A series of accidents brought it about that Goethe at the beginning of the last century, being the dictator of philosophic thought and esthetic laws, praised Shakespeare; the esthetic critics caught up that praise and began to write their long foggy erudite articles, and the great European public began to be enchanted by Shakespeare. The critics, responding to this public interest, laboriously vied with one another in writing fresh and fresh articles about Shakespeare, and readers and spectators were still further confirmed in their enthusiasm, and Shakespeare’s fame kept growing and growing like a snowball, until in our time it has attained a degree of insane laudation that obviously rests on no other basis than suggestion.

“There is no one even approximately equal to Shakespeare either among ancient or modern writers.” “Poetic truth is the most brilliant gem in the crown of Shakespeare’s service.” “Shakespeare is the greatest moralist of all times.” “Shakespeare displays such diversity and such objectivity as place him beyond the limits of time and nationality.” “Shakespeare is the greatest genius that has hitherto existed.” “For the creation of tragedies, comedies, historical plays, idylls, idyllic comedies, esthetic idylls, for representation itself as also for incidental verses, he is the only man. He not only wields unlimited power over our laughter and our tears, over all phases of passion, humour, thought and observation, but he commands an unlimited realm of imagination, full of fancy of a terrifying and amazing character, and he possesses penetration in the world of invention and of reality, and over all this there reigns one and the same truthfulness to character and to nature, and the same spirit of humanity.”

“To Shakespeare the epithet of great applies naturally; and if one adds that independently of his greatness he has also become the reformer of all literature, and moreover has expressed in his works not only the phenomena of the life of his time, but also from thoughts and views that in his day existed only in germ has prophetically foreseen the direction which the social spirit would take in the future (of which we see an amazing example in Hamlet)--one may say without hesitation that Shakespeare was not only a great, but the greatest of all poets that ever existed, and that in the sphere of poetic creation the only rival that equals him is life itself, which in his productions he depicted with such perfection.”

The obvious exaggeration of this appraisement is a most convincing proof that it is not the outcome of sane thought, but of suggestion. The more insignificant, the lower, the emptier, a phenomenon is, once it becomes the object of suggestion, the more supernatural and exaggerated is the importance attributed to it. The Pope is not only holy, but most holy, and so forth. So Shakespeare is not only a good writer, but the greatest genius, the eternal teacher of mankind.

Suggestion is always a deceit, and every deceit is an evil. And really the suggestion that Shakespeare’s works are great works of genius, presenting the climax both of esthetic and ethical perfection, has caused and is causing great injury to men.

This injury is two-fold: first, the fall of the drama and the substitution of an empty immoral amusement for that important organ of progress, and secondly, by the direct degradation of men by presenting them with false models for imitation.

The life of humanity only approaches perfection by the elucidation of religious consciousness (the only principle securely uniting men one with another). The elucidation of the religious consciousness of man is accomplished through all sides of man’s spiritual activity. One side of that activity is art. One part of art, and almost the most important, is the drama.

And therefore the drama, to deserve the importance attributed to it, should serve the elucidation of religious consciousness. Such the drama always was, and such it was in the Christian world. But with the appearance of Protestantism in its broadest sense--that is to say, the appearance of a new understanding of Christianity as a teaching of life--dramatic art did not find a form corresponding to this new understanding of religion, and the men of the Renaissance period were carried away by the imitation of classical art. This was most natural, but the attraction should have passed, and art should have found, as it is now beginning to find, a new form corresponding to the altered understanding of Christianity.

But the finding of this new form was hindered by the teaching, which arose among German writers at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, of the so-called objectivity of art--that is to say, the indifference of art to good or evil--together with an exaggerated praise of Shakespeare’s dramas, which partly corresponded to the esthetic theory of the Germans and partly served as material for it. Had there not been this exaggerated praise of Shakespeare’s dramas, accepted as the most perfect models of drama, people of the 18th and 19th centuries and of our own, would have had to understand that the drama, to have a right to exist and be regarded as a serious matter, ought to serve, as always was, and cannot but be, the case, the elucidation of religious consciousness. And having understood this they would have sought a new form of drama corresponding to their religious perception.

