Books: Preface to Shakespeare
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Samuel Johnson >> Preface to Shakespeare
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In tragedy his performance seems constantly to be worse, as his
labour is more. The effusions of passion which exigence forces
out are for the most part striking and energetick; but whenever he
solicits his invention, or strains his faculties, the offspring of
his throes is tumour, meanness, tediousness, and obscurity.
In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction and a
wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly
in many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in
few. Narration in dramatick poetry is, naturally tedious, as it is
unanimated and inactive, and obstructs the progress of the action;
it should therefore always be rapid, and enlivened by frequent
interruption. Shakespeare found it an encumbrance, and instead of
lightening it by brevity, endeavoured to recommend it by dignity
and splendour.
His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak, for
his power was the power of nature; when he endeavoured, like other
tragick writers, to catch opportunities of amplification, and
instead of inquiring what the occasion demanded, to show how much
his stores of knowledge could supply, he seldom escapes without
the pity or resentment of his reader.
It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy
sentiment, which he cannot well express, and will not reject; he
struggles with it a while, and if it continues stubborn, comprises
it in words such as occur, and leaves it to be disentangled and
evolved by those who have more leisure to bestow upon it.
Not that always where the language is intricate the thought
is subtle, or the image always great where the line is bulky; the
equality of words to things is very often neglected, and trivial
sentiments and vulgar ideas disappoint the attention, to which they
are recommended by sonorous epithets and swelling figures.
But the admirers of this great poet have never less reason to
indulge their hopes of supreme excellence, than when he seems fully
resolved to sink them in dejection, and mollify them with tender
emotions by the fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, or the
crosses of love. He is not long soft and pathetick without some
idle conceit, or contemptible equivocation. He no sooner begins to
move, than he counteracts himself; and terrour and pity, as they
are rising in the mind, are checked and blasted by sudden frigidity.
A quibble is to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the
traveller; he follows it at all adventures, it is sure to lead him
out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some
malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible.
Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether
he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be
amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining it in suspense,
let but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work
unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always
turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation. A quibble
poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was content
to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth. A
quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world,
and was content to lose it.
It will be thought strange, that, in enumerating the defects of
this writer, I have not yet mentioned his neglect of the unities;
his violation of those laws which have been instituted and established
by the joint authority of poets and of criticks.
For his other deviations from the art of writing, I resign him to
critical justice, without making any other demand in his favour,
than that which must be indulged to all human excellence; that his
virtues be rated with his failings: But, from the censure which
this irregularity may bring upon him, I shall, with due reverence
to that learning which I must oppose, adventure to try how I can
defend him.
His histories, being neither tragedies nor comedies, are not subject
to any of their laws; nothing more is necessary to all the praise
which they expect, than that the changes of action be so prepared
as to be understood, that the incidents be various and affecting,
and the characters consistent, natural and distinct. No other unity
is intended, and therefore none is to be sought.
In his other works he has well enough preserved the unity of action.
He has not, indeed, an intrigue regularly perplexed and regularly
unravelled; he does not endeavour to hide his design only to discover
it, for this is seldom the order of real events, and Shakespeare
is the poet of nature: But his plan has commonly what Aristotle
requires, a beginning, a middle, and an end; one event is concatenated
with another, and the conclusion follows by easy consequence. There
are perhaps some incidents that might be spared, as in other poets
there is much talk that only fills up time upon the stage; but the
general system makes gradual advances, and the end of the play is
the end of expectation.
To the unities of time and place he has shewn no regard, and perhaps
a nearer view of the principles on which they stand will diminish
their value, and withdraw from them the veneration which, from the
time of Corneille, they have very generally received by discovering
that they have given more trouble to the poet, than pleasure to
the auditor.
The necessity of observing the unities of time and place arises from
the supposed necessity of making the drama credible. The criticks
hold it impossible, that an action of months or years can be possibly
believed to pass in three hours; or that the spectator can suppose
himself to sit in the theatre, while ambassadors go and return
between distant kings, while armies are levied and towns besieged,
while an exile wanders and returns, or till he whom they saw courting
his mistress, shall lament the untimely fall of his son. The mind
revolts from evident falsehood, and fiction loses its force when
it departs from the resemblance of reality.
From the narrow limitation of time necessarily arises the contraction
of place. The spectator, who knows that he saw the first act
at Alexandria, cannot suppose that he sees the next at Rome, at
a distance to which not the dragons of Medea could, in so short
a time, have transported him; he knows with certainty that he has
not changed his place; and he knows that place cannot change itself;
that what was a house cannot become a plain; that what was Thebes
can never be Persepolis.
