The works of Shakespeare do not meet the demands of every art, and besides that their tendency is very low and immoral. What then is the meaning of the immense fame these works have enjoyed for more than a hundred years?

To reply to this question seems the more difficult because if the works of Shakespeare had any kind of excellence, the achievement which has produced the exaggerated praise lavished upon them, would at least be to some extent intelligible. But here two extremes meet: works which are beneath criticism, insignificant, empty, and immoral--and insensate, universal laudation, proclaiming these works to be above everything that has ever been produced by man.

How is this to be explained?

Many times during my life I have had occasion to discuss Shakespeare with his admirers, not only with people little sensitive to poetry, but also with those who felt poetic beauty keenly, such as Turgénev, Fet,[144] and others, and each time I have encountered one and the same attitude towards my disagreement with the belaudment of Shakespeare.

I was not answered when I pointed out Shakespeare’s defects; they only pitied me for my want of comprehension and urged on me the necessity of acknowledging the extraordinary supernatural grandeur of Shakespeare. They did not explain to me in what the beauties of Shakespeare consist, but were merely indefinitely and exaggeratedly enthusiastic about the whole of Shakespeare, extolling some favourite passages: the undoing of Lear’s button, Falstaff’s lying, Lady Macbeth’s spot which would not wash out, Hamlet’s address to the ghost of his father, the “forty thousand brothers,” “none does offend, none, I say none,” and so forth.

“Open Shakespeare,” I used to say to these admirers of his, “where you will or as may chance, and you will see that you will never find ten consecutive lines that are comprehensible, natural, characteristic of the person who utters them, and productive of an artistic impression.” (Anyone may make this experiment.) And the belauders of Shakespeare opened pages in Shakespeare’s dramas by chance, or at their own choice, and without paying any attention to the reasons I adduced as to why the ten lines selected did not meet the most elementary demands of esthetics or good sense, praised the very things that appeared to me absurd, unintelligible, and inartistic.

So that in general in response to my endeavours to obtain from the worshippers of Shakespeare an explanation of his greatness, I encountered precisely the attitude I have usually met with, and still meet, from the defenders of any dogmas accepted not on the basis of reason but in mere credulity. And just this attitude of the belauders of Shakespeare towards him--an attitude which may be met with in all the indefinite, misty articles about Shakespeare, and in conversations about him, gave me the key to an understanding of the cause of Shakespeare’s fame. There is only one explanation of this astonishing fame: it is one of those epidemic suggestions to which people always have been and are liable. Such irrational suggestion has always existed, and does exist in all spheres of life. Glaring examples of such suggestion, considerable in scope and deceptiveness, were the mediæval Crusades, which influenced not only adults but also children, and many other epidemic suggestions astonishing in their senselessness, such as the belief in witches, in the utility of torture for the discovery of truth, the search for the elixir of life, for the philosopher’s stone, and the passion for tulips valued at several thousand guilders a bulb, which overran Holland. There always have been and always are such irrational suggestions in all spheres of human life--religious, philosophic, economic, scientific, artistic, and in literature generally, and people only see clearly the insanity of such suggestions after they are freed from them. But as long as they are under their influence these suggestions appear to them such undoubted truths that they do not consider it necessary or possible to reason about them. Since the development of the printing-press these epidemics have become particularly striking.

Since the development of the press it has come about that as soon as, from accidental circumstances, something obtains a special significance, the organs of the press immediately announce this significance. And as soon as the press has put forward the importance of the matter, the public directs yet more attention to it. The hypnotization of the public incites the press to regard the thing more attentively and in greater detail. The interest of the public is still further increased, and the organs of the press, competing one with another, respond to the public demand.

