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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Preface to Shakespeare, by Samuel Johnson
+(#8 in our series by Samuel Johnson)
+
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+Title: Preface to Shakespeare
+
+Author: Samuel Johnson
+
+Release Date: April, 2004  [EBook #5429]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on July 18, 2002]
+[Date last updated: August 28, 2005]
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+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE ***
+
+
+
+
+Steve Harris, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE
+
+Together with selected notes on some of the plays
+
+By Samuel Johnson
+
+[Johnson published his annotated edition of Shakespeare's Plays in
+1765.]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE
+ Some of the notes to
+           Measure for Measure
+           Henry IV
+           Henry V
+           King Lear
+           Romeo and Juliet
+           Hamlet
+           Othello
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE
+
+That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the
+honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint
+likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add
+nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox;
+or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory
+expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present
+age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet
+denied by envy, will be at last bestowed by time.
+
+Antiquity, like every other quality that attracts the notice
+of mankind, has undoubtedly votaries that reverence it, not from
+reason, but from prejudice. Some seem to admire indiscriminately
+whatever has been long preserved, without considering that time
+has sometimes co-operated with chance; all perhaps are more willing
+to honour past than present excellence; and the mind contemplates
+genius through the shades of age, as the eye surveys the sun through
+artificial opacity. The great contention of criticism is to find the
+faults of the moderns, and the beauties of the ancients. While an
+authour is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance,
+and when he is dead we rate them by his best.
+
+To works, however, of which the excellence is not absolute and
+definite, but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon
+principles demonstrative and scientifick, 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. As among the works of nature
+no man can properly call a river deep or a mountain high, without
+the knowledge of many mountains and many rivers; so in the productions
+of genius, nothing can be stiled excellent till it has been compared
+with other works of the same kind. Demonstration immediately
+displays its power, and has nothing to hope or fear from the flux
+of years; but works tentative and experimental must be estimated
+by their proportion to the general and collective ability of man,
+as it is discovered in a long succession of endeavours. Of the first
+building that was raised, it might be with certainty determined
+that it was round or square, but whether it was spacious or lofty
+must have been referred to time. The Pythagorean scale of numbers
+was at once discovered to be perfect; but the poems of Homer we
+yet know not to transcend the common limits of human intelligence,
+but by remarking, that nation after nation, and century after century,
+has been able to do little more than transpose his incidents, new
+name his characters, and paraphrase his sentiments.
+
+The reverence due to writings that have long subsisted arises
+therefore not from any credulous confidence in the superior wisdom
+of past ages, or gloomy persuasion of the degeneracy of mankind,
+but is the consequence of acknowledged and indubitable positions,
+that what has been longest known has been most considered, and what
+is most considered is 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 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, 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 be probably such as he has assigned;
+and it may be said, that he has not only shewn human nature as it
+acts in real exigences, 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 mirrour 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 extasies, 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 Rhymer think his Romans not sufficiently Roman; and Voltaire
+censures his kings as not completely royal. 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
+shew 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 and 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 gayeties 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.
+
+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 alterations of exhibition, and approaches
+nearer than either to the appearance of life, by shewing 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 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 authour'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.
+
+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 "Antony 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
+Rhymer and Voltaire vanish away. The play of "Hamlet" is opened,
+without impropriety, by two sentinels; 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 Grave-diggers 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 Rhymer 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.
+
+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 which 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.
+
+If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation, a stile 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 stile 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 authour
+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 shew
+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 shew 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 independant 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 expence not only of likelihood, but
+of possibility. These faults Pope has endeavoured, with more zeal
+than judgment, to transfer to his imagined in interpolators. We
+need not wonder to find Hector quoting Aristotle, when we see the
+loves of Theseus and Hippolyta combined with the Gothic 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.
+
+In his comick scenes he is seldom very successful, when he engages
+his characters in reciprocations of smartness and contest 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.
+There must, however, have been always some modes of gayety preferable
+to others, and a writer ought to chuse 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 encumbrance, 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 subtle, 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 never less reason to
+indulge their hopes of supreme excellence, than when he 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. 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 engulf 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 disquisition, 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 shewn 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 very 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 Antony 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 extasy 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.
+
+The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses,
+and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only
+a stage, and that the players are only players. They come to hear
+a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant
+modulation. The lines relate to some action, and an action must
+be in some place; but the different actions that compleat a story
+may be in places very remote from each other; and where is the
+absurdity of allowing that space to represent first Athens, and
+then Sicily, which was always known to be neither Sicily nor Athens,
+but a modern theatre?
+
+By supposition, as place is introduced, time may be extended; the
+time required by the fable elapses for the most part between the
+acts; for, of so much of the action as is represented, the real and
+poetical duration is the same. If, in the first act, preparations
+for war against Mithridates are represented to be made in Rome,
+the event of the war may, without absurdity, be represented, in the
+catastrophe, as happening in Pontus; we know that there is neither
+war, nor preparation for war; we know that we are neither in Rome
+nor Pontus; that neither Mithridates nor Lucullus are before us.
+The drama exhibits successive imitations of successive actions, and
+why may not the second imitation represent an action that happened
+years after the first; if it be so connected with it, that nothing
+but time can be supposed to intervene? Time is, of all modes of
+existence, most obsequious to the imagination; a lapse of years
+is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In contemplation we
+easily contract the time of real actions, and therefore willingly
+permit it to be contracted when we only see their imitation.
+
+It will be asked, how the drama moves, if it is not credited. It
+is credited with all the credit due to a drama. It is credited,
+whenever it moves, as a just picture of a real original; as
+representing to the auditor what he would himself feel, if he were
+to do or suffer what is there feigned to be suffered or to be done.
+The reflection that strikes the heart is not, that the evils before
+us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we ourselves
+may be exposed. If there be any fallacy, it is not that we fancy the
+players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment; but we
+rather lament the possibility than suppose the presence of misery,
+as a mother weeps over her babe, when she remembers that death
+may take it from her. The delight of tragedy proceeds from our
+consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real,
+they would please no more.
+
+Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken
+for realities, but because they bring realities to mind. When the
+imagination is recreated by a painted landscape, the trees are not
+supposed capable to give us shade, or the fountains coolness; but
+we consider, how we should be pleased with such fountains playing
+beside us, and such woods waving over us. We are agitated in reading
+the history of "Henry the Fifth", yet no man takes his book for the
+field of Agencourt. A dramatick exhibition is a book recited with
+concomitants that encrease or diminish its effect.  Familiar comedy
+is often more powerful on the theatre, than in the page; imperial
+tragedy is always less. The humour of Petruchio may be heightened
+by grimace; but what voice or what gesture can hope to add dignity
+or force to the soliloquy of Cato.
+
+A play read, affects the mind like a play acted. It is therefore
+evident, that the action is not supposed to be real, and it follows
+that between the acts a longer or shorter time may be allowed to
+pass, and that no more account of space or duration is to be taken
+by the auditor of a drama, than by the reader of a narrative, before
+whom may pass in an hour the life of a hero, or the revolutions of
+an empire.
+
+Whether Shakespeare knew the unities, and rejected them by design,
+or deviated from them by happy ignorance, it is, I think, impossible
+to decide, and useless to inquire. We may reasonably suppose, that,
+when he rose to notice, he did not want the counsels and admonitions
+of scholars and criticks, and that he at last deliberately persisted
+in a practice, which he might have begun by chance. As nothing is
+essential to the fable, but unity of action, and as the unities
+of time and place arise evidently from false assumptions, and,
+by circumscribing the extent of the drama, lessen its variety, I
+cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known by
+him, or not observed: Nor, if such another poet could arise, should
+I very vehemently reproach him, that his first act passed at Venice,
+and his next in Cyprus. Such violations of rules merely positive,
+become the comprehensive genius of Shakespeare, and such censures
+are suitable to the minute and slender criticism of Voltaire:
+
+     Non usque adeo permiscuit imis
+     Longus summa dies, ut non, si voce Metelli
+     Serventur leges, malint a Caesare tolli.
