“Shakespeare is the world’s most successful fraud” – Weekend
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On June 29, 1613, during a screening of Henry VIII at the Globe Theater in London, a fire broke out and it burned to the ground. The theater in which all the great plays of Shakespeare were staged was restored the following year, but Shakespeare did not write any more plays. On the occasion of the 410th anniversary of the end of the career of the great classic of English literature, reviews of him by his contemporaries and descendants were collected.
1
With the exception of Homer, I despise none of the great writers, not even Sir Walter Scott, as I do Shakespeare, when I compare my mind with his.
Bernard Shaw, playwright
2
Anyone who reads Shakespeare looks disturbed and begins to feel lonely.
Samuel Johnson, critic
3
The English language has improved so much since the time of Shakespeare that now many of his phrases are simply incomprehensible.
John Dryden, poet and playwright
4
Macbeth is the work of a playwright who should at least try to write a story, if he had the skill and patience for this art.
John R. R. Tolkien
5
An upstart crow, adorned with feathers, with a tiger’s heart under the skin of a hypocrite, he believes that he, too, can express himself in blank verse, like the best of us. And the Swiss, and the reaper, and the player on the pipe, he thinks that only he is the only theater in the country.
Robert Green, playwright
6
The name of Shakespeare, you can be sure, is exalted absurdly high and will certainly be overthrown.
George Gordon Byron, poet
7
His creations are tragi-komi-lyrical-shepherd farces without a plan, without connection in the scenes, without unities; an unpleasant mixture of high and low, touching and funny, true and false witticisms, funny and meaningless; they are filled with such thoughts as are worthy of a sage, and, moreover, such nonsense, which is only worthy of a jester.
Voltaire, philosopher
8
I remember the astonishment I experienced when I read Shakespeare for the first time. I expected to receive great aesthetic pleasure. But, having read one after the other his works, which are considered his best, I not only did not experience pleasure, but felt an irresistible disgust, boredom and bewilderment.
Leo Tolstoy, writer
9
Speaking of Shakespeare: his “Henry VI” is an abomination of an abomination. Only the vile national feeling of the disgusting reptile called an Englishman could distort so shamefully and dishonorably the lofty ideal of Anne d’Arc.
Vissarion Belinsky, literary critic
10
I cannot shake my conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful swindle that has ever happened in this world that has seen a lot.
Henry James, writer
eleven
“If they want pathos and bloodshed, then we need to give them to them!” – this is how one can formulate the inner impulse that moved the young Shakespeare, who made a real bloodbath in Titus Andronicus. The modern equivalent of this can be found in Stephen King and in many films.
Harold Bloom, literary critic
12
I am angry that these Stratfordians, these Shakespeareans, these scoundrels are trying to intervene and use the law of respect for other people’s shrines to their advantage, forcing everyone to honor their Shakespeare and consider him sacred. We don’t have to put up with this: there are already enough of us.
Mark Twain, writer
13
Let the spectator who watches any of these recently revived plays only ask himself, would he approve of such a performance if it were written by a contemporary poet? I fear he will find that much of his applause comes from the mere sound of a name and an empty reverence for antiquity.
Oliver Goldsmith, writer and playwright
14
Shakespeare is by no means a flawless artist. He is too fond of turning directly to life and borrowing from her her everyday language. He forgets that when art renounces fiction, it renounces everything.
Oscar Wilde, writer
15
I think Shakespeare is great, but I’m more interested in the world we live in.
Oliver Stone, director
16
What is Hamlet? He lives entirely for himself, he is an egoist; but even an egoist cannot believe in himself; we can only believe in what is outside us and above us.
Ivan Turgenev, writer
17
If Shakespeare had a psychiatrist, we wouldn’t have his plays and sonnets.
Gertrude Stein, writer
18
It must be admitted that for all his great virtues, he also had huge shortcomings, and if he managed to write better than anyone, then it happened to write worse than anyone.
Alexander Pope, poet
19
I think Shakespeare is too masculine. It is dominated by men. It’s time for us to have a female Hamlet and a female Macbeth.
Kenneth Branagh, director
20
I do not understand him.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher
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