Critically comment on Dr.

Johnson's defence of
tragi-comedy in his 'Preface to Shakespeare.'
The most remarkable passage in the Preface, according to
Wimsatt, is surely the one concerning Johnson's defence of tragi-
comedy. His defence is marked by his realistic approach. By the
rules of critics (and also by the practices of ancient Greek and
Roman dramatists), the mixture of tragedy and comedy in a play
stands condemned but 'there is always,' says Johnson, 'an appeal
open from criticism to nature.' There are two natural grounds to
justify it: that the alternation of pleasure and pain in a play pleases
by its variety; and that life itself is a mingled yarn, pleasure and pain
together. Secondly, the tragi-comedy by partaking of both tragedy
and comedy 'approaches nearer than either to the appearance of
life.'
As practised by Shakespeare, tragi-comedy is even a distinct
species of the dramatic art '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 hastening to his wine, and the mourner burying his dead;
(and) in which the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the
frolic of another....'
Though Shakespeare has been much criticized by critics and
writers for mixing comic and tragic scenes, yet Johnson defends him
very intelligently, logically and realistically. His defence is based on
the following arguments:—
(1) In his mixing of the tragic and the comic, Shakespeare is true to
nature. In real life also there is a mingling of the good and evil, joy
and sorrow, tears and smiles, and so in mixing tragedy and comedy,
Shakespeare merely holds a mirror to nature. This may be against
rules, but 'there is always appeal open from rules in criticism to
nature.'
(2) Tragi-comedy is nearer to life than either tragedy or comedy,
and so it combines within itself the pleasure as well as the
instruction of both. In tragi-comedy the high and the low combine,
both for instruction and pleasure.
(3) The interchange of the serious and the gay, of the comic and
tragic, does not interrupt the progress of the passions, i.e., it does
not result in any weakening of effect.
(4) Moreover, it should be remembered that all pleasure consists
in variety. Tragi-comedy can satisfy a greater variety of tastes, "and
continued melancholy is often not pleasing." Shakespeare can
always move whether to tears or to laughter.
Critics have pointed out that Dr. Johnson's defence of tragi-
comedy is not very convincing. P. A. W. Collins writes : "Johnson's
defence of tragi-comedy is inadequate." "When Shakespeare's plan
is understood, most of the criticisms of Rymer and Voltaire vanish
away, but an understanding of Shakespeare's plan is not much
furthered by suggestions that these plays exhibit 'the real state of
sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow',
that they are doubly instructive because they may 'convey all the
instruction of tragedy or comedy', and that anyway 'all pleasure
consists in variety'—and least of all by the assertion
that Shakespeare's disposition led him to comedy....In
tragedy he is always struggling after some occasion to be comic'.
Shakespeare's 'variety', both in his whole canon and within each
play. Johnson appreciated; but neither he, nor any of his
contemporaries, understood the unity-in-complexity of either his
plotting or his poetry, let alone the interrelation between his
plotting, his poetry and his characterization.
George Watson also thinks that Johnson's justification of tragi-
comedy is based on conflicting grounds. He says : "It will hardly do
to justify tragi-comedy on Dryden's grounds that contraries set off
each other, and then to excuse 'the rules of criticism' on the grounds
that 'there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature', and
'the mingled drama' can be shown to have instructed as
well as pleased : this is a characteristically Johnsonian use of the
escape-clause."
It is, however, to be remembered that Johnson's main forte was
his robust common sense. He could not indulge in the niceties of the
modern Shakespeare scholars and critics. His approach was highly
pragmatic and his defence of Shakespeare's tragi-comedy is the
natural product of that approach. It is therefore at once the strength
and the weakness of Johnson's critical sensibility.
As Johnson's criticism is closely allied with his deep intuitions,
his defence of tragi-comedy assumes a new dimension. It is not 'a
mere abstract and thin cerebration which for some reason he
undertook in opposition to his own genuine response'. As W. K.
Wimsatt says, "It is difficult to imagine any external reason which
could have coerced him. The defence of mingled drama is indeed a
testimony to Johnson's theoretical intelligence, but at the same time it
would seem to be tied into something very deep, though sometimes
less articulate and clear, in Johnson's nature—that is, his strongly
religious sense of mystery in the universe of the inscrutable—the
supernatural. This sense, when it is operating, induces in him a much
less demanding attitude towards the terrestrial distribution of good
and evil, rewards and punishments. It is this sense largely which
moves the Johnson who wrote the pleasantly darkened fable
of Rasselas, the Johnson who turned his withering scorn or he
complacent rationalism of Soame Jenyns's Free Inquiry Into the Na
'are and Origin of Evil. "