+
+Yet when I speak thus slightly of dramatick rules, I cannot but
+recollect how much wit and learning may be produced against me;
+before such authorities I am afraid to stand, not that I think
+the present question one of those that are to be decided by mere
+authority, but because it is to be suspected, that these precepts
+have not been so easily received but for better reasons than I
+have yet been able to find. The result of my enquiries, in which it
+would be ludicrous to boast of impartiality, is, that the unities
+of time and place are not essential to a just drama, that though
+they may sometimes conduce to pleasure, they are always to be
+sacrificed to the nobler beauties of variety and instruction; and
+that a play, written with nice observation of critical rules, is
+to be contemplated as an elaborate curiosity, as the product of
+superfluous and ostentatious art, by which is shewn, rather what
+is possible, than what is necessary.
+
+He that, without diminution of any other excellence, shall preserve
+all the unities unbroken, deserves the like applause with the
+architect, who shall display all the orders of architecture in a
+citadel, without any deduction from its strength; but the principal
+beauty of a citadel is to exclude the enemy; and the greatest graces
+of a play, are to copy nature and instruct life.
+
+Perhaps, what I have here not dogmatically but deliberately written,
+may recal the principles of the drama to a new examination. I am
+almost frighted at my own temerity; and when I estimate the fame
+and the strength of those that maintain the contrary opinion, am
+ready to sink down in reverential silence; as Aeneas withdrew from
+the defence of Troy, when he saw Neptune shaking the wall, and Juno
+heading the besiegers.
+
+Those whom my arguments cannot persuade to give their approbation
+to the judgment of Shakespeare, will easily, if they consider the
+condition of his life, make some allowance for his ignorance.
+
+Every man's performances, to be rightly estimated, must be compared
+with the state of the age in which he lived, and with his own
+particular opportunities; and though to the reader a book be not
+worse or better for the circumstances of the authour, yet as there
+is always a silent reference of human works to human abilities, and
+as the enquiry, how far man may extend his designs, or how high
+he may rate his native force, is of far greater dignity than in
+what rank we shall place any particular performance, curiosity is
+always busy to discover the instruments, as well as to survey the
+workmanship, to know how much is to be ascribed to original powers,
+and how much to casual and adventitious help. The palaces of Peru
+or Mexico were certainly mean and incommodious habitations, if
+compared to the houses of European monarchs; yet who could forbear
+to view them with astonishment, who remembered that they were built
+without the use of iron?
+
+The English nation, in the time of Shakespeare, was yet struggling
+to emerge from barbarity. The philology of Italy had been transplanted
+hither in the reign of Henry the Eighth; and the learned languages
+had been successfully cultivated by Lilly and More; by Pole, Cheke,
+and Gardiner; and afterwards by Smith, Clerk, Haddon, and Ascham.
+Greek was now taught to boys in the principal schools; and those
+who united elegance with learning, read, with great diligence,
+the Italian and Spanish poets. But literature was yet confined to
+professed scholars, or to men and women of high rank. The publick
+was gross and dark; and to be able to read and write, was an
+accomplishment still valued for its rarity.
+
+Nations, like individuals, have their infancy. A people newly awakened
+to literary curiosity, being yet unacquainted with the true state
+of things, knows not how to judge of that which is proposed as its
+resemblance. Whatever is remote from common appearances is always
+welcome to vulgar, as to childish credulity; and of a country
+unenlightened by learning, the whole people is the vulgar. The
+study of those who then aspired to plebeian learning was laid out
+upon adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments. The Death of
+Arthur was the favourite volume.
+
+The mind, which has feasted on the luxurious wonders of fiction,
+has no taste of the insipidity of truth. A play which imitated only
+the common occurrences of the world, would, upon the admirers of
+Palmerin and Guy of Warwick, have made little impression; he that
+wrote for such an audience was under the necessity of looking round
+for strange events and fabulous transactions, and that incredibility,
+by which maturer knowledge is offended, was the chief recommendation
+of writings, to unskilful curiosity.
+
+Our authour's plots are generally borrowed from novels, and it is
+reasonable to suppose, that he chose the most popular, such as were
+read by many, and related by more; for his audience could not have
+followed him through the intricacies of the drama, had they not
+held the thread of the story in their hands.
+
+The stories, which we now find only in remoter authours, were in
+his time accessible and familliar. The fable of "As You Like It",
+which is supposed to be copied from Chaucer's Gamelyn, was a little
+pamphlet of those times; and old Mr. Cibber remembered the tale of
+Hamlet in plain English prose, which the criticks have now to seek
+in Saxo Grammaticus.
+
+His English histories he took from English chronicles and English
+ballads; and as the ancient writers were made known to his countrymen
+by versions, they supplied him with new subjects; he dilated some
+of Plutarch's lives into plays, when they had been translated by
+North.
+
+His plots, whether historical or fabulous, are always crouded with
+incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was more easily
+caught than by sentiment or argumentation; and such is the power
+of the marvellous even over those who despise it, that every man
+finds his mind more strongly seized by the tragedies of Shakespeare
+than of any other writer; others please us by particular speeches,
+but he always makes us anxious for the event, and has perhaps
+excelled all but Homer in securing the first purpose of a writer,
+by exciting restless and unquenchable curiosity, and compelling
+him that reads his work to read it through.
+
+The shows and bustle with which his plays abound have the same
+original. As knowledge advances, pleasure passes from the eye to the
+ear, but returns, as it declines, from the ear to the eye.  Those
+to whom our authour's labours were exhibited had more skill in pomps
+or processions than in poetical language, and perhaps wanted some
+visible and discriminated events, as comments on the dialogue. He
+knew how he should most please; and whether his practice is more
+agreeable to nature, or whether his example has prejudiced the
+nation, we still find that on our stage something must be done as
+well as said, and inactive declamation is very coldly heard, however
+musical or elegant, passionate or sublime.
+
+Voltaire expresses his wonder, that our authour's extravagancies
+are endured by a nation, which has seen the tragedy of Cato. Let
+him be answered, that Addison speaks the language of poets, and
+Shakespeare, of men. We find in Cato innumerable beauties which
+enamour us of its authour, but we see nothing that acquaints us
+with human sentiments or human actions; we place it with the fairest
+and the noblest progeny which judgment propagates by conjunction
+with learning, but "Othello" is the vigorous and vivacious offspring
+of observation impregnated by genius. Cato affords a splendid
+exhibition of artificial and fictitious manners, and delivers just
+and noble sentiments, in diction easy, elevated and harmonious,
+but its hopes and fears communicate no vibration to the heart; the
+composition refers us only to the writer; we pronounce the name of
+Cato, but we think on Addison.
+
+The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately
+formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with
+flowers; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks
+extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed
+sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to
+myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying
+the mind with endless diversity. Other poets display cabinets
+of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and
+polished unto brightness. Shakespeare opens a mine which contains
+gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by
+incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of
+meaner minerals.
+
+It has been much disputed, whether Shakespeare owed his excellence
+to his own native force, or whether he had the common helps of
+scholastick education, the precepts of critical science, and the
+examples of ancient authours.
+
+There has always prevailed a tradition, that Shakespeare wanted
+learning, that he had no regular education, nor much skill in the
+dead languages. Johnson, his friend, affirms, that "He had small Latin
+and no Greek."; who, besides that he had no imaginable temptation
+to falsehood, wrote at a time when the character and acquisitions
+of Shakespeare were known to multitudes. His evidence ought therefore
+to decide the controversy, unless some testimony of equal force
+could be opposed.
+
+Some have imagined, that they have discovered deep learning in
+many imitations of old writers; but the examples which I have known
+urged, were drawn from books translated in his time; or were such
+easy coincidencies of thought, as will happen to all who consider
+the same subjects; or such remarks on life or axioms of morality
+as float in conversation, and are transmitted through the world in
+proverbial sentences.
+
+I have found it remarked, that, in this important sentence, "Go
+before, I'll follow," we read a translation of, I prae, sequar. I
+have been told, that when Caliban, after a pleasing dream, says,
+"I cry'd to sleep again," the authour imitates Anacreon, who had,
+like every other man, the same wish on the same occasion.
+
+There are a few passages which may pass for imitations, but so few,
+that the exception only confirms the rule; he obtained them from
+accidental quotations, or by oral communication, and as he used
+what he had, would have used more if he had obtained it.
+
+The "Comedy of Errors" is confessedly taken from the Menaechmi of
+Plautus; from the only play of Plautus which was then in English.
+What can be more probable, than that he who copied that, would
+have copied more; but that those which were not translated were
+inaccessible?
