a difference.

>>9394875
You take that back about Ovid or you'll be sorry.

>>9394862
Well sure including non Anglo writers from colonies would change the discussion.

>>9394863
>muh Queen Elizabeth
>muh Christian virtue

>>9394880
The metamorphoses was boring trash. Mythology is trash. Read some Livy if you want decent Roman writing that is actually interesting.

>>9394889
t. doesn't know Latin

>>9394891
>T. Wastes Latin on mythology.
Why?

He truly is the greatest one though. I wish I could read something as good as the "tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" monologue of Macbeth again. And English isn't even my native language.

>>9394889
If you think metamorphoses is just mythology, then you're wasting your time trying to read poetry.

>>9394908
It's boring poetry. The subject matter matters. That's why Shakespeare is interesting, he writes about political intrigue, warring factions, and foolish emotions. Obviously some of those things are included in mythologies and obviously Shakespeare drew inspiration from them but Ovid is infantile in comparison.

>>9394918
Did you actually read it or are you just jerking my trigger?

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>>9394924
Yes. To both.

So who do you guys actually think are among the very top tier of writers ever? So far you guys have Shakespeare, Milton, Tolstoy, Cervantes, Dante, Homer, Ovid, and T.S. Eliot, if I didn't miss any.

>>9394958
TWAIN
W
A
I
N

>>9394928
okay. thank you for letting go.

>>9394960
You really think so? Which of his works do you think merit that?

Is Toni Morrison on the same tier as Tolstoy?

>>9394978
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Pudd'n Head Wilson.

>>9394960
Wow, no.
>>9394958
Forgot Joyce.

>>9394991
He's habitually underrated due to huck fin and tom Sawyer.

>>9395002
Not saying he isn't good, but there are several Americans to bring up before Twain. Greatest ever is kind of ridiculous.

>>9395016
>there are several Americans to bring up before Twain

Like who? Faulkner, Melville?

>>9395035
Maybe Melville, but Twain towers over faulkner

>>9395035
Yes. Also Whitman, H. Crane, Stevens, Dickinson, and James.
All greater literary figures.

>>9395016
Idk man, ACKAC was pretty revolutionary for it's time using elements of fantastic realism and fantasy to highlight the social anxieties of a rapidly advancing technological age and how it tears at the fabric of a traditional agrarian society. Just because those things got played to death later on doesn't mean he shouldn't be recognized as the springboard for dystopian sci-fi and other genres.

>>9395045
That's like your opinion man.

>>9395045
Which of those writers, if any, would you put in the very top level of writers?

By the 18th century Shakespeare was on top of the English canon. Remember that it was the age of Dr. Johnson.

>>9394809
the romantic age was (almost?) as influenced by Spenser as it was Shakespeare, he doesn't belong on that list for many reasons. He's a poet, not a playwright, he wrote romance, he's several decades earlier...

the romantics were all about reclaiming the tradition of spenser

>>9395050
Yeah, it's impressive, but is it really GOAT worthy? Consider the entire tradition and all the other innovations.
>>9395062
None, which means I certainly wouldn't put Twain there.

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>>9394842
>Tolstoy as well

>>9395074
Well he put his finger on the pulse of the root of 20th and so far the 21st centuries main source of conflict and stress from the 19th century. Not to mention the siege of Merlin's tower by the products of industry preemptively calls the destruction of Europe in the world wars. It's just not that often somebody puts something out that is as eerily accurate so far ahead of its time.

Dante and Shakespeare divided the world between them. there is no third.

-eliot

>>9395095
Well, you make a case, but I don't believe prophecy equates sublimity. And general consensus in the literary community is that Twain does not stand with the greatest ever.

>>9394814
Well yeah, Homer wasn't born yet during the Bronze Age collapse.

>>9395118
If we are just going to go with general consensus then why have a debate? Not formulating your own opinions in favor of the concensus of others is the most pseud thing you could do. Some people may prefer others prose over his but I like his prose and the pursuit of aesthetics for aesthetics sake is a hollow pursuit. I'll take the man with the most to say any day.

A whole lot of idolatry in this thread. When will the largest kill the rest, and sustain itself on their remains?

>>9395133
Because this was about consensus.

>>9395133
Valuing the message over the form is just as invalid a literary measure as consensus. If predictive power wins over all other qualities any day, then most literature doesn't even attain to the level of bad philosophy and science.

>>9395166
No it wasn't see>>9394958
>What do you guys think
Not
>What do you guys think academia's concensus is.
>>9395167
I said aesthetics for aesthetics sake. Obviously it all goes into the equation.
>What you have to say
>How well you say it
Are both important and say we give points out of ten to those scales and do a cumulative score
ACYKAC
>10
>8

>>9395191
>>9394958
>So far you guys have...
And everything after that is a writer that was proposed based off consensus. See >>9394820
>in terms of consensus

>>9395244
This proposition
>>9394958
Followed this post
>>9394820
Therefore the current conversation is about what we think, not consensus. Pls keep up with the current proposition.

>>9395348
Then >>9394958
made a grave mistake and did not himself understand previous proposed writers are invalid in regard to his new proposition.

>>9395394
Well let's suppose it's the same anon then from both propositions. Don't you think it's more likely he was implying the consensus of the thread rather than of a third party, especially in light of the direction he chose to later take the discourse?

>>9395613
No. OP seems like he was talking about academia and the general literary community throughout time. It's bizarre to assume >>9394820 meant this thread, especially since Milton was not yet mentioned.

>>9394839
This is Anglo delusion at its finest.

>>9395124
by the bronze age collapse i mean the greek dark ages obviously