The public becomes yet more interested, and the press attributes yet more importance to the matter; so that this importance, growing ever greater and greater like a snowball, obtains a quite unnatural appreciation, and this appreciation, exaggerated even to absurdity, maintains itself as long as the outlook on life of the leaders of the press and of the public remains the same. There are in our day innumerable examples of such a misunderstanding of the importance of the most insignificant occurrences, occasioned by the mutual reaction of press and public. A striking example of this was the excitement which seized the whole world over the Dreyfus affair. A suspicion arose that some captain on the French staff had been guilty of treason. Whether because this captain was a Jew, or from some special internal party disagreements in French society, this event, which resembled others that continually occur without arousing anyone’s attention and without interesting the whole world or even the French military, was given a somewhat prominent position by the press. The public paid attention to it. The organs of the press, vying with one another, began to describe, to analyse, to discuss the event, the public became yet more interested, the press responded to the demands of the public, and the snowball began to grow and grow, and grew before our eyes to such an extent that there was not a family which had not its disputes about _l’affaire_. So that Caran d’Ache’s caricature, which depicted first a peaceful family that had decided not to discuss the Dreyfus affair any more, and then the same family represented as angry furies fighting one another, quite correctly depicted the relation of the whole reading world to the Dreyfus question. Men of other nationalities who could not have any real interest in the question whether a French officer had or had not been a traitor--men moreover who could not know how the affair was going--all divided for or against Dreyfus, some asserting his guilt with assurance, others denying it with equal certainty.

It was only after some years that people began to awaken from the “suggestion” and to understand that they could not possibly know whether he was guilty or innocent, and that each one of them had a thousand matters nearer and more interesting to him than the Dreyfus affair. Such infatuations occur in all spheres, but they are specially noticeable in the sphere of literature, for the press naturally occupies itself most of all with the affairs of the press, and these are particularly powerful in our day when the press has obtained such an unnatural development. It continually happens that people suddenly begin to devote exaggerated praise to some very insignificant works, and then if these works do not correspond to the prevailing view of life suddenly become perfectly indifferent to them and forget both the works themselves and their own previous attitude towards them.

So within my recollection, in the eighteen-forties, there occurred in the artistic sphere the exaltation and laudation of Eugène Sue and George Sand; in the social sphere, of Fourier; in the philosophic sphere, of Comte and Hegel; and in the scientific sphere, of Darwin.

Sue is quite forgotten, George Sand is being forgotten and replaced by the writings of Zola and the Decadents, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Maeterlinck and others. Fourier, with his phalansteries, is quite forgotten, and has been replaced by Karl Marx. Hegel, who justified the existing order, and Comte, who denied the necessity of religious activity in humanity, and Darwin, with his law of struggle for existence, still maintain their places, but are beginning to be neglected and replaced by the teachings of Nietzsche, which though perfectly absurd, unthought-out, obscure, and bad in their content, correspond better to the present-day outlook on life. Thus it sometimes happens that artistic, philosophic, and literary crazes in general, arise, fall rapidly, and are forgotten.

But it also happens that such crazes, having arisen in consequence of special causes accidentally favouring their establishment, correspond so well to the view of life diffused in society and especially in literary circles, that they maintain their place for a very long time. Even in Roman times it was remarked that books have their fate, and often a very strange one: failure in spite of high qualities, and enormous undeserved success in spite of insignificance. And a proverb was made: _Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli_, that is, that the fate of books depends on the understanding of those who read them. Such was the correspondence of Shakespeare’s work to the view of life of the people among whom his fame arose. And this fame has been maintained, and is still maintained, because the works of Shakespeare continue to correspond to the view of life of those who maintain this fame.

Until the end of the 18th century Shakespeare not only had no particular fame in England, but was estimated less than his contemporaries: Ben Jonson, Fletcher, Beaumont, and others. His fame began in Germany, and from there passed to England. This happened for the following reason:

Art, especially dramatic art which demands for its realisation extensive preparations, expenditure, and labour, was always religious, that is to say, its object was to evoke in man a clearer conception of that relation of man to God attained at the time by the advanced members of the society in which the art was produced.

So it should be by the nature of the matter, and so it always had been among all nations: among the Egyptians, Hindoos, Chinese, and Greeks--from the earliest time that we have knowledge of the life of man. And it has always happened that, with the coarsening of religious forms, art had more and more diverged from this original aim (which had caused it to be recognised as an important matter--almost an act of worship) and instead of the service of religion, it adopted instead of religious aims worldly aims for the satisfaction of the demands of the crowd, or of the great ones of the earth, that is to say, aims of recreation and amusement.

