nderwent the same feelings: repulsion,
weariness, and bewilderment. At the present time, 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 "Henrys,"
"Troilus and Cressida," the "Tempest," "Cymbeline," 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 non-existent merits--thereby distorting
their esthetic and ethical understanding--is a great evil, as is every
untruth.

[Footnote 52: From "A Critical Essay on Shakespeare," published in
1907.]

Altho I know that the majority of people so firmly believe in the
greatness of Shakespeare that in reading this judgment of mine they
will not admit even the possibility of its justice, and will not give
it the slightest attention, nevertheless I will endeavor, as well as I
can, to show why I believe that Shakespeare can not be recognized
either as a great genius, or even as an average author....

However hopeless it may seem, I will endeavor to demonstrate in the
selected drama--"King Lear"--all those faults equally characteristic
also of all the other tragedies and comedies of Shakespeare, on
account of which he not only is not representing a 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 opposition, and 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 struggle 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 can not produce on the reader the illusion which
represents the essential condition of art.

Lear has no necessity or motive for his abdication; also, having lived
all