Essay On Johnson's Preface To Shakespeare

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Dr. Richard Clarke LITS2306 Notes 06D 1 SAMUEL JOHNSON PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE (1765) In his preface to his edition of the collected works of Shakespeare, Johnson begins by noting that we often seem to cherish the works of the past and to neglect the present. Praises, he writes, are often “without reason lavished on the dead” (320) as a result of which it sometimes seems that the “honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity” (320). Everyone, Johnson suggests, is “perhaps . . . more willing to honour past than present excellence; and the mind contemplates genius through the shades of age” (320). Time is the test of genius, Johnson contends: To works . . . of which the excellence is not absolute and definite, but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon principles demonstrative and scientific, but appealing wholly to observation and experience, no other test can be applied than length of duration and continuance of esteem. What mankind have long possessed they have often examined and compared; and if they persist to value the possession, it is because frequent comparisons have confirmed opinion in its favour. . . . [I]n the productions of genius, nothing can be styled excellent till it has been compared with other works of the same kind. (320) With this test in mind, Johnson suggests that Shakespeare meets these criteria and “may now begin to assume the dignity of an ancient, and earn the privilege of established fame and prescriptive veneration” (321) because he has “long outlived his century, the term commonly used as the test of literary merit” (321). That he deserves such acclaim can be verified by “comparing him with other authors” (321). The question which arises, given the fallibility of “human judgment” (321), is “by what peculiarities of excellence Shakespeare has gained and kept the favour of his countrymen?” (321). Johnson argues that
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