PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE

“Preface to Shakespeare” was written by Samuel Johnson in an edition of Shakespeare’s plays. It played
a large part in establishing Shakespeare’s reputation; his account of the lives of numerous English poets
contributed to the forming of the English literary canon and the defining of qualities such as metaphysical
wit; his remarks on criticism itself were also to have an enduring impact.

Three basic concerns inform this preface: how a poet’s reputation is established; the poet’s relation to
nature; and the relative virtues of nature and experience of life as against a reliance on principles
established by criticism and convention. Johnson begins his preface by intervening in the debate on the
relative virtues of ancient and modern writers. He affirms that the excellence of the ancient authors is
based on a “gradual and comparative” estimate, as tested by “observation and experience.” 12 If we judge
Shakespeare by these criteria – “length of duration and continuance of esteem” – we are justified, thinks
Johnson, in allowing Shakespeare “to assume the dignity of an ancient,” since his reputation has survived
the customs, opinions, and circumstances of his time.

Inquiring into the reasons behind Shakespeare’s enduring success, Johnson makes an important general
statement: “Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature” (61).
Once again, by “general nature,” Johnson refers to the avoidance of particular manners and passing
customs and the foundation of one’s work on the “stability of truth,” i.e., truths that are permanent and
universal. And it is Shakespeare above all writers, claims Johnson, who is “the poet of nature: the
poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirrour of manners and of life.” His characters are not molded
by the accidents of time, place, and local custom; rather, they are “the genuine progeny of common
humanity,” and they “act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all
minds are agitated.” Other poets, says Johnson, present a character as an individual; in Shakespeare,
character “is commonly a species.” It is by virtue of these facts that Shakespeare’s plays are filled with
“practical axioms and domestick wisdom . . . from his works may be collected a system of civil and
economical prudence” (62). In contrast with the “hyperbolical or aggravated characters” of most
playwrights, Shakespeare’s personages are not heroes but men; he expresses “human sentiments in
human language,” using common occurrences. Indeed, in virtue of his use of durable speech derived
from “the common intercourse of life,” Johnson views Shakespeare as “one of the original masters of our
language” (70). Though Shakespeare “approximates the remote, and familiarizes the wonderful,” the
events he portrays accord with probability. In view of these qualities, Shakespeare’s drama “is the
mirrour of life” (64–65).

Johnson now defends Shakespeare against charges brought by critics and writers such as John Dennis,
Thomas Rymer, and Voltaire. These critics argue that Shakespeare’s characters insufficiently reflect their
time period and status, that his Romans, for example, are not sufficiently Roman, and his kings not
sufficiently royal. Johnson retorts that Shakespeare “always makes nature predominate over accident;
and . . . he preserves the essential character,” extricated from accidental conventions and the “casual
distinction of country and condition” (65–66). A more serious form of censure concerns Shakespeare’s
mixing of comic and tragic scenes, thereby violating the classical distinction between tragedy and
comedy. Johnson acknowledges that Shakespeare’s plays “are not in the rigorous and critical sense
either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind; 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.” The ancient poets selected certain aspects of this variety which they
restricted to tragedy and comedy respectively; whereas Shakespeare “has united the powers of exciting
laughter and sorrow not only in one mind but in one composition” (66–67). It is here, in his defense of
tragicomedy that Johnson appeals to nature as a higher authority than precedent. He allows that
Shakespeare’s practice is “contrary to the rules of criticism . . . but there is always an appeal open from
criticism to nature. The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing. That the
mingled drama may convey all the instruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, . . . and
approaches nearer than either to the appearance of life.” Moreover, says Johnson, the mixed genre
makes for greater variety, and “all pleasure consists in variety” (67). Johnson also points out that when
Shakespeare’s plays were first “edited” in 1623 by members of his acting company, these editors, though
they divided the plays into comedies, histories, and tragedies, did not distinguish clearly between these
three types. And through all of the three forms, Shakespeare’s “mode of composition is the same; an
interchange of seriousness and merriment,” and he “never fails to attain his purpose” (68).
Johnson does concede, however, that Shakespeare had many faults. His first defect is that he is “more
careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose.”
Johnson acknowledges that from Shakespeare’s plays, a “system of social duty” may be culled. The
problem is that Shakespeare’s “precepts and axioms drop casually from him; he makes no just
distribution of good or evil,” leaving his examples of good and bad actions “to operate by chance.” And it
is always a writer’s duty, Johnson insists, “to make the world better” (71). Among other faults of
Shakespeare cited by Johnson are: the looseness of his plots, whereby he “omits opportunities of
instructing or delighting”; the lack of regard for distinction of time or place, such that persons from one
age or place are indiscriminately given attributes pertaining to other eras and locations; the grossness
and licentiousness of his humor; the coldness and pomp of his narrations and set speeches; the failure to
follow through with scenes that evoke terror and pity; and a perverse and digressive fascination with
quibbles and wordplay (71–74).
There is one type of defect, however, from which Johnson exonerates Shakespeare: neglect of the
classical unities of drama. Johnson takes this opportunity to elaborate on his earlier cynicism regarding
these ancient rules. To begin with, he exempts Shakespeare’s histories from any requirement of unity:
since these are neither tragedies nor comedies, they are not subject to the laws governing these genres.
All that is required in these histories is that “the changes of action be so prepared as to be understood,
that the incidents be various and affecting, and the characters consistent, natural and distinct. No other
unity is intended” (75). Johnson argues that Shakespeare does observe unity of action: his plots are not
structured by a complication and denouement “for this is seldom the order of real events, and
Shakespeare is the poet of nature.” But he does observe Aristotle’s requirement that a plot have a
beginning, middle, and end.

