Nigel Smith. Is Milton Better Than Shakespeare?(Book Review‪)‬

Nigel Smith. Is Milton Better Than Shakespeare? Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2008. xvii+214 pp. ISBN 13: 978 0 674 02832 6. 1. Since English neoclassical critics such as Dryden, Addison, Burke, and Johnson directly addressed the question of how good Milton is, one might expect that a book devoted to this question might acknowledge, if not respect, some of their judgments. But apart from the occasional description of Milton's poetry as "sublime," Smith says nothing of them. Neither does he take seriously their, or anyone else's, judgments about the achievement of Shakespeare. Smith in fact says almost nothing about Shakespeare in this book and provides no reading of any poem or play by him. He nevertheless attempts to show that Milton is better than Shakespeare.