An article by Ernest Howard Crosby[135] on Shakespeare’s attitude towards the people has suggested to me the idea of expressing the opinion I formed long ago about Shakespeare’s works, an opinion quite contrary to that established throughout the European world. Recalling the struggle with doubts, the pretences, and the efforts to attune myself to Shakespeare, that I went through owing to my complete disagreement with the general adulation, and supposing that many people have experienced and are experiencing the same perplexity, I think it may be of some use definitely and frankly to express this disagreement of mine with the opinion held by the majority, especially as the conclusions I came to on examining the causes of my disagreement are, it seems to me, not devoid of interest and significance.

My disagreement with the established opinion about Shakespeare is not the result of a casual mood or of a lighthearted attitude towards the subject, but it is the result of repeated and strenuous efforts, extending over many years, to harmonise my views with the opinions about Shakespeare accepted throughout the whole educated Christian world.

I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I had expected to receive a great esthetic pleasure, but on reading, one after another, the works regarded as his best, _King Lear_, _Romeo and Juliet_, _Hamlet_, and _Macbeth_, not only did I not experience pleasure but I felt an insuperable repulsion and tedium, and a doubt whether I lacked sense, since I considered works insignificant and simply bad, which are regarded as the summit of perfection by the whole educated world; or whether the importance that educated world attributed to Shakespeare’s works lacks sense. My perplexity was increased by the fact that I have always keenly felt the beauties of poetry in all its forms: why then did Shakespeare’s works, recognised by the whole world as works of artistic genius, not only fail to please me, but even seem detestable? I long distrusted my judgment, and to check my conclusions, during fifty years I repeatedly set to work to read Shakespeare in all possible forms--in Russian, in English, and in German in Schlegel’s translation, as I was advised to. I read the tragedies, comedies, and historical plays, several times over, and I invariably experienced the same feelings--repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment. Now, before writing this article, as an old man of 75,[136] wishing once more to check my conclusions, I have again read the whole of Shakespeare, including the historical plays, the _Henrys_, _Troilus and Cressida_, _The Tempest_, and _Cymbeline_, etc., and have experienced the same feeling still more strongly, no longer with perplexity but with a firm indubitable conviction that the undisputed fame Shakespeare enjoys as a great genius, which makes writers of our time imitate him and readers and spectators, distorting their esthetic and ethical sense, seek non-existent qualities in him, is a great evil--as every falsehood is.

Although I know that the majority of people have such faith in Shakespeare’s greatness that on reading this opinion of mine they will not even admit the possibility of its being correct, and will not pay any attention to it, I shall nevertheless try as best I can to show why I think Shakespeare cannot be admitted to be either a great writer of genius, or even an average one.

For this purpose I will take one of the most admired of Shakespeare’s dramas--_King Lear_, in enthusiastic praise of which most of the critics agree.

“The tragedy of Lear is deservedly celebrated among the dramas of Shakespeare,” says Dr. Johnson. “There is perhaps no play which keeps the attention so strongly fixed, 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 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 inspiration of the poet as the other two.”

“King Lear may be recognised 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, 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 remembrance fresh names and memories of its own creation.”

“Lear, c’est l’occasion de Cordelia,” says Victor Hugo. “La maternité de la fille sur le père; sujet profonde; la maternité vénérable entre toutes, si admirablement traduite par la légend de cette romaine, nourrice, au fond d’un cachot, de son père veillard. La jeune mammelle près de la barbe blanche, il n’est point de spectacle plus sacré. Cette mammelle filiale c’est Cordelia.

“Une fois cette figure rêvée et trouvée Shakespeare a créé son drame.... Shakespeare, portant Cordelia dans sa pensée, a créé cette tragédie comme un dieu, qui ayant une aurore à placer, ferait tout exprès un monde pour l’y mettre.”[137]

“In _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 Michael Angelo, only that the suffering here is far more intense, the wail wilder, the harmonies of beauty more definitely shattered by the discords of despair.”

Such are the judgments of the critics on this drama, and therefore, I think I am justified in choosing it as an example of Shakespeare’s best plays.

I will try as impartially as possible to give the contents of the play, and then show why it is not the height of perfection, as it is said to be by the learned critics, but is something quite different.