Such is the triumphant language with which a critick exults over the
misery of an irregular poet, and exults commonly without resistance
or reply. It is time therefore to tell him, by the authority
of Shakespeare, that he assumes, as an unquestionable principle,
a position, which, while his breath is forming it into words,
his understanding pronounces to be false. It is false, that any
representation is mistaken for reality; that any dramatick fable
in its materiality was ever credible, or, for a single moment, was
ever credited.
The objection arising from the impossibility of passing the first
hour at Alexandria, and the next at Rome, supposes, that when the
play opens the spectator really imagines himself at Alexandria, and
believes that his walk to the theatre has been a voyage to Egypt,
and that he lives in the days of Antony and Cleopatra. Surely he
that imagines this, may imagine more. He that can take the stage
at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half
an hour for the promontory of Actium. Delusion, if delusion be
admitted, has no certain limitation; if the spectator can be once
persuaded, that his old acquaintance are Alexander and Caesar, that
a room illuminated with candles is the plain of Pharsalia, or the
bank of Granicus, he is in a state of elevation above the reach of
reason, or of truth, and from the heights of empyrean poetry, may
despise the circumscriptions of terrestrial nature. There is no
reason why a mind thus wandering in extasy should count the clock,
or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture of the
brains that can make the stage a field.
The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses,
and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only
a stage, and that the players are only players. They come to hear
a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant
modulation. The lines relate to some action, and an action must
be in some place; but the different actions that compleat a story
may be in places very remote from each other; and where is the
absurdity of allowing that space to represent first Athens, and
then Sicily, which was always known to be neither Sicily nor Athens,
but a modern theatre?
By supposition, as place is introduced, time may be extended; the
time required by the fable elapses for the most part between the
acts; for, of so much of the action as is represented, the real and
poetical duration is the same. If, in the first act, preparations
for war against Mithridates are represented to be made in Rome,
the event of the war may, without absurdity, be represented, in the
catastrophe, as happening in Pontus; we know that there is neither
war, nor preparation for war; we know that we are neither in Rome
nor Pontus; that neither Mithridates nor Lucullus are before us.
The drama exhibits successive imitations of successive actions, and
why may not the second imitation represent an action that happened
years after the first; if it be so connected with it, that nothing
but time can be supposed to intervene? Time is, of all modes of
existence, most obsequious to the imagination; a lapse of years
is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In contemplation we
easily contract the time of real actions, and therefore willingly
permit it to be contracted when we only see their imitation.
It will be asked, how the drama moves, if it is not credited. It
is credited with all the credit due to a drama. It is credited,
whenever it moves, as a just picture of a real original; as
representing to the auditor what he would himself feel, if he were
to do or suffer what is there feigned to be suffered or to be done.
The reflection that strikes the heart is not, that the evils before
us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we ourselves
may be exposed. If there be any fallacy, it is not that we fancy the
players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment; but we
rather lament the possibility than suppose the presence of misery,
as a mother weeps over her babe, when she remembers that death
may take it from her. The delight of tragedy proceeds from our
consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real,
they would please no more.
Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken
for realities, but because they bring realities to mind. When the
imagination is recreated by a painted landscape, the trees are not
supposed capable to give us shade, or the fountains coolness; but
we consider, how we should be pleased with such fountains playing
beside us, and such woods waving over us. We are agitated in reading
the history of "Henry the Fifth", yet no man takes his book for the
field of Agencourt. A dramatick exhibition is a book recited with
concomitants that encrease or diminish its effect. Familiar comedy
is often more powerful on the theatre, than in the page; imperial
tragedy is always less. The humour of Petruchio may be heightened
by grimace; but what voice or what gesture can hope to add dignity
or force to the soliloquy of Cato.
A play read, affects the mind like a play acted. It is therefore
evident, that the action is not supposed to be real, and it follows
that between the acts a longer or shorter time may be allowed to
pass, and that no more account of space or duration is to be taken
by the auditor of a drama, than by the reader of a narrative, before
whom may pass in an hour the life of a hero, or the revolutions of
an empire.
Whether Shakespeare knew the unities, and rejected them by design,
or deviated from them by happy ignorance, it is, I think, impossible
to decide, and useless to inquire. We may reasonably suppose, that,
when he rose to notice, he did not want the counsels and admonitions
of scholars and criticks, and that he at last deliberately persisted
in a practice, which he might have begun by chance. As nothing is
essential to the fable, but unity of action, and as the unities
of time and place arise evidently from false assumptions, and,
by circumscribing the extent of the drama, lessen its variety, I
cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known by
him, or not observed: Nor, if such another poet could arise, should
I very vehemently reproach him, that his first act passed at Venice,
and his next in Cyprus. Such violations of rules merely positive,
become the comprehensive genius of Shakespeare, and such censures
are suitable to the minute and slender criticism of Voltaire:
Non usque adeo permiscuit imis
Longus summa dies, ut non, si voce Metelli
Serventur leges, malint a Caesare tolli.