+
+Whether he knew the modern languages is uncertain. That his plays
+have some French scenes proves but little; he might easily procure
+them to be written, and probably, even though he had known the
+language in the common degree, he could not have written it without
+assistance. In the story of "Romeo and Juliet" he is observed to
+have followed the English translation, where it deviates from the
+Italian; but this on the other part proves nothing against his
+knowledge of the original. He was to copy, not what he knew himself,
+but what was known to his audience.
+
+It is most likely that he had learned Latin sufficiently to make
+him acquainted with construction, but that he never advanced to an
+easy perusal of the Roman authours. Concerning his skill in modern
+languages, I can find no sufficient ground of determination; but as
+no imitations of French or Italian authours have been discovered,
+though the Italian poetry was then high in esteem, I am inclined
+to believe, that he read little more than English, and chose for
+his fables only such tales as he found translated.
+
+That much knowledge is scattered over his works is very justly
+observed by Pope, but it is often such knowledge as books did not
+supply. He that will understand Shakespeare, must not be content
+to study him in the closet, he must look for his meaning sometimes
+among the sports of the field, and sometimes among the manufactures
+of the shop.
+
+There is however proof enough that he was a very diligent reader,
+nor was our language then so indigent of books, but that he might
+very liberally indulge his curiosity without excursion into foreign
+literature. Many of the Roman authours were translated, and some of
+the Greek; the reformation had filled the kingdom with theological
+learning; most of the topicks of human disquisition had found English
+writers; and poetry had been cultivated, not only with diligence,
+but success. This was a stock of knowledge sufficient for a mind
+so capable of appropriating and improving it.
+
+But the greater part of his excellence was the product of his own
+genius. He found the English stage in a state of the utmost rudeness;
+no essays either in tragedy or comedy had appeared, from which it
+could be discovered to what degree of delight either one or other
+might be carried. Neither character nor dialogue were yet understood.
+Shakespeare may be truly said to have introduced them both amongst
+us, and in some of his happier scenes to have carried them both to
+the utmost height.
+
+By what gradations of improvement he proceeded, is not easily
+known; for the chronology of his works is yet unsettled. Rowe is of
+opinion, that "perhaps we are not to look for his beginning, like
+those of other writers, in his least perfect works; art had so
+little, and nature so large a share in what he did, that for ought
+I know," says he, "the performances of his youth, as they were the
+most vigorous, were the best." But the power of nature is only the
+power of using to any certain purpose the materials which diligence
+procures, or opportunity supplies. Nature gives no man knowledge,
+and when images are collected by study and experience, can only
+assist in combining or applying them. Shakespeare, however favoured
+by nature, could impart only what he had learned; and as he must
+increase his ideas, like other mortals, by gradual acquisition, he,
+like them, grew wiser as he grew older, could display life better,
+as he knew it more, and instruct with more efficacy, as he was
+himself more amply instructed.
+
+There is a vigilance of observation and accuracy of distinction which
+books and precepts cannot confer; from this almost all original and
+native excellence proceeds. Shakespeare must have looked upon mankind
+with perspicacity, in the highest degree curious and attentive.
+Other writers borrow their characters from preceding writers, and
+diversify them only by the accidental appendages of present manners;
+the dress is a little varied, but the body is the same. Our authour
+had both matter and form to provide; for except the characters of
+Chaucer, to whom I think he is not much indebted, there were no
+writers in English, and perhaps not many in other modern languages,
+which shewed life in its native colours.
+
+The contest about the original benevolence or malignity of man had
+not yet commenced. Speculation had not yet attempted to analyse
+the mind, to trace the passions to their sources, to unfold the
+seminal principles of vice and virtue, or sound the depths of the
+heart for the motives of action. All those enquiries, which from
+that time that human nature became the fashionable study, have been
+made sometimes with nice discernment, but often with idle subtilty,
+were yet unattempted. The tales, with which the infancy of learning
+was satisfied, exhibited only the superficial appearances of action,
+related the events but omitted the causes, and were formed for such
+as delighted in wonders rather than in truth. Mankind was not then
+to be studied in the closet; he that would know the world, was
+under the necessity of gleaning his own remarks, by mingling as he
+could in its business and amusements.
+
+Boyle congratulated himself upon his high birth, because it favoured
+his curiosity, by facilitating his access. Shakespeare had no such
+advantage; he came to London a needy adventurer, and lived for a
+time by very mean employments. Many works of genius and learning
+have been performed in states of life, that appear very little
+favourable to thought or to enquiry; so many, that he who considers
+them is inclined to think that he sees enterprise and perseverance
+predominating over all external agency, and bidding help and
+hindrance vanish before them. The genius of Shakespeare was not to
+be depressed by the weight of poverty, nor limited by the narrow
+conversation to which men in want are inevitably condemned; the
+incumbrances of his fortune were shaken from his mind, "as dewdrops
+from a lion's mane."
+
+Though he had so many difficulties to encounter, and so little assistance
+to surmount them, he has been able to obtain an exact knowledge of
+many modes of life, and many casts of native dispositions; to vary
+them with great multiplicity; to mark them by nice distinctions;
+and to shew them in full view by proper combinations. In this part
+of his performances He had none to imitate, but has himself been
+imitated by all succeeding writers; and it may be doubted, whether
+from all his successors more maxims of theoretical knowledge, or
+more rules of practical prudence, can be collected, than he alone
+has given to his country.
+
+Nor was his attention confined to the actions of men; he was an
+exact surveyor of the inanimate world; his descriptions have always
+some peculiarities, gathered by contemplating things as they really
+exist. It may be observed, that the oldest poets of many nations
+preserve their reputation, and that the following generations
+of wit, after a short celebrity, sink into oblivion.  The first,
+whoever they be, must take their sentiments and descriptions
+immediately from knowledge; the resemblance is therefore just,
+their descriptions are verified by every eye, and their sentiments
+acknowledged by every breast. Those whom their fame invites to the
+same studies, copy partly them, and partly nature, till the books
+of one age gain such authority, as to stand in the place of nature
+to another, and imitation, always deviating a little, becomes at
+last capricious and casual. Shakespeare, whether life or nature
+be his subject, shews plainly, that he has seen with his own eyes;
+he gives the image which he receives, not weakened or distorted by
+the intervention of any other mind; the ignorant feel his representations
+to be just, and the learned see that they are compleat.
+
+Perhaps it would not be easy to find any authour, except Homer, who
+invented so much as Shakespeare, who so much advanced the studies
+which he cultivated, or effused so much novelty upon his age
+or country. The form, the characters, the language, and the shows
+of the English drama are his. "He seems," says Dennis, "to have
+been the very original of our English tragical harmony, that is,
+the harmony of blank verse, diversified often by dissyllable and
+trissyllable terminations. For the diversity distinguishes it from
+heroick harmony, and by bringing it nearer to common use makes it
+more proper to gain attention, and more fit for action and dialogue.
+Such verse we make when we are writing prose; we make such verse
+in common conversation."
+
+I know not whether this praise is rigorously just. The dissyllable
+termination, which the critick rightly appropriates to the drama,
+is to be found, though, I think, not in Gorboduc which is confessedly
+before our authour; yet in Hieronnymo, of which the date is not
+certain, but which there is reason to believe at least as old as
+his earliest plays. This however is certain, that he is the first
+who taught either tragedy or comedy to please, there being no
+theatrical piece of any older writer, of which the name is known,
+except to antiquaries and collectors of books, which are sought
+because they are scarce, and would not have been scarce, had they
+been much esteemed.
+
+To him we must ascribe the praise, unless Spenser may divide it
+with him, of having first discovered to how much smoothness and
+harmony the English language could be softened. He has speeches,
+perhaps sometimes scenes, which have all the delicacy of Rowe,
+without his effeminacy. He endeavours indeed commonly to strike
+by the force and vigour of his dialogue, but he never executes his
+purpose better, than when he tries to sooth by softness.
+
+Yet it must be at last confessed, that as we owe every thing to
+him, he owes something to us; that, if much of his praise is paid
+by perception and judgement, much is likewise given by custom and
+veneration. We fix our eyes upon his graces, and turn them from his
+deformities, and endure in him what we should in another loath or
+despise. If we endured without praising, respect for the father
+of our drama might excuse us; but I have seen, in the book of some
+modern critick, a collection of anomalies which shew that he has
+corrupted language by every mode of depravation, but which his
+admirer has accumulated as a monument of honour.
