[6] His intolerance became aggravated after 1886. In _What shall we do?_ he did not as yet dare to lay hands on Beethoven or on Shakespeare. Moreover, he reproached contemporary artists for daring to invoke their names. "The activity of a Galileo, a Shakespeare, a Beethoven has nothing in common with that of a Tyndall, a Victor Hugo, or a Wagner; just as the Holy Father would deny all relationship with the Orthodox popes." (_What shall we do?_) [7] For that matter, he wished to leave before the end of the first act. "For me the question was settled. I had no more doubt. There was nothing to be expected of an author capable of imagining scenes like these. One could affirm beforehand that he could never write anything that was not evil." [8] In order to make a selection from the French poets of the new schools he conceived the admirable idea of "copying, in each volume, the verses printed on page 28!" [9] _Shakespeare,_ 1903. The book was written on the occasion of an article by Ernest Crosby upon _Shakespeare and the Working Classes._ [10] "Here was one of those incidents which often occur, without attracting the attention of any one, and without interesting--I do not say the world--but even the French military world." And further on: "It was not until some years had passed that men awoke from their hypnosis, and understood that they could not possibly know whether Dreyfus were guilty or not, and that each of them had other interests more important and more immediate than the Affaire Dreyfus." (_Shakespeare._) [11] "_King Lear_ is a very poor drama, very carelessly constructed, which can inspire nothing but weariness and disgust."--_Othello_, for which Tolstoy evinces a certain sympathy, doubtless because the work is in harmony with his ideas of that time concerning marriage and jealousy, "while the least wretched of Shakespeare's plays, is only a tissue of emphatic words." Hamlet has no character at all: "he is the author's phonograph, who repeats all his ideas in a string." As for _The Tempest, Cymbeline, Troilus and Cressida,_ &c., Tolstoy only mentions them on account of their "ineptitude." The only character of Shakespeare's whom he finds natural is Falstaff, "precisely because here the tongue of Shakespeare, full of frigid pleasantries and inept puns, is in harmony with the false, vain, debauched character of this repulsive drunkard." Tolstoy had not always been of this opinion. He read Shakespeare with pleasure between 1860 and 1870, especially at the time when he contemplated writing a historical play about the figure of Peter the Great. In his notes for 1869 we find that he even takes _Hamlet_ as his model and his guide. Having mentioned his completed works, and comparing _War and Peace_ to the Homeric ideal, he adds: "HAMLET and my future works; the poetry of the romance-writer in the depicting of character."