From The Preface To Shakespeare. ( Paper 10 - Assignment )

Dr. Johnson As A Critic Of Shakespeare In His Essay ‘From The Preface To Shakespeare’

Johnson’s preface to Shakespeare on everlasting contribution to English Literary criticism displays his assessment of Shakespeare in an unprejudiced manner. Johnson exposes Shakespeare under the light of neoclassical age but in some instances he is not fully justified. The preface opens with a tribute to Shakespeare’s enduring appeal, which Johnson considers and acknowledged as the taste of eminence.

“Nothing can please many, and please long,

but just representation of general nature.”

According to Johnson, Shakespeare characters’ ‘act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated’. Shakespeare’s appeal has stood the severe test of time and its change of taste, because he does not accentuate only on the particular characteristics of particular age. Instead, he focusses his attention on the common nature of men, their general traits, emotions, passions, and manners of life which are to be found in men at all times in all countries. The knowledge of general human nature, Johnson feels enabled Shakespeare to unveil the truths of life and enrich his plays with practical axioms and domestic wisdom. However, Shakespeare was none of those who attached too much of importance to the subject of love with regard to their theme.

Johnson was bold enough to differ from his contemporary, critics, opinions about Shakespeare’s portrayal of his characters. Dennis and Rhymer did not approve of Monenius as a buffoon and voltaire did not approve of Shakespeare's depiction of Claudius in Hamlet as a drunkard. Johnson defends Shakespeare by arguing that Shakespeare always makes nature predominant over accident, he also defends Shakespeare’s mingling of tragic and comic scenes in his plays. Johnson justifies the mingling of two on the basis that are means a truthful depiction of human life. Thus, Shakespeare was right in combining comedy and tragedy for such a mingling displays real human nature which ‘partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow’.

In the enumeration of Shakespeare’s merits and limitations, Johnson’s demonstrates his neoclassical bias in judging an author by rules. Among the limitation of Shakespeare, the greatest fault he finds in him is pump and bombast, his verbosity and prodigality in the use of words. His excessive infatuation for puns and quibbles ( word play ) and the vulgarity and licentiousness of his jokes makes his writing loose. Shakespeare is thus, blamed for not conforming to the neoclassical standards of poetic diction. Johnson  also criticises Shakespeare’s failure to conform to his didactic ideal of art. Shakespeare, he says, is so intend in amusing that he forgets the superior duty of edifying the readers. He makes no clear cut distinction between the virtuous and wicked characters and distributes his rewards and punishments indiscriminately. According to Johnson, Shakespeare was often careless about his plots and he cared little for the architectonics of plot development. However, the modern school of criticism has seriously questioned Johnson’s conclusion about careless plots. Further, Johnson also maintained that Shakespeare was often lacking about the endings of his plays and attributed this weakness to the fact that he “…shortened the labour to snatch the profit” and “…remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert there…” resulting in the weakening of the entire play.

Shakespeare abounds in anarchism and Johnson has rightly pointed out that “he has no regard to distinction of time or place but gives to one age or nation without scruple, the customs, institution and opinions of another, at the expense not only of likelihood but of possibility”. Even a casual reader of Shakespeare will find that the locale never really gets away from England. His play ‘Coriolanius’ has a strong Roman theme, and there are many references to the English parts, a mixture of Christianity and paganism and even the use of English and Greek makes his play difficult.

It is paradoxical that while Johnson is lavish in his praise of Shakespeare comedies, as he says :

“In tragedy he often writes with great appearance of foil and study. What is written at last with little felicity, but in his comic scenes, he seem to produce without labour, what no labour can improve…in his tragic scenes there is always something wanting…”

Ironically, he also attacks the comic scenes and comic dialogues. He complains of Shakespeare’s excessive use of an image such as “cuckold horns”. He found the authors “contests of sarcasm”, seldom successful and maintained that their jests were “commonly gross and their pleasantry licentiousness…” and cautioned that there are many types of gritty “…a writer ought to choose the best”. Much of what Johnson felt wrong about tragedies were the circumlocution and pomp of diction, the excess of characters, the coldness of set speeches, inconsistencies in time and place and the unwieldy sentiments. 

Johnson defines Shakespeare’s approach to the unities. He pointed out the distinction between actual life and dramatic imitation of life. The time element, Johnson maintained, belonged to the reading and did not exist in the theatre. All that is important in the unity of actions.

“Johnson says delusion, if delusions 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 Pharfilia…”

The reader should not tar the credulity of the place to have the scene shift suddenly to another part of the world since the audience is aware from the start that the performance is unreal.

Johnson’s reputations as a critic of Shakespeare rests mostly on his preface. According to Adam Smith “it is the most manly piece of criticism that was ever published in any country”. Though, it also reveals Johnson’s weakness, his inconsistency, his conflicts, doubts his deficiency in understanding the lighter and imaginative aspects of the poets but overshadowing these limitations, he honestly enumerates Shakespeare’s faults. He also overthrows the validity of the writer. His masterful defence of tragic comedy, his perception of character study and his humbleness in a project, he often felt beyond his capacity.