The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes by Samuel Johnson

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Upon every other stage the universal agent is love, by whose power all
good and evil is distributed, and every action quickened or retarded. To
bring a lover, a lady, and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in
contradictory obligations, perplex them with oppositions of interest,
and harass them with violence of desires inconsistent with each other;
to make them meet in rapture, and part in agony; to fill their mouths
with hyperbolical joy and outrageous sorrow; to distress them as nothing
human ever was distressed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was
delivered; is the business of a modern dramatist. For this, probability
is violated, life is misrepresented, and language is depraved. But love
is only one of many passions; and, as it has no great influence upon the
sum of life[3], it has little operation in the dramas of a poet, who
caught his ideas from the living world, and exhibited only what he saw
before him. He knew that any other passion, as it was regular or
exorbitant, was a cause of happiness or calamity.

Characters thus ample and general were not easily discriminated and
preserved, yet, perhaps, no poet ever kept his personages more distinct
from each other. I will not say, with Pope, that every speech may be
assigned to the proper speaker, because many speeches there are which
have nothing characteristical; but, perhaps, though some may be equally
adapted to every person, it will be difficult to find any that can be
properly transferred from the present possessor to another claimant. The
choice is right, when there is reason for choice.

Other dramatists can only gain attention by hyperbolical or aggravated
characters, by fabulous and unexampled excellence or depravity, as the
writers of barbarous romances invigorated the reader by a giant and a
dwarf; and he that should form his expectations of human affairs from
the play, or from the tale, would be equally deceived. Shakespeare has
no heroes; his scenes are occupied only by men, who act and speak as the
reader thinks that he should himself have spoken or acted on the same
occasion: even where the agency is supernatural, the dialogue is level
with life. Other writers disguise the most natural passions and most
frequent incidents; so that he who contemplates them in the book will
not know them in the world: Shakespeare approximates the remote, and
familiarizes the wonderful; the event which he represents will not
happen, but, if it were possible, its effects would, probably, be such
as he has assigned[4]; and it may be said, that he has not only shown
human nature as it acts in real exigencies, but as it would be found in
trials, to which it cannot be exposed.

This, therefore, is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the
mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the
phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of
his delirious ecstacies, by reading human sentiments in human language,
by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the
world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions.

His adherence to general nature has exposed him to the censure of
criticks, who form their judgments upon narrower principles. Dennis and
Rymer think his Romans not sufficiently Roman; and Voltaire censures his
kings as not completely royal[5]. Dennis is offended, that Menenius, a
senator of Rome, should play the buffoon; and Voltaire, perhaps, thinks
decency violated when the Danish usurper is represented as a drunkard.
But Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident; and, if
he preserves the essential character, is not very careful of
distinctions superinduced and adventitious. His story requires Romans or
kings, but he thinks only on men. He knew that Rome, like every other
city, had men of all dispositions; and, wanting a buffoon, he went into
the senate-house for that which the senate-house would certainly have
afforded him. He was inclined to show an usurper and a murderer, not
only odious, but despicable; he, therefore, added drunkenness to his
other qualities, knowing that kings love wine like other men, and that
wine exerts its natural power upon kings. These are the petty cavils of
petty minds; a poet overlooks the casual distinction of country and
condition, as a painter, satisfied with the figure, neglects the
drapery.

The censure which he has incurred by mixing comick and tragick scenes,
as it extends to all his works, deserves more consideration. Let the
fact be first stated, and then examined.

Shakespeare's plays are not, in the rigorous or 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; and expressing the course of the world, in which
the loss of one is the gain of another; in which, at the same time, the
reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in
which the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the frolick of
another; and many mischiefs and many benefits are done and hindered
without design.

Out of this chaos of mingled purposes and casualties the ancient poets,
according to the laws which custom had prescribed, selected some the
crimes of men, and some their absurdities; some the momentous
vicissitudes of life, and some the lighter occurrences; some the
terrours of distress and some the gaieties of prosperity. Thus rose the
two modes of imitation, known by the names of _tragedy_ and _comedy_,
compositions intended to promote different ends by contrary means, and
considered as so little allied, that I do not recollect among the Greeks
or Romans a single writer who attempted both[6].

Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow, not
only in one mind, but in one composition. Almost all his plays are
divided between serious and ludicrous characters, and, in the successive
evolutions of the design, sometimes produce seriousness and sorrow, and
sometimes levity and laughter.

