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6 Steve Harris, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE
Together with selected notes on some of the plays
By Samuel Johnson
[Johnson published his annotated edition of Shakespeare's Plays in
1765.]
PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE
Some of the notes to
Measure for Measure
Henry IV
Henry V
King Lear
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
Othello
PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE
That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the
honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint
likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add
nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox;
or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory
expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present
age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet
denied by envy, will be at last bestowed by time.
Antiquity, like every other quality that attracts the notice
of mankind, has undoubtedly votaries that reverence it, not from
reason, but from prejudice. Some seem to admire indiscriminately
whatever has been long preserved, without considering that time
has sometimes co-operated with chance; all perhaps are more willing
to honour past than present excellence; and the mind contemplates
genius through the shades of age, as the eye surveys the sun through
artificial opacity. The great contention of criticism is to find the
faults of the moderns, and the beauties of the ancients. While an
authour is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance,
and when he is dead we rate them by his best.
To works, however, of which the excellence is not absolute and
definite, but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon
principles demonstrative and scientifick, but appealing wholly
to observation and experience, no other test can be applied than
length of duration and continuance of esteem. What mankind have
long possessed they have often examined and compared, and if they
persist to value the possession, it is because frequent comparisons
have confirmed opinion in its favour. As among the works of nature
no man can properly call a river deep or a mountain high, without
the knowledge of many mountains and many rivers; so in the productions
of genius, nothing can be stiled excellent till it has been compared
with other works of the same kind. Demonstration immediately
displays its power, and has nothing to hope or fear from the flux
of years; but works tentative and experimental must be estimated
by their proportion to the general and collective ability of man,
as it is discovered in a long succession of endeavours. Of the first
building that was raised, it might be with certainty determined
that it was round or square, but whether it was spacious or lofty
must have been referred to time. The Pythagorean scale of numbers
was at once discovered to be perfect; but the poems of Homer we
yet know not to transcend the common limits of human intelligence,
but by remarking, that nation after nation, and century after century,
has been able to do little more than transpose his incidents, new
name his characters, and paraphrase his sentiments.
The reverence due to writings that have long subsisted arises
therefore not from any credulous confidence in the superior wisdom
of past ages, or gloomy persuasion of the degeneracy of mankind,
but is the consequence of acknowledged and indubitable positions,
that what has been longest known has been most considered, and what
is most considered is best understood.
The Poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revision, may now
begin to assume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege
of established fame and prescriptive veneration. He has long outlived
his century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit.
Whatever advantages he might once derive from personal allusions,
local customs, or temporary opinions, have for many years been
lost; and every topick of merriment or motive of sorrow, which the
modes of artificial life afforded him, now only obscure the scenes
which they once illuminated. The effects of favour and competition
are at an end; the tradition of his friendships and his enmities has
perished; his works support no opinion with arguments, nor supply
any faction with invectives; they can neither indulge vanity nor
gratify malignity, but are read without any other reason than the
desire of pleasure, and are therefore praised only as pleasure is
obtained; yet, thus unassisted by interest or passion, they have
past through variations of taste and changes of manners, and, as
they devolved from one generation to another, have received new
honours at every transmission.
But because human judgment, though it be gradually gaining upon
certainty, never becomes infallible; and approbation, though long
continued, may yet be only the approbation of prejudice or fashion;
it is proper to inquire, by what peculiarities of excellence
Shakespeare has gained and kept the favour of his countrymen.
Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations
of general nature. Particular manners can be known to few,
and therefore few only can judge how nearly they are copied. The
irregular combinations of fanciful invention may delight a-while,
by that novelty of which the common satiety of life sends us all
in quest; but the pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted,
and the mind can only repose on the stability of truth.
Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers,
the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful
mirrour of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by
the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the
world; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can
operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient
fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of
common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation
will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those
general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated,
and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings
of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of
Shakespeare it is commonly a species.
It is from this wide extension of design that so much instruction
is derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakespeare with
practical axioms and domestick wisdom. It was said of Euripides, that
every verse was a precept and it may be said of Shakespeare, that
from his works may be collected a system of civil and oeconomical
prudence. Yet his real power is not shown in the splendour
of particular passages, but by the progress of his fable, and the
tenour of his dialogue; and he that tries to recommend him by select
quotations, will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when
he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a
specimen.