+
+He has scenes of undoubted and perpetual excellence, but perhaps
+not one play, which, if it were now exhibited as the work of a
+contemporary writer, would be heard to the conclusion. I am indeed
+far from thinking, that his works were wrought to his own ideas
+of perfection; when they were such as would satisfy the audience,
+they satisfied the writer. It is seldom that authours, though more
+studious of fame than Shakespeare, rise much above the standard
+of their own age; to add a little of what is best will always
+be sufficient for present praise, and those who find themselves
+exalted into fame, are willing to credit their encomiasts, and to
+spare the labour of contending with themselves.
+
+It does not appear, that Shakespeare thought his works worthy of
+posterity, that he levied any ideal tribute upon future times, or
+had any further prospect, than of present popularity and present
+profit. When his plays had been acted, his hope was at an end;
+he solicited no addition of honour from the reader. He therefore
+made no scruple to repeat the same jests in many dialogues, or to
+entangle different plots by the same knot of perplexity, which may
+be at least forgiven him, by those who recollect, that of Congreve's
+four comedies, two are concluded by a marriage in a mask, by a
+deception, which perhaps never happened, and which, whether likely
+or not, he did not invent.
+
+So careless was this great poet of future fame, that, though he
+retired to ease and plenty, while he was yet little "declined into
+the vale of years," before he could be disgusted with fatigue,
+or disabled by infirmity, he made no collection of his works, nor
+desired to rescue those that had been already published from the
+depravations that obscured them, or secure to the rest a better
+destiny, by giving them to the world in their genuine state.
+
+Of the plays which bear the name of Shakespeare in the late editions,
+the greater part were not published till about seven years after
+his death, and the few which appeared in his life are apparently
+thrust into the world without the care of the authour, and therefore
+probably without his knowledge.
+
+Of all the publishers, clandestine or professed, their negligence
+and unskilfulness has by the late revisers been sufficiently shown.
+The faults of all are indeed numerous and gross, and have not only
+corrupted many passages perhaps beyond recovery, but have brought
+others into suspicion, which are only obscured by obsolete
+phraseology, or by the writer's unskilfulness and affectation. To
+alter is more easy than to explain, and temerity is a more common
+quality than diligence. Those who saw that they must employ conjecture
+to a certain degree, were willing to indulge it a little further.
+Had the authour published his own works, we should have sat quietly
+down to disentangle his intricacies, and clear his obscurities; but
+now we tear what we cannot loose, and eject what we happen not to
+understand.
+
+The faults are more than could have happened without the concurrence
+of many causes. The stile of Shakespeare was in itself ungrammatical,
+perplexed and obscure; his works were transcribed for the players
+by those who may be supposed to have seldom understood them; they
+were transmitted by copiers equally unskilful, who still multiplied
+errours; they were perhaps sometimes mutilated by the actors,
+for the sake of shortening the speeches; and were at last printed
+without correction of the press.
+
+In this state they remained, not as Dr. Warburton supposes,
+because they were unregarded, but because the editor's art was not
+yet applied to modern languages, and our ancestors were accustomed
+to so much negligence of English printers, that they could very
+patiently endure it. At last an edition was undertaken by Rowe;
+not because a poet was to be published by a poet, for Rowe seems
+to have thought very little on correction or explanation, but that
+our authour's works might appear like those of his fraternity, with
+the appendages of a life and recommendatory preface. Rowe has been
+clamorously blamed for not performing what he did not undertake,
+and it is time that justice be done him, by confessing, that though
+he seems to have had no thought of corruption beyond the printer's
+errours, yet he has made many emendations, if they were not made
+before, which his successors have received without acknowledgment,
+and which, if they had produced them, would have filled pages
+and pages with censures of the stupidity by which the faults were
+committed, with displays of the absurdities which they involved, with
+ostentatious exposition of the new reading, and self congratulations
+on the happiness of discovering it.
+
+Of Rowe, as of all the editors, I have preserved the preface and
+have likewise retained the authour's life, though not written with
+much elegance or spirit; it relates however what is now to be known,
+and therefore deserves to pass through all succeeding publications.
+
+The nation had been for many years content enough with Mr. Rowe's
+performance, when Mr. Pope made them acquainted with the true
+state of Shakespeare's text, shewed that it was extremely corrupt,
+and gave reason to hope that there were means of reforming it. He
+collated the old copies, which none had thought to examine before,
+and restored many lines to their integrity; but, by a very compendious
+criticism, he rejected whatever he disliked, and thought more of
+amputation than of cure.
+
+I know not why he is commended by Dr. Warburton for distinguishing
+the genuine from the spurious plays. In this choice he exerted no
+judgement of his own; the plays which he received, were given by
+Hemings and Condel, the first editors; and those which he rejected,
+though, according to the licentiousness of the press in those
+times, they were printed during Shakespeare's life, with his name,
+had been omitted by his friends, and were never added to his works
+before the edition of 1664, from which they were copied by the
+later printers.
+
+This was a work which Pope seems to have thought unworthy of his
+abilities, being not able to suppress his contempt of "the dull
+duty of an editor". He understood but half his undertaking. The
+duty of a collator is indeed dull, yet, like other tedious tasks,
+is very necessary; but an emendatory critick would ill discharge
+his duty, without qualities very different from dulness. In perusing
+a corrupted piece, he must have before him all possibilities of
+meaning, with all possibilities of expression.  Such must be his
+comprehension of thought, and such his copiousness of language. Out
+of many readings possible, he must be able to select that which best
+suits with the state, opinions, and modes of language prevailing
+in every age, and with his authour's particular cast of thought,
+and turn of expression. Such must be his knowledge, and such his
+taste. Conjectural criticism demands more than humanity possesses,
+and he that exercises it with most praise has very frequent need
+of indulgence. Let us now be told no more of the dull duty of an
+editor.
+
+Confidence is the common consequence of success. They whose excellence
+of any kind has been loudly celebrated, are ready to conclude,
+that their powers are universal. Pope's edition fell below his own
+expectations, and he was so much offended, when he was found to
+have left any thing for others to do, that he past the latter part
+of his life in a state of hostility with verbal criticism.
+
+I have retained all his notes, that no fragment of so great a writer
+may be lost; his preface, valuable alike for elegance of composition
+and justness of remark, and containing a general criticism on his
+authour, so extensive that little can be added, and so exact, that
+little can be disputed, every editor has an interest to suppress,
+but that every reader would demand its insertion.
+
+Pope was succeeded by Theobald, a man of narrow comprehension and
+small acquisitions, with no native and intrinsick splendour of
+genius, with little of the artificial light of learning, but zealous
+for minute accuracy, and not negligent in pursuing it. He collated
+the ancient copies, and rectified many errors. A man so anxiously
+scrupulous might have been expected to do more, but what little he
+did was commonly right.
+
+In his report of copies and editions he is not to be trusted,
+without examination. He speaks sometimes indefinitely of copies,
+when he has only one. In his enumeration of editions, he mentions
+the two first folios as of high, and the third folio as of middle
+authority; but the truth is, that the first is equivalent to all
+others, and that the rest only deviate from it by the printer's
+negligence. Whoever has any of the folios has all, excepting those
+diversities which mere reiteration of editions will produce. I
+collated them all at the beginning, but afterwards used only the
+first.
+
+Of his notes I have generally retained those which he retained
+himself in his second edition, except when they were confuted by
+subsequent annotators, or were too minute to merit preservation. I
+have sometimes adopted his restoration of a comma, without inserting
+the panegyrick in which he celebrated himself for his achievement.
+The exuberant excrescence of diction I have often lopped, his
+triumphant exultations over Pope and Rowe I have sometimes suppressed,
+and his contemptible ostentation I have frequently concealed; but
+I have in some places shewn him, as he would have shewn himself,
+for the reader's diversion, that the inflated emptiness of some
+notes may justify or excuse the contraction of the rest.
+
+Theobald, thus weak and ignorant, thus mean and faithless, thus
+petulant and ostentatious, by the good luck of having Pope for his
+enemy, has escaped, and escaped alone, with reputation, from this
+undertaking. So willingly does the world support those who solicite
+favour, against those who command reverence; and so easily is he
+praised, whom no man can envy.
