leo tolstoy, 1906: "i remember the astonishment i felt when i first read shakespeare. i expected to receive a powerful aesthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: "king lear," "romeo and juliet," "hamlet" and "macbeth," not only did i feel no delight, but i felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium... several times i read the dramas and the comedies and historical plays, and i invariably underwent the same feelings: repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment. at the present time, before writing this preface, being desirous once more to test myself, i have, as an old man of seventy-five, again read the whole of shakespeare, including the historical plays, the "henrys," "troilus and cressida," "the tempest", "cymbeline", and i have felt, with even greater force, the same feelings,—this time, however, not of bewilderment, but of firm, indubitable conviction that the unquestionable glory of a great genius which shakespeare enjoys, and which compels writers of our time to imitate him and readers and spectators to discover in him non-existent merits,—thereby distorting their aesthetic and ethical understanding,—is a great evil, as is every untruth." "tolstoy on shakespeare."