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''[[Shakespeare and the Drama]]'' ''[[Shakespeare and the Drama]]''
-Mr. Crosby's article on Shakespeare's attitude toward the +Mr. [[Ernest Howard Crosby|Crosby]]'s article on Shakespeare's attitude toward the
working classes * has suggested to me the idea of expressing working classes * has suggested to me the idea of expressing
my own long-established opinion about the works of Shake- my own long-established opinion about the works of Shake-

Revision as of 21:14, 19 October 2019

Tolstoy's Shakespeare and the Drama (1906) is easily the most vexing document in the long history of European Shakespeare criticism. Admittedly, it is unjust, wrongheaded, and wholly negative. But it cannot be ignored, as it has been by some critics, or dismissed lightly, as it has been by others. That such a document could be written by the man whom many critics would rank beside the object of his attack, and that it could be written in the twentieth century, are themselves of great interest. But of greater interest are the possible causes of Tolstoy's attitude. "--Shakespeare in Europe (1963) by Oswald LeWinter

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Shakespeare in Europe (1963) is a book by Oswald LeWinter.

Chapter on Tolstoy

Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy

1828-1910


Tolstoy's Shakespeare and the Drama (1906) is easily the most vexing document in the long history of European Shakespeare criticism. Admittedly, it is unjust, wrongheaded, and wholly negative. But it cannot be ignored, as it has been by some critics, or dismissed lightly, as it has been by others. That such a document could be written by the man whom many critics would rank beside the object of his attack, and that it could be written in the twentieth century, are themselves of great in- terest. But of greater interest are the possible causes of Tolstoy's attitude.

After 1880 Tolstoy became more and more dissatisfied with the growing alienation of art from the "masses" And with the zeal of a reformer and the natural messianic strain of the Slav, Tolstoy launched on a program of polemical works culminat- ing in What Is Art? (1898) and the present essay. The flaws of these works are only too obvious. The reformer's passion has intimidated the critic's judgment. But the impulse is honest. Its motivation lies in Tolstoy's rationalist Christianity, his visio pacis the eventual establishment of a classless Christian society based on brotherhood. In What Is Art? Tolstoy had promulgated his doctrine of "infection" a doctrine which sup- poses that anything which does not "infect" one with sympathy is not art. Tolstoy's elevation of folk art to the highest level, and his equation of simplicity with artistic virtue are all of a piece with the doctrine.

We must remember that Tolstoy's humanism was one of re- ligious orientation. He was dismayed by the decay of tradi- tional values, the growing religion of "art" with its concomitant the refusal to judge literary works from an ethical basis, and the rise of science with its growing moral relativism. Against


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such a background Tolstoy's attack on Shakespeare, whom the Romantics he blamed for the above-mentioned tendencies had all but canonized, becomes intelligible. And given Tolstoy's maximalist personality, a passionate strain he never quite sub- dued, even the vitttperativene$$ of the essay can be under- stood. Thus, injudicious as the essay is it must be seen as one of the great attempts at stemming the tide of aestheticism and decadence, directed less against Shakespeare than against that tradition which had used him as the exemplum of its own pre- dilections. Had Tolstoy made this more explicit than he was able to do, the essay, today, would have mare currency.


Shakespeare and the Drama

Mr. Crosby's article on Shakespeare's attitude toward the working classes * has suggested to me the idea of expressing my own long-established opinion about the works of Shake- speare, in direct opposition as it is to that established in the whole European world. Calling to mind all the struggles of doubt and self-deceit, all the 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 franldy this view of mine opposed to that of the majority, the more so as the conclusions to which I came when examin- ing the causes of my disagreement with the universally estab- lished opinion, are, it seems to me, not without interest and significance.

My disagreement with the established opinion about Shake- speare is not the result of an accidental frame of mind nor of

From Tolstoy on Shakespeare (London, The Free Age Press, Everett and Company, 1907), pp. 7-81. Translated by V. Tchertkoff.

1 Tolstoy intended this essay as a preface to an article by Ernest Crosby, with which it appeared. Crosby's article, while of little value to Shakespeare criticism, has had a greater vogue than it deserves, for example, among critics such as Smirnov. Editor.


LEO NIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY 22$

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 aesthetic 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 and positively bad, or whether the significance which this civilized world attributes to the works of Shakespeare was itself senseless. My consternation was in- creased by the fact that I always keenly felt the beauties of poetry in every form; then why should artistic works recog- nized by the whole world as those of a genius the works of Shakespearenot only fail to please me, but be disagreeable to me? For a long time I could not believe in myself, and during fifty years, in order to test myself, I several times recommenced reading Shakespeare in every possible form, in Russian and in English and in German and in Schlegel's translation, as I was advised. Several times I read the dramas and the comedies and historical plays, and I invariably underwent the same feelings: repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment. At the present time, before writing this preface, being desirous once more to test myself, I have as an old man of seventy-five, again read the whole of Shakespeare, including the historical plays: the Henry's, Troilus and Cressida, The Tempest, Cymbeline, etc., and I have felt with even greater force the same feelings this time, however, not of bewilderment, but of firm, indubitable conviction that the unquestionable glory of a great genius which Shakespeare enjoys, and which compels writers of our time to imitate him and readers and spectators to discover in him nonexistent merits thereby distorting their aesthetic and ethical understanding is a great evil, as is every untruth.

Although I know that the majority of people believe so firmly in the greatness of Shakespeare that in reading this


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judgment of mine they will not admit even the possibility of its justice, and will not give it the slightest attention, never- theless I will endeavor as well as I can to show why I believe that Shakespeare cannot be recognized either as a great genius, or even as an average author.

For illustration of my purpose I will begin by taking one of Shakespeare's most extolled dramas, Kmg Lear, in the enthusiastic praise of which the majority of critics agree.

"The tragedy of Lear is deservedly celebrated among the dramas of Shakespeare," says Dr. Johnson. "There is perhaps no play which so much agitates our passions and interests our curiosity."

"We wish that we could pass this play over and say nothing about it," says Hazlitt. "All that we can say must fall far short of the subject, or even of what we ourselves conceive of it To attempt to give a description of the play itself or of its effects upon the mind is mere impertinence; yet we must say something. It is then the best of Shakespeare's plays, for it is the one in which he was the most in earnest."

"If the originality of invention did not so much stamp almost every play of Shakespeare," says Hallam, "that to name one as the most original seems a disparagement to others, we might say that this great prerogative of genius was exercised above all in Lear. It diverges more from the model of regular tragedy than Macbeth or Othello or even more than Hamlet, but the fable is better constructed than in the last of these, and it displays full as much of the almost superhuman inspira- tion of the poet as the other two."

"King Lear may be recognized as the perfect model of the dramatic art of the whole world," says Shelley.

"I am not minded to say much of Shakespeare's Arthur," says Swinburne. "There are one or two figures in the world of his work of which there are no words that would be fit or good to say. Another of these is Cordelia. The place they have in our lives and thoughts is not one for talk. The niche set apart for them to inhabit in our secret hearts is not penetrable by the lights and noises of common day. There are chapels in the cathedral of man's highest art, as in that of his inmost life,


LEO NIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY

not made to be set open to the eyes and feet of the world. Love and Death and Memory keep charge for us in silence of some beloved names. It is the crowning glory of genius, the final miracle and transcendent gift of poetry that it can add to the number of these, and engrave on the very heart of our re- membrance fresh names and memories of its own creation.**

"Lear is the occasion for Cordelia," says Victor Hugo. "Maternity of the daughter toward the father; profound sub- ject; maternity venerable among all other maternities, so admirably rendered by the legend of that Roman girl, who in the depths of a prison nurses her old father. The young breast near the white beard. There is not a spectacle more holy. This filial breast is Cordelia. Once this figure dreamed

of and found, Shakespeare created his drama Shakespeare

carrying Cordelia in his thoughts, created that tragedy, like a God who, having an aurora to put forward, makes a world expressly for it."

"In King Lear, Shakespeare's vision sounded the abyss of horror to its very depths, and his spirit showed neither fear, nor giddiness, nor faintness at the sight," says Brandes. *On the threshold of this work, a feeling of awe comes over one, as on the threshold of the Sistine Chapel, with its ceiling frescoes by Michelangelo, only that the suffering here is far more intense, the wail wilder, and the harmonies of beauty more definitely shattered by the discords of despair."

Such are the judgments of the critics about this drama, and therefore I believe I am not wrong in selecting it as a type of Shakespeare's best*

As impartially as possible I will endeavor to describe the contents of the drama, and then to show why it is not that acme of perfection it is represented to be by critics, but is something quite different


The drama of Lear begins with a scene giving the conversa- tion between two courtiers, Kent and Gloucester. Kent, point- ing to a young man present, asks Gloucester whether that is


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not his son. Gloucester says that he has often blushed to ac- knowledge the young man as his son, but has now ceased doing so. Kent says he "cannot conceive him." Then Gloucester, in the presence of this son of his, says: "The fellow's mother could, and grew round-wombed, and had a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed." "I have another, a legiti- mate son," continues Gloucester, "but although this one came into the world before he was sent for, his mother was fair and there was good sport at his making, and therefore I ac- knowledge this one also."

Such is the introduction. Not to mention the language of King Lear, the same in which all Shakespeare's kings speak, the reader or spectator cannot conceive that a king, however old and stupid he may be, could believe the words of the vicious daughters with whom he had passed his whole life, and not believe his favorite daughter, but curse and banish her; and therefore the spectator or reader cannot share the feelings of the persons participating in this unnatural scene.

The second scene opens with Edmund, Gloucester's illegiti- mate son, soliloquizing on the injustice of men, who concede rights and respect to the legitimate son, but deprive the illegitimate son of them, and he determines to ruin Edgar, and usurp his place. For this purpose, he forges a letter to him- self as from Edgar, in which the latter expresses a desire to murder his father. Awaiting his father's approach, Edmund, as if against his will, shows him this letter, and the father immediately believes that his son Edgar, whom he tenderly loves, desires to kill him. The father goes away, Edgar enters, and Edmund persuades him that his father for some reason desires to kill him. Edgar immediately believes this and flees from his parent

The relations between Gloucester and his two sons, and the feelings of these characters, are as unnatural as Lear's rela- tion to his daughters, or even more so, and therefore it is still more difficult for the spectator to transport himself into the mental condition of Gloucester and his sons and sympathize with them, than it is to do so into that of Lear and his daughters.


LEO NIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY 22Q

In the fourth scene, the banished Kent, so disguised that Lear does not recognize him, presents himself to Lear who is already staying with Goneril. Lear asks who he is, to which Kent answers, one doesn't know why, in a tone quite inap- propriate to his position: "A very honest hearted fellow and as poor as the King." "If thou be as poor for a subject as he is for a King, thou art poor enough. . . . How old art thou?" asks the King. "Not so young, Sir, to love a woman, etc., nor so old to dote on her." To this the King says, "If I like thee no worse after dinner, I will not part from thee yet."

These speeches follow neither from Lear's position, nor his relation to Kent, but are put into the mouths of Lear and Kent, evidently because the author regards them as witty and amusing.

GoneriTs steward appears, and behaves rudely to Lear, for which Kent knocks him down. The King, still not recognizing Kent, gives him money for this and takes him into his service. After this appears the fool, and thereupon begins a prolonged conversation between the fool and the King, utterly unsuited to the position and serving no purpose. Thus, for instance, the fool says, "Give me an egg and 111 give thee two crowns." The King asks, "What crowns shall they be?" "Why," says the fool, "after I have cut the egg f the middle and eat up the meat, the two crowns of the egg. When thou dovest thy crown f the middle, and gavest away both parts, thou borest thine ass on thy back o'er the dirt: thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou gavest thy golden one away. If I speak like myself in this, let him be whipp'd that first finds it so" ( I, iv, 173-180).

In this manner lengthy conversations go on, calling forth in the spectator or reader that wearisome uneasiness which one experiences when listening to jokes which are not witty.

This conversation is interrupted by the approach of Goneril. She demands of her father that he should diminish bis ret- inue: that he should be satisfied with fifty courtiers instead of one hundred. At this suggestion, Lear gets into a strange and unnatural rage, and asks:


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Doth any here know me? This is not Lear:

Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes?

Either his notion weakens, his discernings

Are lethargied Ha! waking? 'tis not so,

Who is it that can tell me who I am?

(I, iv, 246-250)

And so forth.

While this goes on the fool does not cease to interpolate his humorless jokes. GoneriTs husband then enters and wishes to appease Lear, but Lear curses Goneril, invoking for her either sterility or the birth of such an infant monster as would return laughter and contempt for her motherly cares, and would thus show her all the horror and pain caused by a child's ingratitude.

These words, which express a genuine feeling, might have been touching had they stood alone. But they are lost amongst long and high-flown speeches which Lear keeps incessantly uttering quite inappropriately. He either invokes "blasts and fogs" upon the head of his daughter, or desires his curse to "pierce every sense about her," or else appealing to his own eyes says that should they weep he will pluck them out and "cast them with the waters that they lost to temper clay. 9 * And so on.

After this, Lear sends Kent, whom he still fails to rec- ognize, to his other daughter, and notwithstanding the despair he has just manifested, he talks with the fool, and elicits his jokes. The jokes continue to be mirthless and besides creat- ing an unpleasant feeling, similar to shame, the usual effect of unsuccessful witticisms, they are also so drawn out as to be positively dull. Thus the fool asks the King whether he can tell why one's nose stands in the middle of one's face? Lear says he cannot. "Why, to keep one's eyes of either side 's nose; that what a man cannot smell out, he may spy into."

