Every good writer has his fan club, but also people who have not fallen in favor. Being William Shakespeare a world-renowned author, it is not surprising that he has earned the envy and antipathy of several writers of his time or later.
Next I will tell you about 5 writers who would look up to Shakespeare as blasphemous.
Leo Tolstoy
This Russian writer said that Shakespeare's plays were "trivial and insufferably bad", in addition to defining said author as “a little artistic and insignificant writer not only low moral but immoral”. Finally, he referred to books like Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet as "an irresistible repulsion and boredom."
George Bernard Shaw
This Irish author was a theater critic for three years at the London Saturday Review. In that time he reviewed 19 Shakespeare plays, to which he commented
"With the sole exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, who I despise as completely as I do Shakespeare, especially when I measure my intellect against his."
Later he added the following
“I have devoted a lot of effort to open the eyes of the English to the emptiness of Shakespeare's philosophy, to its superficiality, its double standards, its weakness and incoherence as a thinker, to his snobbery, to his vulgar prejudices, his ignorance and his incapacity as a philosopher. "
Voltaire
This famous philosopher, historian and writer was quite fond of Shakespeare as well as adapted several of his works. However, his opinion changed completely as can be seen in his statements.
“He was a savage. He has written many graceful lines but his pieces can only please in London and Canada. It is not a good sign when only those from your own house admire you ”.
With the passage of time his criticisms became more accusatory.
"My blood boils in my veins as I talk to you about him... And how terrible it is ... is that I, who was the first to speak about this Shakespeare, have also been the first to show the French some pearls that he had found in his huge dung heap. "
JRR Tolkien
The author of The Lord of the Rings gave off pure hatred for Shakespeare since he was a teenager talking about “his dirty birthplace, his simple surroundings and his seedy character”. As an adult he referred to Shakespeare's writings as "bloody cobwebs."
Robert Greene
From the same time as Shakespeare, this author warned other writers about a new boy in the world of literature, whom he describes as
"An upstart crow, embellished with our feathers, that with his tiger heart wrapped in the skin of a player he supposes that he is thus capable of inflaming his white verses like the best of us and that to top it all he is believed to be the only representative of the scene in our country. "
It seems that Shakespeare earned the hatred of many famous writers, despite all the fame he continues to have today, Shakespeare was not only a great writer admired by many, but also hated by many others.
Everyone was and is free to have and express their own opinion on any subject or artist, although George Bernard Shaw's seems pure arrogance, even more so if we remember that he visited Soviet Russia and the Communists easily deceived him with the theater that gave him. They rode and turned him into a mindless propagandist. In any case, there is almost universal consensus on William Shakespeare: He is one of the great geniuses of Universal Literature of all time along with Miguel de Cervantes.
George Bernard Shaw is another proof of the difference between literary talent and political wisdom, because he admired and was a propagandist for Stalin and also for Mussolini. Nothing should be surprising when the Nazi in uniform, graduation and confidant of the Gestapo, the immoral, false, hypocritical and overrated Martin Heidegger, admirer and propagandist of Hitler, as racist as this one, is admired and considered a "genius of philosophy" and as mediocre as all racists.