Quote:
Originally Posted by ahi
Tolstoy didn't think he deserves such honour ["greatest writer in the English Language"], and he gave a few dozen pages' worth of reasons why.
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I think the other problem comes in what we mean by "greatest writer".
If we mean "greatest storyteller", Shakespeare fails miserably. The plots are often poor, and quite often stolen.
If we mean "greatest natural dialogue writer", Shakespeare fails miserably. He wasn't even trying to write natural dialogue.
if we mean "greatest wordsmith", I think we're closer to the something that can be argued. His turn of phrase is simply stunning. As someone once said on first seeing Hamlet -- "...but it's so full of quotes."
So Tolstoy is right, in that the plays don't contain what he requires them to contain to be considered great, or even good. And wrong, in that they do contain what is needed for others to consider Shakespeare the greatest, without having been brainwashed.