FOOL. Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell? LEAR. No.

FOOL. Nor I either; but I can tell why a snail has a house. LEAR. Why?


LEO NXKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY 231

FOOL. Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his

daughters, and leave his horns without a case. . * . LEAR. Be my horses ready? FOOL. Thy asses are gone about 'em. The reason why the seven

stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason. LEAR. Because they are not eight? FOOL. Yes, indeed: thou would'st make a good fool.

(I, v, 28-41) And so on.

After this lengthy scene, a gentleman enters and an- nounces that the horses are ready. The fool says:

She that's a maid now, and laughs at my departure, Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter

(I, v, 55-56)

and departs.

The second part of the first scene of the second act begins by the villain Edmund persuading his brother, when their father enters, to pretend that they are fighting with their swords. Edgar consents, although it is utterly incomprehen- sible why he should do so. The father finds them fighting. Edgar flies and Edmund scratches his arm to draw blood and persuades his father that Edgar was working charms for the purpose of killing his father and had desired Edmund to help him, but that he, Edmund, had refused and that then Edgar flew at him and wounded his arm. Gloucester believes everything, curses Edgar, and transfers all the rights of tihe elder and legitimate son to the illegitimate Edmund. The Duke, hearing of this, also rewards Edmund.

In the second scene, in front of Gloucester's palace, Lear's new servant, Kent, still unrecognized by Lear, without any reason, begins to abuse Oswald, GoneriTs steward, calling him "A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred pound, filthy worsted-stockinged knave ... the son and heir of a mongrel bitch" (II, ii, 14-22). And so on. Then drawing his sword, he demands that Oswald should fight with him, saying that he will make a "sop o* the moonshine'* of him words which no


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commentators can explain. When he is stopped, he continues to give vent to the strangest abuse, saying that a tailor made Oswald, as "a stone cutter or a painter could not have made him so ill, though they had been but two hours o* the trader He further says that, if only leave be given him, he will "tread this unbolted villain into mortar and daub the wall of a jakes with him."

Thus Kent, whom nobody recognizes, although both the King and the Duke of Cornwall, as well as Gloucester who is present, ought to know him well, continues to brawl,, in the character of Lear's new servant, until he is taken and put in the stocks.

The third scene takes place on a heath. Edgar, flying from the persecutions of his father, hides in a wood and tells the public what kinds of lunatics exist there beggars who go about naked, thrust wooden pricks and pins into their flesh, scream with wild voices and enforce charity, and says that he wishes to simulate such a lunatic in order to save himself from persecution. Having communicated this to the public he retires.

The fourth scene is again before Gloucester's castle. Enter Lear and the fool. Lear sees Kent in the stocks, and, still not recognizing him, is inflamed with rage against those who dared so to insult his messenger, and calls for the Duke and Regan. The fool goes on with his jokes.

Lear with difficulty restrains his ire. Enter the Duke and Regan. Lear complains of Goneril, but Regan justifies her sister. Lear curses Goneril, and when Regan tells him he had better return to her sister, he is indignant and says: "Ask for forgiveness?" and falls down on his knees demonstrating how indecent it would be if he were abjectly to beg food and clothing as charity from his own daughter, and he curses Goneril with the strangest curses and asks who put his ser- vant in the stocks. Before Regan can answer, Goneril arrives. Lear becomes yet more exasperated and again curses Goneril, but when he is told that it was the Duke himself who ordered the stocks, he does not say anything, because, at this moment, Regan tells him that she cannot receive him now, and that he


LEO NIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY 233

had best return to Goneril, with, however, not a hundred but fifty servants, and that in a month's time she herself will receive him. Lear again curses Goneril and does not want to go to her, continuing to hope that Regan will accept him with the whole hundred servants. But Regan says she will receive him only with twenty-five and then Lear makes up his mind to go back to Goneril, who admits fifty. But when Goneril says that even twenty-five are too many, Lear pours forth a long argument about the superfluous and the needful being relative, and says that if a man is not allowed more than he needs he is not to be distinguished from a beast. Lear, or rather the actor who plays Lear's part, adds that there is no need for a lady's finery, which does not keep her warm. After this he flies into a mad fury and says that to take vengeance on his daughters he will do something dreadful, but that he will not weep, and so he departs. A storm be- gins.

Such is the second act, full of unnatural events, and yet more unnatural speeches, not flowing from the position of the characters, and finishing with a scene between Lear and his daughters which might have been powerful if it had not been permeated with the most absurdly foolish, unnatural speeches which, moreover, have no relation to the subject put into the mouth of Lear. Lear's vacillations between pride, anger, and the hope of his daughters giving in would be exceedingly touching if they were not spoiled by the verbose absurdities to which he gives vent, about being ready to divorce himself from Regan's dead mother, should Regan not be glad to re- ceive hum or about "fen-suck'd fogs," which he invokes upon the head of his daughter, or about the heavens being obliged to patronize old people because they themselves are old.

The third act begins with thunder, lightning a storm of some special land such as, according to the words of the characters in the piece, had never before taken place. On the heath, a gentleman tells Kent that Lear, banished by his daughters from their homes, is running about the heath alone, tearing his hair and throwing it to the wind, and that none but the fool is with him. In return Kent tells the gentleman


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that the Dukes have quarreled, and that the French army has landed at Dover, and having communicated this intelli- gence, he dispatches the gentleman to Dover to meet Cor- delia.

The second scene of the third act also takes place on the heath, but in another part of it. Lear walks about the heath and says words which are meant to express his despair: he desires that the winds should blow so hard that they (the winds) should crack their cheeks and that the rain should flood everything, that lightning should singe his white head, and the thunder flatten the world and destroy all germs "that make ungrateful man!" The fool keeps uttering still more senseless words. Enter Kent; Lear says that for some reason during thig storm all criminals shall be found out and con- victed. Kent, still unrecognized by Lear, endeavors to per- suade him to take refuge in a hovel. At this point the fool pronounces a prophecy in no wise related to the situation and they all depart

The third scene is again transferred to Gloucester's castle. Gloucester tells Edmund that the French King has already landed with his troops, and intends to help Lear. Learning this, Edmund decides to accuse his father of treason in order that he may get his heritage.

The fourth scene is again on the heath in front of the hovel. Kent invites Lear into the hovel, but Lear answers that he has no reason to shelter himself from the tempest, that he does not feel it, having in his mind a tempest, called forth by the ingratitude of his daughters, which extinguishes all else. This true feeling, expressed in simple words, might elicit sympathy, but amidst the incessant pompous raving, it escapes one and loses its significance.

The hovel into which Lear is led turns out to be the same which Edgar has entered, disguised as a madman, i.e., naked. Edgar comes out of the hovel, and, although all have known him, no one recognizes him as no one recognizes Kent and Edgar, Lear, and the fool begin to say senseless things which continue with interruptions for many pages. In the middle of this scene, enters Gloucester (who also does not recognize


LEO NIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY 23$

either Kent or his son Edgar), and tells them how his son Edgar wanted to kill him.

This scene is again cut short by another in Gloucester's castle, during which Edmund betrays his father and the Duke of Cornwall promises to avenge himself on Gloucester, Then the scene shifts back to Lear. Kent, Edgar, Gloucester, Lear, and the fool are at a farm and talking. Edgar says: "Frateretto calls me: and tells me Nero is an angler in the lake of dark- ness. . . ." The fool says: "Tell me whether a madman be a gentleman or a yeoman?" Lear, having lost his mind, says that the madman is a king. The fool says no, the madman is the yeoman who has allowed his son to become a gentleman. Lear screams: "To have a thousand with red burning spits come hissing in upon 'em^-while Edgar shrieks that the foul fiend bites his back. At this the fool remarks that one cannot believe "in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath." Then Lear imagines he is judging his daugh- ters. "Sit thou here, most learned justicer," says he, addressing the naked Edgar; "Thou, sapient sir, sit here. Now, you she foxes." To this Edgar says: "Look where he stands and glares! Wantest thou eyes at trial, madam? Come o'er the bourn, Bessy, to me."

The fool sings:

Her boat hath a leak,

And she must not speak,

Why she dares not come over to thee.

Edgar goes on in his own strain. Kent suggests that Lear should Ue down, but Lear continues his imaginary trial: "Bring in the evidence," he cries. "Thou robed man of justice, take thy place," he says to Edgar, "and thou" (to the fool) "his yoke-fellow of equity, bench by his side. You are o' the com- mission, sit you too," addressing Kent.

"Purr, the cat is grey," shouts Edgar.

"Arraign her first, 'tis Goneril," cries Lear. "I here take my oath before this honourable assembly, she kicked the poor king her father."


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"Come hither, mistress. Is your name Goneril?" says the fool, addressing the seat.

"And here's another whose warped looks proclaim what store her heart is made of," cries Lear. "Stop her there! arms, arms, sword, fire! Corruption in the place! False justicer, why hast thou let her 'scape?"

This raving terminates by Lear falling asleep, and Glouces- ter persuading Kent, still without recognizing him, to carry Lear to Dover, and Kent and the fool cam* off the King.

The scene is transferred to Gloucester's castle. Gloucester himself is about to be accused of treason. He is brought for- ward and bound. The Duke of Cornwall plucks out one of Gloucester's eyes and sets his foot on it. Regan says, "One side will mock another; the other too." The Duke wishes to pluck the other out also, but a servant, for some reason, sud- denly takes Gloucester's part and wounds the Duke. Regan kills the servant, \vho, dying, says to Gloucester that he has "one eye left to see some mischief on him." The Duke says, "Lest it see more, prevent it," and he tears out Gloucester's other eye and throws it on the ground. Here Regan says that it was Edmund who betrayed his father, and then Gloucester immediately understands that he has been deceived and that Edgar did not wish to kill him.

Thus ends the third act.

The fourth act is again on the heath. Edgar, still attired as a lunatic, i.e., naked, soliloquizes in stilted terms about the instability of fortune and the advantages of a humble lot Then there comes to him, somehow into the very place on the heath where he is, his father, the blinded Gloucester, led by an old man. In that characteristic Shakespearean language the chief peculiarity of which is that the thoughts are bred either by the consonance or the contrasts of words Gloucester also speaks about the instability of fortune. He tells the old man who leads him to leave him, but the old man points out to him that he cannot see his way. Gloucester says he has no way and therefore does not require eyes. And he argues about his having stumbled when he saw, and about defects often proving commodities. "Ah! dear son Edgar," he adds, "might I but live to see thee in my touch, I'd say I had eyes again.'*


LEO XIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY 237

Edgar, naked and in the character of a lunatic, hearing this, still does not disclose himself to his father, who does not recognize his voice but regards him as a wandering madman. Gloucester avails himself of the opportunity to deliver him- self of a witticism: " 'Tis the times' plague when madmen lead the blind," and he insists on dismissing the old man, obviously not from motives which might be natural to Gloucester at that moment, but merely in order, when left alone with Edgar, to enact the later scene of the imaginary leaping from the cliff.

Notwithstanding Edgar has just seen his blinded father and has learned that his father repents of having banished him, he puts in utterly unnecessary interjections which Shakespeare might know, having read them in Harouet's book, 2 but which Edgar had no means of becoming acquainted with, and above all, which it was quite unnatural for him to repeat in his present position. He says, "Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once: of lust, as Obidicut; Hobbididence, prince of dumbness; Mahu of stealing; Modo, of murder; Flibberti- gibbet, of mopping and mowing; who since possesses chamber- maids and waiting women." Hearing these words, Gloucester makes a present of his purse to Edgar, saying:

That I am so wretched

Makes thee the happier: heavens, deal so still! Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man, That slaves your ordinance, that will not see Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly; So distribution should undo excess, And each man have enough.

(IV, i, 68-74)

Having pronounced these strange words, the blind Glouces- ter requests Edgar to lead him to a certain cliff overhanging the sea, and they depart.

The second scene of the fourth act takes place before the

2 Tolstoy must be referring to Harsnet's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, which was entered in the Stationers' Register March 16, 1603. Professor W. W. Greg, in "The Date of King Lear and Shake- speare's Use of Earlier Versions," The Library, Vol. XX, No. 4, London (March 1940), pp. 377-400, calls attention to the fact that this work is the source of Edgar's devils. Editor.


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Duke of Albany's palace. Goneril is not only cruel, but also depraved. She despises her husband and discloses her love for the villain Edmund, who has inherited the title of his father Gloucester. Edmund leaves, and a conversation takes place between Goneril and her husband. The Duke of Albany, the only figure with human feelings, who had been already dis- satisfied with his wife's treatment of her father, now reso- lutely takes Lear's side, but expresses his emotion in such words as to shake one's confidence in his feelings. He says that a bear would lick Lear's reverence, that if the heavens do not send their visible spirits to tame these vile offenses, humanity' must prey on itself like monsters, etc.

Goneril does not listen to him, and then he begins to abuse her:

See thyself, devil,

Proper deformity seems not in the fiend So horrid as in woman.

"O vain fool," says Goneril. Thou changed and self-cover'd thing, for shame," continues the Duke:

Be-monster not thy feature. Were't my fitness To let these hands obey my blood, They are apt enough to dislocate and tear Thy flesh and bones; howe'er thou art a fiend, A woman's shape doth shield thee.

