[Kalimac]

Tolkien was quite prickly about a lot of authors - the only thing I don't like about reading his letters is cringing every time he broadsides some writer whom I love. Granted, when your perspective is that of someone capable of writing the epic of the 20th century, other writings doubtless do look feeble. But he was very hard to please.

That said, there is a passage in the letters somewhere (and I wish I could find exactly where) where he mentions reading "Macbeth" in school and being disappointed by it, specifically thinking that for "Birnam Wood moving on Dunsinane" that to have that prophecy come true by having men disguised as trees was a cop-out - he wanted them to be real trees. And he said particularly that he wrote the Storming of Isengard partially out of memory of Birnam Wood, and the way he would have liked it to happen. So Immortal Shakespeare did influence Immortal Tolkien, as little as the latter may have liked it...