Samuel Johnson's Preface to Literary Criticism

Introduction:

Eighteenth-century writer Samuel Johnson ((1709-1784) is one of the most significant figures in English
literature. His fame is due in part to a widely read biography of him, written by his friend James Boswell
and published in 1791. Although probably best known for compiling his celebrated dictionary, Johnson
was an extremely prolific writer who worked in a variety of fields and forms.  

Dr. Johnson is one of the greatest critics. As a literary critic he was an exponent of classicism. He
condemned everything that did not conform to classical doctrines. He is almost always penetrating and
stimulating. His 'Preface to Shakespeare' is considered as one of the noblest monuments of English neo-
classical criticism. His judgment of Shakespeare marks the date in the history of criticism.

Dr. Samuel Johnson’s preface to The Plays of William Shakespeare has long been considered a classic
document of English literary criticism. In it Johnson sets forth his editorial principles and gives an
appreciative analysis of the “excellences” and “defects” of the works of Shakespeare. Many of his points
have become fundamental tenets of modern criticism; others give greater insight into Johnson’s
prejudices than into Shakespeare’s genius. The resonant prose of the preface adds authority to the
views of its author.

Preface to Shakespeare

Samuel Johnson’s “Preface to Shakespeare” was published in 1765 and it is an important contribution

to English literary criticism. Although Johnson is a neo-classical critic and writer, he is completely
unbiased when he assesses Shakespeare.

Johnson eulogizes as well as specifies Shakespeare’s flaws or weaknesses. According to Harold Bloom,
Johnson invariably within Shakespeare’s plays to examine them as if he is examining human life without
considering the fact that Shakespeare’s main purpose is to bring life to mind. 

Shakespeare’s Merits:

Samuel Johnson in his “Preface to Shakespeare” highlights several qualities and defects in Shakespeare’s
plays whether they are comedies or tragedies. Samuel Johnson’s preface got enough fame due to the
points that he raised in his writing. However, while highlighting the defects and qualities of
Shakespeare’s work, Johnson, sometimes contradicts his own views.

Johnson develops his argument in considering Shakespeare and his works as antique. He used the word
“antique” as referential. He argues that something written a long time ago, must have been discussed a
lot and if it is still admired, it contains some established qualities because it has gone through a phase of
testing, checking and comparing.
Johnson on Shakespeare’s characters in the Preface to Shakespeare:

“Nothing can please many and please long, but just the representation of general nature” (Preface to
Shakespeare by Johnson). By nature, Johnson means the observation of reality. Johnson says that
Shakespeare had the ability to provide a ‘just representation of general nature’. Here, Johnson presents
the idea of universality. David Daiches reports that Dr. Johnson appreciates Shakespeare because he,
according to Dryden’s requirement of a just and lively image of human nature, fulfills it. He further
explains that Shakespeare as a dramatist is praised because he does what is expected from a dramatist.
Shakespeare’s writings have a main theme of good and evil, these are universal problems, and everyone
agrees to these problems. All humanity faces good as well as evil so the author who uses these problems
relates to people’s lives.

According to Johnson, art should be exact representation (imitation) of general nature as Plato says that
art is the imitation of nature. Also, dealing with the theme of universality, Johnson seems to believe in
modern thoughts that truth has to be universal, accepted by all and common for all. Nature is
represented by classicists so copying them also means copying nature. Hamlet says, “Hold up a mirror to
nature”, which means imitation of nature according to Platonic theory. Shakespeare is also categorized
by Johnson as poet of nature.

For Johnson, the fundamental necessity of artistic greatness is truthfulness to the details of nature. This
guides Johnson to make a number of unforgettable assertions about Shakespeare’s grandeur. For
instance, the characters of Shakespeare are the “genuine progeny of common humanity” and they
speak in the language of everyday life and convey feelings and emotions which resonate in every soul.
Johnson states that Shakespeare’s characters are not affected by the practices of certain places or by
the incidents of short-lived trends or transient beliefs. “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.” ( Preface to Shakespeare by Johnson).