(IV, iii, 63-68)

After this a messenger enters and announces that the Duke of Cornwall, wounded by his servant while plucking out Gloucester's eyes, had died. Goneril is glad, but already an- ticipates with fear that Regan, now a widow, will deprive her of Edmund. Here the second scene ends.

The third scene of the fourth act represents the French camp. From a conversation between Kent and a gentleman, the reader or spectator learns that the King of France is not in the camp, and that Cordelia has received a letter from Kent and is greatly grieved by what she has learned about her father. The gentleman says that her face reminded one of sunshine and rain*


LEO NIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY

. . . her smiles and tears Were like a better way; those happy smilets, That play'd on her ripe lip, seem'd not to know What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence, As pearls from diamonds dropp'd.

(IV, iii, 20-24)

The gentleman says that Cordelia desires to see her father, but Kent says that Lear is ashamed of seeing this daughter

whom he has treated so unkindly.

>

In the fourth scene, Cordelia, talking with a physician, tells him that Lear has been seen, that he is quite mad, wearing on his head a wreath of various weeds, that he is roaming about and that she has sent soldiers in search of him, adding that she desires all secret remedies to spring with her tears, and the like.

She is informed that the armies of the Dukes are approach- ing; but she is concerned only about her father and departs.

The fifth scene of the fourth act lies in Gloucester's castle. Regan is talking with Oswald, GoneriTs steward, who is car- rying a letter from Goneril to Edmund, and she announces to him that she also loves Edmund, and that, being a widow, it is better for her to marry him than for Goneril to do so, and she begs him to persuade her sister of this. Further, she tells him that it was very unreasonable to blind Gloucester and yet leave him alive, and therefore advises Oswald, should he meet Gloucester, to kill him, promising him a great reward if he does this.

In the sixth scene, Gloucester again appears with his still unrecognized son Edgar, who (now in the guise of a peasant) pretends to lead his father to the cliff. Gloucester is walking along on level land, but Edgar persuades him that they are with difficulty ascending a steep hill. Gloucester believes this. Edgar tells his father that the noise of the sea is heard; Gloucester believes this also. Edgar stops on a level place and persuades his father that he has ascended the cliff and that in front of him lies a dreadful abyss, and then leaves him alone. Gloucester, addressing the Gods, says that he shakes off his affliction, as he can bear it no longer, and that he does


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not condemn them the Gods. Having said this, he leaps on the level ground and falls, imagining that he has jumped off the cliff. On this occasion Edgar, soliloquizing, gives vent to a yet more entangled utterance:

... I know not how conceit may rob The treasury of life when life itself Yields to the theft; had he been where he thought, By this, had thought been past.

(IV, vi, 43-46)

He approaches Gloucester, in the character of yet a differ- ent person, and expresses astonishment at the latter not being hurt by his fall from such a dreadful height Gloucester be- lieves that he has fallen and prepares to die, but he feels that he is alive and begins to doubt that he has fallen from such a height Then Edgar persuades him that he has indeed jumped from the dreadful height and tells Kim that the individual who had been with him at the top was the devil, as he had eyes like two full moons and a thousand noses and wavy horns. Gloucester believes this, and is persuaded that his despair was the work of the devil, and therefore decides that he will henceforth despair no more, but will quietly await death. Hereupon enters Lear, for some reason covered with wild flowers. He has lost his senses and says things wilder than before. He speaks about coining, about the moon, calls for a clothier's yard then he cries that he sees a mouse, which he wishes to entice by a piece of cheese. Then he sud- denly demands the password from Edgar, and Edgar im- mediately answers him with the words, "Sweet marjoram.'* Lear says "Pass," and the blind Gloucester, who has not rec- ognized either his son or Kent, recognizes the King's voice.

Then the King, after his disconnected utterances, suddenly begins to speak ironically about flatterers who agreed to aU he said: "Ay and no too was no good divinity," but when he had got into a storm without shelter, he had seen all this was not true; and then he goes on to say that as all creation addicts itself to adultery, and Gloucester's bastard son had treated his father more kindly than his daughters had treated him


LEO NIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY 241

(although Lear, according to the development of the drama could not know how Edmund had treated Gloucester); there- fore, let dissoluteness prosper, the more so as being a King, he needs soldiers. He here addresses an imaginary hypocrit- ically virtuous lady who acts the prude, whereas

The fitchew, nor the soiled horse goes to 't

With a more riotous appetite.

Down from the waist they are Centaurs,

Though women all above:

But to the girdle do the gods inherit,

Beneath is all the fiends'.

(IV, vi, 124-129)

and saying this Lear screams and spits from horror. This mono- logue is evidently meant to be addressed by the actor to the audience, and probably produces an effect on the stage, but it is utterly uncalled for in the mouth of Lear as well as his words: "It smells of mortality," uttered while wiping his hand as Gloucester expresses a desire to kiss it Then Gloucester's blindness is referred to, which gives occasion for a play of words on eyes, about blind Cupid, at which Lear says to Glou- cester, "No eyes in your head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light" Then Lear declaims a monologue on the unfairness of legal judgment, which is quite out of place in the mouth of the insane Lear. After this enters a gentleman with attendants, sent by Cordelia to fetch her father. Lear continues to act as a madman and runs away. The gentleman sent to fetch Lear does not run after him, but lengthily describes to Edgar the position of the French and British armies. Oswald enters, and seeing Glouces- ter, and desiring to receive the reward promised by Regan, attacks him; but Edgar with his club lolls Oswald, who, in dying, transmits to his murderer Edgar, GoneriTs letter to Edmund, the delivery of which would insure reward. In this letter, Goneril promises to kill her husband and marry Ed- mund. Edgar drags out Oswald's body by the legs, and then returns and leads his father away.

The seventh scene of the fourth act takes place in a tent in the French camp. Lear is asleep on a bed. Enter Cordelia


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and Kent, still in disguise. Lear is awakened by the music, and seeing Cordelia, does not believe she is a living being, thinks she is an apparition, does not believe that he himself is alive. Cordelia assures him that she is his daughter, and begs him to bless her. He falls on his knees before her, begs her pardon, acknowledges that he is old and foolish, says he is ready to take poison, which he thinks she has probably pre- pared for him, as he is persuaded she must hate him. "For your sisters," he says, "have done me wrong: you have some cause, they have not." Then he gradually comes to his senses and ceases to rave. His daughter suggests that he should take a walk. He consents and says: "You must bear with me. Pray you now forget and forgive: I am old and foolish/' They de- part. The gentlemen and Kent, remaining on the scene, hold a conversation which explains to the spectator that Edmund is at the head of the troops and that a battle must soon begin between Lear's defenders and his enemies. So the fourth act closes.

In this fourth act, the scene between Lear and his daughter might have been touching, if it had not been preceded in the course of the earlier acts by the tediously drawn-out monoto- nous ravings of Lear, and if, moreover, this expression of his feelings constituted the last scene. But the scene is not the last.

In the fifth act, the former cold, pompous, artificial ravings of Lear go on again, destroying the impression which the previous scene might have produced.

The first scene of the fifth act begins by representing Ed- mund and Regan; the latter is jealous of her sister, and offers herself. Then comes Goneril, her husband, and some soldiers. The Duke of Albany, although pitying Lear, regards it as his duty to fight against the French who have invaded his country, and so he prepares for battle.

Then Edgar enters, still disguised, and hands to the Duke of Albany the letter he had received from General's dying steward, and tells him if he gains the victory to sound the trumpet, saying that he can produce a champion who will confirm the contents of the letter.


LEO XIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY 243

In the second scene, Edgar enters leading his father, Glouces- ter, seats him by a tree, and goes away himself. The noise of battle is heard, Edgar runs back and says that the battle is lost, and Lear and Cordelia are prisoners. Gloucester again falls into despair. Edgar, still without disclosing himself to his father, counsels endurance, and Gloucester immediately agrees with him.

The third scene opens with a triumphal progress of the victor Edmund. Lear and Cordelia are prisoners. Lear, al- though no longer insane, continues to utter the same sense- less inappropriate words, as, for example, that in prison he will sing with Cordelia, she will ask his blessing, and he will kneel down (this process of kneeling down is repeated three times) and will ask her forgiveness. And he further says that while they are living in prison they will wear out "packs and sects of great ones"; that he and Cordelia are sacrifices upon which the gods will throw incense, and that he that parts them "shall bring a brand from heaven and fire us hence like foxes; wipe thine eyes; the good-years shall devour them, flesh and fell, ere they shall make us weep.**

Edmund orders Lear and his daughter to be led away to prison, and having called the officer to do this says he re- quires another duty and asks hm> whether hell do it. The captain says he cannot draw a cart nor eat dried oats, but if it be a man's work, he can do it. Enter the Duke of Albany, Goneril, and Regan. The Duke of Albany wishes to champion Lear, but Edmund does not allow it. The daughters take part in the dialogue and begin to abuse each other, being jealous of Edmund. Here everything becomes so confused that it is difficult to follow the action. The Duke of Albany wishes to arrest Edmund, and tells Regan that Edmund has long ago entered into guilty relations with his wife, and that therefore Regan must give up her claims on Edmund, and if she wishes to many, should marry him, the Duke of Albany.

Having said this, the Duke of Albany calls Edmund, orders the trumpet to be sounded, saying that if no one appears, he will fight him himself.

Here Regan, whom Goneril has evidently poisoned, falls


244 SHAKESPEARE IX ETROPE

deadly sick. Trumpets are sounded, and Edgar enters with a visor concealing his face, and without giving his name, chal- lenges Edmund. Edgar abuses Edmund; Edmund throws all the abuses back on Edgar's head. They fight and Edmund falls. Goneril is in despair. The Duke of Albany shows Goneril her letter. Goneril departs.

The dying Edmund discovers that his opponent was his brother. Edgar raises his \isor and pronounces a moral lesson to the effect that the father having begotten his illegitimate son Edmund, has paid for it with his eyesight. After this Edgar tells the Duke of Albany his adventures and how he has only just now, before entering the recent combat, dis- closed everything to his father, and the father could not bear it and died from emotion. Edmund is not yet dead, and wants to know all that has taken place.

Then Edgar relates that while he was sitting over his father's body a man came and closely embraced him, and shouting as loudly as if he wished to burst heaven, threw himself on the body of Edgar's father, and told the most piteous tale about Lear and himself, and that while relating this, the strings of life began to crack, but at this moment the trumpet sounded twice and Edgar left him "tranced. 9 ' And this was Kent.

Edgar has hardly finished this narrative when a gentleman rushes in with a bloody knife, shouting "Help!" In answer to the question, "Who is killed?" the gentleman says that Goneril is lolled, having poisoned her sister: she has con- fessed it.

Enter Kent, and at this moment the corpses of Goneril and Regan are brought in. Edmund here says that the sisters evidently loved him, as one has poisoned the other for his sake and then slain herself. At the same time, he confesses that he had given orders to kill Lear and to hang Cordelia in prison, and to pretend that she had taken her own life; but now he wishes to prevent these deeds, and having said this, he dies, and is carried away.

After this enters Lear with the dead Cordelia in his arms, although he is more than eighty years old and ill. Again begin


LEO NIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY 24$

Lear's awful ravings, at which one feels ashamed, as at un- successful jokes. Lear demands that all should howl, and alternately believes that Cordelia is dead, and that she is alive.

Had I your tongues and eyes [he says], lid use them so That heaven's vault should crack.

(V, iii, 258-259)

Then he says that he killed the slave who hanged Cordelia. Next he says that his eyes see badly; but at the same time he recognizes Kent, whom all along he had not recognized.

The Duke of Albany says that he will resign during the life of Lear, and that he will reward Edgar and Kent and all who have been faithful to him. At this moment, the news is brought that Edmund is dead, and Lear, continuing his ravings, begs that they will undo one of his buttons the same request which he had made when roaming about the heath. He expresses his thanks for this, tells everyone to look at something, and thereupon dies.

In conclusion, the Duke of Albany, having survived the others, says:

The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

(V, iii, 322-325)

All depart to the music of a dead march. Thus ends the fifth act and the drama.


m

Such is this celebrated drama. However absurd it may ap- pear in my rendering (which I have endeavored to make as impartial as possible), I may confidently say that in the original it is yet more absurd. For any man of our time if he were not under the hypnotic suggestion that this drama is the height of perfection it would be enough to read it to its end (had he sufficient patience for this) to be convinced that


246 SHAKESPEARE IN EUROPE

far from its being the height of perfection, it is a very bad, carelessly composed production, which, if it could have been of interest to a certain public at a certain time, cannot evoke amongst us anything but aversion and weariness. Ever} 7 reader of our time who is free from the influence of suggestion will also receive exactly the same impression from all the other extolled dramas of Shakespeare, not to mention the senseless dramatized tales, Pericles, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Cym- beline, Troilus and Crestida.

But such free-minded individuals, not inoculated with Shake- peare worship, are no longer to be found in our Christian society. On every man of our society and time, from the first period of his conscious life, it has been inculcated that Shake- speare is a genius as poet and dramatist, and that all his writ- ings are the height of perfection. Yet however hopeless it may seem, I will endeavor to demonstrate in the selected drama- King Lear-all those faults, equally characteristic of all the other tragedies and comedies of Shakespeare, on account of which he is not only no model of dramatic art, but does not satisfy the most elementary demands of art recognized by alL

Dramatic art, according to the laws established by those very critics who extol Shakespeare, demands that the persons represented in the play should be, in consequence of actions proper to their characters, and owing to a natural course of events, placed in positions requiring them to struggle with the surrounding world to which they find themselves in op- positionand in this struggle should display their inherent qualities.