But when it was decided that Shakespeare’s drama is the summit of perfection, and that people ought to write as he did without any religious or even any moral content--all the dramatists, imitating him, began to compose plays lacking content, like the plays of Goethe, Schiller, Hugo, and, among us Russians, Púshkin, and the historical plays of Ostróvski, Alexéy Tolstóy, and the innumerable other more or less well-known dramatic works which fill all the theatres and are continually produced by anyone to whom the thought and desire to write plays occur.

Only thanks to such a mean petty understanding of the importance of the drama do there appear among us that endless series of dramatic works presenting the actions, situations, characters, and moods of people, not only devoid of any spiritual content but even lacking any human sense. And let not the reader suppose that I exclude from this estimate of contemporary drama the pieces I myself have incidentally written for the theatre. I recognise them, just like all the rest, to be lacking in that religious content which should form the basis of the future drama.

So that the drama, the most important sphere of art, has become in our time merely an empty and immoral amusement for the empty and immoral crowd. What is worst of all is that to the art of the drama, which has fallen as low as it was possible to fall, people continue to attribute an elevated significance, unnatural to it.

Dramatists, actors, theatrical managers, the press--the latter most seriously publishing reports of theatres, operas, and so forth--all feel assured that they are doing something very useful and important.

The drama in our time is like a great man fallen to the lowest stage of degradation, who yet continues to pride himself on his past, of which nothing now remains. And the public of our time is like those who pitilessly get amusement out of this once great man, now descended to the lowest depths.

Such is one harmful effect of the epidemic suggestion of the greatness of Shakespeare. Another harmful effect of that bepraisement is the setting up of a false model for men’s imitation.

If people now wrote of Shakespeare that, for his time, he was a great writer, he managed verse well enough, was a clever actor and a good stage-manager, even if their valuation were inexact and somewhat exaggerated, provided it was moderate, people of the younger generations might remain free from the Shakespearean influence. But when to every young man entering on life in our time are presented as models of moral perfection, not the religious and moral teachers of mankind, but first of all Shakespeare, about whom it is decided and transmitted by learned men from generation to generation as an irrefragable truth that he is the greatest of poets and the greatest of teachers of life, a young man cannot remain free from this harmful influence.

On reading or hearing Shakespeare the question for a young man is no longer whether Shakespeare is good or bad, but only to discover wherein lies that extraordinary esthetic and ethical beauty of which he has received the suggestion from learned men whom he respects, but which he neither sees nor feels. And forcing himself, and perverting his esthetic and ethical feeling, he tries to make himself agree with the prevailing opinion. He no longer trusts himself, but trusts to what learned people, respected by him, have said (I myself have experienced all this). Reading the critical analyses of the plays, and the extracts from books with explanatory commentaries, it begins to seem to him that he feels something like an artistic impression, and the longer this continues the more is his esthetic and ethical feeling perverted. He already ceases to discriminate independently and clearly between what is truly artistic, and the artificial imitation of art.

But above all, having assimilated that immoral view of life which permeates all Shakespeare’s works he loses the capacity to distinguish between good and evil. And the error of extolling an insignificant, inartistic, and not only non-moral but plainly immoral writer, accomplishes its pernicious work.

That is why I think that the sooner people emancipate themselves from this false worship of Shakespeare the better it will be--first because people when they are freed from this falsehood will come to understand that a drama which has no religious basis is not only not an important or good thing, as is now supposed, but is a most trivial and contemptible affair. And having understood this they will have to search for and work out a new form of modern drama--a drama which will serve for the elucidation and confirmation in man of the highest degree of religious consciousness. And secondly, because people, when themselves set free from this hypnotic state, will understand that the insignificant and immoral works of Shakespeare and his imitators, aiming only at distracting and amusing the spectators, cannot possibly serve to teach the meaning of life, but that, as long as there is no real religious drama, guidance for life must be looked for from other sources.