Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies

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Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies

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Title: Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies
Author: Samuel Johnson
Editor: Arthur Sherbo
Release Date: April 6, 2005 [EBook #15566]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY
SAMUEL JOHNSON
NOTES TO SHAKESPEARE
Vol. III
Tragedies
Edited, with an Introduction, by Arthur Sherbo
Los Angeles William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California 1958
GENERAL EDITORS
Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan Ralph Cohen, _University of California, Los Angeles_
Vinton A. Dearing, _University of California, Los Angeles_
Lawrence Clark Powell, Clark Memorial Library
ASSISTANT EDITOR
W. Earl Britton, University of Michigan
ADVISORY EDITORS
Emmett L. Avery, State College of Washington Benjamin Boyce, Duke University Louis Bredvold, University of Michigan John Butt, _King's College, University of Durham_
James L. Clifford, Columbia University Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago Louis A. Landa, Princeton University Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota Ernest C. Mossner, University of Texas James Sutherland, _University College, London_
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., _University of California, Los Angeles_
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
Edna C. Davis, Clark Memorial Library

Introduction on Tragedies
Dr. Johnson's reaction to Shakespeare's tragedies is a curious one, compounded as it is of deep emotional involvement in a few scenes in some plays and a strange dispassionateness toward most of the others. I suspect that his emotional involvement took root when he read Shakespeare as a boy--one remembers the terror he experienced in reading of the Ghost in Hamlet, and it was probably also as a boy that he suffered that shock of horrified outrage and grief at the death of Cordelia that prevented him from rereading the scene until be came to edit the play. Johnson's deepest feelings and convictions, Professor Clifford has recently reminded us, can be traced back to his childhood and adolescence. But it is surprising to learn, as one does from his commentary, that other scenes in these very plays (Hamlet and King Lear, and in Macbeth, too) leave him unmoved, if one can so interpret the absence of any but an explanatory note on, say, Lear's speech beginning "Pray, do not mock me;/I am a very foolish fond old man." Besides this negative evidence there is also the positive evidence of many notes which display the dispassionate editorial mind at work where one might expect from Johnson an outburst of personal feeling. There are enough of these outbursts to warrant our expecting others, but we are too frequently disappointed. Perhaps Johnson thought of most of Shakespeare's tragedies as "imperial tragedies" and that is why he could maintain a stance of aloofness; conversely, "the play of Timon is a domestick Tragedy, and therefore strongly fastens on the attention of the reader." But the "tragedy" of Timon does not capture the attention of the modern reader, and perhaps all attempts to fix Johnson's likes and dislikes, and the reasons for them, in the canon of Shakespeare's plays must circle endlessly without ever getting to their destination.

TRAGEDIES
Vol. IV
MACBETH
(392) Most of the notes which the present editor has subjoined to this play were published by him in a small pamphlet in 1745.
I.i (393,*) _Enter three Witches_] In order to make a true estimate of the abilities and merit of a writer, it it always necessary to examine the genius of his age, and the opinions of his contemporaries. A poet who should now make the whole action of his tragedy depend upon enchantment, and produce the chief events by the assistance of supernatural agents, would be censured as transgressing the bounds of probability, be banished from the theatre to the nursery, and condemned to write fairy tales instead of tragedies; but a survey of the notions that prevailed at the time when this play was written, will prove that Shakespeare was in no danger of such censures, since he only turned the system that was then universally admitted, to his advantage, and was far from overburthening the credulity of his audience.
The reality of witchcraft or enchantment, which, though not strictly the same, are confounded in this play, has in all ages and countries been credited by the common people, and in most, by the learned themselves. These phantoms have indeed appeared more frequently, in proportion as the darkness of ignorance has been more gross; but it cannot be shown, that the brightest gleams of knowledge have at any time been sufficient to drive them out of the world. The time in which this kind of credulity was at its height, seems to have been that of