Yet when I speak thus slightly of dramatick rules, I cannot but
recollect how much wit and learning may be produced against me;
before such authorities I am afraid to stand, not that I think
the present question one of those that are to be decided by mere
authority, but because it is to be suspected, that these precepts
have not been so easily received but for better reasons than I
have yet been able to find. The result of my enquiries, in which it
would be ludicrous to boast of impartiality, is, that the unities
of time and place are not essential to a just drama, that though
they may sometimes conduce to pleasure, they are always to be
sacrificed to the nobler beauties of variety and instruction; and
that a play, written with nice observation of critical rules, is
to be contemplated as an elaborate curiosity, as the product of
superfluous and ostentatious art, by which is shewn, rather what
is possible, than what is necessary.
He that, without diminution of any other excellence, shall preserve
all the unities unbroken, deserves the like applause with the
architect, who shall display all the orders of architecture in a
citadel, without any deduction from its strength; but the principal
beauty of a citadel is to exclude the enemy; and the greatest graces
of a play, are to copy nature and instruct life.
Perhaps, what I have here not dogmatically but deliberately written,
may recal the principles of the drama to a new examination. I am
almost frighted at my own temerity; and when I estimate the fame
and the strength of those that maintain the contrary opinion, am
ready to sink down in reverential silence; as Aeneas withdrew from
the defence of Troy, when he saw Neptune shaking the wall, and Juno
heading the besiegers.
Those whom my arguments cannot persuade to give their approbation
to the judgment of Shakespeare, will easily, if they consider the
condition of his life, make some allowance for his ignorance.
Every man's performances, to be rightly estimated, must be compared
with the state of the age in which he lived, and with his own
particular opportunities; and though to the reader a book be not
worse or better for the circumstances of the authour, yet as there
is always a silent reference of human works to human abilities, and
as the enquiry, how far man may extend his designs, or how high
he may rate his native force, is of far greater dignity than in
what rank we shall place any particular performance, curiosity is
always busy to discover the instruments, as well as to survey the
workmanship, to know how much is to be ascribed to original powers,
and how much to casual and adventitious help. The palaces of Peru
or Mexico were certainly mean and incommodious habitations, if
compared to the houses of European monarchs; yet who could forbear
to view them with astonishment, who remembered that they were built
without the use of iron?
The English nation, in the time of Shakespeare, was yet struggling
to emerge from barbarity. The philology of Italy had been transplanted
hither in the reign of Henry the Eighth; and the learned languages
had been successfully cultivated by Lilly and More; by Pole, Cheke,
and Gardiner; and afterwards by Smith, Clerk, Haddon, and Ascham.
Greek was now taught to boys in the principal schools; and those
who united elegance with learning, read, with great diligence,
the Italian and Spanish poets. But literature was yet confined to
professed scholars, or to men and women of high rank. The publick
was gross and dark; and to be able to read and write, was an
accomplishment still valued for its rarity.
Nations, like individuals, have their infancy. A people newly awakened
to literary curiosity, being yet unacquainted with the true state
of things, knows not how to judge of that which is proposed as its
resemblance. Whatever is remote from common appearances is always
welcome to vulgar, as to childish credulity; and of a country
unenlightened by learning, the whole people is the vulgar. The
study of those who then aspired to plebeian learning was laid out
upon adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments. The Death of
Arthur was the favourite volume.
The mind, which has feasted on the luxurious wonders of fiction,
has no taste of the insipidity of truth. A play which imitated only
the common occurrences of the world, would, upon the admirers of
Palmerin and Guy of Warwick, have made little impression; he that
wrote for such an audience was under the necessity of looking round
for strange events and fabulous transactions, and that incredibility,
by which maturer knowledge is offended, was the chief recommendation
of writings, to unskilful curiosity.
Our authour's plots are generally borrowed from novels, and it is
reasonable to suppose, that he chose the most popular, such as were
read by many, and related by more; for his audience could not have
followed him through the intricacies of the drama, had they not
held the thread of the story in their hands.
The stories, which we now find only in remoter authours, were in
his time accessible and familliar. The fable of "As You Like It",
which is supposed to be copied from Chaucer's Gamelyn, was a little
pamphlet of those times; and old Mr. Cibber remembered the tale of
Hamlet in plain English prose, which the criticks have now to seek
in Saxo Grammaticus.
His English histories he took from English chronicles and English
ballads; and as the ancient writers were made known to his countrymen
by versions, they supplied him with new subjects; he dilated some
of Plutarch's lives into plays, when they had been translated by
North.
