>>25374659
Most people haven’t read the first book of the Faerie Queene and most people can still recite a line of Shakespeare. Spenser was a great poet but nowhere near the levels of mastery of Shakespeare.

File: Oth.jpg (539 KB, 780x1890)

539 KB JPG

>>25374659
There's no doubt he's a giant, but -- like Milton -- he wasn't content with English as he found it and so insisted on writing in a language of his own invention. Spenser's achievement is monumental but was ultimately a dead end for English and English literature. Shakespeare on the other hand not only wrote the best and most beautiful English verse and prose ever, but did so in an idiom more natural then all his predecessors. Only in his very last works does he become mannered, but even that mannerism is nothing compared to the deliberate archaicism of Spenser, with all of the difficulty of Chaucer and none of the easy joy.

It's not just that Shakespeare had incredible psychological and dramatological insights. Shakespeare was so adept at developing poetic images and so in tune with the semantic possibilities of individual words that he fundamentally restructured the way English-speakers think. Spenser is beautiful but he cannot claim such a legacy, or such genius.

>inb4 the rest of the thread is shitted up by a huge number of illiterate contrarian retards who've read the first 30 pages of the Faerie Queene to stroke their ego because it's considered hard and haven't read any Shakespeare since they played Tybalt in high school, much less any of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and are so unfamiliar with the language they can't distinguish thee and thou.

of the very little I've read of Spenser, I've loved him, his mastery of the language is certainly up there.

>>25375042
>using Othello as an example of Shakespeare's natural idiom
Othello is unique among Shakespeare's plays for its unnatural style

>>25375042
Spenser and Drayton were objectively better poets than Shakespeare.
Simple as
>who've read the first 30 pages of the Faerie Queene to stroke their ego because it's considered hard
The Faerie Queene is not hard for anyone who has read any amount of older poetry and literature.

I've read The Shepheardes Calender and loved it. It was in a class on Pastoral Poetry that was really fun overall.

Need to tackle The Faerie Queene sooner or later.

>>25375042
>Spenser's achievement is monumental but was ultimately a dead end for English
English literature at the time was branching out in multiple directions. It was Shakespeare's branch that prevailed, but that doesn't invalidate Spenser's. In this battle of competing visions, somebody had to lose.

Nobody, in any language, in the entire history of literature, is better than Shakespeare. Spenser is still pretty great though.

>>25375042
>Spenser's achievement is monumental but was ultimately a dead end for English
Objectively false since his language was a major inspiration for, among other poets, Milton and Keats. Admittedly after the 19th century it does seem as if his possible influence on poetry has exhausted itself.

>Shakespeare on the other hand not only wrote the best and most beautiful English verse and prose ever
Shakespeare's prose is simply too rhythmic to be evaluated as prose and even then it self-evidently does not tower above the prose of North, Sidney, Bacon, Donne, etc.

>an idiom more natural then all his predecessors
Utterly false. Shakespeare employs just as much artificial, exaggerated and merely decorative language as any of the Elizabethan poets, and by no means stands closer to natural speech than Chaucer, Wyatt, Marlowe, Johnson or Spenser when he's not intentionally archaic.

>Only in his very last works does he become mannered
On the contrary, compared to his early period Shakespeare becomes far less mannered in his later works. Or rather, Shakespeare's mannerism becomes less generic, more complex and refined an instrument of expression in his later works. Which allows for more real and authentic speech to enter in, as opposed to something like Richard II which always wears a stylistic cage.

>none of the easy joy.
Very strange accusation. After getting over any difficulties of language, Spenser should flow with a decorative and musical beauty that rivals and often outdoes the notorious sweetness of Shakespeare.

>he fundamentally restructured the way English-speakers think
This is an exaggeration. It's good to remember that Shakespeare is not only considered synonymous with the English language because his influence was so determinate on it, but more importantly because of his unprecedented mastery over what already existed.