ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how a comparison with Tolstoy, who, with Goethe, is of all modern writers most nearly comparable with Shakespeare, and reveals a striking similarity of spiritual experience. It draws upon The Varieties of Religious Experience for the facts concerning Tolstoy. A popular theory presumes that Shakespeare’s decade of tragedy was the outcome of some spiritual calamity, of some episode of tragic gloom in his private life. No tangible evidence supports the allegation. Tolstoy, like the Shakespeare of 1600, was not a young and inexperienced man when sickness entered his soul. He, too, had already written tragic literature during happier days. Tolstoy continued to reject the superficialities of civilization, and his attitude shows a remarkable likeness to that of the poet, as given in the utterances of Timon. Tolstoy lived the very history that Shakespeare traced out for him three centuries earlier.
