PART - II

PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE
By: Dr. Johnson

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 LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Life of Johnson

• Preface to Shakespeare

• Shakespeare “a poet of nature”

• Shakespeare’s faults

• Summary

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 DEMERITS OF SHAKESPEARE

 As a true neo-classicist Johnson tries to balance the merits

of Shakespeare with his demerits

According to him:

 There is no moral lesson in the plays of Shakespeare

 There is no poetic justice in the plays of Shakespeare

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 DEMERITS OF SHAKESPEARE

 There is no poetic justice in the plays of Shakespeare

 Though there is no poetic justice in real life either, but
according to Johnson, being true to life is not enough, an
artist must not show negativity to the audience because the
audience is always aware that they are watching a play and
in this context he feels that Shakespeare sacrificed virtue to
convenience and that his emphasis was more on pleasing
than in instructing the audience

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 DEMERITS OF SHAKESPEARE

 “A play in which the wicked prosper, and the virtuous

miscarry may doubtless be good because it is a just
representation of the common events of life”

 “but since all reasonable human beings naturally love justice,

I cannot easily be persuaded, that the observation of justice
makes a play worse; or, that if other excellencies are equal,
the audience will not always rise better pleased from the final
triumph of persecuted virtue”

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 DEMERITS OF SHAKESPEARE
 Johnson also finds faults with Shakespeare’s plots. He thinks that
Shakespeare’s plots are loosely formed and are not pursued with
diligence

 He also finds Shakespeare guilty of violating chronology and

verisimilitude relating to time and place For example:

• Hector quotes Aristotle in Troilus and Cressida

• The love of Theseus and Hippolyta is combined with the Gothic
mythology of Fairies

 Johnson lauds Shakespeare’s skill in writing comic scenes but

does not gloss over the faults in many comic dialogues: The
language used is coarse
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 DEMERITS OF SHAKESPEARE

He also finds faults with Shakespeare’s tragedies

 He thinks that the meanness, tediousness and obscurity in

Shakespeare’s tragedies are the undesirable effect of

excessive labour

 Also Shakespeare’s narration is often verbose and prolix, full

of verbiage and unnecessary repetition

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 DEMERITS OF SHAKESPEARE

 Shakespeare at times does not match his words to the

occasion

 Repeatedly Johnson finds Shakespeare’s tragic scenes

marred by a sudden drop in emotional temperature caused

by some infelicity of language- a pun, a conceit, a hyperbole

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 DEMERITS OF SHAKESPEARE
Johnson criticizes Shakespeare for his fondness for a quibble.

 He calls it a golden apple for which Shakespeare would

stoop from his elevation

 And the fatal Cleopatra for which Shakespeare was willing to

lose the world and was content to lose it

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 JOHNSON DEFENDS SHAKESPEARE’S VIOLATION OF THE
UNITIES

 Johnson went against the general practice of the time that a

playwright must follow all the three unities. Regarding the
unity of time and place, he defends Shakespeare
 He says that that all those who say that all the unities
must be followed are those who believe and say that since
the audience is watching a play, they cannot believe about
the certain lapse of time and certain change of place

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 SHAKESPEARE’S VIOLATION OF THE UNITIES

 Johnson refutes their arguments by saying that the audience

is always aware that they are watching a play, they will
always accept it, so this argument is not valid
 Similarly the argument that the action should revolve around
the singular revolution of the sun. He says that if in three
hours the audience can imagine the passage of one day,
then they can also surely imagine of much longer periods of
time lapse between scenes in the play

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 SHAKESPEARE AND ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND

 Johnson considers Shakespeare a pioneer in many ways

 Although not much is known of his learning and education still

Shakespeare is always original; nothing is derived from the

works of other writers

 He is comparable only to Homer in his manner of invention

 He is the first playwright to establish the harmony of blank

verse
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 SHAKESPEARE AND ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND

 First to discover the qualities of English language for the

smoothness and harmony

 First successful playwright whose tragedies and comedies

were both successful and gave appropriate pleasure

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 CONCLUSION

 Thus Johnson is a great critic

 His "Preface" is called as a balanced estimate”
 Here Johnson shows his penetrating power that probes to
the very core of Shakespeare's art
 It reveals its deep humanity and its sovereign realism
 His praise of Shakespeare as the dramatist of realism par
excellence is wholly justified and convincing 

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