In King Lear, the persons represented are indeed placed externally in opposition to the outward world, and they strug- gle with it. But their strife does not flow from the natural course of events nor from their own characters, but is quite arbitrarily established by the author, and therefore cannot produce on the reader that illusion which represents the es- sential condition of art.

Lear has no necessity or motive for his abdication, also having lived all his life with his daughters, he has no reason to believe the words of the two elder and not the truthful


LEO NIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY 247

statement of the youngest; yet upon this is built the whole tragedy of his position.

Similarly unnatural is the subordinate action: the relation of Gloucester to his sons* The positions of Gloucester and Edgar flow from the circumstance that Gloucester, just like Lear, immediately believes the coarsest untruth, and does not even endeavor to inquire of his injured son whether the ac- cusation against him be true, but at once curses and banishes him. The fact that Lear's relations with his daughters are the same as those of Gloucester with his sons makes one feel yet more strongly that in both cases the relations are quite ar- bitrary and do not flow from the characters nor the natural course of events. Equally unnatural and obviously invented is the fact that, all through the tragedy, Lear does not rec- ognize his old courtier Kent, and therefore the relations be- tween Lear and Kent fail to excite the sympathy of the reader or spectator. In a yet greater degree the same holds true of the position of Edgar, who, unrecognized by anyone, leads his blind father and persuades him that he has leaped off a cliff when in reality Gloucester jumps on level ground.

These positions into which the characters are placed quite arbitrarily are so unnatural that the reader or spectator is unable, not only to sympathize with their sufferings, but even to be interested in what he reads or sees. This in the first place.

Secondly, in this, as in the other dramas of Shakespeare, all the characters live, think, speak, and act quite uncon- formably with the given time and place. The action of King Lear takes place 800 years B.C. and yet the characters are placed in conditions possible only in the Middle Ages: par- ticipating in the drama are kings, dukes, armies, and illegiti- mate children, and gentlemen, courtiers, doctors, fanners, officers, soldiers, and knights with visors, etc. It may be that such anachronisms (with which Shakespeare's dramas abound) did not injure the possibility of illusion in the sixteenth cen- tury and the beginning of the seventeenth; but in our time it is no longer possible to follow with interest the development of events which one knows could not take place in the condi-


SHAKESPEARE IX EUROPE

tions which the author describes in detail. The artificiality of the positions, not flowing from the nature of the characters, and their want of conformity with time and space, is further increased by those coarse embellishments which are continually added by Shakespeare in the places intended to appear par- ticularly touching. The extraordinary stonn, during which King Lear roams about the heath, or the grass which for some reason he puts on his head like Ophelia in Hamlet or Edgar's attire, or the fool's speeches, or the appearance of the helmeted horseman, Edgarall these effects not only fail to enhance the impression but produce an opposite effect "Man sieht die Absicht und man wird verstimmt" 3 as Goethe says. It often happens that even during these obviously in- tentional efforts after effect as for instance the dragging out by the legs of half a dozen corpses with which all Shakespeare's tragedies terminate instead of feeling fear and pity, one is tempted rather to laugh.

But it is not enough that Shakespeare's characters are placed in tragic positions which are impossible, do not flow from the course of events, are inappropriate to time and space- besides this, these personages act in a way which is out of keeping with their definite character, and is quite arbitrary. It is generally asserted that in Shakespeare's dramas the char- acters are especially well expressed, that notwithstanding their vividness, they are many-sided like those of living people; that while exhibiting the characteristics of a given individual they at the same time wear the features of man in general; it is usual to say that the delineation of character in Shake- speare is the height of perfection.

This is asserted with much confidence and repeated by all as indisputable truth; but however much I endeavored to find confirmation of this in Shakespeare's dramas, I always found the opposite. In reading any of Shakespeare's dramas what- ever, I was from the very first instantly convinced that he was lacking in the most important, if not the only means of por- traying characters: individuality of language, i.e., the style of speech of every person being natural to his character. This 8 After realizing the intention one tains against it. Editor.


LEO NIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY 24Q

is absent from Shakespeare. All his characters speak, not their own, but always one and the same Shakespearean preten- tious and unnatural language, in which not only they could not speak, but in which no living man ever has spoken or does speak.

No living man could or can say as Lear says that he would divorce his wife in the grave should Regan not receive him, or that the heavens would crack with shouting, or that the winds would burst, or that the wind wishes to blow the land into the sea, or that the curled waters wish to flood the shore, as the gentleman describes the storm, or that it is easier to bear one's grief, and the soul leaps over many sufferings when grief finds fellowship; or that Lear has become chadless while I am fatherless, as Edgar says, or use similar unnatural expressions with which the speeches of all the characters in all Shakespeare's dramas overflow.

Again, it is not enough that all the characters speak in a way in which no living men ever did or could speak they all suffer from a common intemperance of language. Those who are in love, who are preparing for death, who are fighting, who are dying, all alike speak much and unexpectedly about subjects utterly inappropriate to the occasion, being evidently guided rather by consonances and play of \vords than by thoughts. They all speak alike. Lear raves exactly as does Edgar when feigning madness. Both Kent and the fool speak alike. The words of one of the personages might be placed in the mouth of another, and by the character of the speech it would be impossible to distinguish who speaks. If there is a difference in the speech of Shakespeare's various characters, it lies merely in the different dialogues which are pronounced for these characters again by Shakespeare and not by them- selves. Thus Shakespeare always speaks for kings in one and the same inflated empty language. Also in one and the same Shakespearean, artificially sentimental language speak all the women who are intended to be poetic: Juliet, Desdemona, Cordelia, Imogen, Marina. In the same way also, it is Shake- speare alone who speaks for his villains Richard, Edmund, lago, Macbeth expressing for them those vicious feelings


250 SHAKESPEARE IN EUROPE

which villains never express. Yet more similar are the speeches of the madmen with their horrible words and those of fools with their mirthless puns. So that in Shakespeare there is no language of living individuals that language which in the drama is the chief means of setting forth characters. (If gesticulation be also a means of expressing character, as in ballets, this is only a secondary means.) Moreover if the char- acters speak at random and in a random way, and all in one and the same diction, as is the case in Shakespeare's work, then even the action of gesticulation is wasted. Therefore, whatever the blind panegyrists of Shakespeare may say, in Shakespeare there is no expression of character. Those per- sonages who in his dramas stand out as characters, are char- acters borrowed by him from former works which have served as the foundation of his dramas, and they are mostly de- picted, not by the dramatic method which consists in making each person speak with his own diction, but in the epic method of one person describing the features of another.


IV

The perfection with which Shakespeare expresses character is asserted chiefly on the ground of the characters of Lear, Cordelia, Othello, Desdemona, Falstaff, Hamlet. But all these characters, as well as all the others, instead of belonging to Shakespeare are taken by him from dramas, chronicles, and romances anterior to him. All these characters not only are not rendered more powerful by him, but in most cases, they are weakened and spoiled. This is very striking in this drama of King Lear, which we are examining, taken by him from the drama King Leir by an unknown author. The characters of this drama, that of King Lear, and especially of Cordelia, not only were not created by Shakespeare, but have been strikingly weakened and deprived of expression by him, as compared with their appearance in the older drama.

In the older drama, Leir abdicates because, having be- come a widower, he thinks only of saving his soul. He asks his daughters as to their love for him that by means of a certain


LEO NIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY

device he has invented he may retain his favorite daughter on his island. The elder daughters are betrothed, while the youngest does not wish to contract a loveless union with any of the neighboring suitors whom Leir proposes to her, and he is afraid that she may marry some distant potentate.

The device which he has invented, as he informs his courtier Perillus (Shakespeare's Kent), is this: that when Cordelia tells him that she loves him more than anyone or as much as her elder sisters do, he will tell her that she must in proof of her love marry the prince he will indicate on his island. All these motives for Lear's conduct are absent in Shake- speare's play. Then, when according to the old drama, Leir asks his daughters about their love for him, Cordelia does not say, as Shakespeare has it, that she will not give her father all her love, but will love her husband too, should she marry to say which is quite unnatural but simply says that she cannot express her love in words and hopes that her actions will prove it. Goneril and Regan remark that Cordelia's answer is not an answer, and that the father cannot meekly accept such indifference, so that what is wanting in Shakespeare i.e., the explanation of Lear's anger which caused him to disinherit his youngest daughter exists in the old drama. Leir is annoyed by the failure of his scheme, and the poisonous words of his elder daughters irritate him still more. After the division of the kingdom between the elder daughters there follows in the older drama a scene between Cordelia and the King of Gaul, setting forth, instead of the colorless Cordelia of Shakespeare, a very definite and attractive character of the truthful, tender, and self-sacrificing youngest daughter. While Cordelia, without grieving that she has been deprived of a portion of the heritage, sits sorrowing at having lost her father's love, and looking forward to earn her bread by her labor, there comes the King of Gaul, who, in the disguise of a pilgrim, desires to choose a bride from amongst Leir's daughters. He asks Cordelia why she is sad. She tells him the cause of her grief. The King of Gaul, still in the guise of a pilgrim, falls in love with her, and offers to arrange a marriage for her with the King of Gaul, but she says she will many only a man


SHAKESPEARE IX EUROPE

whom she loves. Then the pilgrim, still disguised, offers her his hand and heart and Cordelia confesses that she loves the pilgrim and consents to marry him, notwithstanding the poverty that awaits her. Thereupon the pilgrim discloses to her that it is he who is the King of Gaul, and Cordelia marries him. Instead of this scene, Lear, according to Shake- speare, proposes to Cordelia's two suitors to take her without dowry, and one cynically refuses, while the other, one does not fcaow why, accepts her. After this, in the old drama, as in Shakespeare's, Leir undergoes the insults of Goneril, into whose house he has removed, but he bears these insults in a very different way from that represented by Shakespeare: he feels that by his conduct toward Cordelia he has deserved this, and humbly submits. As in Shakespeare's drama, so also in the older drama, the courtierKentwho had interceded for Cordelia and was therefore banished comes to Leir and assures him of his love, but under no disguise, simply as a faithful old servant who does not abandon his king in a moment of need. Leir tells him what, according to Shake- speare, he tells Cordelia in the last scene that if the daughters whom he has benefited hate him, a retainer to whom he has done no good cannot love him. But Perillus Kent assures the King of his love toward him, and Leir, pacified, goes on to Regan. In the older drama there are no tempests nor tearing out of gray hairs, but there is the weakened and humbled old man, Leir, overpowered with grief, and banished by his other daughter also, who even wishes to kill him. Turned out by his elder daughters, Leir, according to the older drama, as a last resource, goes with Perillus to Cordelia. Instead of the unnatural banishment of Lear during the tempest, and his roaming about the heath, Leir, with Perillus, in the older drama, during their journey to France, very naturally reach the last degree of destitution, sell their clothes in order to pay for their crossing over the sea, and, in the attire of fisher- men, exhausted by cold and hunger, approach Cordelia's house. Here again, instead of the unnatural combined ravings of the fool, Lear and Edgar, as represented by Shakespeare, there follows in the older drama a natural scene of reunion


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between the daughter and the father. Cordelia who, not- withstanding her happiness, has all the time been grieving about her father and praying God to forgive her sisters who had done him so much wrong meets her father in his ex- treme want, and wishes immediately to disclose herself to him, but her husband advises her not to do this, in order not to agitate the weak old man. She accepts the counsel and takes Leir into her house without disclosing herself to him and nurses him. Leir gradually revives, and then the daughter asks him who he is and how he lived formerly.

If from the first [says Leir] I should relate the cause, I would make a heart of adamant to weep. And thou, poor soul, land hearted as thou art, Dost weep already, ere I do begin.

Cordelia replies:

For God's love tell it, and when you have done 111 tell the reason why I weep so soon.

And Leir relates all he has suffered from his elder daughters, and says that now he wishes to find shelter with the child who would be in the right even were she to condemn him to death. "If , however," he says, "she will receive me with love, it will be God's and her work, and not my merit." To this Cordelia says, "Oh, I know for certain that thy daughter will lovingly receive thee." "How canst thou know this without knowing her?" says Leir. "I know," says Cordelia, "because not far from here, I had a father who acted towards me as badly as thou hast acted towards her, yet if I were only to see his white head, I would creep to meet him on my knees." "No, this can- not be," says Leir, "for there are no children in the world so cruel as mine." "Do not condemn all for the sins of some," says Cordelia, and falls on her knees. "Look here, dear father," she says, "look at me: I am thy loving daughter." The father recog- nizes her and says: "It is not for thee, but for me to beg thy pardon on my knees for all my sins towards thee."

Is there anything approaching this exquisite scene in Shake- speare's drama?


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However strange this opinion may seem to worshipers of Shakespeare, yet the whole of this old drama is incomparably and in even- respect superior to Shakespeare's adaptation. It is so, firstly, because it has not got the utterly superfluous char- acters of the villain Edmund and the unlifelike Gloucester and Edgar, who only distract one's attention; secondly, because it has not got the completely false "effects" of Lear running about the heath, his conversations with the fool, and all these im- possible disguises, failures to recognize, and accumulated deaths; and above all, because in this drama there is the sim- ple natural and deeply touching character of Leir and the yet more touching and clearly defined character of Cordelia, both absent in Shakespeare. Therefore there is in the older drama, instead of Shakespeare's long drawn-out scene of Lear's inter- view with Cordelia and of Cordelia's unnecessary murder the exquisite scene of the interview between Leir and Cordelia, unequaled by any in all Shakespeare's dramas.