Shakespeare’s characters are individuals but represent universality. Johnson elaborates about
Shakespeare’s characters, “Shakespeare has no heroes; his scenes are occupied by men”. It means that
Shakespeare’s characters are of general kind and are not restricted by customs and conventions of any
one society. David Daiches describes that by having no heroes does not mean that his characters are not
heroic or impressive but that they are not supernatural beings but “men, whom we recognize as fellow
human beings” acting according to the general laws of nature. Also, if Shakespeare uses ghosts, he gives
them humanly characteristics as they speak like human beings such as Hamlet’s father’s ghost.

Johnson was brave enough to vary from neo-classical critics’ assessments about Shakespeare’s
delineation of his characters. For example, Dennis and Rhymer did not favor Shakespeare’s portrayal of
Menenius, a representative of Rome, like a fool, and Voltaire did not favor Claudius as a drunkard.
Johnson supports Shakespeare by stating that Shakespeare always gives more importance to nature
than accident. Shakespeare’s plays may demand a Roman Senator or a monarch but he imagines
completely as regards men and not specific characters living in a certain age or place. And no doubt, for
no reason to presume that a man cannot be a fool since he is a king or a Senator. 
Johnson on Mingled drama in the preface to Shakespeare:

Shakespeare has blended tragedy and comedy in most of his plays and Johnson defends this blending of
tragic and comic ingredients on the grounds of the neoclassical theory itself. For the neoclassicist, art is
a realistic portrayal of mankind. On this ground, one can defend Shakespeare’s exercise of blending
comic and tragic elements, for such a blending shows real human life which partakes good and bad,
delight and sadness. Through his plays, Shakespeare presents a world where all human efforts and
activities have similar significance. In Shakespeare’s plays, all types of men and women are fairly
presented. 

Johnson praises Shakespeare and comments, “His drama is the mirror of life”. According to Johnson, his
plays are so realistic that we get practical knowledge from them. He further says, “Shakespeare’s plays
are not in the rigorous and critical sense either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct
kind..”. According to Johnson, divisions of Shakespeare’s plays into tragedies and comedies is wrong.
Eliot shares Johnson’s idea of incorrect labeling of Shakespeare’s dramas as tragic, comic and historic.

Johnson judges Shakespeare’s tragedy as “a skill” and his comedy as an ‘instinct’. He thinks that the
natural medium for Shakespeare is comedy not tragedy. According to him, Shakespeare had to struggle
for his tragedies but still they did not reach perfection.

He presents a mingled drama – a tragicomedy, which provides instructions in both the ways, as a
tragedy as well as a comedy. He reinforces if tragedy and comedy are mingled, the effect one wants to
create on the audience is impaired. Mingling of tragedy and comedy means to represent the reality of
the world as it is.

Johnson and the unities in the Preface to Shakespeare:

Johnson supports Shakespeare’s negligence of the unities of time, place, and action. The neo-classical
persistence on the three unities denotes that a drama should consist of those episodes and incidents
which cover a restricted time span of twelve or twenty-four hours and take place in a single area.
Supporting Shakespeare Johnson states that the action of his dramas is dependent on some conventions
which the spectator takes gladly. For example, if the audience can accept that the person standing on
the stage is Julius Caesar or Antony, then the spectators can also approve of moving scenes from one
place to another or the span of an extended time period. Johnson says that the unities of time and place
are used to make the drama more credible. But the fact is that the audience already knows that it is a
stage and not Athens or Sicily and the person who is performing on the stage is a performer and not
Julies Caesar or Antonio or Hamlet.

Johnson on Shakespeare’s Demerits in the Preface to Shakespeare:

In his "Preface" Johnson defends Shakespeare in many matters, but he does not consider him to be a
faultless dramatist. According to him, Shakespeare tries more to please his audience than to instruct
them. It seems that he writes without any moral purpose. His plots are often very loosely formed and
carelessly pursued. His comic scenes are seldom very successful. In such scenes the jests are generally
indecent. Johnson does not take a favourable view of Shakespeare's tragic plays. He accuses him of
employing a disproportionate pomp of diction. He condemns Shakespeare for inappropriate use of idle
conceit and his over-fondness for quibbles.