+
+Our authour fell then into the hands of Sir Thomas Hanmer, the
+Oxford editor, a man, in my opinion, eminently qualified by nature
+for such studies. He had, what is the first requisite to emendatory
+criticism, that intuition by which the poet's intention is immediately
+discovered, and that dexterity of intellect which dispatches
+its work by the easiest means. He had undoubtedly read much; his
+acquaintance with customs, opinions, and traditions, seems to have
+been large; and he is often learned without shew. He seldom passes
+what he does not understand, without an attempt to find or to make
+a meaning, and sometimes hastily makes what a little more attention
+would have found. He is solicitous to reduce to grammar, what
+he could not be sure that his authour intended to be grammatical.
+Shakespeare regarded more the series of ideas, than of words; and
+his language, not being designed for the reader's desk, was all
+that he desired it to be, if it conveyed his meaning to the audience.
+
+Hanmer's care of the metre has been too violently censured. He found
+the measures reformed in so many passages, by the silent labours
+of some editors, with the silent acquiescence of the rest, that
+he thought himself allowed to extend a little further the license,
+which had already been carried so far without reprehension; and
+of his corrections in general, it must be confessed, that they are
+often just, and made commonly with the least possible violation of
+the text.
+
+But, by inserting his emendations, whether invented or borrowed, into
+the page, without any notice of varying copies, he has appropriated
+the labour of his predecessors, and made his own edition of little
+authority. His confidence indeed, both in himself and others, was
+too great; he supposes all to be right that was done by Pope and
+Theobald; he seems not to suspect a critick of fallibility, and it
+was but reasonable that he should claim what he so liberally granted.
+
+As he never writes without careful enquiry and diligent consideration,
+I have received all his notes, and believe that every reader will
+wish for more.
+
+Of the last editor it is more difficult to speak. Respect is due
+to high place, tenderness to living reputation, and veneration
+to genius and learning; but he cannot be justly offended at that
+liberty of which he has himself so frequently given an example, nor
+very solicitous what is thought of notes, which he ought never to
+have considered as part of his serious employments, and which, I
+suppose, since the ardour of composition is remitted, he no longer
+numbers among his happy effusions.
+
+The original and predominant errour of his commentary, is
+acquiescence in his first thoughts; that precipitation which is
+produced by consciousness of quick discernment; and that confidence
+which presumes to do, by surveying the surface, what labour only
+can perform, by penetrating the bottom. His notes exhibit sometimes
+perverse interpretations, and sometimes improbable conjectures;
+he at one time gives the authour more profundity of meaning than
+the sentence admits, and at another discovers absurdities, where
+the sense is plain to every other reader. But his emendations are
+likewise often happy and just; and his interpretation of obscure
+passages learned and sagacious.
+
+Of his notes, I have commonly rejected those, against which the
+general voice of the publick has exclaimed, or which their own
+incongruity immediately condemns, and which, I suppose, the authour
+himself would desire to be forgotten. Of the rest, to part I have
+given the highest approbation, by inserting the offered reading
+in the text; part I have left to the judgment of the reader, as
+doubtful, though specious; and part I have censured without reserve,
+but I am sure without bitterness of malice, and, I hope, without
+wantonness of insult.
+
+It is no pleasure to me, in revising my volumes, to observe how much
+paper is wasted in confutation. Whoever considers the revolutions
+of learning, and the various questions of greater or less importance,
+upon which wit and reason have exercised their powers, must lament
+the unsuccessfulness of enquiry, and the slow advances of truth,
+when he reflects, that great part of the labour of every writer is
+only the destruction of those that went before him. The first care
+of the builder of a new system, is to demolish the fabricks which
+are standing. The chief desire of him that comments an authour,
+is to shew how much other commentators have corrupted and obscured
+him. The opinions prevalent in one age, as truths above the reach
+of controversy, are confuted and rejected in another, and rise again
+to reception in remoter times. Thus the human mind is kept in motion
+without progress. Thus sometimes truth and errour, and sometimes
+contrarieties of errour, take each other's place by reciprocal
+invasion. The tide of seeming knowledge which is poured over one
+generation, retires and leaves another naked and barren; the sudden
+meteors of intelligence which for a while appear to shoot their
+beams into the regions of obscurity, on a sudden withdraw their
+lustre, and leave mortals again to grope their way.
+
+These elevations and depressions of renown, and the contradictions
+to which all improvers of knowledge must for ever be exposed, since
+they are not escaped by the highest and brightest of mankind, may
+surely be endured with patience by criticks and annotators, who
+can rank themselves but as the satellites of their authours. How
+canst thou beg for life, says Achilles to his captive, when thou
+knowest that thou art now to suffer only what must another day be
+suffered by Achilles?
+
+Dr. Warburton had a name sufficient to confer celebrity on those
+who could exalt themselves into antagonists, and his notes have
+raised a clamour too loud to be distinct. His chief assailants
+are the authours of the Canons of Criticism and of the Review of
+Shakespeare's Text; of whom one ridicules his errours with airy
+petulance, suitable enough to the levity of the controversy; the
+other attacks them with gloomy malignity, as if he were dragging
+to justice an assassin or incendiary. The one stings like a fly,
+sucks a little blood, takes a gay flutter, and returns for more; the
+other bites like a viper, and would be glad to leave inflammations
+and gangrene behind him. When I think on one, with his confederates,
+I remember the danger of Coriolanus, who was afraid that "girls
+with spits, and boys with stones, should slay him in puny battle;"
+when the other crosses my imagination, I remember the prodigy in
+"Macbeth",
+
+   An eagle tow'ring in his pride of place,
+   was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd.
+
+Let me however do them justice. One is a wit, and one a scholar.
+They have both shewn acuteness sufficient in the discovery of
+faults, and have both advanced some probable interpretations of
+obscure passages; but when they aspire to conjecture and emendation,
+it appears how falsely we all estimate our own abilities, and the
+little which they have been able to perform might have taught them
+more candour to the endeavours of others.
+
+Before Dr. Warburton's edition, "Critical Observations on Shakespeare"
+had been published by Mr. Upton, a man skilled in languages, and
+acquainted with books, but who seems to have had no great vigour
+of genius or nicety of taste. Many of his explanations are curious
+and useful, but he likewise, though he professed to oppose the
+licentious confidence of editors, and adhere to the old copies,
+is unable to restrain the rage of emendation, though his ardour is
+ill seconded by his skill. Every cold empirick, when his heart is
+expanded by a successful experiment, swells into a theorist, and
+the laborious collator some unlucky moment frolicks in conjecture.
+
+"Critical, historical and explanatory notes" have been likewise
+published upon Shakespeare by Dr. Grey, whose diligent perusal
+of the old English writers has enabled him to make some useful
+observations. What he undertook he has well enough performed, but
+as he neither attempts judicial nor emendatory criticism, he employs
+rather his memory than his sagacity. It were to be wished that all
+would endeavour to imitate his modesty who have not been able to
+surpass his knowledge.
+
+I can say with great sincerity of all my predecessors, what I hope
+will hereafter be said of me, that not one has left Shakespeare
+without improvement, nor is there one to whom I have not been
+indebted for assistance and information. Whatever I have taken from
+them it was my intention to refer to its original authour, and it
+is certain, that what I have not given to another, I believed when
+I wrote it to be my own. In some perhaps I have been anticipated;
+but if I am ever found to encroach upon the remarks of any other
+commentator, I am willing that the honour, be it more or less,
+should be transferred to the first claimant, for his right, and his
+alone, stands above dispute; the second can prove his pretensions
+only to himself, nor can himself always distinguish invention, with
+sufficient certainty, from recollection.
+
+They have all been treated by me with candour, which they have not
+been careful of observing to one another. It is not easy to discover
+from what cause the acrimony of a scholiast can naturally proceed.
+The subjects to be discussed by him are of very small importance;
+they involve neither property nor liberty; nor favour the interest
+of sect or party. The various readings of copies, and different
+interpretations of a passage, seem to be questions that might
+exercise the wit, without engaging the passions. But, whether it
+be, that "small things make mean men proud," and vanity catches
+small occasions; or that all contrariety of opinion, even in those
+that can defend it no longer, makes proud men angry; there is
+often found in commentaries a spontaneous strain of invective and
+contempt, more eager and venomous than is vented by the most furious
+controvertist in politicks against those whom he is hired to defame.
