d sufferings and strife of its heroes, represented the
highest dramatic ideal, then such a description of the sufferings and
the struggles of heroes would be a sufficient subject in the Christian
world, too, if only the narrow demands of pseudo-classicalism were
rejected. These men, not understanding that, for the Greeks, the strife
and sufferings of their heroes had a religious significance, imagined
that they needed only to reject the inconvenient law of the three
Unities, without introducing into the drama any religious element
corresponding to their time, in order that the drama should have
sufficient scope in the representation of various moments in the lives
of historical personages and, in general, of strong human passions.
Exactly this kind of drama existed at that time among the kindred
English people, and, becoming acquainted with it, the Germans decided
that precisely such should be the drama of the new period.

Thereupon, because of the clever development of scenes which constituted
Shakespeare's peculiarity, they chose Shakespeare's dramas in preference
to all other English dramas, excluding those which were not in the least
inferior, but were even superior, to Shakespeare. At the head of the
group stood Goethe, who was then the dictator of public opinion in
esthetic questions. He it was who, partly owing to a desire to destroy
the fascination of the false French art, partly owing to his desire to
give a greater scope to his own dramatic writing, but chiefly through
the agreement of his view of life with Shakespeare's, declared
Shakespeare a great poet. When this error was announced by an authority
like Goethe, all those esthetic critics who did not understand art threw
themselves on it like crows on carrion and began to discover in
Shakespeare beauties which did not exist, and to extol them. These men,
German esthetic critics, for the most part utterly devoid of esthetic
feeling, without that simple, direct artistic sensibility which, for
people with a feeling for art, clearly distinguishes esthetic
impressions from all others, but believing the authority which had
recognized Shakespeare as a great poet, began to praise the whole of
Shakespeare indiscriminately, especially distinguishing such passages as
struck them by their effects, or which expressed thoughts corresponding
to their views of life, imagining that these effects and these thoughts
constitute the essence of what is called art. These men acted