The old drama also terminates more naturally and more in accordance with the moral demands of the spectator than does Shakespeare's: namely, by the King of the Gauls con- quering the husbands of the elder sisters, and by Cordelia, instead of being killed, restoring Leir to his former posi- tion.

Thus it is in the drama we are examining which Shakespeare has borrowed from the drama King Leir. So is it also with Othello, taken from an Italian romance, and, again, with the famous Hamlet. The same may be said of Antony, Brutus, Cleopatra, Shylock, Richard, and all Shakespeare's characters, all taken from antecedent work. Shakespeare, while profiting by character already given in preceding dramas or romances or chronicles or Plutarch's Lives, not only fails to render them more truthful and vivid, as his eulogists affirm, but on the contrary, always weakens them and often completely destroys them, as with Lear, compelling his characters to commit ac- tions unnatural to them and above all to utter speeches natural neither to them nor to anyone whatever. Thus in Othello, al- though that is perhaps, I will not say the best, but the least bad, and the least encumbered by pompous volubility, die characters of Othello, lago, Cassio, Emilia, according to Shake-


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speare, are much less natural and lifelike than in the Italian romance. Shakespeare's Othello suffers from epilepsy of which he has an attack on the stage; moreover, in Shakespeare's ver- sion, Desdemona's murder is preceded by the strange vow of the kneeling Othello. Othello, according to Shakespeare, is a Negro and not a Moor. All this is erratic, inflated, unnatural, and violates the unity of the character. All this is absent in the romance. In that romance, the reasons for Othello's jealousy are represented more naturally than in Shakespeare. In the romance, Cassio, knowing whose the handkerchief is, goes to Desdemona to return it, but approaching the back door of Desdemona's house sees Othello and flies from him. Othello perceives the escaping Cassio, and this it is that chiefly con- firms his suspicions. Shakespeare has not got this, and yet this casual incident explains Othello's jealousy more than anything else. With Shakespeare, this jealousy is founded entirely on lago's persistent machinations and treacherous words which Othello blindly believes. Othello's monologue over the sleep- ing Desdemona, about his desiring her when killed to look as she is alive, about his going to love her even dead, and now wishing to smell her "balmy breath," etc., is utterly impossible. A man who is preparing for the murder of a beloved being does not utter such phrases; still less after committing a mur- der would he speak about the necessity of an eclipse of sun and moon, and of the globe yawning, nor can he, Negro though he be, address devils, inviting them to burn him in hot sulfur and so forth. Lastly, however effective may be his suicide, absent in the romance, it completely destroys the conception of his clearly defined character. If he indeed suffered from grief and remorse, he would not, intending to loll himself, pronounce phrases about his own services, about the pearl and about his eyes dropping tears "as fast as the Arabian trees medicinal gum"; and yet less about the Turks beating an Italian, and how he, Othello, smote himf hus! So that notwith- standing the powerful expression of emotions in Othello when, under the influence of lago's hints, jealousy rises in him, and then in his scenes with Desdemona, one's conception of Othello's character is constantly infringed by his false pathos and the unnatural speeches he pronounces.


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So it is with the chief character, Othello, but notwithstand- ing its alteration and the disadvantageous features which it is made thereby to present in comparison with the character in the romance from which it was taken, this character still remains a character, but all the other personages are com- pletely spoiled by Shakespeare.

lago, according to Shakespeare, is an unmitigated villain, deceiver, and thief, a robber who robs Roderigo and always succeeds even in his most impossible designs and therefore is a person quite apart from real life. In Shakespeare, the motive of his villainy is, firstly, that Othello did not give him the post he desired, secondly, that he suspects Othello of an intrigue with his wife, and thirdly, that as he says, he feels a strange kind of love for Desdemona. There are many motives, but they are all vague. Whereas in the romance there is but one simple and dear motive: lago's passionate love for Desdemona, trans- muted into hatred toward her and Othello after she had pre- ferred the Moor to him and had resolutely repulsed him. Yet more unnatural is the utterly unnecessary Roderigo whom lago deceives and robs, promising him Desdemona's love, and whom he forces to fulfill all he commands: to intoxicate, pro- voke, and then kill Cassio. Emilia, who says anything it may occur to the author to put into her mouth, has not even the slightest semblance of a live character.

"But Falstaff, the wonderful Falstaff," Shakespeare's eu- logists will say, "of him, at all events, one cannot say that he is not a living character, or that having been taken from the comedy of an unknown author, it has been weak- ened."

Falstaff, like all Shakespeare's characters, was taken from a drama or comedy by an unknown author, written on a really living person, Sir John Oldcastie, who had been the friend of some Duke. This Oldcastie had once been convicted of heresy, but had been saved by his friend the Duke. But afterward he was condemned and burned at the stake for his religious be- liefs which did not conform with Catholicism. It was on this same Oldcastie that an anonymous author, in order to please the Catholic public, wrote a comedy or drama, ridiculing this


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martyr for conscience's sake and representing him as a good- for-nothing man, the boon companion of the Duke, and it is from this comedy that Shakespeare borrowed, not only the character of Falstaff, but also his own ironical attitude toward it. In Shakespeare's first works, when this character appeared, it was frankly called Oldcastle, but later, in Elizabeth's time, when Protestantism again triumphed, it was awkward to bring out with mockery a martyr in the strife with Catholicism, and besides, Oldcastie's relatives had protested, and Shakespeare accordingly altered the name of Oldcastle to that of Falstaff, also a historical figure, known for having fled from the field of battle at Agincourt.

FalstafF is indeed quite a natural and typical character; but then it is perhaps the only natural and typical character de- picted by Shakespeare. And this character is natural and typical because of all Shakespeare's characters, it alone speaks a language proper to itself. And it speaks thus because it speaks in the same Shakespearean language full of mirthless jokes and unamusing puns which, being unnatural to all Shakespeare's other characters, is quite in harmony with the boastful, dis- torted, and depraved character of the drunken FalstafF. For this reason alone does this figure truly represent a definite character. Unfortunately, the artistic effect of this character is spoiled by the fact that it is so repulsive by its gluttony, drunkenness, debauchery, rascality, deceit, and cowardice, that it is difficult to share the feeling of gay humor with which the author treats it. Thus it is with Falstaff,

But in none of Shakespeare's figures is his I will not say incapacity to give, but utter indifference to giving his per- sonages a typical character, so strikingly manifest as in Ham- let. In connection with none of Shakespeare's works do we see so strikingly displayed that blind worship of Shakespeare, that unreasoning state of hypnotism owing to which even the mere thought is not admitted that any of Shakespeare's pro- ductions can be wanting in genius or that any of the principal personages in his dramas can fail to be the expression of a new and deeply conceived character.

Shakespeare takes an old story, not bad in its way, relating:


2$S SHAKESPEARE IN EUROPE

"Acec quette ruse Amlette, qui depute jut Roy de Danne- march vengea la mort de son pere Horwendille, Occis par Fengon son frdre, et autre occurrence de son histoire" 4 or a drama which was written on this theme fifteen years before him. On this subject he writes his own drama, introducing quite inappropriately (as indeed he always does) into the mouth of die principal person all such thoughts of his own as appeared to him worthy of attention. Putting into the mouth of his hero these thoughts: about life (the gravedigger), about death ("To be or not to be") the same which are expressed in his Sixty-sixth Sonnet about the theater, about women, he is utterly unconcerned as to the circumstances under which these words are said, and it naturally turns out that the person expressing all these thoughts is a mere phonograph of Shake- speare, without character, whose actions and words do not agree.

In the old legend, Hamlet's personality is quite compre- hensible: he is indignant at his uncle's and his mother's deeds, and wishes to revenge himself upon them, but is afraid his uncle may kill him as he had killed his father. Therefore he simulates insanity, desiring to bide his time and observe all that goes on in the palace. Meanwhile his uncle and mother, being afraid of him, wish to test whether he is feigning or is really mad, and send to him a girl whom he loves. He persists, then sees his mother in private, kills a courtier who is eaves- dropping, and convicts his mother of her sin. Afterward he is

4 "With what cunning Hamlet, who has since become King of Denmark, avenged the death or his father, Honvendille, killed by his own brother Fengon, and other incidents of his lif e." Tolstoy is quoting here only the synopsis of the plot as it appears before Histoire Troisiesme in Le Cinquiesme Tome des Histoires Tragiques par F. de Belleforest, Paris, 1582. Hie Histoires, a collection of tragic tales translated from the Italian of Matteo Bandello (i48o?-is6i), appeared in successive volumes, Number i privileged in 1565. In VoL 5, dated 1576, but privi- leged in 1570, there is the story of Hamlet, absent from Bandello, and clearly derived from Saxo Grammaticus, whose history Belleforest knew and had used for his Harengues MUitaires privileged 'February 4, 1570. Tolstoy had probably seen the Bdlef orest in Shakespeares Hamlet QueUen (1881) where Gericke had given Moltke's text of the Histoires based on the 1581 Lyons edition together with all of the variants from the 1582 Paris edition which Gericke felt was a superior edition. Editor.


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sent to England, but intercepts letters, and returning from England, takes revenge on his enemies, burning them all.

All this is comprehensible and flows from Hamlet's char- acter and position. But Shakespeare, putting into Hamlet's mouth speeches which he himself wishes to express, and mak- ing him commit actions which are necessary to the author in order to produce scenic effects, destroys all that constitutes the character of Hamlet and of the legend. During the whole of the drama, Hamlet is doing not what he would really desire, but what is necessary for the author's plan. One moment he is awestruck at his father's ghost, another moment he begins to chaff it, calling it "old mole"; one moment he loves Ophelia, another moment he teases her, and so forth. There is no possi- bility of finding any explanation whatever of Hamlet's actions or words, and therefore no possibility of attributing any char- acter to him.

But as it is recognized that Shakespeare, the genius, cannot write anything bad, therefore learned people use all the powers of their minds to find extraordinary beauties in what is an obvious and crying failure, demonstrated with especial vividness in Hamlet, where the principal figure has no char- acter whatever. And lo! profound critics declare that in this drama, in the person of Hamlet, is expressed a singularly powerful, perfectly novel and deep personality, consisting in this person having no character; and that precisely in this absence of character consists the genius of creating a deeply conceived character. Having decided this, learned critics write volumes upon volumes, so that the praise and explanation of the greatness and importance of tie representation of the character of a man who has no character, constitute whole libraries. It is true that some of the critics timidly express the idea that there is something strange in this figure, that Hamlet is an unsolved riddle, but no one has the courage to say ( as in Hans Andersen's story) that the King is naked, i.e., that it is as clear as day that Shakespeare did not succeed and did not even wish to give any character to Hamlet, did not even understand that this was necessary. And learned critics continue to investi- gate and extol this puzzling production, which reminds one of


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the famous stone with an inscription which Pickwick found near a cottage doorstep, and which divided the scientific world into two hostile camps.

So that neither do the characters of Lear nor Othello, nor Falstaff nor yet Hamlet, in any way confirm the existing opin- ion that Shakespeare's power consists in the delineation of character.

If in Shakespeare's dramas one does meet figures having certain characteristic featuresfor the most part secondary figures, such as Polonius in Hamlet and Portia in The Merchant of Venice these few lifelike characters amongst five hundred or more other secondary figures, with the complete absence of character in the principal figures, do not at all prove that the merit of Shakespeare's dramas consists in the expression of character.

That a great talent for depicting character is attributed to Shakespeare arises from his actually possessing a peculiarity which, for superficial observers and in the play of good actors, may appear to be the capacity of depicting character. This peculiarity consists in the capacity of representing scenes expressing the play of emotion. However unnatural the posi- tions may be in which he places his characters, however im- proper to them the language which he makes them speak, however featureless they are, the very play of emotion, its increase and alteration and the combination of many contrary feelings are expressed correctly and powerfully in some of Shakespeare's scenes, and, in the play of good actors, evokes, even if only for a time, sympathy with the persons represented. Shakespeare, himself an actor, and an intelligent man, knew how to express by the means not only of speech, but of excla- mation, gesture, and the repetition of words, states of mind and developments or changes of feeling taking place in the persons represented. So that, in many instances, Shakespeare's characters, instead of speaking, merely make an exclamation, or weep, or in the middle of a monologue, by means of ges- tures, demonstrate the pain of their position (just as Lear asks someone to unbutton him) or in moments of great agita- tion, repeat a question several times, or several times demand


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the repetition of a word which has particularly struck them, as do Othello, Macduff, Cleopatra, and others. Such clever methods of expressing the development of feeling, giving good actors the possibility of demonstrating their powers, were and are often mistaken by many critics for the expression of char- acter. But however strongly the play of feeling may be ex- pressed in one scene, a single scene cannot give the character of a figure when this figure, after a correct exclamation or gesture, begins in a language not its own, at the author's arbitrary will, volubly to utter words which are neither neces- sary nor in harmony with its character.


"Well, but what of the profound utterances and sayings ex- pressed by Shakespeare's characters," Shakespeare's panegyrists will retort. "See Lear's monologue on punishment, Kent's speech about vengeance, or Edgar's about his former life, Gloucester's reflections on the instability of fortune, and in other dramas, the famous monologues of Hamlet, Antony, and others."