+
+Perhaps the lightness of the matter may conduce to the vehemence
+of the agency; when the truth to be investigated is so near to
+inexistence, as to escape attention, its bulk is to be enlarged
+by rage and exclamation: That to which all would be indifferent
+in its original state, may attract notice when the fate of a name
+is appended to it. A commentator has indeed great temptations to
+supply by turbulence what he wants of dignity, to beat his little
+gold to a spacious surface, to work that to foam which no art or
+diligence can exalt to spirit.
+
+The notes which I have borrowed or written are either illustrative,
+by which difficulties are explained; or judicial, by which faults
+and beauties are remarked; or emendatory, by which depravations
+are corrected.
+
+The explanations transcribed from others, if I do not subjoin any
+other interpretation, I suppose commonly to be right, at least I
+intend by acquiescence to confess, that I have nothing better to
+propose.
+
+After the labours of all the editors, I found many passages which
+appeared to me likely to obstruct the greater number of readers,
+and thought it my duty to facilitate their passage. It is impossible
+for an expositor not to write too little for some, and too much for
+others. He can only judge what is necessary by his own experience;
+and how long soever he may deliberate, will at last explain many
+lines which the learned will think impossible to be mistaken, and
+omit many for which the ignorant will want his help. These are censures
+merely relative and must be quietly endured. I have endeavoured to
+be neither superfluously copious, nor scrupulously reserved, and
+hope that I have made my authour's meaning accessible to many who
+before were frighted from perusing him, and contributed something
+to the publick, by diffusing innocent and rational pleasure.
+
+The compleat explanation of an authour not systematick
+and consequential, but desultory and vagrant, abounding in casual
+allusions and light hints, is not to be expected from any single
+scholiast. All personal reflections, when names are suppressed,
+must be in a few years irrecoverably obliterated; and customs,
+too minute to attract the notice of law, such as mode of dress,
+formalities of conversation, rules of visits, disposition of
+furniture, and practices of ceremony, which naturally find places
+in familiar dialogue, are so fugitive and unsubstantial that they
+are not easily retained or recovered. What can be known, will
+be collected by chance, from the recesses of obscure and obsolete
+papers, perused commonly with some other view. Of this knowledge
+every man has some, and none has much; but when an authour has
+engaged the publick attention, those who can add any thing to his
+illustration, communicate their discoveries, and time produces what
+had eluded diligence.
+
+To time I have been obliged to resign many passages, which, though
+I did not understand them, will perhaps hereafter be explained,
+having, I hope, illustrated some, which others have neglected or
+mistaken, sometimes by short remarks or marginal directions, such
+as every editor has added at his will, and often by comments more
+laborious than the matter will seem to deserve; but that which
+is most difficult is not always most important, and to an editor
+nothing is a trifle by which his authour is obscured.
+
+The poetical beauties or defects I have not been very diligent to
+observe. Some plays have more, and some fewer judicial observations,
+not in proportion to their difference of merit, but because I gave
+this part of my design to chance and to caprice.  The reader, I
+believe, is seldom pleased to find his opinion anticipated; it is
+natural to delight more in what we find or make, than in what we
+receive. Judgement, like other faculties, is improved by practice,
+and its advancement is hindered by submission to dictatorial
+decisions, as the memory grows torpid by the use of a table book.
+Some initiation is however necessary; of all skill, part is infused
+by precept, and part is obtained by habit; I have therefore shewn
+so much as may enable the candidate of criticism to discover the
+rest.
+
+To the end of most plays, I have added short strictures, containing
+a general censure of faults, or praise of excellence; in which I
+know not how much I have concurred with the current opinion; but
+I have not, by any affectation of singularity, deviated from it.
+Nothing is minutely and particularly examined, and therefore it is
+to be supposed, that in the plays which are condemned there is much
+to be praised, and in these which are praised much to be condemned.
+
+The part of criticism in which the whole succession of editors
+has laboured with the greatest diligence, which has occasioned the
+most arrogant ostentation, and excited the keenest acrimony, is the
+emendation of corrupted passages, to which the publick attention
+having been first drawn by the violence of contention between Pope
+and Theobald, has been continued by the persecution, which, with a
+kind of conspiracy, has been since raised against all the publishers
+of Shakespeare.
+
+That many passages have passed in a state of depravation through
+all the editions is indubitably certain; of these the restoration
+is only to be attempted by collation of copies or sagacity of
+conjecture. The collator's province is safe and easy, the conjecturer's
+perilous and difficult. Yet as the greater part of the plays are
+extant only in one copy, the peril must not be avoided, nor the
+difficulty refused.
+
+Of the readings which this emulation of amendment has hitherto
+produced, some from the labours of every publisher have advanced into
+the text; those are to be considered as in my opinion sufficiently
+supported; some I have rejected without mention, as evidently erroneous;
+some I have left in the notes without censure or approbation, as
+resting in equipoise between objection and defence; and some, which
+seemed specious but not right, I have inserted with a subsequent
+animadversion.
+
+Having classed the observations of others, I was at last to try
+what I could substitute for their mistakes, and how I could supply
+their omissions. I collated such copies as I could procure, and
+wished for more, but have not found the collectors of these rarities
+very communicative. Of the editions which chance or kindness put
+into my hands I have given an enumeration, that I may not be blamed
+for neglecting what I had not the power to do.
+
+By examining the old copies, I soon found that the late publishers,
+with all their boasts of diligence, suffered many passages; to
+stand unauthorised, and contented themselves with Rowe's regulation
+of the text, even where they knew it to be arbitrary, and with a
+little consideration might have found it to be wrong. Some of these
+alterations are only the ejection of a word for one that appeared
+to him more elegant or more intelligible. These corruptions I have
+often silently rectified; for the history of our language, and
+the true force of our words, can only be preserved, by keeping the
+text of authours free from adulteration. Others, and those very
+frequent, smoothed the cadence, or regulated the measure; on these
+I have not exercised the same rigour; if only a word was transposed,
+or a particle inserted or omitted, I have sometimes suffered the
+line to stand; for the inconstancy of the copies is such, as that
+some liberties may be easily permitted. But this practice I have
+not suffered to proceed far, having restored the primitive diction
+wherever it could for any reason be preferred.
+
+The emendations, which comparison of copies supplied, I have
+inserted in the text; sometimes where the improvement was slight,
+without notice, and sometimes with an account of the reasons of
+the change.
+
+Conjecture, though it be sometimes unavoidable, I have not wantonly
+nor licentiously indulged. It has been my settled principle, that
+the reading of the ancient books is probably true, and therefore
+is not to be disturbed for the sake of elegance, perspicuity, or
+mere improvement of the sense. For though much credit is not due
+to the fidelity, nor any to the judgement of the first publishers,
+yet they who had the copy before their eyes were more likely to
+read it right, than we who only read it by imagination. But it is
+evident that they have often made strange mistakes by ignorance or
+negligence, and that therefore something may be properly attempted by
+criticism, keeping the middle way between presumption and timidity.
+
+Such criticism I have attempted to practise, and where any passage
+appeared inextricably perplexed, have endeavoured to discover how
+it may be recalled to sense, with least violence. But my first labour
+is, always to turn the old text on every side, and try if there
+be any interstice, through which light can find its way; nor would
+Huetius himself condemn me, as refusing the trouble of research,
+for the ambition of alteration. In this modest industry I have not
+been unsuccessful. I have rescued many lines from the violations of
+temerity, and secured many scenes from the inroads of correction.
+I have adopted the Roman sentiment, that it is more honourable to
+save a citizen, than to kill an enemy, and have been more careful
+to protect than to attack.
+
+I have preserved the common distribution of the plays into acts,
+though I believe it to be in almost all the plays void of authority.
+Some of those which are divided in the later editions have no division
+in the first folio, and some that are divided in the folio have no
+division in the preceding copies. The settled mode of the theatre
+requires four intervals in the play, but few, if any, of our
+authour's compositions can be properly distributed in that manner.
+An act is so much of the drama as passes without intervention of
+time or change of place. A pause makes a new act.  In every real,
+and therefore in every imitative action, the intervals may be
+more or fewer, the restriction of five acts being accidental and
+arbitrary. This Shakespeare knew, and this he practised; his plays
+were written, and at first printed in one unbroken continuity, and
+ought now to be exhibited with short pauses, interposed as often
+as the scene is changed, or any considerable time is required to
+pass. This method would at once quell a thousand absurdities.