His plots, whether historical or fabulous, are always crouded with
incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was more easily
caught than by sentiment or argumentation; and such is the power
of the marvellous even over those who despise it, that every man
finds his mind more strongly seized by the tragedies of Shakespeare
than of any other writer; others please us by particular speeches,
but he always makes us anxious for the event, and has perhaps
excelled all but Homer in securing the first purpose of a writer,
by exciting restless and unquenchable curiosity, and compelling
him that reads his work to read it through.
The shows and bustle with which his plays abound have the same
original. As knowledge advances, pleasure passes from the eye to the
ear, but returns, as it declines, from the ear to the eye. Those
to whom our authour's labours were exhibited had more skill in pomps
or processions than in poetical language, and perhaps wanted some
visible and discriminated events, as comments on the dialogue. He
knew how he should most please; and whether his practice is more
agreeable to nature, or whether his example has prejudiced the
nation, we still find that on our stage something must be done as
well as said, and inactive declamation is very coldly heard, however
musical or elegant, passionate or sublime.
Voltaire expresses his wonder, that our authour's extravagancies
are endured by a nation, which has seen the tragedy of Cato. Let
him be answered, that Addison speaks the language of poets, and
Shakespeare, of men. We find in Cato innumerable beauties which
enamour us of its authour, but we see nothing that acquaints us
with human sentiments or human actions; we place it with the fairest
and the noblest progeny which judgment propagates by conjunction
with learning, but "Othello" is the vigorous and vivacious offspring
of observation impregnated by genius. Cato affords a splendid
exhibition of artificial and fictitious manners, and delivers just
and noble sentiments, in diction easy, elevated and harmonious,
but its hopes and fears communicate no vibration to the heart; the
composition refers us only to the writer; we pronounce the name of
Cato, but we think on Addison.
The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately
formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with
flowers; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks
extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed
sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to
myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying
the mind with endless diversity. Other poets display cabinets
of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and
polished unto brightness. Shakespeare opens a mine which contains
gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by
incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of
meaner minerals.
It has been much disputed, whether Shakespeare owed his excellence
to his own native force, or whether he had the common helps of
scholastick education, the precepts of critical science, and the
examples of ancient authours.
There has always prevailed a tradition, that Shakespeare wanted
learning, that he had no regular education, nor much skill in the
dead languages. Johnson, his friend, affirms, that "He had small Latin
and no Greek."; who, besides that he had no imaginable temptation
to falsehood, wrote at a time when the character and acquisitions
of Shakespeare were known to multitudes. His evidence ought therefore
to decide the controversy, unless some testimony of equal force
could be opposed.
Some have imagined, that they have discovered deep learning in
many imitations of old writers; but the examples which I have known
urged, were drawn from books translated in his time; or were such
easy coincidencies of thought, as will happen to all who consider
the same subjects; or such remarks on life or axioms of morality
as float in conversation, and are transmitted through the world in
proverbial sentences.
I have found it remarked, that, in this important sentence, "Go
before, I'll follow," we read a translation of, I prae, sequar. I
have been told, that when Caliban, after a pleasing dream, says,
"I cry'd to sleep again," the authour imitates Anacreon, who had,
like every other man, the same wish on the same occasion.
There are a few passages which may pass for imitations, but so few,
that the exception only confirms the rule; he obtained them from
accidental quotations, or by oral communication, and as he used
what he had, would have used more if he had obtained it.
The "Comedy of Errors" is confessedly taken from the Menaechmi of
Plautus; from the only play of Plautus which was then in English.
What can be more probable, than that he who copied that, would
have copied more; but that those which were not translated were
inaccessible?
Whether he knew the modern languages is uncertain. That his plays
have some French scenes proves but little; he might easily procure
them to be written, and probably, even though he had known the
language in the common degree, he could not have written it without
assistance. In the story of "Romeo and Juliet" he is observed to
have followed the English translation, where it deviates from the
Italian; but this on the other part proves nothing against his
knowledge of the original. He was to copy, not what he knew himself,
but what was known to his audience.
It is most likely that he had learned Latin sufficiently to make
him acquainted with construction, but that he never advanced to an
easy perusal of the Roman authours. Concerning his skill in modern
languages, I can find no sufficient ground of determination; but as
no imitations of French or Italian authours have been discovered,
though the Italian poetry was then high in esteem, I am inclined
to believe, that he read little more than English, and chose for
his fables only such tales as he found translated.
That much knowledge is scattered over his works is very justly
observed by Pope, but it is often such knowledge as books did not
supply. He that will understand Shakespeare, must not be content
to study him in the closet, he must look for his meaning sometimes
among the sports of the field, and sometimes among the manufactures
of the shop.
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