are consisted, but were
merely vaguely and exaggeratedly enraptured with the whole of
Shakespeare, extolling some favorite passages: the unbuttoning of Lear's
button, Falstaff's lying, Lady Macbeth's ineffaceable spots, Hamlet's
exhortation to his father's ghost, "forty thousand brothers," etc.

"Open Shakespeare," I used to say to these admirers, "wherever you like,
or wherever it may chance, you will see that you will never find ten
consecutive lines which are comprehensible, unartificial, natural to the
character that says them, and which produce an artistic impression."
(This experiment may be made by any one. 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 esthetic and common sense, they were enchanted with the very
thing which to me appeared absurd, incomprehensible, and inartistic. So
that, in general, when I endeavored to get from Shakespeare's worshipers
an explanation of his greatness, I met in them exactly the same
attitude which I have met, and which is usually 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 Shakespeare--which 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 constantly have been and are subject. Such
"suggestion" 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 the individual "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 philosopher's stone, or the passion for tulips
valued at several thousand guldens a bulb which took hold of Holland.
Such irrational "suggestions" always have been existing, and still
exist, in all spheres of human life--religious, philosophical,
political, economical, scientific, artistic, and, in general,
literary--and people clearly see the insan