hey, guys. i'll say it up front: this will probably be a

>>9971239
gee, you really are a dingbat. the answer is yes to all of those things. mere mortals like us will never be qualified to "evaluate" shakespeare because we simply do not have the critical framework necessary to do so. all we can do is bask in his genius. uhhhh but anyway read De Quincy's "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth." It's short and very important.

Shakespeare is considered the best both for individual quality and influence.
Debate on the former largely goes on whether the Sonnets Shakespeare or the Plays Shakespeare is better, but the Plays were quite a bit more influential.

Sometimes I'm unsure if Shakespeare was truly that mind-blowingly good, or if all of the critics and analysts have created a depth that wasn't initially there.

>>9971285
Even if that were true, Shakespeare was a master storyteller and his plays are wonderful even at surface level.

yeah, call me a dingbat, but that de quincy essay referenced here >>9971267

seems to me to be the epitome of the analytical consequence referenced here >>9971285

shakespeare's greatness is in the abundance and variety of his accomplishments. he wrote a lot of plays, in different genres, and invented a huge variety of characters. cervantes is the author of don quixote. homer wrote the iliad and the odyssey. dante wrote the divine comedy. dickens wrote a lot of great novels, but does he show as much range as shakespeare? shakespeare wrote hamlet and he wrote a midsummer night's dream. he wrote king lear and he wrote much ado about nothing. he wrote othello and he wrote henry v. he's fun to read, miraculously eloquent, constantly interesting, and constantly relevant. shakespeare is the goat because he's the total package.

>>9971366

if you had to recommend one play of his to me that shows that range--fun, eloquent, interesting, relevant--which would you choose?

if it helps you, i like the work of writers like borges, dante, and william blake--people who sort of take a try at quantifying the divine.

>>9971400
i meant you find range across his body of work. in a single play? that's harder. but i'll say hamlet.

also, shakespeare is a lot more earthbound than those guys you named. more concerned with what's going on here on earth between humans than looking up.

>>9971432

gotcha. thanks, friend.

It's hard to understand how good his prose is because English has changed and the pronunciation of words has changed. There are a ton of puns and such which fly over modern audiences heads. Some info on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s

He is considered all those things though, sometimes by the same people. He is certainly the most influential which is kind of remarkable considering how late in the game he was. The fact he has been so influential I think helps cement the case his original works were actually good works.

>>9971239
Shakespeare is inconsistent. He wrote some true masterworks, like Hamlet. But he also wrote a lot of filler.... basically just pages and pages of sex jokes. Even his genius-level stuff doesn't strike me as being incomparable. I've never seen a good argument for why he should be regarded as being on a higher level than other top-tier writers, but I do think he belongs in the top tier.