It will not easily be imagined how much Shakespeare excells in
accommodating his sentiments to real life, but by comparing him
with other authours. It was observed of the ancient schools of
declamation, that the more diligently they were frequented, the
more was the student disqualified for the world, because he found
nothing there which he should ever meet in any other place. The
same remark may be applied to every stage but that of Shakespeare.
The theatre, when it is under any other direction, is peopled by
such characters as were never seen, conversing in a language which
was never heard, upon topicks which will never arise in the commerce
of mankind. But the dialogue of this authour is often so evidently
determined by the incident which produces it, and is pursued with
so much ease and simplicity, that it seems scarcely to claim the
merit of fiction, but to have been gleaned by diligent selection
out of common conversation, and common occurrences.
Upon every other stage the universal agent is love, by whose
power all good and evil is distributed, and every action quickened
or retarded. To bring a lover, a lady and a rival into the fable;
to entangle them in contradictory obligations, perplex them with
oppositions of interest, and harrass them with violence of desires
inconsistent with each other; to make them meet in rapture and part
in agony; to fill their mouths with hyperbolical joy and outrageous
sorrow; to distress them as nothing human ever was distressed; to
deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered, is the business
of a modern dramatist. For this probability is violated, life is
misrepresented, and language is depraved. But love is only one of
many passions, and as it has no great influence upon the sum of
life, it has little operation in the dramas of a poet, who caught
his ideas from the living world, and exhibited only what he saw
before him. He knew, that any other passion, as it was regular or
exorbitant, was a cause of happiness or calamity.
Characters thus ample and general were not easily discriminated
and preserved, yet perhaps no poet ever kept his personages more
distinct from each other. I will not say with Pope, that every
speech may be assigned to the proper speaker, because many speeches
there are which have nothing characteristical; but, perhaps, though
some may be equally adapted to every person, it will be difficult
to find, any that can be properly transferred from the present
possessor to another claimant. The choice is right, when there is
reason for choice.
Other dramatists can only gain attention by hyperbolical or aggravated
characters, by fabulous and unexampled excellence or depravity, as
the writers of barbarous romances invigorated the reader by a giant
and a dwarf; and he that should form his expectations of human
affairs from the play, or from the tale, would be equally deceived.
Shakespeare has no heroes; his scenes are occupied only by men,
who act and speak as the reader thinks that he should himself have
spoken or acted on the same occasion: Even where the agency is
supernatural the dialogue is level with life. Other writers disguise
the most natural passions and most frequent incidents: so that he
who contemplates them in the book will not know them in the world:
Shakespeare approximates the remote, and familiarizes the wonderful;
the event which he represents will not happen, but if it were
possible, its effects would be probably such as he has assigned;
and it may be said, that he has not only shewn human nature as it
acts in real exigences, but as it would be found in trials, to which
it cannot be exposed. This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare,
that his drama is the mirrour of life; that he who has mazed his
imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise
up before him, may here be cured of his delirious extasies, by
reading human sentiments in human language; by scenes from which a
hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor
predict the progress of the passions.
His adherence to general nature has exposed him to the censure of
criticks, who form their judgments upon narrower principles. Dennis
and Rhymer think his Romans not sufficiently Roman; and Voltaire
censures his kings as not completely royal. Dennis is offended, that
Menenius, a senator of Rome, should play the buffoon; and Voltaire
perhaps thinks decency violated when the Danish Usurper is represented
as a drunkard. But Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over
accident; and if he preserves the essential character, is not very
careful of distinctions superinduced and adventitious. His story
requires Romans or kings, but he thinks only on men. He knew that
Rome, like every other city, had men of all dispositions; and
wanting a buffoon, he went into the senate-house for that which the
senate-house would certainly have afforded him. He was inclined to
shew an usurper and a murderer not only odious but despicable, he
therefore added drunkenness to his other qualities, knowing that
kings love wine like other men, and that wine exerts its natural
power upon kings. These are the petty cavils of petty minds; a
poet overlooks the casual distinction of country and condition, as
a painter, satisfied with the figure, neglects the drapery.
The censure which he has incurred by mixing comick and tragick
scenes, as it extends to all his works, deserves more consideration.
Let the fact be first stated, and then examined.
Shakespeare's plays are not in the rigorous and critical sense
either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind;
exhibiting the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes
of good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled with endless variety of
proportion and innumerable modes of combination; and expressing
the course of the world, in which the loss of one is the gain of
another; in which, at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his
wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in which the malignity
of one is sometimes defeated by the frolick of another; and many
mischiefs and many benefits are done and hindered without design.