Thoughts and sayings may be appreciated, I will answer, in a prose work, in an essay, a collection of aphorisms, but not in an artistic dramatic production, the object of which is to elicit sympathy with what is represented. Therefore the monologues and sayings of Shakespeare, even did they contain very many deep and new thoughts, which is not the case, do not consti- tute the merits of an artistic poetic production. On the con- trary, these speeches, expressed in unnatural conditions, can only spoil artistic works.

An artistic, poetic work, particularly a drama, must first of all excite in the reader or spectator the illusion that whatever the person represented is living through, or experiencing, is lived through or experienced by himself. For this purpose it is as important for the dramatist to know precisely what he should make his characters both do and say as what he should not make them say and do so as not to destroy the illusion of the reader or spectator. However eloquent and profound they


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may be, speeches, when put into the mouths of dramatic characters, if they be superfluous or unnatural to the position and character, destroy the chief condition of dramatic art the illusion owing to which the reader or spectator lives in the feelings of the persons represented. Without putting an end to the illusion, one may leave much unsaid the reader or spec- tator will himself fill this up and sometimes, owing to this, his illusion is even increased, but to say what is superflous is the same as to overthrow a statue composed of separate pieces and thereby scatter them, or to take away the lamp from a magic lantern: the attention of the reader or spectator is dis- tracted, the reader sees the author, the spectator sees the actor, the illusion disappears and to restore it is sometimes impos- sibletherefore without the feeling of measure, there cannot be an artist, and especially a dramatist.

Shakespeare is devoid of this feeling. His characters con- tinually do and say what is not only unnatural to them, but utterly unnecessary. I do not cite examples of this, because I believe that he who does not himself see this striking deficiency in all Shakespeare's dramas will not be persuaded by any examples and proofs. It is sufficient to read King Lear alone, with its insanity, murders, plucking out of eyes, Gloucester's jump, its poisonings, and wranglings not to mention Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winters Tale, The Tempest to be convinced of this. Only a man devoid of the sense of measure and of taste could produce such types as Titus Andronicus or Troilus and Cressida, or so mercilessly mutilate the old drama King Leir.

Gervinus 5 endeavors to prove that Shakespeare possessed the feeling of beauty, "Schonheifs sinn* but all Gervinus* proofs prove only that he himself, Gervinus, is completely destitute of it. In Shakespeare everything is exaggerated: the actions are exaggerated, so are their consequences, the speeches of the characters are exaggerated, and therefore at every step the possibility of artistic impression is interfered with. What- ever people may say, however they may be enraptured by

5 Georg Gottfried Gervinus (1805-1871), one of the greatest of the nineteenth-century German Shakespeare scholars. Editor.


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Shakespeare's works, whatever merits they may attribute to them, it is perfectly certain that he was not an artist and that his works are not artistic productions. Without the sense of measure, there never was nor can be an artist, as without the feeling of rhythm, there cannot be a musician. Shakespeare might have been whatever you like, but he was not an artist. "But one should not forget the time at which Shakespeare wrote," say his admirers. *lt was a time of cruel and coarse habits, a time of the then fashionable euphuism, i.e., artificial way of expressing oneself a time of forms of life strange to us, and therefore, to judge about Shakespeare, one should have in view the time when he wrote. In Homer as in Shakespeare, there is much that is strange to us, but this does not prevent us from appreciating the beauties of Homer," say these ad- mirers. But in comparing Shakespeare with Homer, as does Gervinus, that infinite distance which separates true poetry from its semblance manifests itself with especial force. How- ever distant Homer is from us, we can, without the slightest effort, transport ourselves into the life he describes, and we can thus transport ourselves because, however alien to us may be the events Homer describes, he believes in what he says and speaks seriously, and therefore he never exaggerates, and the sense of measure never abandons him. This is the reason why, not to speak of the wonderfully distinct, lifelike, and beautiful characters of Achilles, Hector, Priam, Odysseus, and the eter- nally touching scenes of Hectors leave-taking, of Priam's embassy, of Odysseus' return, and others the whole of the Iliad, and still more the Odyssey, are so humanly near to us that we feel as if we ourselves had lived and are living amongst its gods and heroes. Not so with Shakespeare. From his first words, exaggeration is seen: the exaggeration of events, the exaggeration of emotion, and the exaggeration of effects. One sees at once that he does not believe in what he says, that it is of no necessity to him, that he invents the events he describes and is indifferent to his characters that he has conceived them only for the stage and therefore makes them do and say only what may strike his public, and so we do not believe either in the events or in the actions or in the sufferings of the


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characters. Nothing demonstrates so clearly the complete ab- sence of aesthetic feeling in Shakespeare as comparison be- tween him and Homer. The works which we call the works of Homer are artistic, poetic, original works, lived through by the author or authors; whereas the works of Shakespeare bor- rowed as they are and externally, like mosaics, artificially fitted together piecemeal from bits invented for the occasion- have nothing whatever in common with art and poetry.


VI

But perhaps the height of Shakespeare's conception of life is such that though he does not satisfy the aesthetic demands he discloses to us a view of life so new and important for men that, in consideration of its importance, all his failures as an artist become imperceptible. So indeed say Shakespeare's ad- mirers. Gervinus says distinctly that besides Shakespeare's significance in the sphere of dramatic poetry in which, accord- ing to his opinion, Shakespeare equals "Homer in the sphere of Epos, Shakespeare being the very greatest judge of the human soul, is a teacher of most indisputable ethical authority and the most select leader in the world and in life."

In what then consists this indisputable authority of the most select leader in the world and in life? Gervinus devotes the concluding chapter of his second volume about fifty pages to an explanation of this.

The ethical authority of this supreme teacher of life con- sists in the following: the starting point of Shakespeare's con- ception of life, says Gervinus, is that man is gifted with powers of activity and therefore first of all, also according to Gervinus, Shakespeare regarded as good and necessary for man that he should act (as if it were possible for a man not to act).

Die thatkraftigen Manner, Fortinbras, Bolingbroke, Aid- biades, Octavius spiden hier die gegensatdichen Rollen gegen die verschiedenen thatlosen; nicht ihre Charaktere verdienen ihnen Allen ihr Gluck und Gedeihen etwa durch eine grosse Ueberlegenheit ihrer Natur, sondern trotz ihrer geringeren Anlage stellt sich ihre Thatkraft an $ich iiber die Unthatigkeit


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der Anderen hinaus, gleichviel aus ucie schoner Quelle diese Passivitat aus wie schlechter \ene Thatigkeit fitesse*

That is, active people, like Fortinbras, Bolingbroke, Alcibi- ades, and Octavius, says Gervinus, are placed in contrast, by Shakespeare, with various characters who do not exhibit en- ergetic activity. And happiness and success, according to Shakespeare, are attained by individuals possessing this active character, but not at all owing to the superiority of their na- ture; on the contrary, notwithstanding their inferior gifts, the capacity of activity in itself always gives them the advantage over inactivity, quite independently of any consideration whether the inactivity of some flows from excellent impulses and the activity of the others from bad ones. "Activity is good, inactivity is evil. Activity transforms evil into good/' says Shakespeare, according to Gervinus. Shakespeare prefers the principle of Alexander (of Macedonia) to that of Diogenes, says Gervinus. In other words, he prefers death and raurder through ambition to abstinence and wisdom.

According to Geninus, Shakespeare believes that humanity need not set up ideals, but that only healthy activity and the golden mean is necessary in everything. Indeed, Shakespeare is so penetrated by this conviction, that, according to Gervinus' assertion, he allows himself to deny even Christian morality, which makes exaggerated demands on human nature. "Shake- speare," we read, "did not approve of the limits of duty ex- ceeding the intentions of nature. He teaches the golden mean between heathen hatred to one's enemies and Christian love towards them" (pp. 56i-s62). 7 How far Shakespeare was pene- trated with this fundamental principle of reasonable modera- tion, says Gervinus, can be seen from the fact that he has the courage to express himself even against the Christian rules which prompt human nature to the excessive exertion of its powers. He did not admit that the limits of duties should exceed the biddings of nature. Therefore he preached a rea- sonable mean, natural to man, between Christian and heathen

6 Cf. Gervinus, Shakespeare Commentaries, translated by F. E. Bunnett, 5th ed. (London, Smith, Elder, & Co., 1892), p. 911. Editor.

7 Cf . English edition of Gervinus, pp. 916-917. Editor.


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precepts, of love toward one's enemies on the one hand, and hatred toward them on the other. 8

"That one may do too much good (exceed the reasonable limits of good) is convincingly proved by Shakespeare's words and examples. Thus excessive generosity ruins Timon, while Antonio's moderate generosity confers honor; normal ambition makes Henry V great, whereas it ruins Percy in whom it has risen too high; excessive virtue leads Angelo to destruction, and if, in those who surround him, excessive severity becomes harmful and cannot prevent crime, on the other hand the divine element in man charity if it be excessive, can create crime."

Shakespeare taught, says Gervinus, that one may be too good.

He teaches, according to Gervinus, that morality, like poli- tics, is a matter in which, owing to the complexity of circum- stances and motives, one cannot establish any principles (p. 563), and in this he agrees with Bacon and Aristotle there are no positive religious and moral laws which may create principles for correct moral conduct suitable for all cases.

Gervinus most clearly expresses the whole of Shakespeare's moral theory by saying that Shakespeare does not write for those classes for whom definite religious principles and laws are suitable (i.e., for 999 out of 1,000 men) but for the edu- cated.

"There are classes of men whose morality is best guarded by the positive precepts of religion and state lawto such persons, Shakespeare's creations are inaccessible. They are comprehensible and accessible only to the educated, from whom one can expect that they should acquire the healthy tact of life and self -consciousness by means of which, the innate guiding powers of conscience and reason, uniting with the will, lead us to the definite attainment of worthy aims in life. But even for such educated people, Shakespeare's teaching is

8 Tolstoy is here condensing and paraphrasing a complex passage in G. G. Gervinus' Shakespeare Commentaries concerning the principles under- lying Shakespeare's moral views. Cf. Gervinus, p. 917. Editor.

9 Cf . English edition of Gervinus, p. 918. Editor.


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not always without danger. The condition on which his teach- ing is quite harmless is that it should be accepted in all its completeness, in all its parts without any omission. Then it is not only without danger, but is the most clear and faultless and therefore the most worthy of confidence of all moral teaching" (p. 564 ). 10

In order thus to accept all, one should understand that according to his teaching it is stupid and harmful for the indi- vidual to revolt against or endeavor to overthrow the limits of established religious and state forms. "Shakespeare," says Gervinus, "would abhor an independent and free individual, who, with a powerful spirit, should struggle against all con- vention in politics and morality, and overstep that union be- tween religion and the State, which has for thousands of years supported society. According to his views, the practical wis- dom of men could not have a higher object than the introduc- tion into society of the greatest spontaneity and freedom, but precisely because of this, one should safeguard as sacred and irrefragable the natural laws of societyone should respect the existing order of things, and continually verifying it, incul- cate its rational sides, not overlooking nature for the sake of culture, or vice versa" (p. 566 ). n Property, the family, the State, are sacred; but aspiration toward the recognition of the equality of men is insanity. Its realization would bring hu- manity to the greatest calamities. No one struggled more than Shakespeare against the privileges of rank and position, but could this free-thinking man resign himself to the privileges of the wealthy and educated being destroyed in order to give room to the poor and ignorant? How could a man who so eloquently attracts people toward honors permit that the very aspiration toward that which was great be crushed, together with rank and distinction for services, and with the destruction of all degrees "the motives for all high undertakings to be stifled." Even if the attraction of honors and false power treacherously obtained were to cease, could the poet admit of the most dreadful of all violence, that of the ignorant crowd?

10 Cf. English edition of Gervinus, p. 919. Editor.

11 Cf. English edition of Gervinus, p. 921. Editor.


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He saw that, thanks to this equality now preached, even-thing may pass into violence, and violence into arbitrary action, and that into unchecked passion which will end the world as the wolf does its prey, and in the end the world will swallow itself up. Even if this does not happen with mankind when it attains equality, even if the love of nations and eternal peace do not prove that impossible "nothing" as Alonso expressed it in The Tempest, if, on the contrary, the actual attainment of aspira- tions toward equality is possible, then the poet would deem that the old age and extinction of the world had approached, and that therefore, for active individuals, it is not worth while to live (pp. 571-57*). 12

Such is Shakespeare's view of life as demonstrated by his greatest exponent and admirer.

Another of the most modern admirers of Shakespeare, Georg Brandes, further adds:

No one, of course, can conserve his life quite pure from evil, from deceit, and from the injury of others, but evil and deceit are not always vices, and even the evil caused to others, is not necessarily a vice; it is often merely a necessity, a legitimate weapon, a right And indeed, Shakespeare always held that there are no unconditional prohibitions, nor unconditional duties. For instance, he did not doubt Hamlet's right to kill the King, nor even his right to stab Polonius to death, and yet, he could not restrain himself from an overwhelming feeling of indignation and repulsion when, looking around, he saw every- where how incessantly the most elementary moral laws were being infringed. Now in his mind there was formed as it were, a closely rivetted ring of thoughts concerning what he had always vaguely felt: such unconditional commandments do not exist; the quality and significance of an act, not to speak of a character, do not depend upon their enactment or infringe- ment, the whole substance lies in the contents with which the separate individual at the moment of his decision and on his own responsibility, fills up the form of these laws.*

In other words, Shakespeare finally clearly saw that the moral of the aim is the only true and possible one; so that,

12 Cf . English edition of Gervimis, p. 925. Editor.

  • Georg Brandes, William Shakespeare (1895).


