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Interestingly this is the exact opposite of the usual argument as to why Shakespeare is still popular, i.e. that his work speaks of a deep universal truth about

• photonthug 3y ago
  > Conversely, when real artists struck chords with large groups of people, it was because they stumbled upon something unique that many people shared. Shakespeare has exactly this going on too, though. He contributed like a thousand neologisms to English that actually stuck. That probably doesn't happen unless your art is a bit like science, almost "discovering" something in the collective unconcious rather than an act of invention. When that happens, you have something that's new/unique but also something that is deep/universal. Cubism and surrealism are also like this
  • Root_Denied 3y ago
    There's an argument that Shakespeare didn't coin (all or some of) those phrases or words, that they were in common everyday use at the time but never written down because the type of people who used them couldn't write. That would still be valuable in disseminating those neologisms further and giving them staying power, but it's less discovery and more documenting.