Tolstoy on Shakespeare

The author remembers the astonishment he felt when he first read Shakespeare. He expected to receive a powerful aesthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as Shakespeare's best: "King Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did the author feel no delight, but he felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium, and doubted as to whether he was senseless in feeling works regarded as the summit of perfection by the whole of the civilized world to be ...