Preface To Shakespeare (Notes)

Preface to Shakespeare
Points to remember
1. Shakespeare’s characters are realistic and genuine representation of human
nature and sentiment
2. Shakespeare mixes tragedy and comedy, which is against rules of theatre but
this is realistic as life itself is a mix of happiness and sorrows, good and evil, etc.
3. Shakespeare sacrifices virtue for pleasure. He did not write to teach moral
virtue. The dialogues in his comedies are gross and immoral.
4. Shakespeare is a better comedian than tragedian. His tragedies are struggling
but the comedy flows more naturally.
5. Shakespeare’s love for conceit and puns ruins many paragraphs which are
otherwise sorrowful and warm, or could have aroused pity or fear.
6. Anachronism (कालभ्रम) - 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.
7. Shakespeare follows the unity of action. His plays have a beginning, a middle and
an end. He does not follow the unities of time and place but Johnson says this is
not necessary as the audience knows the stage and the characters are fictional
so they can accept geography and time.
Shakespeare’s characters are a just representation of human nature as they deal

with passions and passions. They are also true to the age, sex, professions 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 dialogues are level with life,
Shakespeare plays are a storehouse of practical wisdom and from them a
philosophy be formulated of life. Moreover, his plays represent the different
passions and not love alone. In this his plays mirror life.
Of tragic comedy Shakespeare has been much criticized for mixing tragedy and
comedy but Johnson defends him. Johnson says that in mixing tragedy and comedy
Shakespeare has been true nature because even in real life there is a mingling of
good and evil, joy and sorrows, tears and smiles etc.
This may be against the classical rules but there is always an appeal open from
criticism to nature. Moreover, tragedy and comedy being nearer to life combines
with in itself the pleasure and instruction of both tragedy and comedy.
Shakespeare use of tragic comedy 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. Contained melancholy is often not pleasing.
Shakespeare had the power to move whether to tears or laughter.
Shakespeare - Comic Genius

Johnson says that comedy came natural to Shakespeare he seems to produce his
comic 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.
Shakespeare engaged in dramatic poetry with the world open before him; the rules
of the ancients were yet known to few; the public judgment was unformed; he had
no example of such fame as might force him upon imitation, nor critics of such
authority as might restrain his extravagance.
He therefore indulged his natural disposition, and his disposition was Rhyme. The
force of his comic scenes has suffered little diminution from the changes made
by a century and a half, in manners or in words. As his personages act upon
principles
arising from genuine passion, very little modified by particular forms, their
pleasures
and vexations are communicable to all times and to all places; they are natural, and
therefore durable; the adventitious peculiarities of personal habits, are only
superficial.
The comedies are bright and pleasing for a little while, yet soon fading to a dim
tint, without any remains of former luster; but the discriminations of true passion
are the colors of has remarked, led him to comedy.
In tragedy he often writes with great appearance of toil and study, what is written
at last with little felicity; but in his comic scenes, he seems to produce without
labour, what nolab our can improve. In tragedy he is always struggling after some
occasion to be comic, but in comedy he seems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a
mode of thinking congenial to his nature. In his tragic scenes there is always
something wanting, but his comedy often surpasses expectation or desire. His
comedy pleases by the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy for the greater
part by incident and action. His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be instinct.
Shakespeare’s Demerits
Johnson’s praise for Shakespeare, which centers on the Bard’s sublunary approach
to character, dialogue, and plot, does not blind him to the poet of nature’s
weaknesses. Johnson airs Shakespeare’s imperfections without hesitance. In doing
so, though, he does not weaken his arguments; he simply establishes his
credentials as a critic.
Johnson is not hesitant to admit Shakespeare’s faults: his earlier praise serves to
keep those flaws in perspective. Even without that perspective, however,
Johnson’s censure of Shakespeare is not particularly harsh. For the most part,
Johnson highlights surface-level defects in the Bard’s works: his “loosely formed”
plots, his “commonly gross” jests, and—most ironically—his “disproportionate
pomp of diction and a wearisome train of circumlocution” The most egregious fault
Johnson finds in Shakespeare, though, is thematic.
Unsurprisingly, Johnson exhibits emphatic distaste for Shakespeare’s lack of moral
purpose. Johnson argues that he “sacrifices virtue to convenience”. In leading “his
persons indifferently through right and wrong” and leaving “their examples to
operate by chance,” Shakespeare has abandoned his duty as an author as the
righteous Johnson would have that duty defined (19). This is, in his eyes,
Shakespeare’s greatest flaw, though it does not overtake his other merits.
The Three Unities

Shakespeare’s histories are neither tragedy nor comedy hence he is not required
to follow classical rules of unities. The only unity he needs to maintain in his
histories is consistency and naturalness of action. In his historical plays his plots
have variety and complexity of nature. They have a beginning, middle and end and
one event is logically connected with another and the plot makes gradual
advancement towards the end.
Shakespeare shows no regard for the unities of time and place and according to
Johnson, place and according to Johnson these have troubled the poet more than
it has pleased the audience. The observance of these unities is considered
necessary to provided credibility to the drama but any fiction can never real and
the audience knows this.
If a spectator can imagine the stage to be Alexandria and the actors to be Antony
and Cleopatra then the spectator 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, so they can surely accept the lengthy time and multiple locations without
complaint.
Two main reasons had been offered in the past in support of this trinity and both
these reasons were false. Firstly it was said that Aristotle had insisted upon them
and secondly that without them a play would be unconvincing. In his defense of
Shakespeare in this respect and also in respect of Shakespeare mingling of tragic
and comic scenes, Johnson has been regarded as an outright dissenter against the
neoclassical rules and proprieties. The attitude he adopts in these matters is a
pointer or foreshadowing the coming of the Romantic new era (1800-1850) (The
essay was published in 1765)

Preface To Shakespeare (Notes)

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Preface to Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s characters are a just representation of human nature as they deal

Shakespeare - Comic Genius

The Three Unities

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