Tolstoy on Shakespeare: A Critical Essay on Shakespeare

One of literature's supreme masters mounts a brutal assault on another's crown. Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, spent decades trying to love Shakespeare. This essay documents his failure - and his conviction that the world has been wrong about the Bard for centuries. Tolstoy doesn't dismiss Shakespeare casually; he methodically dissects King Lear, exposing what he sees as contrived plotting, improbable coincidences, and characters who fail to behave with psychological authenticity. For Tolstoy, true art must evoke genuine feeling through sincere depiction of human experience, and he finds Shakespeare's celebrated tragedies hollow, their acclaim the result of fashion rather than merit. The essay is infuriating, provocative, and strangely moving - a window into how a genius thinks about genius, and why taste remains irreducibly personal. Whether you agree or bristle, Tolstoy forces you to examine why you love what you love.