Tolstoy on Shakespeare: A Critical Essay on ShakespeareTolstoy, Leo, graf
General
Tolstoy on Shakespeare: A Critical Essay on Shakespeare
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Criticism and interpretation; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Political and social views
and the tales of the cook and the miller take rank with those of the
squire and lawyer. The English Bible, too, was in Shakespeare's hands,
and he must have been familiar with shepherd kings and
fishermen-apostles. In the very year in which "Hamlet" first appeared, a
work was published in Spain which was at once translated into English, a
work as well known to-day as Shakespeare's own writings. If the
peasantry was anywhere to be neglected and despised, where should it be
rather than in proud, aristocratic Spain, and yet, to place beside
Shakespeare's Bottoms and Slys, Cervantes has given us the admirable
Sancho Panza, and has spread his loving humor in equal measure over
servant and master. Are we to believe that the yeomen of England, who
beat back the Armada, were inferior to the Spanish peasantry whom they
overcame, or is it not rather true that the Spanish author had a deeper
insight into his country's heart than was allotted to the English
dramatist? Cervantes, the soldier and adventurer, rose above the
prejudices of his class, while Shakespeare never lifted his eyes beyond
the narrow horizon of the Court to which he catered. It was love that
opened Cervantes's eye, and it is in all-embracing love that Shakespeare
was deficient. As far as the common people were concerned, he never held
the mirror up to nature.
But the book of all others which might have suggested to Shakespeare
that there was more in the claims of the lower classes than was dreamt
of in his philosophy was More's "Utopia," which in its English form was
already a classic. More, the richest and most powerful man in England
after the king, not only believed in the workingman, but knew that he
suffered from unjust social conditions. He could never have represented
the down-trodden followers of Cade-Tyler nor the hungry mob in
"Coriolanus" with the utter lack of sympathy which Shakespeare
manifests. "What justice is there in this," asks the great Lord
Chancellor, whose character stood the test of death--"what justice is
there in this, that a nobleman, a goldsmith, a banker, or any other man,
that either does nothing at all or at best is employed in things that
are of no use to the public, should live in great luxury and splendor
upon what is so ill acquired; and a mean man, a carter, a smith, a
plowman, that works harder even than the beasts themselves, and is
employed on labors so necessary that no commonwealth could hold out a
year without them, can only earn so poor a livelihood, and must lead so
miserable a life, that the condition of the beasts is much better than
theirs?"
How different from this is Shakespeare's conception of the place of the
workingman in society! After a full and candid survey of his plays,
Bottom, the weaver with the ass's head, remains his type of the artizan
and the "mutable, rank-scented many," his type of the masses. Is it
unfair to take the misshapen "servant-monster" Caliban as his last word
on the subject?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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