+
+In restoring the authour's works to their integrity, I have considered
+the punctuation as wholly in my power; for what could be their care
+of colons and commas, who corrupted words and sentences. Whatever
+could be done by adjusting points is therefore silently performed,
+in some plays with much diligence, in others with less; it is
+hard to keep a busy eye steadily fixed upon evanescent atoms, or
+a discursive mind upon evanescent truth.
+
+The same liberty has been taken with a few particles, or other words
+of slight effect. I have sometimes inserted or omitted them without
+notice. I have done that sometimes, which the other editors have
+done always, and which indeed the state of the text may sufficiently
+justify.
+
+The greater part of readers, instead of blaming us for passing trifles,
+will wonder that on mere trifles so much labour is expended, with
+such importance of debate, and such solemnity of diction. To these
+I answer with confidence, that they are judging of an art which
+they do not understand; yet cannot much reproach them with their
+ignorance, nor promise that they would become in general, by learning
+criticism, more useful, happier or wiser.
+
+As I practised conjecture more, I learned to trust it less; and
+after I had printed a few plays, resolved to insert none of my own
+readings in the text. Upon this caution I now congratulate myself,
+for every day encreases my doubt of my emendations.
+
+Since I have confined my imagination to the margin, it must not
+be considered as very reprehensible, if I have suffered it to play
+some freaks in its own dominion. There is no danger in conjecture,
+if it be proposed as conjecture; and while the text remains uninjured,
+those changes may be safely offered, which are not considered even
+by him that offers them as necessary or safe.
+
+If my readings are of little value, they have not been ostentatiously
+displayed or importunately obtruded. I could have written longer
+notes, for the art of writing notes is not of difficult attainment.
+The work is performed, first by railing at the stupidity, negligence,
+ignorance, and asinine tastelessness of the former editors,
+and shewing, from all that goes before and all that follows, the
+inelegance and absurdity of the old reading; then by proposing
+something, which to superficial readers would seem specious, but
+which the editor rejects with indignation; then by producing the
+true reading, with a long paraphrase, and concluding with loud
+acclamations on the discovery, and a sober wish for the advancement
+and prosperity of genuine criticism.
+
+All this may be done, and perhaps done sometimes without impropriety. But
+I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires
+many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot
+without so much labour appear to be right. The justness of a happy
+restoration strikes at once, and the moral precept may be well
+applied to criticism, quod dubitas ne feceris.
+
+To dread the shore which he sees spread with wrecks, is natural to
+the sailor. I had before my eye, so many critical adventures ended
+in miscarriage, that caution was forced upon me. I encountered
+in every page Wit struggling with its own sophistry, and Learning
+confused by the multiplicity of its views. I was forced to censure
+those whom I admired, and could not but reflect, while I was
+dispossessing their emenations, how soon the same fate might happen
+to my own, and how many of the readings which I have corrected may
+be some other editor defended and established.
+
+     Criticks, I saw, that other's names efface,
+     And fix their own, with labour, in the place;
+     Their own, like others, soon their place resign'd,
+     Or disappear'd, and left the first behind.--Pope.
+
+
+That a conjectural critick should often be mistaken, cannot be
+wonderful, either to others or himself, if it be considered that
+in his art there is no system, no principal and axiomatical truth
+that regulates subordinate positions. His chance of errour is renewed
+at every attempt; an oblique view of the passage a slight misapprehension
+of a phrase, a casual inattention to the parts connected, is sufficient
+to make him not only fail but fail ridiculously; and when he succeeds
+best, he produces perhaps but one reading of many probable, and he
+that suggests another will always be able to dispute his claims.
+
+It is an unhappy state, in which danger is hid under pleasure. The
+allurements of emendation are scarcely resistible. Conjecture has
+all the joy and all the pride of invention, and he that has once
+started a happy change, is too much delighted to consider what
+objections may rise against it.
+
+Yet conjectural criticism has been of great use in the learned world;
+nor is it my intention to depreciate a study, that has exercised
+so many mighty minds, from the revival of learning to our own age,
+from the Bishop of Aleria to English Bentley. The criticks on ancient
+authours have, in the exercise of their sagacity, many assistances,
+which the editor of Shakespeare is condemned to want. They are
+employed upon grammatical and settled languages, whose construction
+contributes so much to perspicuity, that Homer has fewer passages
+unintelligible than Chaucer. The words have not only a known
+regimen, but invariable quantities, which direct and confine the
+choice. There are commonly more manuscripts than one; and they do
+not often conspire in the same mistakes. Yet Scaliger could confess
+to Salmasius how little satisfaction his emendations gave him.
+Illudunt nobis conjecturae nostrae, quarum nos pudet, posteaquam
+in meliores cofices incidimus. And Lipsius could complain, that
+criticks were making faults, by trying to remove them, Ut olim
+vitiis, ita nunc remediis laboratur. And indeed, where mere
+conjecture is to be used, the emendations of Scaliger and Lipsius,
+notwithstanding their wonderful sagacity and erudition, are often
+vague and disputable, like mine or Theobald's.
+
+Perhaps I may not be more censured for doing wrong, than for doing
+little; for raising in the publick expectations, which at last I
+have not answered. The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and
+that of knowledge is often tyrannical. It is hard to satisfy those
+who know not what to demand, or those who demand by design what
+they think impossible to be done. I have indeed disappointed no
+opinion more than my own; yet I have endeavoured to perform my task
+with no slight solicitude. Not a single passage in the whole work
+has appeared to me corrupt, which I have not attempted to restore;
+or obscure, which I have not endeavoured to illustrate.  In many
+I have failed like others; and from many, after all my efforts, I
+have retreated, and confessed the repulse. I have not passed over,
+with affected superiority, what is equally difficult to the reader
+and to myself, but where I could not instruct him, have owned my
+ignorance. I might easily have accumulated a mass of seeming learning
+upon easy scenes; but it ought not to be imputed to negligence,
+that, where nothing was necessary, nothing has been done, or that,
+where others have said enough, I have said no more.
+
+Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. Let him,
+that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who
+desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read
+every play from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence
+of all his commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let
+it not stoop at correction or explanation. When his attention is
+strongly engaged, let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of
+Theobald and Pope. Let him read on through brightness and obscurity,
+through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his comprehension
+of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures
+of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness; and read the
+commentators.
+
+Particular passages are cleared by notes, but the general effect
+of the work is weakened. The mind is refrigerated by interruption;
+the thoughts are diverted from the principal subject; the reader
+is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book,
+which he has too diligently studied.
+
+Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been surveyed; there
+is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the comprehension
+of any great work in its full design and its true proportions; a
+close approach shews the smaller niceties, but the beauty of the
+whole is discerned no longer.
+
+It is not very grateful to consider how little the succession of
+editors has added to this authour's power of pleasing. He was read,
+admired, studied, and imitated, while he was yet deformed with all
+the improprieties which ignorance and neglect could accumulate upon
+him; while the reading was yet not rectified, nor his allusions
+understood; yet then did Dryden pronounce "that Shakespeare was the
+man, who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest
+and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still
+present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily:
+When he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too.
+Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater
+commendation: he was naturally learned: he needed not the spectacles
+of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there.
+I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him
+injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many
+times flat and insipid; his comick wit degenerating into clenches,
+his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when
+some great occasion is presented to him: No man can say, he ever
+had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as
+high above the rest of poets,
+
+     "Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi."
+
+It is to be lamented, that such a writer should want a commentary;
+that his language should become obsolete, or his sentiments obscure.
+But it is vain to carry wishes beyond the condition of human things;
+that which must happen to all, has happened to Shakespeare, by
+accident and time; and more than has been suffered by any other
+writer since the use of types, has been suffered by him through
+his own negligence of fame, or perhaps by that superiority of mind,
+which despised its own performances, when it compared them with
+its powers, and judged those works unworthy to be preserved, which
+the criticks of following ages were to contend for the fame of
+restoring and explaining.
+
+Among these candidates of inferiour fame, I am now to stand the
+judgment of the publick; and wish that I could confidently produce
+my commentary as equal to the encouragement which I have had
+the honour of receiving. Every work of this kind is by its nature
+deficient, and I should feel little solicitude about the sentence,
+were it to be pronounced only by the skilful and the learned.