Out of this chaos of mingled purposes and casualties the ancient
poets, according to the laws which custom had prescribed, selected
some the crimes of men, and some their absurdities; some the
momentous vicissitudes of life, and some the lighter occurrences;
some the terrours of distress, and some the gayeties of prosperity.
Thus rose the two modes of imitation, known by the names of tragedy
and comedy, compositions intended to promote different ends by
contrary means, and considered as so little allied, that I do not
recollect among the Greeks or Romans a single writer who attempted
both.
Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow
not only in one mind, but in one composition. Almost all his plays
are divided between serious and ludicrous characters, and, in the
successive evolutions of the design, sometimes produce seriousness
and sorrow, and sometimes levity and laughter.
That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be
readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticism
to nature. The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry
is to instruct by pleasing. That the mingled drama may convey all
the instruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, because
it includes both in its alterations of exhibition, and approaches
nearer than either to the appearance of life, by shewing how
great machinations and slender designs may promote or obviate one
another, and the high and the low co-operate in the general system
by unavoidable concatenation.
It is objected, that by this change of scenes the passions are
interrupted in their progression, and that the principal event,
being not advanced by a due gradation of preparatory incidents,
wants at last the power to move, which constitutes the perfection
of dramatick poetry. This reasoning is so specious, that it is
received as true even by those who in daily experience feel it to
be false. The interchanges of mingled scenes seldom fail to produce
the intended vicissitudes of passion. Fiction cannot move so much,
but that the attention may be easily transferred; and though it
must be allowed that pleasing melancholy be sometimes interrupted
by unwelcome levity, yet let it be considered likewise, that
melancholy is often not pleasing, and that the disturbance of one
man may be the relief of another; that different auditors have
different habitudes; and that, upon the whole, all pleasure consists
in variety.
The players, who in their edition divided our authour's works into
comedies, histories, and tragedies, seem not to have distinguished
the three kinds, by any very exact or definite ideas.
An action which ended happily to the principal persons, however
serious or distressful through its intermediate incidents, in
their opinion constituted a comedy. This idea of a comedy continued
long amongst us, and plays were written, which, by changing the
catastrophe, were tragedies to-day and comedies to-morrow.
Tragedy was not in those times a poem of more general dignity or
elevation than comedy; it required only a calamitous conclusion,
with which the common criticism of that age was satisfied, whatever
lighter pleasure it afforded in its progress.
History was a series of actions, with no other than chronological
succession, independent of each other, and without any tendency to
introduce or regulate the conclusion. It is not always very nicely
distinguished from tragedy. There is not much nearer approach to
unity of action in the tragedy of "Antony and Cleopatra", than in
the history of "Richard the Second". But a history might be continued
through many plays; as it had no plan, it had no limits.
Through all these denominations of the drama, Shakespeare's mode
of composition is the same; an interchange of seriousness and
merriment, by which the mind is softened at one time, and exhilarated
at another. But whatever be his purpose, whether to gladden or
depress, or to conduct the story, without vehemence or emotion,
through tracts of easy and familiar dialogue, he never fails to
attain his purpose; as he commands us, we laugh or mourn, or sit
silent with quiet expectation, in tranquillity without indifference.
When Shakespeare's plan is understood, most of the criticisms of
Rhymer and Voltaire vanish away. The play of "Hamlet" is opened,
without impropriety, by two sentinels; Iago bellows at Brabantio's
window, without injury to the scheme of the play, though in terms
which a modern audience would not easily endure; the character of
Polonius is seasonable and useful; and the Grave-diggers themselves
may be heard with applause.
Shakespeare engaged in dramatick poetry with the world open before
him; the rules of the ancients were yet known to few; the publick
judgment was unformed; he had no example of such fame as might
force him upon imitation, nor criticks of such authority as might
restrain his extravagance: He therefore indulged his natural
disposition, and his disposition, as Rhymer has remarked, led him
to comedy. In tragedy he often writes with great appearance of
toil and study, what is written at last with little felicity; but
in his comick scenes, he seems to produce without labour, what no
labour can improve. In tragedy he is always struggling after some
occasion to be comick, but in comedy he seems to repose, or to
luxuriate, as in a mode of thinking congenial to his nature. In his
tragick scenes there is always something wanting, but his comedy
often surpasses expectation or desire. His comedy pleases by the
thoughts and the language, and his tragedy for the greater part by
incident and action. His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to
be instinct.
