Tolstoy on Shakespeare: A Critical Essay on Shakespeare

In Short

This iconoclastic volume centers on Leo Tolstoy’s radical essay challenging William Shakespeare’s global stature as a literary genius. Examining plays like King Lear and Hamlet, Tolstoy argues that Shakespeare’s work lacks coherent characterization, natural dialogue, and genuine moral purpose. The volume expands its critique through supplementary pieces by Ernest Crosby, who analyzes Shakespeare’s aristocratic disdain for the working classes, and George Bernard Shaw, who applauds Tolstoy for puncturing blind hero-worship. Together, these essays challenge readers to abandon unthinking literary tradition and judge art strictly by its ethical clarity and emotional sincerity.

The Story

The book opens with Leo Tolstoy detailing his decades-long struggle to appreciate Shakespeare. Despite repeated attempts to align his judgment with universal European adulation, Tolstoy consistently finds the plays unnatural, absurd, and devoid of true artistic merit. To prove his point, he conducts a rigorous scene-by-scene critique of King Lear. He details how Lear absurdly banishes his favorite daughter Cordelia based on blatant flattery from his elder children, while the subplot involves Gloucester instantly believing a forged letter framing his loyal son Edgar. Tolstoy points out how characters routinely fail to recognize people they know intimately, speak in pompous or inappropriate riddles, and act without believable human motivation.

Comparing Shakespeare's tragedy to an earlier anonymous drama, King Leir, Tolstoy asserts that the older version is vastly superior because its characters act with simple, touching sincerity, and its narrative ends logically rather than indulging in chaotic bloodshed. Turning to Hamlet, Tolstoy argues that Shakespeare ruined a coherent historical legend by forcing the Danish prince to deliver contradictory speeches and act erratically merely to produce theatrical effects, rendering the character fundamentally hollow.

Seeking the origin of Shakespeare’s vast reputation, Tolstoy traces it to late eighteenth-century German critics. Seeking a freer dramatic form than the rigid French classical style, these writers elevated Shakespeare as an exemplar of "objective art"—art indifferent to moral good or evil. Tolstoy argues that this spark lit a mindless, epidemic "suggestion" spread by the printing press, misleading generations into accepting dogma over reason. True art, Tolstoy maintains, must advance religious consciousness and unite humanity in ethical feeling, a purpose Shakespeare's works completely fail to serve.

The volume then shifts to Ernest Crosby’s essay, which examines Shakespeare’s political and social biases. Surveying the historical plays, comedies, and tragedies, Crosby catalogs an extensive array of abusive epithets hurled at common laborers, cooks, and servants. He points out how working people are consistently depicted as foul-breathed, cowardly, and foolish crowds, while nobility is romanticized. In plays like Henry V and CorIolanus, royalty treats commoners as mere disposable tools, while speeches like Ulysses’ panegyric on degree in Troilus and Cressida expose Shakespeare’s deep hostility toward democratic progress. Crosby shows how Shakespeare even travesties utopian visions of equality, such as Gonzalo’s speech in The Tempest.

The argument concludes with excerpts from a letter by George Bernard Shaw, who supports Tolstoy's assault on Shakespeare's intellectual prestige, noting that Shakespeare merely recycled ready-made Elizabethan morality rather than offering original philosophical insight.

How It Unfolds

The struggle with universal adulation Tolstoy describes his long, unsuccessful efforts to force himself to admire Shakespeare's works, concluding that his deep aversion is not a fleeting mood but a reasoned rejection of a widespread cultural obsession.

The dismantling of Lear Analyzing King Lear scene by scene, Tolstoy highlights its unnatural character motivations, absurd disguises, convoluted subplots, and pompous rhetoric, contrasting it unfavorably with the simpler, morally coherent older play King Leir.

The incoherence of Hamlet Examining the prince of Denmark, Tolstoy argues that Shakespeare ruined a clear historical revenge legend by burdening Hamlet with incompatible traits and theatrical posturing, leaving him without a genuine character.

The origin of the delusion Tolstoy attributes Shakespeare's inflated fame to late eighteenth-century German critics who promoted moral indifference in art, triggering a mass cultural delusion sustained by uncritical faith rather than rational judgment.

The aristocratic prejudice Ernest Crosby surveys Shakespeare’s plays to document a pervasive contempt for the working classes, demonstrating how common people are routinely depicted as base, foolish, and inherently inferior to royalty.