Virtue is not distributed wisely

Johnson says that Shakespeare’s biggest defect is that he abandons virtue to pleasure. According to
Johnson, Shakespeare didn’t write his plays because he wanted to convey any moral purpose. Instead,
he wanted to convey delight and pleasure through his plays.  Johnson also states that Shakespeare did
not pay much attention to ‘poetic justice’; he develops his characters regardless of their right and wrong
actions and at the end expels them casually. Johnson states that it is the job of the writer to make the
world peaceful and that is why he emphasizes poetic justice.

In Shakespeare’s plays there is no just distribution of evil and good. His virtuous characters do not
always show a disapproval of the wicked ones. His characters pass through right and wrong indifferently
and at the end if they serve as examples, they do so by chance and not by the author’s efforts. The fact
that the period in -which he lived was not too refined is not an excuse for this defect. Every writer has
the duty of trying to make the world a better place to live in.

A defect on Shakespeare’s plot:

The second defect that Johnson points out about Shakespeare’s plays is the plot. Johnson’s complaint is
that Shakespeare’s plots are loosely knit and if he had paid a little more attention and time, he could
have improved. Johnson also implies that the end part of Shakespeare’s plays is promptly rounded off.
And for this reason, the end parts of his plays do not seem as artistically ordered as their earlier
sections. Johnson explains the reason by saying that Shakespeare used to reduce his hard work at the
end of the plays because he was in a hurry to take the profit.

In fact in his plays there are plenty of opportunities to instruct or delight, but he makes use of those the
ate easy and rejects those which demand more effort and labour. In many of his plays the later part
appears to have been neglected. It seems that when he was approaching the end of his work and the
reward seemed near at hand, he exerted less labour on the work in order to complete in quickly and
derive the profits immediately. As a matter of fact, it is the conclusion at which he ought to have exerted
his maximum labour; lack of attention has resulted in the catastrophe in several of his plays being
improbably produced or imperfectly represented.   

Anachronism in Shakespeare’s plays:

Another defect that Johnson points out about Shakespeare’s plays is an anachronism. —his violation of
chronology, or his indifference to historical accuracy. Shakespeare is indifferent about the distinctions of
time and place and gives to one age or nation the manners and opinions which pertain to another. This
is detrimental to the effect of likelihood of the incidents. Johnson says that in Shakespeare’s plays the
conventions, ideas, and manners of one age or country are used randomly for another age or country.
This creates a sense of implausibility and impossibility within a play. For example, on one occasion in
play, Shakespeare makes Hector quote Aristotle in Troilus and Cressida and mingles classical legend with
Gothic mythology in A Midsummer Night’s Dream which is unrealistic on a historical basis. However, it
must be confessed that he was not the only violator of chronology; Sidney, a contemporary writer, who
was also learned, in his Arcadia confounded the pastoral period with the feudal age, whereas the two
ages were quite opposite to each other.  

Dialogues in Shakespeare’s comedy:

Another defect that Johnson points out about Shakespeare’s plays is faults of dialogue and diction.
Johnson claims that the banter in which the comic characters indulge is generally gross and immoral.
Many of their jests are generally indecent and gross and there is much licentiousness and indelicacy
even where ladies join the conversation. Even the refined characters speak on the same level as the
clowns and often all distinction between the two is lost. Whether this was the real conversation of ladies
and gentlemen of his period is difficult to say. Because most of his characters are guilty of this, it often
becomes hard to differentiate between refined characters and low characters. Johnson thinks that
Shakespeare should have been judicious in his choice of modes of merriment. 

Shakespeare’s use of word-play and conceit:

Johnson turns critical about Shakespeare’s propensity to employ conceits as well as obscure word-
play. Johnson states that Shakespeare’s love for conceit and puns ruins many paragraphs which are
otherwise sorrowful and warm, or could have aroused pity or fear. Shakespeare’s unrestrained love for
quibbles and puns guides him to produce meaningless just as will-o-the-ship deceive a traveler. 

The narrative parts of Shakespeare’s plays show an undue pomp of diction and verbosity full of
repetition. Instead of enlivening the narration by making it brief, Shakespeare endeavours to make it
effective through dignity and splendour. Quite often the quality of words does not correspond to that or
the thought or image for which they were employed. Trivial sentiments and vulgar ideas are, at times,
clothed in sonorous epithets and high-sounding images. In such cases terror and pity are degraded into
a sort of frigidity. Thus the intense feelings roused by him suddenly lose their intensity and
become weak.