Who is Shakespeare's equivalent for the French language?
By this I mean, that author who probably died many centuries ago, but whose work has survived the passage of centuries. That author whose name everyone knows but whose work almost no one has read (unless the francophones are well-read, in which casez my apologies), and about whom everyone's French teacher won't shut up about?
For English there is Shakespeare; for Spanish, Cervantes; but for French?