The defense of hierarchy Crosby analyzes key speeches celebrating social rank and authority, showing that Shakespeare actively feared democratic ideas and viewed the lower classes as a dangerous, chaotic mass.

The playwright evaluated George Bernard Shaw offers qualified support for Tolstoy’s thesis, placing Shakespeare among second-order writers whose morality is strictly borrowed and whose philosophical contributions are vastly overrated.

The People

Leo Tolstoy The primary essayist, Tolstoy seeks absolute moral and aesthetic truth in art. Distressed by the universal adulation heaped upon Shakespeare, he systematically dissects the plays to expose what he views as artificiality and moral emptiness, ultimately advocating for art that serves human ethical progress.

William Shakespeare The central subject of critique, Shakespeare is evaluated through his body of work. He is depicted by Tolstoy as an unoriginal, theatrical craftsman focused on sensational effects, and by Crosby as a class-conscious Elizabethan poet who held common working people in open contempt.

King Lear Examined by Tolstoy as a prime example of unnatural characterization, Lear is a monarch who foolishly banishes his loving daughter Cordelia over obvious flattery, spends the play delivering pompous monologues, and wanders the heath acting insane without believable human motivation.

Hamlet Analyzed by both Tolstoy and Shaw, Hamlet is a prince whose actions and speeches contradict one another across the play. Instead of pursuing clear revenge, he alternates between awe, mockery, and cruelty, rendering his character entirely incoherent to satisfy stage demands.

Ernest Crosby A social critic whose essay complements Tolstoy's work, Crosby seeks to uncover Shakespeare's political orientation. He gathers extensive textual evidence to demonstrate the playwright's snobbery and resistance to social equality.

George Bernard Shaw A renowned dramatist who joins the debate, Shaw seeks to liberate literature from uncritical hero-worship. He argues that Shakespeare lacked a true philosophical framework and relied entirely on ready-made Elizabethan morality.

In Its Own Voice

"My disagreement with the established opinion about Shakespeare is not the result of an accidental frame of mind, nor of a light-minded attitude toward the matter, but is the outcome of many years' repeated and insistent endeavors to harmonize my own views of Shakespeare with those established amongst all civilized men of the Christian world." Tolstoy reflects on his prolonged personal effort to understand why he could not share the world's uncritical praise for the English playwright.

"Degree being vizarded, / Th' unworthiest shews as fairly in the mask." Crosby cites Ulysses' famous speech from Troilus and Cressida to illustrate Shakespeare's defense of strict social hierarchy and monarchical authority.

"I place Shakespeare with Dickens, Scott, Dumas pere, etc., in the second order, because, tho they are enormously entertaining, their morality is ready-made..." Shaw explains why Shakespeare falls short of the highest rank of original philosophical literature.

What It's Really About

Beneath its provocative attacks on a literary icon, this volume is fundamentally an inquiry into the purpose of art and the dangers of uncritical tradition. Tolstoy argues that true art must be clear, sincere, and directly tied to the moral and spiritual elevation of humanity. When society exalts works that prioritize sensational stage effects, artificial language, and moral neutrality, it corrupts public taste and elevates mere entertainment over ethical truth.

Crosby’s contribution expands this theme into the social realm, examining how literature reflects and reinforces class power. Together with Shaw's commentary, the book challenges readers to question inherited intellectual dogmas, asking whether artistic greatness should be judged by reputation and verbal flourish or by a work's capacity to illuminate human experience and foster genuine human unity.

Why Read It Today

This collection will fascinate literary contrarians, students of Russian thought, and anyone who has ever secretly struggled to enjoy Shakespeare. It feels like an intense, uncompromising intellectual debate, stripping away academic reverence to confront the text directly. Reading Tolstoy systematically dismantle revered plays provides a bracing, thought-provoking shock that forces readers to re-examine their own definitions of literary quality.

The book is not without its difficulties. Tolstoy's arguments can be uncompromisingly rigid, judging sixteenth-century theatrical conventions against his own strict nineteenth-century moral and aesthetic framework. Crosby's essay relies heavily on long lists of archaic Elizabethan insults and extended textual citations that require patient reading. Furthermore, readers must adjust to the Victorian translation style and the authors' unapologetic dismissal of works widely considered masterpieces.

Yet the volume stays with you precisely because it refuses to indulge in comfortable praise. It offers an unforgettable lesson in critical thinking, reminding us that no author, regardless of their historical stature, should be exempt from rigorous moral and artistic examination.