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according to Brandes, Shakespeare's fundamental principle, for which he extols him, is that the end justifies the means.

Action at all costs, the absence of all ideals, moderation in everything, the conservation of the forms of life once estab- lished, and the end justifies the means. If you add to this a Chauvinist English patriotism, expressed in all the historical dramas, a patriotism according to which the English throne is something sacred, Englishmen always vanquish the French, killing thousands and losing only scores, Joan of Arc regarded as a witch, and the belief that Hector and all the Trojans, from whom the English descend, are heroes, while the Greeks are cowards and traitors, and so forth such is the view of life of the wisest teacher of life according to his greatest ad- mirers. And he who will attentively read Shakespeare's works cannot fail to recognize that the description of this Shake- spearean view of life by his admirers is quite correct.

vn

The merit of every poetic work depends on three things:

1. The subject of the work: the deeper the subject, i.e., the more important it is to the life of mankind, the higher is the work.

2. The external beauty achieved by technical methods proper to the particular kind of art. Thus in dramatic art, the technical method will be: a true individuality of language corresponding to the characters, a natural and at the same time touching plot, a correct scenic rendering of the demon- stration and development of emotion, and the feeling of meas- ure in all that is represented.

3. Sincerity, i.e., that the author should himself keenly feel what he expresses. Without this condition there can be no work of art, as the essence of art consists in the contemplator of the work of art being infected with the author s feeling. If the author does not actually feel what he expresses, then the recipient cannot become infected with the feeling of the au- thor, he does not experience any feeling, and the production can no longer be classified as a work of art.


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The subject of Shakespeare's pieces, as is seen from the demonstrations of his greatest admirers, is that lowest, most vulgar view of life which regards the external elevation of the lords of the world as a genuine distinction, despises the crowd, i.e., the working classes, repudiates not only all reli- gious, but also all humanitarian strivings directed to the betterment of the existing order.

The second condition also, with the exception of the render- ing of the scenes in which the movement of feelings is ex- pressed, is quite absent in Shakespeare. He does not grasp the natural character of the positions of his personages, nor the language of the persons represented, nor does he possess the feeling of measure without which no work can be artistic.

The third and most important condition sincerity, is com- pletely absent in all Shakespeare's works. In all of them one sees intentional artifice, one sees that he is not in earnest, but that he is playing with words.


vm

Shakespeare's works do not satisfy the demands of all art, and besides this, their tendency is of the lowest and most immoral. What then signifies the great fame these works have enjoyed for more than a hundred years?

Many times during my life I have had occasion to argue about Shakespeare with his admirers, not only with people little sensitive to poetry, but with those who keenly felt poetic beauty, such as Turgenev, Fet, 13 and others, and every time I encountered one and the same attitude toward my objection to the praises of Shakespeare. I was not refuted when I pointed out Shakespeare's defects, they only condoled with me for my want of comprehension, and urged upon me the necessity of recognizing the extraordinary supernatural grandeur of Shake- speare, and they did not explain to me in what the beauties of Shakespeare consisted, but were merely vaguely and ex-


13 Afanasi Afanasievich Fet (iSaoP-iSga), who with Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov ( 1821-1877), is considered one of the best Russian poets of the second half of the nineteenth century. Editor.


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aggeratedly enraptured with the whole of Shakespeare, ex- tolling some favorite passages: the unbuttoning of Lear's button, Falstaffs King, Lady Macbeth's ineffaceable spots, Hamlet's exhortation to his father's ghost, eta, etc.

"Open Shakespeare,'* I used to say to these admirers, "wher- ever you like, or wherever it may chance, you will see that you will never find ten consecutive lines which are compre- hensible, unartificial, natural to the character that says them, and which produce an artistic impression." (This experiment may be made by anyone.) And either at random, or according to their own choice, Shakespeare's admirers opened pages in Shakespeare's dramas, and without paying any attention to my criticisms as to why the selected ten lines did not satisfy the most elementary demands of aesthetic and common sense, they were enchanted with the very things which to me ap- peared absurd, incomprehensible, and inartistic. So that in general, when I endeavored to get from Shakespeare's wor- shipers an explanation of his greatness, I met in them exactly the same attitude which I met, and which is usually to be met, in the defenders of any dogmas accepted not through reason but through faith. It is this attitude of Shakespeare's admirers toward their object an attitude which may be seen also in all the mistily indefinite essays and conversations about Shake- spearewhich gave me the key to the understanding of the cause of Shakespeare's fame. There is but one explanation of this wonderful fame: it is one of those epidemic "suggestions" to which men ever have been and are subject. Such "sugges- tion" always has existed and does exist in the most varied spheres of life. As glaring instances, considerable in scope and in deceitful influence, one may cite the medieval Crusades, which afflicted not only adults but even children, and other "suggestions," startling in their senselessness, such as faith in witches, in the utility of torture for the discovery of the truth, the search for the elixir of life, the philosophers' stone, or the passion for tulips, valued at several thousand guldens a bulb, which took hold of Holland. Such irrational "suggestions" always have existed and do exist in all spheres of human life- religious, philosophical, political, economical, scientific, artistic,


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and, in general, literary and people clearly see their insanity only when they free themselves from them. But so long as they are under their influence, the suggestions appear to them so certain, so true, that to argue about them is regarded as neither necessary nor possible. With the development of the printing press, these epidemics became especially striking.

With the development of the press, it has now come to pass that as soon as any event, owing to casual circumstances, re- ceives an especially prominent significance, the organs of the press immediately announce this significance. As soon as the press has brought forward the significance of the event, the public devotes more and more attention to it. The attention of the public prompts the press to examine the event with greater attention and in greater detail. The interest of the public further increases, and the organs of the press, competing with one another, satisfy the public demand. The public is still more interested; the press attributes yet more significance to the event So that the importance of the event, continually grow- ing like a lump of snow, receives an appreciation utterly in- appropriate to its real significance, and this appreciation, often exaggerated to insanity, is retained so long as the conception of life of the leaders of the press and of the public remains the same. There are innumerable examples of such an inappropri- ate estimation which in our time, owing to the mutual influ- ence of press and public on one another, is attached to the most insignificant subjects. A striking example of such mutual influence of the public and the press was the excitement which lately caught hold of the whole world in the case of Dreyfus. The suspicion arose that some captain of the French staff was guilty of treason. Whether because this particular captain was a Jew or because of special internal party disagreements in French society, the press attached a somewhat prominent interest to this event, whose like is continually occurring with- out attracting anyone's attention, and without being able to interest even the French military, still less the whole world. The public turned its attention to this incident, the organs of the press, mutually competing, began to describe, examine, discuss the event; the public was yet more interested; the press


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answered to the demand of the public, and the lump of snow began to grow and grow, till before our eyes it attained such a bulk, that there was not a family where controversies did not rage about "Faffaire" The caricature by Caran d'Ache, repre- senting at first a peaceful family, decided to talk no more about Dreyfus, and then the members of the same family fighting with each other like exasperated furies, quite correctly ex- pressed the attitude of the whole of the reading world to the question about Dreyfus. People of foreign nationalities, who could not be interested in the question whether a French offi- cer was a traitor or notpeople, moreover, who could know nothing of the development of the case-all divided them- selves for and against Dreyfus, and the moment they met they talked and argued about Dreyfus, some asserting his guilt with assurance, others denying it with equal assurance. Only after the lapse of some years did people begin to awake from the "suggestion" and to understand that they could not possibly know whether Dreyfus was guilty or not, and that each one had thousands of subjects much more near to him and inter- esting than the case of Dreyfus.

Such infatuations take place in all spheres, but they are especially noticeable in the sphere of literature, as the press naturally occupies itself the more keenly with the affairs of the press, and they are particularly powerful in our time when the press has received such an unnatural development. It con- tinually happens that people suddenly begin to extol some most insignificant works in exaggerated language, and then, if these works do not correspond to the prevailing view of life, they suddenly become utterly indifferent to them, and forget both the works themselves and their former attitude toward them.

So within my recollection, since the forties, there has been in the sphere of art the laudation and glorification of Eugene Sue and Georges Sand, and in the social sphere, Fourier, in the philosophic sphere, Comte, Hegel, in the scientific sphere, Darwin.

Sue is quite forgotten, Georges Sand is being forgotten and replaced by the writings of Zola and the Decadents, Baude-


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laire, Verlaine, Maeterlinck, and others. Fourier, with his Phalansteries, is quite forgotten, his place being taken by Marx. Hegel, who justified die existing order, and Comte, who denied the necessity of religious activity in mankind, and Darwin with his law of struggle, still hold on, but are begin- ning to be forgotten, being replaced by the teaching of Nietzsche, which, although utterly extravagant, unconsidered, misty, and vicious in its bearing, yet corresponds better with existing tendencies. Thus sometimes artistic, philosophic, and, in general, literary crazes suddenly arise and are as quickly forgotten. But it also happens that such crazes, having arisen in consequence of special reasons accidentally favoring their establishment, correspond in such a degree to the \iews of life spread in society, and especially in literary circles, that they are maintained for a long time. As far back as in the time of Rome, it was remarked that often books have their own very strange fates: consisting in failure, notwithstanding their high merits, and in enormous undeserved success, notwithstanding their triviality. The saying arose: "Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libettr i.e., that the fate of books depends on the understanding of those who read them. Such was the harmony between Shakespeare's writings and the view of life of those amongst whom his fame arose. And this fame has been and still is maintained owing to Shakespeare's work continuing to correspond to the conception of life of those who support this fame.


IX

Until the end of the eighteenth century, Shakespeare not only failed to gain any special fame in England, but was valued less than his contemporary dramatists: Ben Jonson, Fletcher, Beaumont, and others. His fame originated in Germany, and thence was transferred to England, This happened for the following reason.

Art, especially dramatic art, demanding for its realization great preparations, outlays, and labor, was always religious, i.e., its object was to stimulate in men the clearer conception


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of the relation of man to God which had at a given time been attained by the leading men of the circle interested in art.

So it was bound to be from its own nature, and so, as a matter of fact, has it always been amongst all nations Egyp- tians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks commencing in some remote period of human life. And it has always happened that with the coarsening of religious forms, art has more and more diverged from its original object ( according to which it could be regarded as an important function almost an act of wor- ship) and instead of serving religious objects it strove for worldly aims, seeking to satisfy the demands of the crowd or of the powerful, i.e., the aims of recreation and amusement This deviation of art from its true and high vocation took place everywhere and even in connection with Christianity.

The first manifestations of Christian art were services in churches: in the administration of the sacraments and the ordinary liturgy. When, in course of time, the forms of art as used in worship became insufficient, there appeared the Mys- teries, describing those events which were regarded as the most important in the Christian religious view of life. When, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the center of gravity of Christian teaching was more and more transferred to the worship of Christ as God, and the interpretation and following of his teaching, the form of Mysteries describing external Christian events became insufficient, and new forms were demanded. As the expression of the aspirations which gave rise to these changes there appeared the Moralities, dramatic representations in which the characters were personifications of Christian virtues and their opposite vices.

But allegories, owing to the very fact of their being works of art of a lower order, could not replace the former religious dramas, and yet no new forms of dramatic art had yet been found corresponding to the conception now entertained of Christianity, according to which it was regarded as a teaching of life. Hence dramatic art, bereft of any foundation, came in all Christian countries to swerve further and further from its proper use and object, and instead of serving God, it took to serving the crowd (by crowd, I mean, not merely the common


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people, but the majority of immoral or unmoral men, indiffer- ent to the higher problems of human life). This deviation was, moreover, encouraged by the circumstance that at this very time the Greek thinkers, poets, and dramatists, hitherto un- known in the Christian world, were discovered and brought back into favor. From all this it followed that, not having yet had time to work cut their own form of dramatic art, cor- responding to the new conception entertained of Christianity as being a teaching of life, and, at the same time, recognizing the previous form of Mysteries and Moralities as insufficient, the writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in their search for a new form, began to imitate the newly discovered Greek models, attracted by their elegance and novelty.

Since those who could principally avail themselves of dra- matic representations were the powerful of this worldlongs, princes, courtiers, the least religious people, not only utterly indifferent to the questions of religion, but in most cases com- pletely depraved therefore in satisfying the demands of its audience, the drama of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries entirely gave up all religious aim. It came to pass that the drama, which formerly had such a lofty and religious significance, and which can on this condition alone occupy an important place in human life, became, as in the time of Rome, a spectacle, an amusement, a recreation only with this differ- ence, that in Rome the spectacles existed for the whole people, whereas in the Christian world of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries they were principally meant for de- praved kings and the higher classes. Such was the case with the Spanish, English, Italian, and French drama.

The dramas of that time, principally composed in all these countries according to ancient Greek models, or taken from poems, legends, or biographies, naturally reflected the char- acteristics of their respective nationalities: in Italy comedies were chiefly elaborated with humorous positions and persons. In Spain there flourished the worldly drama with complicated plots and ancient historical heroes. The peculiarities of the English drama were the coarse incidents of murders, execu- tions, and battles taking place on the stage, and popular


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humorous interludes. Neither the Italian nor the Spanish nor the English drama had European fame, but they all enjoyed success in their own countries. General fame, owing to the elegance of its language and the talent of its writers, was possessed only by the French drama, distinguished by its strict adherence to the Greek models and especially to the law of the three unities.