That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be
readily allowed; 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, because it includes
both in its alternations of exhibition, and approaches nearer than
either to the appearance of life, by showing how great machinations and
slender designs may promote or obviate one another, and the high and the
low co-operate in the general system by unavoidable concatenation.

It is objected, that by this change of scenes the passions are
interrupted in their progression, and that the principal event, being
not advanced by a due gradation of preparatory incidents, wants, at
last, the power to move, which constitutes the perfection of dramatick
poetry. This reasoning is so specious, that it is received as true even
by those who, in daily experience, feel it to be false. The interchanges
of mingled scenes seldom fail to produce the intended vicissitudes of
passion. Fiction cannot move so much, but that the attention may be
easily transferred; and though it must be allowed that pleasing
melancholy may be sometimes interrupted by unwelcome levity, yet let it
be considered, likewise, that melancholy is often not pleasing, and that
the disturbance of one man may be the relief of another; that different
auditors have different habitudes; and that, upon the whole, all
pleasure consists in variety.

The players, who, in their edition, divided our author's works into
comedies, histories and tragedies, seem not to have distinguished the
three kinds by any very exact or definite ideas.

An action which ended happily to the principal persons, however serious
or distressful through its intermediate incidents, in their opinion,
constituted a comedy. This idea of a comedy continued long amongst us;
and plays were written, which, by changing the catastrophe, were
tragedies to-day, and comedies to-morrow[7].

Tragedy was not in those times a poem of more general dignity or
elevation than comedy; it required only a calamitous conclusion, with
which the common criticism of that age was satisfied, whatever lighter
pleasure it afforded in its progress.

History was a series of actions, with no other than chronological
succession, independent of each other, and without any tendency to
introduce or regulate the conclusion. It is not always very nicely
distinguished from tragedy. There is not much nearer approach to unity
of action in the tragedy of Anthony and Cleopatra, than in the history
of Richard the second. But a history might be continued through many
plays, as it had no plan, it had no limits.

Through all these denominations of the drama, Shakespeare's mode of
composition is the same; an interchange of seriousness and merriment, by
which the mind is softened at one time, and exhilarated at another. But
whatever be his purpose, whether to gladden or depress, or to conduct
the story, without vehemence or emotion, through tracts of easy and
familiar dialogue, he never fails to attain his purpose; as he commands
us, we laugh or mourn, or sit silent with quiet expectation, in
tranquillity without indifference.

When Shakespeare's plan is understood, most of the criticisms of Rymer
and Voltaire vanish away. The play of Hamlet is opened, without
impropriety, by two centinels; Iago bellows at Brabantio's window,
without injury to the scheme of the play, though in terms which a modern
audience would not easily endure; the character of Polonius is
seasonable and useful; and the Gravediggers themselves may be heard with
applause.

Shakespeare engaged in dramatick poetry with the world open before him;
the rules of the ancients were yet known to few; the publick judgment
was unformed; he had no example of such fame as might force him upon
imitation, nor criticks of such authority as might restrain his
extravagance: he, therefore, indulged his natural disposition, and his
disposition, as Rymer 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 comick scenes, he seems to
produce, without labour, what no labour can improve. In tragedy he is
always struggling after some occasion to be comick; but in comedy he
seems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a mode of thinking congenial to
his nature. In his tragick 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[8].

The force of his comick 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 dies, bright and pleasing for a little while, yet
soon fading to a dim tinct, without any remains of former lustre; but
the discriminations of true passion are the colours of nature; they
pervade the whole mass, and can only perish with the body that exhibits
them. The accidental compositions of heterogeneous modes are dissolved
by the chance that combined them; but the uniform simplicity of
primitive qualities neither admits increase, nor suffers decay. The sand
heaped by one flood is scattered by another, but the rock always
continues in its place. The stream of time, which is continually washing
the dissoluble fabricks of other poets, passes, without injury, by the
adamant of Shakespeare[9].

If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation, a style which
never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology so consonant and
congenial to the analogy and principles of its respective language, as
to remain settled and unaltered; this style is probably to be sought in
the common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be
understood, without ambition of elegance. The polite are always catching
modish innovations, and the learned depart from established forms of
speech, in hope of finding or making better; those who wish for
distinction forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a
conversation above grossness and below refinement, where propriety
resides, and where this poet seems to have gathered his comick dialogue.
He is, therefore, more agreeable to the ears of the present age than any
other author equally remote, and among his other excellencies deserves
to be studied as one of the original masters of our language.

