Preface to Shakespeare free essay sample

â€Å"The Preface is the impartial estimate of Shakespeare’s virtues and defects by a powerful mind†. (Halliday). Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare is a classic of literary criticism in which he is above his political personal, religious and literary prejudices: mentions both the merits and One of the first excellence of Shakespeare, as Preface shows: â€Å"Shakespeare is above all the writers, at least above the modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror if manners and life.† According to Johnson, â€Å"Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident†. His blend of tragedy and comedy is also nearer and more natural to life, because the mingled drama approaches nearer to life :Mingled drama m demerits of Shakespeare like a true critic; and become very honest and sincere in his estimate of Shakespeare. Johnson tests Shakespeare by the fact and experience, by the test of time, nature and universality, his defense to tragicomedy is superb and still unsurpassed; in which he has excelled his guru Dryden. He finds Shakespeare great because he holds a mirror to nature. In minimized the importance of love on the sum of life, Johnson anticipates Shaw. ay convey all the instructions of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, because it includes both in its alternations of exhibition and approaches nearer than either to the appearance of life† Shakespeare was the originator of â€Å"the form, the character, the language and the shadows of English drama† and â€Å"opens a mine contains cold and diamonds†. â€Å"Addison speaks the language of poets, and Shakespeare of men†, thus, Shakespeare is one of the great and the original masters of the language. There are few limitations of Preface too: Johnson could not fathom the depths of Shakespeare’s poetic genius. Nor could he think of the psychological subtleties of his characterization, he was equally deaf to â€Å"the overtones of Shakespeare’s poetry at its most sublime his criticism of his perceptive powers. In the mystery of Shakespeare tragedy was beyond the reach of his common sense. No wonder then if he feels that Shakespeare was at his best in comedy†. Nevertheless these shortcomings do not mar the basic merits of his Preface which is as immortal as the plays of Shakespeare and the tests of Shakespeare provided by him are valid even today. About the excellence of Shakespeare’s plot, Johnson says, â€Å"our writer’s plots are generally borrowed from novels†, but due to his merit, â€Å"his plots, whether historical or fabulous, are always crowded with incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was most easily caught than by sentiment or argumentation†. Johnson writes, Shakespeare â€Å"knows how he should most please; and whether his practice is more agreeable to nature; or whether his example has prejudiced the nation.† He could not see â€Å"how truth may be stated myth or symbol, how The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale for instance, are more than pleasant romantic pieces; significantly, he says of the latter that with all its absurdities, it is very entertaining†. The limitations of this critical sensibility are no where prominent than in his complaint that Shakespeare â€Å"seems to write without any moral purpose†. He fails to see the hidden morals of Shakespeare’s plays; to him only the explicitly stated morals are the morals, thus, some of the most conspicuous virtues of Shakespeare, for example, his objectivity and his highly individualized treatment of his characters, are treated by Johnson as his â€Å"defects†Ã¢â‚¬â€these defects are certainly not Shakespeare’s, but Johnson’s. Shakespeare was the first playwright whose tragic as well as comic plays succeeded in providing the dramatic pleasure appropriate to them. He has given us excellent comedies â€Å"without labour which no labour can improve,† so the world prefers his comedies because they are profound and more true to nature. However, the language of his comic scenes is the language of the real life, neither gross nor refined and hence it has not gone obsolete. Early in English drama â€Å"Neither the character nor dialogues were yet understood, Shakespeare may be truly said to have introduced them both amongst us, and in some of his happier scenes to have carried them both to the utmost height†. â€Å"In my opinion†, concludes Johnson, â€Å"very few in the lines were difficult to his audience, and that he uses such expressions as were them common, though the paucity if contemporary writers makes them now seem peculiar.† His enumeration of Shakespeare in itself is a classic piece of criticism. These faults he finds are owing to two causes—(a) carelessness, (b) excess of conceit. â€Å"The details analysis of the faults†, says Raleigh, â€Å"is fine piece of criticism, and has never been seriously challenged†. Shakespeare’s obscurities arise from: 1. the careless manner of publication; 2. the shifting fashions and grammatical license of Elizabethan English; 3. the use of colloquial English; 4. the use of many allusions, the reference, etc., to topical events and personalities; 5. The rapid flow of ideas which often hurries him to a second thought before the first been fully explained. Thus, many of Shakespeare’s obscurities belong either to the age or the necessities of stagecraft and to the man. Johnson tried teaching and later organized a school in Litchfield. His educational ventures were not successful, however, although one of his students, David Garrick, later famous as an actor, became a lifelong friend. Johnson, having given up teaching, went to London to try the literary life. Thus began a long period of hack writing for the Gentlemans Magazine. He founded his own periodical, The Rambler, in which he published, between 1750 and 1752, a considerable number of eloquent, insightful essays on literature, criticism, and moral Beginning in 1747, while busy with other kinds of writing and always burdened with poverty, Johnson was also at work on a major project—compiling a dictionary commissioned by a group of