[Lalaith]

I would hate to accuse our beloved professor of literary posturing but this I fear is what his Shakespeare-loathing amounted to. Tolkien was a scholar of early and mediaeval literature and was very sniffy on principle about ANYTHING written post-1400, even the works of great and glorious Shakespeare.
In the same way, the pre-Raphaelite painters of the 19th century were so called because they claimed that all painting after Raphael was bogus. (Other than their own, naturally...) This may be demonstrably untrue, but once you have decided on a position it is very hard to climb down...