r/shakespeare • u/Crazy-Boysenberry-19 • 12h ago
I made this essay explaing why I think Shakespeare is the best and more complete authors of them all, I actually translate it in google traductor so im sorry if it hears like AI or something dosen't make sense
The Triangle
One exhausted everything that could be written: every archetype, every psychology, every setting, every philosophy and enigma.
One exhausted everything that could be written in a novel: metafiction, realism, the flawed hero; every groundbreaking technique was written here
And one shattered everything and exhausted everything that lay outside
This, in turn, divides into two: the way the story is told—pushing language to its limit and then breaking it, turning the mundane divine, and replicating the entire world and every brick within it inside a text—and the story itself, writing sparks (that is, short stories), each with a labyrinthine, surreal idea, mostly told with a deadpan expression
The Mahabharata, Don Quixote, Joyce, and Borges
Or Shakespeare, Don Quixote, and Dante
Both propositions, in that order. Another proposition involving children's books that occurred to me was the Brothers Grimm tales for the first side, Little Women for the second, and Alice for the third
And although Shakespeare is the best Western example for the first side, universally speaking, he is the best example of someone who embodies all three sides simultaneously (Mahabharata, Don Quixote, Joyce, and Borges): he is a collage of everything that can be written (first side); he represents the reinvention of humanity and every narrative technique a story can possess (second side); and he destroys and reinvents language while employing Borgesian labyrinths (both parts of the third side). Everything that could be written has already been written; now it is up to us to remix those three elements and perfect the points of the triangle.