booksellers. After more than eight years in preparation, the Dictionary of the English Language appeared in 1755. This remarkable work contains about 40,000 entries elucidated by vivid, idiosyncratic, still-quoted definitions and by an extraordinary range of illustrative examples. Johnson published another periodical, The Idler, between 1758 and 1760. In 1764 he and the eminent English portraitist Sir Joshua Reynolds founded the Literary Club; its membership included such luminaries as Garrick, the statesman Edmund Burke, the playwrights Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and a young Scottish lawyer, James Boswell. Johnsons last major work, The Lives of the English Poets, was begun in 1778, when he was nearly 70 years old, and completed—in ten volumes—in 1781. The work is a distinctive blend of biography and literary criticism. Johnsons points to remember in Preface to Shakespeare Shakespeare’s characters are a just representation of human nature as they deal with passions and principles which are common to humanity. They are also true to the age, sex, profession to which they belong and hence the speech of one cannot be put in the mouth of another. His characters are not exaggerated. Even when the agency is supernatural, the dialogue is level with life. Shakespeare’s plays are a storehouse of practical wisdom and from them can be formulated a philosophy of life. Moreover, his plays represent the different passions and not love alone. In this, his plays mirror life. Shakespeare’s use of tragic comedy: Shakespeare has been much criticized for mixing tragedy and comedy, but Johnson defends him in this. Johnson says that in mixing tragedy and comedy, Shakespeare has been true to nature, because even in real life there is a mingling of good and evil, joy and sorrow, tears and smiles etc. this may be against the classical rules, but there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature. Moreover, tragic-comedy being nearer to life combines within itself the pleasure and instruction of both tragedy and comedy. Shakespeare’s use of tragicomedy does not weaken the effect of a tragedy because it does not interrupt the progress of passions. In fact, Shakespeare knew that pleasure consisted in variety. Continued melancholy or grief is often not pleasing. Shakespeare had the power to move, whether to tears or laughter. Shakespeare’s comic genius: Johnson says that comedy came natural to Shakespeare. He seems to produce his comic scenes without much labour, and these scenes are durable and hence their popularity has not suffered with the passing of time. The language of his comic scenes is the language of real life which is neither gross nor over refined, and hence it has not grown obsolete. Shakespeare writes tragedies with great appearance of toil and study, but there is always something wanting in his tragic scenes. His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy instinct. Johnson’s defence of Shakespeare’s use of unities: Samuel Johnson ((1709-1784) Shakespeare’s histories are neither tragedy nor comedy and hence he is not required to follow classical rules of unities. The only unity he needs to maintain in his histories is the consistency and naturalness in his characters and this he does so faithfully. In his other works, he has well maintained the unity of action. His plots have the variety and complexity of nature, but have a beginning, middle and an end, and one event is logically connected with another, and the plot makes gradual advancement towards the denouement. Shakespeare shows no regard for the unities of Time and place, and according to Johnson, these have troubled the poet more than it has pleased his audience. The observance of these unities is considered necessary to provide credibility to the drama. But, any fiction can never be real, and the audience knows this. If a spectator can imagine the stage to be Alexandria and the actors to be Antony and Cleopatra, he can surely imagine much more. Drama is a delusion, and delusion has no limits. Therefore, there is no absurdity in showing different actions in different places. As regards the unity of Time, Shakespeare says that a drama imitates successive actions, and just as they may be represented at successive places, so also they may be represented at different period, separated by several days. The only condition is that the events must be connected with each other. Johnson further says that drama moves us not because we think it is real, but because it makes us feel that the evils represented may happen to ourselves. Imitations produce pleasure or pain, not because they are mistaken for reality, but because they bring realities to mind.Therefore, unity of Action alone is sufficient, and the other two unities arise from false assumptions. Hence it is good that Shakespeare violates them. Faults of Shakespeare: Shakespeare writes without moral purpose and is more careful to please than to instruct. There is no poetic justice in his plays. This fault cannot be excused by the barbarity of his age for justice is a virtue independent of time and place. Next, his plots are loosely formed, and only a little attention would have improved them. He neglects opportunities of instruction that his plots offer, in fact, he very often neglects the later parts of his plays and so his catastrophes often seem forced and improbable. There are many faults of chronology and many anachronisms in his play. His jokes are often gross and licentious. In his narration, there is much pomp of diction and circumlocution. Narration in his dramas is often tedious. His set speeches are cold and weak. They are often verbose and too large for thought. Trivial ideas are clothed in sonorous epithets. He is too fond of puns and quibbles which engulf him in mire. For a pun, he sacrifices reason, propriety and truth.He often fails at moments of great excellence. Some contemptible conceit spoils the effect of his pathetic and tragic scenes. Merits of Shakespeare: He perfected the blank verse, imparted to it diversity and flexibility and brought it nearer to the language of prose.