So it continued till the end of the eighteenth century, at which time the following happened: in Germany, which had not even got any passable dramatic writers (there was a weak and little-known writer, Hans Sachs), all educated people, to- gether with Frederick the Great, bowed down before the French pseudo-classical drama. Yet at this very time there appeared in Germany a group of educated and talented writers and poets, who feeling the falsity and coldness of the French drama, endeavored to find a new and freer dramatic form. The members of this group, like all the upper classes of the Christian world of that time, were under the charm and influ- ence of the Greek classics, and being utterly indifferent to religious questions, they thought that, if the Greek drama, describing the calamities and sufferings and strife of its heroes, represented the highest dramatic ideal, then such a descrip- tion of the sufferings and the struggles of heroes would be a sufficient subject in the Christian world too, if onlv the narrow demands of pseudo-classicalism were rejected. These men, not understanding that, for the Greeks, the strife and sufferings of their heroes had a religious significance, imagined thev needed only reject the inconvenient law of the three unities without introducing into the drama any religious element correspond- ing to their own time-in order that the drama should have sufficient scope in the representation of various moments in the lives of historical personages, and in general of strong human passions. Exactly this kind of drama existed at that time amongst the kindred English people, and becoming acquainted with it, the Germans decided that precisely such should be the drama of the new period.


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Hereupon, because of the clever development of scenes which constituted Shakespeare's peculiarity, the Germans chose Shakespeare's dramas in preference to all other English dramas, though these were not in the least inferior, but were even superior to Shakespeare. At the head of the group stood Goethe, who was then the dictator of public opinion in aes- thetic questions. He it was who, partly owing to a desire to destroy the fascination of the false French art, partly because he wished to give a greater scope to his own dramatic writing, but chiefly through the agreement of his view of life with Shakespeare's declared Shakespeare a great poet When this error was announced by an authority like Goethe, all those aesthetic critics who did not understand art threw themselves on it like crows on carrion, and began to discover in Shake- speare beauties which did not exist, and to extol them. These men German aesthetic critics, for the most part utterly devoid of aesthetic feeling (without that simple, direct artistic sensi- bility which, for people with a feeling for art, clearly dis- tinguishes aesthetic impressions from all others), but believing the authority which had recognized Shakespeare as a great poet began to praise the whole of Shakespeare indiscrim- inately, especially distinguishing such places as struck them by their effects, or which expressed thoughts coiresponding to their views of life, imagining that these effects and these thoughts constitute the essence of what is called art. These men acted as blind men would act who endeavored to find diamonds by touch amongst a heap of stones they were finger- ing. As the blind man would for a long time strenuously han- dle the stones and in the end could come to no other conclusion than that all stones are precious and especially so the smooth- est, so also these aesthetic critics, without artistic feeling, could not but come to similar results in relation to Shakespeare. To give the greater force to their praise of the whole of Shake- speare they invented aesthetic theories according to which it appeared that no definite religious view of life was necessary for works of art in general, and especially for the drama; that for the puipose of the drama, the representation of human passions and characters was quite sufficient; that not only was


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an internal religious illumination of what was represented unnecessary, but art should be objective, i.e., should represent events quite independently of any judgment of good and evil. As these theories were founded on Shakespeare's own views of life it naturally turned out that the works of Shakespeare satis- fied these theories and therefore were the height of perfection.

These were the people chiefly responsible for Shakespeare's fame. It was principally owing to their writings that the inter- action took place between writers and public which expressed itself and is still expressing itself in an insane worship of Shakespeare which has no rational foundation. These aesthetic critics have written profound treatises about Shakespeare. (Eleven thousand volumes have been written about him, and a whole science of Shakespearology composed.) While the public on the one hand were more and more interested, the learned critics on the other gave further and further explana- tions, adding to the confusion.

So that the first cause of Shakespeare's fame was that the Germans wished to oppose a livelier and freer drama to the cold French drama of which they had grown wean', and which no doubt was tedious enough. The second cause was that the young German writers required a model for writing their own dramas. The third and principal cause was the activity of the learned and zealous aesthetic German critics without aesthetic feeling, who invented the theory of objective art, deliberately rejecting the religious essence of the drama.

"But," I shall be asked, "what do you understand by the words: 'religious essence of the drama? Is not what you are demanding for the drama religious instruction, didactics, what is called 'tendency* which is incompatible with true art?" I reply that by religious essence of art I understand not the direct inculcation of any religious truths in an artistic guise, and not an allegorical demonstration of these truths, but the expression of a definite view of life corresponding to the high- est religious understanding of a given time, which, serving as a motive for composition of the drama, penetrates, unknown to the author, through the whole of his work. So it has always been with true art, and so it is with every true artist in general


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and especially the dramatist. Hence as it was when the drama was a serious thing, and as it should be, according to the essence of the matter he alone can write a drama who has got something to say to men, and that something of the great- est importance for them: about man's relation to God, to the Universe, to the All, the Eternal, the Infinite. But when, thanks to the German theories about objective art, the idea was estab- lished that for the drama this was quite unnecessary, then it became obvious how a writer like Shakespeare who had not got developed in his mind the religious convictions proper to his time, who, in fact, had no convictions at all, but heaped up in his drama all possible events, horrors, fooleries, discus- sions, and effects could appear to be a dramatic writer of the greatest genius.

But these are all external reasons. The fundamental inner cause of Shakespeare's fame was and is this that his dramas were "pro captu lectorte" i.e., they corresponded to the irreli- gious and immoral frame of mind of the upper classes of his time and ours.


XI

At the beginning of the last century, \vhen Goethe was dictator of philosophic thought and aesthetic laws, a series of casual circumstances made him praise Shakespeare. The aes- thetic critics caught up this praise and took to WTiting their lengthy, misty, learned articles, and the great European public began to be enchanted with Shakespeare. The critics, answer- ing to the popular interest, and endeavoring to compete with one another, wrote new and ever new essays about Shake- speare, the readers and spectators on their side were increas- ingly confirmed in their admiration, and Shakespeare's fame, like a lump of snow, kept growing and growing, until in our time it has attained that insane worship which obviously has no other foundation but "suggestion."

"Shakespeare finds no rival, not even approximately, either amongst the old or the new writers." TPoetic truth is the brightest flower in the crown of Shakespeare's merits. "Shake-


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speare is the greatest moralist of all times/' "Shakespeare ex- hibits such many-sidedness and such objectivism that they carry him bevond the limits of time and nationality." "Shake-

J 4 *

speare is the greatest genius that has hitherto existed." "For tragedy, comedy, history, idyl, idylistic comedy, aes- thetic idyl, for the profoundest presentation, as for any casu- ally thrown off passing piece of verse, he is the only man. He not only wields an unlimited power over our mirth and our tears, over all the workings of passion, humor, thought, and observation, but he possesses also an infinite region full of the fantasy of fiction, of a horrifying and an amusing character. He possesses penetration both in the world of fiction and of reality, and above this reigns one and the same tmthfulness to character and to nature, and the same spirit of humanity."

  • To Shakespeare the epithet of Great comes of itself; and if

one adds that independently of his greatness he has further become the reformer of all literature, and moreover has in his works not only expressed the phenomenon of lif e as it was in his day, but also, by the germs of thought which floated in the air, has prophetically forestalled the direction that the social spirit is going to take in the future (of which we see a strik- ing example in Hamlet) one may without hesitation say that Shakespeare was not only a great poet, but the greatest of all poets who ever existed, and that in the sphere of poetic crea- tion, his only worthy rival was that same Me which in his works he expressed to such perfection."

The obvious exaggeration of this estimate proves more con- clusively than anything that it is the consequence not of com- mon sense, but of suggestion. If only a phenomenon has become the subject of suggestion, the more trivial, the lower, the emptier it is, the more supernatural and exaggerated is the significance attributed to it. The Pope is not merely saintly, but most saintly, and so forth. So Shakespeare is not merely a good writer, but the greatest genius, the eternal teacher of mankind.

Suggestion is always a deceit, and every deceit is an evil. In truth the suggestion that Shakespeare's works are great works of genius, presenting the height of both aesthetic and


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ethical perfection, has caused and is causing great injury to men.

This injury is twofold: first, the fall of the drama, and the replacement of this important weapon of progress by an empty and immoral amusement; and secondly, tie direct depravation of men by presenting to them false models for imitation.


xn

Human life is perfected solely through the development of the religious consciousness, the only element which perma- nently unites men. The development of the religious conscious- ness of men is accomplished through all the sides of man's spiritual activity. One direction of this activity is art. One sec- tion of art, perhaps the most influential is the drama.

Therefore the drama, in order to deserve the importance attributed to it, should serve the development of religious consciousness. Such has the drama always been, and such it formerly was in the Christian world. But upon the appearance of Protestantism in its broadest sense, i.e., the appearance of a new understanding of Christianity as a teaching of life, the dramatic art did not find a form corresponding to the new understanding of Christianity, and the men of the Renaissance were carried away by the imitation of classical art. This was most natural, but the tendency was bound to pass, and art had to discover, as indeed it is now beginning to do, its new form corresponding to the change in the understanding of Christianity.

But the discovery of this new form was arrested by the teaching, arising amongst German writers at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries as to so-called objective art, i.e., art indifferent to good or evil, in connection with the exaggerated praise of Shakespeare's dramas, which partly corresponded to the aesthetic teaching of the Germans, and partly served as material for it If there were not that exaggerated praise of Shakespeare's dramas, recognized as the most perfect model of the drama, the men of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would have had to


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understand that the drama, to have a right to exist and to be a serious thing, must serve, as it always has served and cannot but do the development of the religious consciousness. And having understood this, they would have searched for a new form of drama corresponding to their religious understanding.

But when it was decided that the height of perfection was Shakespeare's drama, and that we ought to write as he did, not only without any religious, but even without any moral, in- tention, then all writers of dramas began, in imitation of him, to compose such empty pieces as are those of Goethe, Schiller, Hugo, and, in Russia, of Pushkin, or the chronicles of Ostrovsld, Alexis Tolstoy, and an innumerable quantity of other more or less celebrated dramatic productions which fill all the theaters and are prepared wholesale by anyone who happens to have the idea or desire to write a play. It is only thanks to such a low, trivial understanding of the significance of the drama that there appears amongst us that infinite quantity of dra- matic works describing men's actions, positions, characters, and frames of mind, not only void of any spiritual substance, but often of any human sense.

Let not the reader think that I exclude from this estimate of contemporary drama the theatrical pieces I have myself incidentally written. I recognize them, as well as all the rest, as not having that religious character which must form the foundation of the drama of the future.

The drama then, the most important branch of art, has in our time become the trivial and immoral amusement of a trivial and immoral crowd. The worst of it is, moreover, that to dramatic artfallen as low as it is possible to fall is still attributed an elevated significance no longer appropriate to it. Dramatists, actors, theatrical managers, the press-this last publishing in the most serious tone reports of theaters and operas and the rest, are all perfectly certain that they are doing something very worthy and important.


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xm

The drama in our time is as a great man fallen, who has reached the last degree of his degradation, and at the same time continues to pride himself on his past of which nothing now remains. The public of our time is like those who merci- lessly amuse themselves over this man once so great, and now in the lowest stage of his fall.

Such is one of the mischievous effects of the epidemic suggestion about the greatness of Shakespeare. Another de- plorable result of this worship is the presentation to men of a false model for imitation. If people wrote of Shakespeare that for his time he was a good writer, that he had a fairly good turn for verse, was an intelligent actor and good stage manager, even were this appreciation incorrect and somewhat exag- geratedif only it were moderately true, people of the rising generation might remain free from Shakespeare's influence. But when every young man entering into life in our time has presented to him as die model of moral perfection, not the religious and moral teachers of mankind, but first of all Shake- speare, concerning whom it has been decided and is handed down by learned men from generation to generation as an in- contestable truth, that he was the greatest poet, the greatest teacher of life, the young man cannot remain free from this pernicious influence. When he is reading or listening to Shake- speare, the question for him is no longer whether Shakespeare be good or bad, but only: in what consists that extraordinary beauty, both aesthetic and ethical, of which he has been assured by learned men whom he respects, and which he him- self neither sees nor feels? And constraining himself, and distorting his aesthetic and ethical feeling, he tries to conform to the ruling opinion. He no longer believes in himself but in what is said by the learned people whom he respects. I have experienced all this. Then, reading critical examinations of the dramas and extracts from books with explanatory comments he begins to imagine that he feels something of the nature of an artistic impression. The longer this continues, the more does


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his aesthetic and ethical feeling become distorted. He ceases to distinguish directly and clearly what is artistic from an artificial imitation of art. But above all, having assimilated the immoral view of life which penetrates all Shakespeare's writings, he loses the capacity of distinguishing good from evil. And the error of extolling an insignificant, inartistic writer not only not moral, but directly immoral executes its de- structive work.


XIV

This is why I think that the sooner people free themselves from the false glorification of Shakespeare, the better it will be.

Firstly, having freed themselves from this deceit, men will come to understand that the drama which has no religious element as its foundation is not only not an important and good thing, as it is now supposed to be, but the most trivial and des- picable of things. Having understood this, they will have to search for and work out a new form of modern drama, a drama which will serve as the development and confinnation of the highest stage of religious consciousness in men.

Secondly, having freed themselves from this hypnotic state, men will understand that the trivial and immoral works of Shakespeare and his imitators, aiming merely at the recreation and amusement of the spectators, cannot possibly represent the teaching of life, and that, while there is no true religious drama, the teaching of life should be sought for in other sources.







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