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PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE
Together with selected notes on some of the plays
By Samuel Johnson
[Johnson published his annotated edition of Shakespeare's Plays in
1765.]
PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE
Some of the notes to
Measure for Measure
Henry IV
Henry V
King Lear
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
Othello
PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE
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
authour 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 be 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
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