This deflection of art from its true and high vocation occurred everywhere, and it occurred in Christendom.

The first manifestation of Christian art was in the worship of God in the temples: the performance of Mass and, in general, of the liturgy. When in course of time the forms of this art of divine worship became insufficient, the Mysteries were produced, depicting those events regarded as most important in the Christian religious view of life. Afterwards, when in the 13th and 14th centuries the centre of gravity of Christian teaching was more and more transferred from the worship of Jesus as God, to the explanation of his teaching and its fulfilment, the form of the Mysteries, which depicted external Christian events, became insufficient and new forms were demanded; and as an expression of this tendency appeared the Moralities, dramatic representations in which the characters personified the Christian virtues and the opposite vices.

But allegories by their very nature, as art of a lower order, could not replace the former religious drama, and no new form of dramatic art corresponding to the conception of Christianity as a teaching of life had yet been found. And dramatic art, lacking a religious basis, began in all Christian countries more and more to deviate from its purpose, and instead of a service of God became a service of the crowd (I mean by “crowd” not merely the common people, but the majority of immoral or non-moral people indifferent to the higher problems of human life). This deviation was helped on by the fact that just at that time the Greek thinkers, poets, and dramatists, with whom the Christian world had not hitherto been acquainted, were re-discovered and favourably accepted. And therefore, not having yet had time to work out for themselves a clear and satisfactory form of dramatic art suitable to the new conception entertained of Christianity as a teaching of life, and at the same time recognising the previous Mysteries and Moralities as insufficient, the writers of the 15th and 16th centuries, in their search for a new form, began to imitate the newly discovered Greek models, which were attractive by their elegance and novelty. And as it was chiefly the great ones of the earth who could avail themselves of the drama--the kings, princes, and courtiers--the least religious people, not merely quite indifferent to questions of religion but for the most part thoroughly depraved--it followed that to satisfy the demands of its public the drama of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries was chiefly a spectacle intended for depraved kings and for the upper classes. Such was the drama of Spain, England, Italy, and France.

The plays of that time, chiefly composed in all these countries according to ancient Greek models, from poems, legends, and biographies, naturally reflected the national characters. In Italy what was chiefly elaborated were comedies with amusing scenes and characters. In Spain the worldly drama flourished, with complicated plots and ancient historical heroes. The peculiarity of English drama was the coarse effects produced by murders, executions, and battles on the stage, and popular comic interludes. Neither the Italian, nor the Spanish, nor the English, drama had European fame, and each of them enjoyed success only in its own country. General fame, thanks to the elegance of its language and the talent of its writers, was enjoyed only by the French drama, which was distinguished by strict adherence to the Greek models, and especially to the law of the three Unities.

So matters continued till the end of the 18th century, but at the end of that century this is what happened: in Germany which lacked even mediocre dramatists, (though there had been a weak and little known writer, Hans Sachs), all educated people, including Frederick the Great, bowed down before the French pseudo-classical drama. And yet at that very time there appeared in Germany a circle of educated and talented writers and poets who, feeling the falsity and coldness of the French drama, sought a newer and freer dramatic form. The members of this group, like all the upper classes of the Christian world at that time, were under the charm and influence of the Greek classics and, being utterly indifferent to religious questions, thought that if the Greek drama depicting the calamities, sufferings, and struggles of its heroes supplied the best model for the drama, then for drama in the Christian world such representation of the sufferings and struggles of heroes would also be a sufficient subject, if only one rejected the narrow demands of pseudo-classicism. These men, not understanding that the sufferings and strife of their heroes had a religious significance for the Greeks, imagined that it was only necessary to reject the inconvenient law of the three Unities, and without containing any religious element corresponding to the beliefs of their own time, the representation of various incidents in the lives of historic personages, and of strong human passions in general would afford a sufficient basis for the drama. Just such a drama existed at that time among the kindred English people and, becoming acquainted with it, the Germans decided that just such should be the drama of the new period.

