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On September 29, 1662, Samuel Pepys, the renowned English diarist, watched a performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in London. His reaction was far from favorable. He noted:
". . . We attended Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, a play I had never seen before and will never see again, as it struck me as the most absurd and dull performance I’ve ever witnessed. I admit there was some impressive dancing and a few beautiful women, which were the only redeeming aspects."
Pepys wasn’t the only one to criticize Shakespeare. Despite being celebrated as one of the greatest writers in English literature, several prominent authors have openly expressed their disdain for his works.
1. LEO TOLSTOY
Among Shakespeare’s most vocal detractors was Leo Tolstoy, the celebrated author of War and Peace. Tolstoy penned a 100-page critique in his non-fiction work, analyzing Shakespeare’s plays and his standing as a writer. Published in 1906 as On Shakespeare and Drama, Tolstoy condemned the plays as “trivial and downright poor,” described Shakespeare’s fame as “harmful,” and branded him “an unimportant, unartistic writer” who was “not merely amoral, but immoral.” He recounted reading King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth (often considered his finest works) in his youth, only to feel “an overwhelming sense of repulsion and boredom.” Was this merely the reaction of an inexperienced reader? Not at all. At 75, Tolstoy revisited Shakespeare’s entire body of work to reassess his views. His conclusion remained unchanged:
"I experienced, even more strongly, the same emotions—though this time, not confusion, but a firm, unwavering certainty that the unquestioned acclaim of Shakespeare’s genius, which compels modern writers to mimic him and audiences to attribute nonexistent virtues to his works (thereby warping their aesthetic and moral sensibilities)—is a profound evil, as all falsehoods are."
2. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
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During the late 1890s, George Bernard Shaw served as a theater critic for the London newspaper Saturday Review. Over three years, he reviewed 19 of Shakespeare’s works and made his disdain for the Bard unmistakably clear: “With the sole exception of Homer,” he declared, “there is no renowned author, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I hold in such complete contempt as I do Shakespear [sic] when I compare my intellect to his.”
While Shaw occasionally acknowledged Shakespeare’s clever wordplay and linguistic creativity in his critiques, he dismissed Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing as “hackwork,” called Othello “overly dramatic,” and even confessed that he preferred Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Falstaff over The Merry Wives of Windsor, the play that inspired it. Although Shaw’s harsh views on Shakespeare softened slightly as his own fame as a playwright grew, his disdain never fully faded. Later editions of Tolstoy’s essay even featured a letter from Shaw to its publishers, where he stated:
"I have made every effort to awaken the English to the shallowness of Shakespeare’s philosophy, the unoriginality and superficiality of his moral teachings, his incoherence and inadequacy as a thinker, his elitism, his crude biases, his lack of knowledge, and his overall unsuitability for the intellectual greatness attributed to him."
3. VOLTAIRE
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Shaw’s letter mentions French author Voltaire, whose critiques of Shakespeare “are particularly significant,” Shaw noted, “because Voltaire initially held an intense admiration for Shakespeare, only to grow increasingly critical as he aged and became less willing to overlook philosophical shortcomings for the sake of artistic talent.” Indeed, during his exile in Britain in the 1720s, Voltaire developed a sincere appreciation for Shakespeare (who was still largely unknown in Europe at the time) and attempted to replicate his style and dramatic techniques upon returning to France in 1728. He even adapted several of Shakespeare’s plays for French audiences, including La Mort de César (inspired by Julius Caesar, 1731), Zaïre (based on Othello, 1733), and Sémiramis (derived from Hamlet, 1748).
However, Voltaire’s admiration waned as Shakespeare’s fame spread across Europe, and the Bard began to overshadow French playwrights. “He was a barbarian … with a touch of imagination,” Voltaire wrote in a 1765 letter to his friend, the lawyer Bernard-Joseph Saurin. “He penned some brilliant lines, but his works can only be appreciated in London and Canada. It reflects poorly on a nation’s taste when what it admires finds no favor elsewhere.”
As years passed, his disdain only deepened:
"France lacks enough insults, dunce caps, and pillories for such a rogue. My blood boils as I speak of him … And the worst part is that … I was the one who first introduced Shakespeare to the French. I was the first to reveal a few pearls I had discovered in his vast heap of rubbish."
4. J.R.R. TOLKIEN
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As a teenager in the early 1900s, J.R.R. Tolkien, while part of a school debating society, reportedly gave a speech where, as noted by his biographer Humphrey Carpenter, he “unleashed a torrent of scathing criticism on Shakespeare, condemning his grimy birthplace, his dismal surroundings, and his base character.” Whether Tolkien held these views into adulthood is debated, but his correspondence provides some insight: In a 1944 letter, he dismissed the study of Shakespeare’s works as “foolish,” and in another from 1955, he admitted to having “thoroughly disliked” analyzing his plays during his school years.
As a professor of Anglo-Saxon and English literature, much of Tolkien’s aversion to Shakespeare stemmed from the excessive focus on his works in academic curricula, often at the expense of older and, in Tolkien’s view, more valuable texts. Additionally, he resented Shakespeare’s influence on the English language, particularly his redefinition of the word “elf” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
In a 1951 letter to his editor Milton Waldman, Tolkien mentioned creating two new languages for the elves in his novels. He added in a footnote that he intended “the term [elves] to reflect its ancient meanings, preserved as late as Spenser—a curse on Will Shakespeare and his wretched cobwebs.”
5. ROBERT GREENE
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Unsurprisingly, Shakespeare had his share of critics during his lifetime, with one of the most notable being the Elizabethan playwright and author Robert Greene. Though Greene authored numerous poems, plays, short stories, and essays, he is primarily remembered today for a pamphlet published after his death in 1592, titled Greene’s Groats-Worth of Wit, Bought With A Million of Repentance. The pamphlet tells a moral tale of two brothers, Roberto and Luciano, who grow apart after Roberto achieves fame as a playwright and Luciano becomes infatuated with a courtesan named Lamilia. Luciano ends up destitute when Lamilia abandons him, while Roberto wastes his newfound wealth and success until he is left with only a single groat. In the end, Roberto urges readers to learn from his mistakes and lead virtuous lives—and cautions three fellow playwrights about a rising star in the literary world, whom he describes as:
"an upstart crow, adorned with our plumes, who, with his 'Tiger’s heart wrapped in a Player’s hide,' believes he can spout blank verse as well as any of you: and … fancies himself the only 'shake-scene' in the land."
Roberto is later revealed to be Greene himself, and the three playwrights he addresses are thought to be Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Lodge, and George Peele. The “upstart crow” and “shake-scene” he warns them about is, of course, William Shakespeare. Greene’s reference to the line “O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide” from Henry VI: Part 3 suggests his displeasure that Shakespeare, who started as an actor, dared to venture into playwriting.
