Shakespeare

[Achebe]

That is to say, if this discussion is to continue, you'll first have to cop to the fact that when you say "the best writing in English - any genre - came after the 19th century and accelerated in the 20th", you're being absolutely, 100% biased, ignoring the fact that Shakespeare's English isn't even the same English as ours,

Shakespeare wrote in a more contorted, convoluted style than his contemporaries and immediate predecessors. It's easier to read Marlowe and Spenser than Shakespeare.

such that of course it's gonna be the stuff closest to our language that we love, and that not merely the taste but even the ways of thinking in literature change with the ages

Tastes change, but not as much as you're claiming. Keats died in 1820 or 21...and very few poems are around that compare to 'Ode to Psyche'. Similarly, the first two books of 'Paradise Lost' have not lost their power. Think similarly about the Commedia, the Illiad, and the Mahabharata. And Romeo and Juliet or Antony and Cleopatra - these are not loved less today.
Shakespeare was a great poet, and measured by output the most pre-eminent of the English writers. But not the Newton of literature as he's made out to be.

I'm sure Britain's late cultural dominance played a part in his popularity, but so too with Greek and Latin literature in Antiquity, or French literature in the Middle Ages, or Italian literature in the "Renaissance"....that is to say, it's a non-factor, when considering quality. Ad hominem, or rather ad historiam, if you will.

The point was that when Britain rose to power in the 1800s, the empire builders looked as far back as they credibly could, to legitimise their claims of cultural superiority (antiquity legitimises), instead of saying 'hang on, this shit that Byron's written is god's balls'.
There's an inherent bias in reading English speaking critics rate Shakespeare, as their own reading is for the most part, only in English.


This whole thread was sparked by an article that I read on the 'Guardian' about why Will is Shakespeer-less.

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Romeo and Juliet sounds kind of pretty but it's just icky when you think about a couple of middle-schoolers getting married just so they can get down, then being so emo as to kill themselves.

I actually love R&J - not for the play, but the poetry. I remember reading this when I was 12, and falling in love with words. Of course, as I was 12, I thought it was good riddance to the drama when the lovers killed themselves (perhaps still do...)

Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads.

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still pisses on anything the americans or australians were writing at the time. . . oh no wait a minute, you lot didn't exist before we invented you.

The aborigines have been around in Australia for 40,000 years. They do have songs, but rather simple ones, passed down through the oral route. Might just edge out Will's sonnets, but in truth can't go beyond Act 1 Sc 1 of Henry VI....