Preface to Shakespeare | Page 2

best understood.
The Poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revision, may now
begin to assume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege of
established fame and prescriptive veneration. He has long outlived his
century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit. Whatever

advantages he might once derive from personal allusions, local customs,
or temporary opinions, have for many years been lost; and every topick
of merriment or motive of sorrow, which the modes of artificial life
afforded him, now only obscure the scenes which they once illuminated.
The effects of favour and competition are at an end; the tradition of his
friendships and his enmities has perished; his works support no opinion
with arguments, nor supply any faction with invectives; they can
neither indulge vanity nor gratify malignity, but are read without any
other reason than the desire of pleasure, and are therefore praised only
as pleasure is obtained; yet, thus unassisted by interest or passion, they
have past through variations of taste and changes of manners, and, as
they devolved from one generation to another, have received new
honours at every transmission.
But because human judgment, though it be gradually gaining upon
certainty, never becomes infallible; and approbation, though long
continued, may yet be only the approbation of prejudice or fashion; it is
proper to inquire, by what peculiarities of excellence Shakespeare has
gained and kept the favour of his countrymen.
Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of
general nature. Particular manners can be known to few, and therefore
few only can judge how nearly they are copied. The irregular
combinations of fanciful invention may delight a-while, by that novelty
of which the common satiety of life sends us all in quest; but the
pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted, and the mind can only
repose on the stability of truth.
Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the
poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirrour of
manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of
particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by the
peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon
small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary
opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as
the world will always supply, and observation will always find. His
persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and
principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life
is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too
often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species.

It is from this wide extension of design that so much instruction is
derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakespeare with practical
axioms and domestick wisdom. It was said of Euripides, that every
verse was a precept and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his
works may be collected a system of civil and oeconomical prudence.
Yet his real power is not shown in the splendour of particular passages,
but by the progress of his fable, and the tenour of his dialogue; and he
that tries to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like the
pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a
brick in his pocket as a specimen.
It will not easily be imagined how much Shakespeare excells in
accommodating his sentiments to real life, but by comparing him with
other authours. It was observed of the ancient schools of declamation,
that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the student
disqualified for the world, because he found nothing there which he
should ever meet in any other place. The same remark may be applied
to every stage but that of Shakespeare. The theatre, when it is under any
other direction, is peopled by such characters as were never seen,
conversing in a language which was never heard, upon topicks which
will never arise in the commerce of mankind. But the dialogue of this
authour is often so evidently determined by the incident which
produces it, and is pursued with so much ease and simplicity, that it
seems scarcely to claim the merit of fiction, but to have been gleaned
by diligent selection out of common conversation, and common
occurrences.
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 harrass them with violence of desires inconsistent with each