.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long."

All depart to the music of a dead march. Thus ends the fifth act and the
drama.

III

Such is this celebrated drama. However absurd it may appear in my
rendering (which I have endeavored to make as impartial as possible), I
may confidently say that in the original it is yet more absurd. For any
man of our time--if he were not under the hypnotic suggestion that this
drama is the height of perfection--it would be enough to read it to its
end (were he to have sufficient patience for this) to be convinced that
far from being the height of perfection, it is a very bad, carelessly
composed production, which, if it could have been of interest to a
certain public at a certain time, can not evoke among us anything but
aversion and weariness. Every reader of our time, who is free from the
influence of suggestion, will also receive exactly the same impression
from all the other extolled dramas of Shakespeare, not to mention the
senseless, dramatized tales, "Pericles," "Twelfth Night," "The
Tempest," "Cymbeline," "Troilus and Cressida."

But such free-minded individuals, not inoculated with
Shakespeare-worship, are no longer to be found in our Christian society.
Every man of our society and time, from the first period of his
conscious life, has been inoculated with the idea that Shakespeare is a
genius, a poet, and a dramatist, and that all his writings are the
height of perfection. Yet, 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 fro