These observations are to be considered not as unexceptionably constant,
but as containing general and predominant truth. Shakespeare's familiar
dialogue is affirmed to be smooth and clear, yet not wholly without
ruggedness or difficulty; as a country may be eminently fruitful, though
it has spots unfit for cultivation: his characters are praised as
natural, though their sentiments are sometimes forced, and their actions
improbable; as the earth upon the whole is spherical, though its surface
is varied with protuberances and cavities.

Shakespeare with his excellencies has likewise faults, and faults
sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit. I shall show them
in the proportion in which they appear to me, without envious malignity
or superstitious veneration. No question can be more innocently
discussed than a dead poet's pretensions to renown; and little regard is
due to that bigotry which sets candour higher than truth.

His first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the evil in
books or in men. He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much
more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without
any moral purpose. From his writings, indeed, a system of social duty
may be selected, for he that thinks reasonably must think morally; but
his precepts and axioms drop casually from him; he makes no just
distribution of good or evil, nor is always careful to show in the
virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons
indifferently through right and wrong, and, at the close, dismisses them
without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance.
This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a
writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue
independent on time or place.

The plots are often so loosely formed, that a very slight consideration
may improve them, and so carelessly pursued, that he seems, not always
fully to comprehend his own design. He omits opportunities of
instructing or delighting, which the train of his story seems to force
upon him, and apparently rejects those exhibitions which would be more
affecting, for the sake of those which are more easy.

It may be observed, that in many of his plays the latter part is
evidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his work, and
in view of his reward, he shortened the labour to snatch the profit. He,
therefore, remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert
them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly
represented.

He had no regard to distinction of time or place, but gives to one age
or nation, without scruple, the customs, institutions, and opinions of
another, at the expense not only of likelihood, but of possibility.
These faults Pope has endeavoured, with more zeal than judgment, to
transfer to his imagined interpolators. We need not wonder to find
Hector quoting Aristotle, when we see the loves of Theseus and Hippolyta
combined with the Gothick mythology of fairies. Shakespeare, indeed, was
not the only violator of chronology, for in the same age Sidney, who
wanted not the advantages of learning, has, in his Arcadia, confounded
the pastoral with the feudal times, the days of innocence, quiet, and
security, with those of turbulence, violence, and adventure[10].

In his comick scenes he is seldom very successful, when he engages his
characters in reciprocations of smartness and contests of sarcasm; their
jests are commonly gross, and their pleasantry licentious; neither his
gentlemen nor his ladies have much delicacy, nor are sufficiently
distinguished from his clowns by any appearance of refined manners.
Whether he represented the real conversation of his time is not easy to
determine; the reign of Elizabeth is commonly supposed to have been a
time of stateliness, formality, and reserve; yet, perhaps, the
relaxations of that severity were not very elegant[11]. There must,
however, have been always some modes of gaiety preferable to others, and
a writer ought to choose the best.

In tragedy his performance seems constantly to be worse, as his labour
is more. The effusions of passion, which exigence forces out, are, for
the most part, striking and energetick; but whenever he solicits his
invention, or strains his faculties, the offspring of his throes is
tumour, meanness, tediousness, and obscurity.

In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction, and a
wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in
many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few.
Narration in dramatick poetry is naturally tedious, as it is unanimated
and inactive, and obstructs the progress of the action; it should,
therefore, always be rapid, and enlivened by frequent interruption.
Shakespeare found it an incumbrance, and instead of lightening it by
brevity, endeavoured to recommend it by dignity and splendour.

His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak, for his
power was the power of nature; when he endeavoured, like other tragick
writers, to catch opportunities of amplification, and instead of
inquiring what the occasion demanded, to show how much his stores of
knowledge could supply, he seldom escapes without the pity or resentment
of his reader.

It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy
sentiment, which he cannot well express, and will not reject; he
struggles with it a while, and, if it continues stubborn, comprises it
in words such as occur, and leaves it to be disentangled and evolved by
those who have more leisure to bestow upon it.

Not that always where the language is intricate, the thought is subtile,
or the image always great where the line is bulky; the equality of words
to things is very often neglected, and trivial sentiments and vulgar
ideas disappoint the attention, to which they are recommended by
sonorous epithets and swelling figures.

