“In such an age, immortal Shakespeare wrote,
By no quaint rules, nor hampering critics taught;
With rough majestic force he mov’d the heart,
And strength and nature made amends for art.
Our humble author does his steps pursue,
He owns he had the mighty bard in view;
And in these scenes has made it more his care
To rouse the passions than to charm the ear.”
10 The note has reference to Biron’s remark, towards the end of the
last scene, that a “twelvemonth and a day” is “too long for a play”
(ed. 1733, ii., p. 181). In Mr. Lounsbury’s _Shakespeare as a
Dramatic Artist_, 1901—which I regret I did not see before the
present Introduction was in type—it is urged as “demonstration” of
Theobald’s _sagacity_ that he had the insight to see that
Shakespeare’s disregard of the unities was owing not to ignorance
but to intention. Theobald’s note, however, has a suspicious
similarity to what Gildon had said in his _Art of Poetry_, 1718, i.,
p. 99. It is, says Gildon, “plain from his [Shakespeare’s] own words
he saw the _absurdities_ of his own conduct. And I must confess that
when I find that ... he himself has written one or two plays very
near a _regularity_, I am the less apt to pardon his errors that
seem of choice, as agreeable to his lazyness and easie gain.”
11 Cf. the _Dunciad_, i. 69-72, where the inducements of satire make
him adopt a decided attitude in favour of the dramatic rules.
12 No. 592. The quotation will prove the injustice of De Quincey’s
attitude to Addison in his Essay on Shakespeare. De Quincey even
makes the strange statement that “by express examination, we
ascertained the curious fact that Addison has never in one instance
quoted or made any reference to Shakespeare” (_Works_, ed. Masson,
iv., p. 24).
13 It must be noted that some of Johnson’s arguments had themselves
been anticipated in _Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet_, 1736.
The volume is anonymous, but has been ascribed to Sir Thomas Hanmer
(see below, p. liii). It examines the play “according to the rules
of reason and nature, without having any regard to those rules
established by arbitrary dogmatising critics,” and shows “the
absurdity of such arbitrary rules” as the unities of time and place.
It is a well-written, interesting book, and is greatly superior to
the _Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Hamlet_, which
appeared, likewise anonymously, in 1752.
For references to other works previous to Johnson’s Preface which
dispute the authority of the classical rules, see note on p. 126.
14 Johnson’s opinion of Mrs. Montagu’s _Essay_ has been recorded by
Boswell (ed. Birkbeck Hill, ii., p. 88). But the book was well
received. It went into a fourth edition in 1777, in which year it
was translated into French. It is praised by such writers as Beattie
and James Harris. Cf. Morgann, p. 270.
15 See Monsieur Jusserand’s _Shakespeare en France_, 1898, and Mr.
Lounsbury’s _Shakespeare and Voltaire_, 1902.
16 This book is ascribed in Charles Knight’s untrustworthy _Studies of
Shakspere_, Book XI., to William Richardson (1743-1814), Professor
of Humanity in the University of Glasgow. Unfortunately the British
Museum Catalogue lends some support to this injustice by giving it
either to him or to Edward Taylor of Noan, Tipperary. The error is
emphasised in the _Dictionary of National Biography_. Though
Richardson upholds some of the more rigid classical doctrines, his
work is of a much higher order. The book is attributed to Richardson
in Watt’s _Bibliotheca Britannica_, 1824, but it had been assigned
to Taylor in Isaac Reed’s “List of Detached Pieces of Criticism on
Shakespeare,” 1803. From the evidence of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_
for 1797 (Vol. 67, Part II., p. 1076) it would appear that the
author was Edward Taylor (1741-1797) of Steeple-Aston, Oxfordshire.
17 The only extant Elizabethan translation of the _Menaechmi_, however,
is of later date than the _Comedy of Errors_. See note on p. 9.
18 It is to be noted that the three points above mentioned are dealt
with at considerable length in Farmer’s _Essay_.
_ 19 Fraser’s Magazine_, Sept., Oct., and Dec., 1837; reprinted in
_Miscellanies, Prose and Verse, by William Maginn_, 1885, vol. ii.
20 Recorded in Northcote’s _Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds_, 1813, p.
90. An attempt to reopen the question has recently been made by Mr.
Churton Collins in three articles in the _Fortnightly Review_
(April, May, and July, 1903). Mr. Churton Collins believes that
Shakespeare had a first-hand knowledge of Ovid, Plautus, Seneca,
Horace, Lucretius, Cicero, Terence, and Virgil, and that he was more
or less familiar with the Greek dramatists through the medium of the
Latin language.
_ 21 Journey from this World to the Next_, ch. viii.
_ 22 The Life of Alexander Pope, Esq._, by W. H. Dilworth, 1759, pp.
83-4. Cf. William Ayre’s _Memoirs of Pope_, 1745 (on which
Dilworth’s _Life_ is founded), vol. i., p. 273.
23 It should be noted that Theobald had said that the _second_ Folio
“in the generality is esteemed as the best impression of
Shakespeare” (_Shakespeare Restored_, p. 70).
24 See the “Life of Johnson” contributed to the eighth edition of the
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, and reprinted in the ninth.