PhilK:
"I don't suppose that Shakespeare worried about being compared to Goethe when he wrote Romeo and Juliet"
Almost certainly not, given that Shakespeare died some 130 years before Goethe was born. Goethe, on the other hand, did worry about being compared to Shakespeare, but being Goethe, he went ahead anyway.
This was why he wrote in German, which Sahespeare was not fluent in.