Hypothesis #1 is that Shakespeare was the greatest author who ever lived
Greatest author across all time periods and all human languages? Not very likely, considering that one of the main factors of his large popularity was the spread of the English language and the spread of the British empire throughout the 17th to 19th centuries. Even if you consider Shakespeare as the best author of his period in the neighborhood of, say, a few centuries, you’re still excluding all other languages and all other time periods.
There are other examples of authors who’s popularity was boosted by the spread of a language. There are examples in Roman, Spanish, German, Japanese, and Persian, for instance. For each of these lucky ones, though, there were probably hundreds of authors who were forgotten as their languages were. For all we know, there could have been a literary genius in a remote tribe in Africa who was forgotten the day his village was attacked by the neighboring one.
If you change your hypothesis to “Shakespeare was the greatest English language author who ever lived”, then it starts looking more likely.
Greatest author across all time periods and all human languages? Not very likely, considering that one of the main factors of his large popularity was the spread of the English language and the spread of the British empire throughout the 17th to 19th centuries. Even if you consider Shakespeare as the best author of his period in the neighborhood of, say, a few centuries, you’re still excluding all other languages and all other time periods.
There are other examples of authors who’s popularity was boosted by the spread of a language. There are examples in Roman, Spanish, German, Japanese, and Persian, for instance. For each of these lucky ones, though, there were probably hundreds of authors who were forgotten as their languages were. For all we know, there could have been a literary genius in a remote tribe in Africa who was forgotten the day his village was attacked by the neighboring one.
If you change your hypothesis to “Shakespeare was the greatest English language author who ever lived”, then it starts looking more likely.