But most writers,however much they long for permanence or immortality, fail to achieve it. There were plenty of good dramatists working at the same time as Shakespeare, but most of them are now forgotten except by a few scholars and research students: and no one can say which of the contemporary English writers will be remembered in the year 2070. Future readers may decide that the greatest poetry of the twentieth century is not to be found in the work of T.S. Eliot but in the lyrics of the Beatles.