The force of his comick scenes has suffered little diminution from
the changes made by a century and a half, in manners or in words.
As his personages act upon principles arising from genuine passion,
very little modified by particular forms, their pleasures and
vexations are communicable to all times and to all places; they are
natural, and therefore durable; the adventitious peculiarities of
personal habits, are only superficial dies, bright and pleasing
for a little while, yet soon fading to a dim tinct, without any
remains of former lustre; but the discriminations of true passion
are the colours of nature; they pervade the whole mass, and can only
perish with the body that exhibits them. The accidental compositions
of heterogeneous modes are dissolved by the chance which combined
them; but the uniform simplicity of primitive qualities neither
admits increase, nor suffers decay. The sand heaped by one flood is
scattered by another, but the rock always continues in its place.
The stream of time, which is continually washing the dissoluble
fabricks of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of
Shakespeare.
If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation, a stile which
never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology so consonant
and congenial to the analogy and principles of its respective
language as to remain settled and unaltered; this stile is probably
to be sought in the common intercourse of life, among those who
speak only to be understood, without ambition of elegance. The
polite are always catching modish innovations, and the learned
depart from established forms of speech, in hope of finding or
making better; those who wish for distinction forsake the vulgar,
when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above grossness
and below refinement, where propriety resides, and where this poet
seems to have gathered his comick dialogue. He is therefore more
agreeable to the ears of the present age than any other authour
equally remote, and among his other excellencies deserves to be
studied as one of the original masters of our language.
These observations are to be considered not as unexceptionably constant,
but as containing general and predominant truth. Shakespeare's
familiar dialogue is affirmed to be smooth and clear, yet not wholly
without ruggedness or difficulty; as a country may be eminently
fruitful, though it has spots unfit for cultivation: His characters
are praised as natural, though their sentiments are sometimes
forced, and their actions improbable; as the earth upon the whole
is spherical, though its surface is varied with protuberances and
cavities.
Shakespeare with his excellencies has likewise faults, and faults
sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit. I shall shew
them in the proportion in which they appear to me, without envious
malignity or superstitious veneration. No question can be more
innocently discussed than a dead poet's pretensions to renown; and
little regard is due to that bigotry which sets candour higher than
truth.
His first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the evil
in books or in men. He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is
so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to
write without any moral purpose. From his writings indeed a system
of social duty may be selected, for he that thinks reasonably
must think morally; but his precepts and axioms drop casually from
him; he makes no just distribution of good or evil, nor is always
careful to shew in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he
carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at
the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their
examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his
age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the
world better, and justice is a virtue independant on time or place.
The plots are often so loosely formed, that a very slight consideration
may improve them, and so carelessly pursued, that he seems not
always fully to comprehend his own design. He omits opportunities
of instructing or delighting which the train of his story seems
to force upon him, and apparently rejects those exhibitions which
would be more affecting, for the sake of those which are more easy.
It may be observed, that in many of his plays the latter part
is evidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his
work, and, in view of his reward, he shortened the labour, to snatch
the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should most
vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced
or imperfectly represented.
He had no regard to distinction of time or place, but gives to
one age or nation, without scruple, the customs, institutions, and
opinions of another, at the expence not only of likelihood, but
of possibility. These faults Pope has endeavoured, with more zeal
than judgment, to transfer to his imagined in interpolators. We
need not wonder to find Hector quoting Aristotle, when we see the
loves of Theseus and Hippolyta combined with the Gothic mythology
of fairies. Shakespeare, indeed, was not the only violator of
chronology, for in the same age Sidney, who wanted not the advantages
of learning, has, in his "Arcadia", confounded the pastoral with
the feudal times, the days of innocence, quiet and security, with
those of turbulence, violence and adventure.
In his comick scenes he is seldom very successful, when he engages
his characters in reciprocations of smartness and contest of sarcasm;
their jests are commonly gross, and their pleasantry licentious;
neither his gentlemen nor his ladies have much delicacy, nor are
sufficiently distinguished from his clowns by any appearance of
refined manners. Whether he represented the real conversation of his
time is not easy to determine; the reign of Elizabeth is commonly
supposed to have been a time of stateliness, formality and reserve,
yet perhaps the relaxations of that severity were not very elegant.
There must, however, have been always some modes of gayety preferable
to others, and a writer ought to chuse the best.
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