William Shakespeare: The World’s Greatest Writer?

Many writers respect William Shakespeare, not just for the volume of what he has achieved but for the fact that he seems to have had a great insight into the plight of the human soul. How great was Shakespeare as a writer? Could he be the greatest writer on the planet earth? This writer doesn’t seem to think so. Shakespeare was great. To pen all those plays, at that point in time when many other young men of his age were busy pursuing other more important issues is no mean achievement, and indeed inspires many a writer.

Many would give anything for an iota of the immense success he achieved. Many would pay with their souls to write as well as he did, if only in approximation of his achievements. He surprises me indeed, but I have my reservations as to referring to him as the greatest writer to have graced this profession. Great language use, wide coverage, great subjects, prolificacy, but… wait a minute, hasn’t any other writer achieved that much? So many writers have done the same in other genres of literature and this seems to dwarf Shakespeare in comparison. He had so many weaknesses which men and women seem to forget whenever they tackle his plays and sonnets. I will only point a few weaknesses for the purposes of this article.

His poetry seems to override the playwright in him

Shakespeare nearly always seemed to place poetic intonations in the mouth of his characters irrespective of their origin or social standing in society. Drama must approximate reality for the viewers to be swallowed the happenings therein. Shakespeare seems to have overlooked this fact. Not every Tom, Dick, and Harry has such a mastery of language as to speak so poetically! On this note, Shakespeare falls flat on his face.

Empty stages, empty scenes

Doesn’t it seem horrible to even imagine every scene in Shakespeare’s plays starting with an empty stage, followed by enter so and so, and when the scene ends, everyone seems to exit leaving the same stage as blank as it was. How incredible! Shakespeare’s imagination seems to have left him on this, and it seems to have been the case in all his plays. A great playwright wouldn’t have done this. What with Richard I, II, and III? Not even once, and again on this note, Shakespeare disapproves the status bestowed on him.

Replaying history

Outside the famous kings and princes that he seems to have read and understood so much, there is little else in Shakespeare. Writers are supposed to use their imagination and use it well. When a seemingly great writer recedes into what I would want to call chronicling of history and historical subjects, then this part eliminates the very part of him that would have been great. Shakespeare replayed history so much in addition to a few lies here and there and a little psychological insight. He didn’t do anything different than what the earlier Greek writers like Euripides, Sophocles and others did when they reconstructed Greek myths into plays. Shakespeare might have been great, but not the greatest writer of all time!