Tolstoy on Shakespeare

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PART I

TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE




I

Mr. Crosby's article on Shakespeare's attitude toward the working
classes suggested to me the idea of also expressing my own
long-established opinion about the works of Shakespeare, in direct
opposition, as it is, to that established in all the whole European world.
Calling to mind all the struggle of doubt and self-deceit,--efforts to
attune myself to Shakespeare--which I went through owing to my complete
disagreement with this universal adulation, and, presuming that many have
experienced and are experiencing the same, I think that it may not be
unprofitable to express definitely and frankly this view of mine, opposed
to that of the majority, and the more so as the conclusions to which I
came, when examining the causes of my disagreement with the universally
established opinion, are, it seems to me, not without interest and
significance.

My disagreement with the established opinion about Shakespeare is not
the result of an accidental frame of mind, nor of a light-minded
attitude toward the matter, but is the outcome of many years' repeated
and insistent endeavors to harmonize my own views of Shakespeare with
those established amongst all civilized men of the Christian world.

I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I
expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one
after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear," "Romeo and
Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I
felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium, and doubted as to whether I
was senseless in feeling works regarded as the summit of perfection by
the whole of the civilized world to be trivial