English Literature: Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare

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Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare Dattani "TARA"

“The Preface is the impartial estimate of Shakespeare’s virtues and defects by a powerful mind”. Dickens
Anglo Saxon
(Halliday). Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare is a classic of literary criticism in which he is above his Esslin "Absurd
political personal, religious and literary prejudices: mentions both the merits and demerits of Drama"
Shakespeare like a true critic; and become very honest and sincere in his estimate of Shakespeare. Feminist Criticism in
Johnson tests Shakespeare by the fact and experience, by the test of time, nature and universality, his Wilderness
defense to tragicomedy is superb and still unsurpassed; in which he has excelled his guru Dryden. He Freud's Stage of
Development finds Shakespeare great because he holds a mirror to nature. In minimized the importance of love on development
of Indian Gao Xingjian
English Drama the sum of life, Johnson anticipates Shaw.
Indian Drama
Indian Women
One of the first excellence of Shakespeare, as Preface shows: Jumpa Lahiri
Jacobean “Shakespeare is above all the writers, at least above the modern writers,
Meghdootam
Drama the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror
if manners and life.” According to Johnson, “Shakespeare always makes Myth of Sisyphus
nature predominate over accident”. His blend of tragedy and comedy is Newspaper
also nearer and more natural to life, because the mingled drama Oedipus
approaches nearer to life :Mingled drama may convey all the instructions Othello
Age of Chaucer
of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, because it includes both in its Pinter
alternations of exhibition and approaches nearer than either to the
Poetics
appearance of life”
Post Feminism
Shakespeare was the originator of “the form, the character, the language Rushdie
Neo-Classical and the shadows of English drama” and “opens a mine contains cold and Sartre
or Augustan diamonds”. “Addison speaks the language of poets, and Shakespeare of "Existentialism"
Age men”, thus, Shakespeare is one of the great and the original masters of the language. There are few Sashi Despande
limitations of Preface too: Johnson could not fathom the depths of Shakespeare’s poetic genius. Nor Satan
could he think of the psychological subtleties of his characterization, he was equally deaf to “the Structuralism and
overtones of Shakespeare’s poetry at its most sublime his criticism of his perceptive powers. In the Literature
Elizabethan
Age mystery of Shakespeare tragedy was beyond the reach of his common sense. No wonder then if he feels Tales from
that Shakespeare was at his best in comedy”. Nevertheless these shortcomings do not mar the basic Shakespeare
merits of his Preface which is as immortal as the plays of Shakespeare and the tests of Shakespeare Tess

http://literarism.blogspot.com/2010/07/johnsons-preface-to-shakespeare.html[11/7/2012 12:08:44 PM]

English Literature: Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare

provided by him are valid even today.

Theory of Literature
Kamala Das: About the excellence of Shakespeare’s plot, Johnson says, “our Tolstoy
Confessional writer’s plots are generally borrowed from novels”, but due to his Two Uses of
Poet Language
merit, “his plots, whether historical or fabulous, are always
crowded with incidents, by which the attention of a rude people Ulysses
was most easily caught than by sentiment or argumentation”. Verse Satire 17thC
Themes, Styles Johnson writes, Shakespeare “knows how he should most please; Vivekananda
& Techniques and whether his practice is more agreeable to nature; or whether Wordsworth's Nature
of O.Henry his example has prejudiced the nation.” He could not see “how
truth may be stated myth or symbol, how The Tempest and The
Winter’s Tale for instance, are more than pleasant romantic pieces; Join Us
significantly, he says of the latter that with all its absurdities, it is
Two Uses of Join this site
very entertaining”.
Language: IA with Google Friend
Richards Connect
The limitations of this critical sensibility are no where prominent
Members (116)
than in his complaint that Shakespeare “seems to write without any
More »
moral purpose”. He fails to see the hidden morals of Shakespeare’s
plays; to him only the explicitly stated morals are the morals, thus,
Criticism some of the most conspicuous virtues of Shakespeare, for example,
his objectivity and his highly individualized treatment of his characters, are treated by Johnson as his
A Room of One's Own
“defects”—these defects are certainly not Shakespeare’s, but Johnson’s. Shakespeare was the first
Absurd Drama playwright whose tragic as well as comic plays succeeded in providing the dramatic pleasure
Addison appropriate to them. He has given us excellent comedies “without labour which no labour can
Aristotle improve,” so the world prefers his comedies because they are profound and more true to nature.
Arnold However, the language of his comic scenes is the language of the real life, neither gross nor refined
and hence it has not gone obsolete. Already a member?Sign
Ars Poetica in
Bardsley
Early in English drama “Neither the character nor dialogues were yet understood, Shakespeare may be
Barthes Famous Article
truly said to have introduced them both amongst us, and in some of his happier scenes to have carried
Blake them both to the utmost height”. “In my opinion”, concludes Johnson, “very few in the lines were Absurd Drama: Esslin
Camus difficult to his audience, and that he uses such expressions as were them common, though the paucity Camus: Myth of
Chaucer if contemporary writers makes them now seem peculiar.” Sisyphys
Critical Essays Consciousness &
His enumeration of Shakespeare in itself is a classic piece of criticism. These faults he finds are owing Novel
Cultural Materialism
to two causes—(a) carelessness, (b) excess of conceit. “The details analysis of the faults”, says Raleigh, Home & Exile
Darwin “is fine piece of criticism, and has never been seriously challenged”. Shakespeare’s obscurities arise
Indian Epic
Death of the Author from:
Indian Themes
Deconstruction 1. the careless manner of publication;
2. the shifting fashions and grammatical license of Elizabethan English; Indian Women
Deridda Drama
3. the use of colloquial English;
Edmund Wilson Joyce: Extrinic
4. the use of many allusions, the reference, etc., to topical events and personalities;
Eliot Approach to Stuty
5. The rapid flow of ideas which often hurries him to a second thought before the first been fully
Emile explained. Literary Criticism
Esslin Thus, many of Shakespeare’s obscurities belong either to the age or the necessities of stagecraft and to Literary Criticism &
the man. Theory
Eugene Ionesco
Literature,
Existentialism
Censorship and the
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Labels: Critics and Books, English, Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare, Shakespeare Existentialism
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English Literature: Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare

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English Literature: Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare

http://literarism.blogspot.com/2010/07/johnsons-preface-to-shakespeare.html[11/7/2012 12:08:44 PM]