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True Is It That We Have Seen Better Plays
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Where is it written "I am the bard thy god, thou shalt have no other bards before me"? Shakespeare is one of England's, Europe's, the world's greatest writers. If you asked me to name the best play of 1596, I would say, without hesitation,
A Midsummer Night's Dream
; the best of 1597 would be
Henry IV, Part One
; the best of 1600,
Hamlet
. But these confessions would not satisfy the jealous guardians of the cult of Shakespeare. Lovers of classical music can prefer Mozart, or fancy Beethoven; a predilection for Handel is not necessarily perverse. But in the world of English...