But the admirers of this great poet have most reason to complain when he
approaches nearest to his highest excellence, and seems fully resolved
to sink them in dejection, and mollify them with tender emotions, by the
fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, or the crosses of love. What
he does best, he soon ceases to do. He is not long soft and pathetick
without some idle conceit, or contemptible equivocation. He no sooner
begins to move, than he counteracts himself; and terrour and pity, as
they are rising in the mind, are checked and blasted by sudden
frigidity.

A quibble is to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the traveller;
he follows it at all adventures it is sure to lead him out of his way,
and sure to ingulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his
mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or
profundity of his disquisitions, whether he be enlarging knowledge or
exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or
enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him, and
he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which
he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation.
A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was
content to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth.
A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world,
and was content to lose it.

It will be thought strange, that, in enumerating the defects of this
writer, I have not yet mentioned his neglect of the unities; his
violation of those laws which have been instituted and established by
the joint authority of poets and of criticks.

For his other deviations from the art of writing, I resign him to
critical justice, without making any other demand in his favour, than
that which must be indulged to all human excellence; that his virtues be
rated with his failings: but, from the censure which this irregularity
may bring upon him, I shall, with due reverence to that learning which I
must oppose, adventure to try how I can defend him.

His histories, being neither tragedies nor comedies, are not subject to
any of their laws; nothing more is necessary to all the praise which
they expect, than 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,
and, therefore, none is to be sought.

In his other works he has well enough preserved the unity of action. He
has not, indeed, an intrigue regularly perplexed and regularly
unravelled: he does not endeavour to hide his design only to discover
it, for this is seldom the order of real events, and Shakespeare is the
poet of nature: but his plan has commonly what Aristotle requires, a
beginning, a middle, and an end; one event is concatenated with another,
and the conclusion follows by easy consequence. There are, perhaps, some
incidents that might be spared, as in other poets there is much talk
that only fills up time upon the stage; but the general system makes
gradual advances, and the end of the play is the end of expectation.

To the unities of time and place he has shown no regard; and, perhaps, a
nearer view of the principles on which they stand will diminish their
value, and withdraw from them the veneration which, from the time of
Corneille, they have generally received, by discovering that they have
given more trouble to the poet, than pleasure to the auditor.

The necessity of observing the unities of time and place arises from the
supposed necessity of making the drama credible. The criticks hold it
impossible, that an action of months or years can be possibly believed
to pass in three hours; or that the spectator can suppose himself to sit
in the theatre, while ambassadors go and return between distant kings,
while armies are levied and towns besieged, while an exile wanders and
returns, or till he whom they saw courting his mistress, shall lament
the untimely fall of his son. The mind revolts from evident falsehood,
and fiction loses its force when it departs from the resemblance of
reality.

From the narrow limitation of time necessarily arises the contraction of
place. The spectator, who knows that he saw the first act at Alexandria,
cannot suppose that he sees the next at Rome, at a distance to which not
the dragons of Medea could, in so short a time, have transported him; he
knows with certainty that he has not changed his place; and he knows
that place cannot change itself; that what was a house cannot become a
plain; that what was Thebes can never be Persepolis.

Such is the triumphant language with which a critick exults over the
misery of an irregular poet, and exults commonly without resistance or
reply. It is time, therefore, to tell him, by the authority of
Shakespeare, that he assumes, as an unquestionable principle, a
position, which, while his breath is forming it into words, his
understanding pronounces to be false. It is false, that any
representation is mistaken for reality; that any dramatick fable in its
materiality was ever credible, or, for a single moment, was ever
credited.

The objection arising from the impossibility of passing the first hour
at Alexandria, and the next at Rome, supposes, that when the play opens,
the spectator really imagines himself at Alexandria, and believes that
his walk to the theatre has been a voyage to Egypt, and that he lives in
the days of Anthony and Cleopatra. Surely he that imagines this may
imagine more. He that can take the stage at one time for the palace of
the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium.
Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation; if the
spectator can be once persuaded, that his old acquaintance are Alexander
and Caesar, that a room illuminated with candles is the plain of
Pharsalia, or the bank of Granicus, he is in a state of elevation above
the reach of reason, or of truth, and from the heights of empyrean
poetry, may despise the circumscriptions of terrestrial nature. There is
no reason why a mind thus wandering in ecstacy should count the clock,
or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture of the brains
that can make the stage a field.

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