was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your
address; and I could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself 'Le
vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre'; that I might obtain that regard
for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so
little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to
continue it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I
had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly
scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man is well
pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
Seven years, my Lord, have now passed, since I waited in your outward
rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to
complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication,
without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile
of favor. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a Patron
before.
The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
him a native of the rocks.
Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground,
encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to
take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has
been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am
solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.
I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations
where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the Public
should consider me as owing that to a Patron, which Providence has
enabled me to do for myself.
Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any
favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should
conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long
wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with
so much exultation,
My Lord, Your Lordship's most humble,
Most obedient servant, SAM. JOHNSON.
[Footnote A: For a sketch of Johnson's life, see the Introduction to
"Life of Addison" in the volume of English Essays. The interest of his
preface to the great Dictionary need hardly be pointed out, since the
work itself is a landmark in the history of our language. The letter
to Chesterfield, short though it is is a document of great importance
in the freeing of literature from patronage, and is in itself a
notable piece of literature. The preface to Johnson's edition of
Shakespeare's plays not only explains the editor's conception of
his task, but contains what is perhaps the best appreciation of the
dramatist written in the eighteenth century.]
PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE
BY SAMUEL JOHNSON. (1765)
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 author 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 he 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 enemies 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 manner, 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 domestic 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 shewn 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 authors. 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 rise in the commerce of mankind. But the
dialogue of this author 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 probably
be such as he has assigned; and it may be said, that he has not only
shewn human nature as it acts in real exigencies, 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 narrow 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.
And 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 on 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; but 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 heap 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 style 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 unexceptionally
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.