For the unities of time and place, however, Shakespeare had no regard, a point on which Johnson
defends Shakespeare by questioning these unities themselves. Like Corneille, he views these unities as
having “given more trouble to the poet, than pleasure to the auditor” (75–76). Johnson sees these unities
as arising from “the supposed necessity of making the drama credible.” And such a requirement is
premised on the view that the mind of a spectator or reader “revolts from evident falsehood, and fiction
loses its force when it departs from the resemblance of reality.” The unity of place is merely an inference
from the unity of time, since in a short period of time, spectators cannot believe that given actors have
traversed impossible distances to remote locations. Such are the grounds on which critics have objected
to the irregularity of Shakespeare’s drama. In Johnson’s eyes, such premises are themselves spurious: in
a striking counter-argument, he appeals to Shakespeare himself as a counter-authority, asserting: “It is
false, that any representation is mistaken for reality; that any dramatick fable in its materiality was ever
credible” (76). Spectators, Johnson observes, are always aware, in their very trip to the theater, that they
are subjecting themselves to a fiction, to a form of temporary self-delusion. And we must acknowledge
that, “if delusion be admitted,” it has “no certain limitation.” If we can believe that the battle being enacted
on stage is real, why would we be counting the clock or dismissing the changing of places as unreal? We
know, from first to last, that “the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players” (77).

Imitations give us pleasure, says Johnson, “not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they
bring realities to mind” (78). Johnson concludes that “nothing is essential to the fable, but unity of action,”
and that the unities of time and place both arise from “false assumptions” and diminish the variety of
drama (79). Hence these unities are “to be sacrificed to the nobler beauties of variety and instruction,” the
greatest virtues of a play being “to copy nature and instruct life.” Johnson is well aware of the forces
arrayed against him on these points, and that he is effectively recalling “the principles of drama to a new
examination” (80). Yet his strategy is both to argue logically against the incoherence of the unities of time
and place and to set up Shakespeare as an alternative source of authority as against the classical
tradition. Ironically, his own views are thus sanctioned by a playwright to whom he himself has
painstakingly accorded the dignity of a classic. Johnson broadly agrees with the tradition that
Shakespeare lacked formal learning; the greater part of his excellence “was the product of his own
genius.” In contrast with most writers, who imitate their predecessors, Shakespeare directly obtained “an
exact knowledge of many modes of life” as well as of the inanimate world, gathered “by contemplating
things as they really exist” (89). He demonstrates clearly that “he has seen with his own eyes; he gives
the image which he receives, not weakened or distorted by the intervention of any other mind.” In
summary, the “form, the characters, the language, and the shows of the English drama are his” (90).
Johnson also shrewdly points out that Shakespeare’s reputation owes something to his audience, to its
willingness to praise his graces and overlook his defects (90–91). In this text, Johnson’s appeal to nature
and direct experience and observation over classical precedents and rules, as well as his assessment of
Shakespeare as inaugurating a new tradition, effectively sets the stage for various broader perspectives
of the role of the poet, the poet’s relation to tradition and classical authority, and the virtues of
individualistic poetic genius. His assessment of Shakespeare is backed by a laborious editing of his plays.