The masterly development of the scenes, which constitutes Shakespeare’s speciality, caused them to select Shakespeare’s dramas from among all other English plays which were not in the least inferior, but often superior, to Shakespeare’s.

At the head of the circle stood Goethe, who was then the dictator of public opinion on esthetic questions. And he it was--partly from a wish to destroy the fascination of the false French art, partly from a wish to give freer scope to his own dramatic activity, but chiefly because his view of life agreed with Shakespeare’s--he it was who acclaimed Shakespeare a great poet. When that falsehood had been proclaimed on Goethe’s authority, all those esthetic critics who did not understand art threw themselves upon it like crows upon carrion, and began to search Shakespeare for non-existent beauties, and to extol them. These men, German esthetic critics--for the most part utterly devoid of esthetic feeling, ignorant of that simple direct artistic impression which for men with a feeling for art clearly distinguishes artistic impression from all other, but believing the authority that had proclaimed Shakespeare as a great poet--began to belaud the whole of Shakespeare indiscriminately, selecting passages especially which struck them by their effects or expressed thoughts corresponding to their own view of life, imagining that such effects and such thoughts constitute the essence of what is called art.

These men acted as blind men would if they tried by touch to select diamonds out of a heap of stones they fingered. As the blind man, long sorting out the many little stones, could finally come to no other conclusion than that all the stones were precious and the smoothest were especially precious, so the esthetic critics, deprived of artistic feeling, could come to no other result about Shakespeare. To make their praise of the whole of Shakespeare more convincing they composed an esthetic theory, according to which a definite religious view of life is not at all necessary for the creation of works of art in general, or for the drama in particular; that for the inner content of a play it is quite enough to depict passions and human characters, that not only is no religious illumination of the matter presented required, but that art ought to be objective, that is to say, it should depict occurrences quite independently of any valuation of what is good or bad. And as this theory was educed from Shakespeare, it naturally happened that the works of Shakespeare corresponded to this theory, and were therefore the height of perfection.

And these were the people chiefly responsible for Shakespeare’s fame.

Chiefly in consequence of their writings, the inter-action of writers and the public came about which found expression, and is still expressed, by the insensate belaudment of Shakespeare without any rational basis. These esthetic critics wrote profound treatises about Shakespeare (eleven thousand volumes have been written about him, and a whole science of Shakespeareology has been formulated); the public became more and more interested, and the learned critics explained more and more, that is to say, they added to the confusion and belaudment.

So that the first cause of Shakespeare’s fame was that the Germans wanted to oppose something freer and more alive to the French drama of which they were tired, and which was really dull and cold. The second cause was that the young German writers required a model for their own dramas. The third and chief cause was the activity of the learned and zealous esthetic German critics who lacked esthetic feeling and formulated the theory of objective art, that is to say, deliberately repudiated the religious essence of the drama.

“But,” I shall be asked, “what do you mean by the words ‘religious essence of the drama’? Is not what you demand for the drama religious instruction, didactics: what is called a tendency--which is incompatible with true art?” By “the religious essence of art,” I reply, I mean not an external inculcation of any religious truth in artistic guise, and not an allegorical representation of those truths, but the expression of a definite view of life corresponding to the highest religious understanding of a given period: an outlook which, serving as the impelling motive for the composition of the drama, permeates the whole work though the author is unconscious of it. So it has always been with true art, and so it is with every true artist in general and with dramatists especially. Hence, as happened when the drama was a serious thing, and as should be according to the essence of the matter, he alone can write a drama who has something to say to men--something highly important for them--about man’s relation to God, to the universe, to all that is infinite and unending.

But when, thanks to the German theories about objective art, an idea had been established that, for drama, this is not wanted at all, then a writer like Shakespeare who in his own soul had not formed religious convictions corresponding to his period, and who had even no convictions at all, but piled up in his plays all possible events, horrors, fooleries, discussions, and effects, could evidently be accepted as the greatest of dramatic geniuses.

But all these are external reasons: the fundamental inner cause of Shakespeare’s fame was, and is, that his plays fitted _pro captu lectoris_, that is to say responded to the irreligious and immoral attitude of the upper classes of our world.