+
+
+
+
+SELECTED NOTES FROM SOME OF THE PLAYS
+
+
+
+MEASURE FOR MEASURE
+
+There is perhaps not one of Shakespeare's plays more darkened than
+this by the peculiarities of its Authour, and the unskilfulness of
+its Editors, by distortions of phrase, or negligence of transcription.
+
+ACT I. SCENE i. (I. i. 7-9.)
+
+                  Then no more remains:
+     But that to your sufficiency, as your worth is able,
+     And let them work.
+
+This is a passage which has exercised the sagacity of the Editors,
+and is now to employ mine.
+
+Sir Tho. Hanmer having caught from Mr. Theobald a hint that a line
+was lost, endeavours to supply it thus.
+
+     --Then no more remains,
+     But that to your sufficiency you join
+     A will to serve us, as your worth is able.
+
+He has by this bold conjecture undoubtedly obtained a meaning, but,
+perhaps not, even in his own opinion, the meaning of Shakespeare.
+
+That the passage is more or less corrupt, I believe every reader
+will agree with the Editors. I am not convinced that a line is
+lost, as Mr. Theobald conjectures, nor that the change of "but" to
+"put", which Dr. Warburton has admitted after some other Editor,
+will amend the fault. There was probably some original obscurity
+in the expression, which gave occasion to mistake in repetition or
+transcription. I therefore suspect that the Authour wrote thus,
+
+     --Then no more remains,
+     But that to your sufficiencies your worth is abled,
+     And let them work.
+
+THEN NOTHING REMAINS MORE THAN TO TELL YOU THAT YOUR VIRTUE IS
+NOW INVESTED WITH POWER EQUAL TO YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM. LET
+THEREFORE YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND YOUR VIRTUE NOW WORK TOGETHER. It may
+easily be conceived how "sufficiencies" was, by an inarticulate
+speaker, or inattentive hearer, confounded with "sufficiency as",
+and how "abled", a word very unusual, was changed into "able". For
+"abled", however, an authority is not wanting. Lear uses it in the
+same sense, or nearly the same, with the Duke. As for "sufficiencies",
+D. Hamilton, in his dying speech, prays that "Charles II. may exceed
+both the VIRTUES and SUFFICIENCIES of his father."
+
+ACT I. SCENE ii. (I. i. 51.)
+
+     We have with a leaven'd and prepared choice.
+
+"Leaven'd" has no sense in this place: we should read "Level'd
+choice". The allusion is to archery, when a man has fixed upon his
+object, after taking good aim.--Warburton.
+
+No emendation is necessary. "leaven'd choice" is one of Shakespeare's
+harsh metaphors. His train of ideas seems to be this. "I have proceeded
+to you with choice mature, concocted, fermented, leaven'd." When
+Bread is "leaven'd", it is left to ferment: a "leavn'd" choice is
+therefore a choice not hasty, but considerate, not declared as soon
+as it fell into the imagination, but suffered to work long in the
+mind. Thus explained, it suits better with "prepared" than "levelled".
+
+ACT II. SCENE ix. (II. iii. 11-12.)
+
+     Who falling in the flaws of her own youth,
+     Hath blister'd her report.
+
+Who doth not see that the integrity of the metaphor requires we
+should read "flames of her own youth."--Warburton.
+
+Who does not see that upon such principles there is no end of
+correction.
+
+ACT III. SCENE i. (III. i. 13-15.)
+
+                  Thou art not noble:
+     For all th' accommodations, that thou bear'st
+     Are nurs'd by baseness.
+
+Dr. Warburton is undoubtedly mistaken in supposing that by "baseness"
+is meant "self-love" here assigned as the motive of all human
+actions. Shakespeare meant only to observe, that a minute analysis of
+life at once destroys that splendour which dazzles the imagination.
+Whatever grandeur can display, or luxury enjoy, is procured by "baseness",
+by offices of which the mind shrinks from the contemplation. All
+the delicacies of the table may be traced back to the shambles
+and the dunghill, all magnificence of building was hewn from the
+quarry, and all the pomp of ornaments, dug from among the damps
+and darkness of the mine.
+
+ACT III. SCENE i. (III. i. 16-17.)
+
+       The soft and tender fork
+     of a poor worm.
+
+"Worm" is put for any creeping thing or "serpent". Shakespeare supposes
+falsely, but according to the vulgar notion, that a serpent wounds
+with his tongue, and that his tongue is "forked".  He confounds reality
+and fiction, a serpent's tongue is "soft" but not "forked" nor
+hurtful. If it could hurt, it could not be soft.  In Midsummer-night's
+Dream he has the same notion.
+
+     --With doubler tongue
+     Then thine, O serpent, never adder stung.
+
+ACT III. SCENE i. (III. i. 32-4.)
+
+       Thou hast nor youth, nor age:
+     But as it were an after dinner's sleep,
+     Dreaming on both.
+
+This is exquisitely imagined. When we are young we busy ourselves
+in forming schemes for succeeding time, and miss the gratifications
+that are before us; when we are old we amuse the languour of age
+with the recollection of youthful pleasures or performances; so
+that our life, of which no part is filled with the business of the
+present time, resembles our dreams after dinner, when the events
+of the morning are mingled with the designs of the evening.
+
+ACT III. SCENE i. (III. i. 36-8.)
+
+         When thou'rt old and rich,
+       Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty
+       To make thy riches pleasant.
+
+But how does beauty make "riches pleasant"? We should read "bounty",
+which compleats the sense, and is this; Thou hast neither the
+pleasure of enjoying riches thy self, for thou wantest vigour: nor
+of seeing it enjoyed by others, for thou wantest "bounty". Where
+the making the want of "bounty" as inseparable from old age as
+the want of "health", is extremely satyrical tho' not altogether
+just.                            --Warburton.
+
+I am inclined to believe that neither man nor woman will have much
+difficulty to tell how "beauty makes riches pleasant". Surely this
+emendation, though it is elegant and ingenious, is not such as that
+an opportunity of inserting it should be purchased by declaring
+ignorance of what every one knows, by confessing insensibility of
+what every one feels.
+
+ACT III. SCENE ii. (III. i. 137-8.)
+
+     Is't not a kind of incest, to take life
+     From thine own sister's shame?
+
+In Isabella's declamation there is something harsh, and something
+forced and far-fetched. But her indignation cannot be thought
+violent when we consider her not only as a virgin but as a nun.
+
+ACT IV. SCENE viii. (iv. iii. 4-5.)
+
+     First here's young Mr. Rash, &c.
+
+This enumeration of the inhabitants of the prison affords a very
+striking view of the practices predominant in Shakespeare's age.
+Besides those whose follies are common to all times, we have four
+fighting men and a traveller. It is not unlikely that the originals
+of these pictures were then known.
+
+ACT IV. SCENE xiii. (IV. V. 1.)
+
+     Duke. These letters at fit time deliver me.
+
+Peter never delivers the letters, but tells his story without any
+credentials. The poet forgot the plot which he had formed.
+
+ACT V. SCENE vii. (V. i. 448.)
+
+     'Till he did look on me.
+
+The Duke has justly observed that Isabel is importuned against all
+sense to solicit for Angelo, yet here against all sense she solicits
+for him. Her argument is extraordinary.
+
+     A due sincerity govern'd his deeds,
+     'Till he did look on me; since it is so,
+     Let him not die. That Angelo had committed
+
+all the crimes charged against him, as far as he could commit
+them, is evident. The only INTENT which his act did not overtake,
+was the defilement of Isabel. Of this Angelo was only intentionally
+guilty. Angelo's crimes were such, as must sufficiently justify
+punishment, whether its end be to secure the innocent from wrong,
+or to deter guilt by example; and I believe every reader feels some
+indignation when he finds him spared. From what extenuation of his
+crime can Isabel, who yet supposes her brother dead, form any plea
+in his favour. Since he was good 'till he looked in me, let him
+not die. I am afraid our Varlet Poet intended to inculcate, that
+women think ill of nothing that raises the credit of their beauty,
+and are ready, however virtuous, to pardon any act which they think
+incited by their own charms.
+
+ACT V. SCENE viii. (v. i. 479 foll.)
+
+It is somewhat strange, that Isabel is not made to express either
+gratitude, wonder or joy at the sight of her brother.
+
+After the pardon of two murderers Lucio might be treated by the
+good Duke with less harshness; but perhaps the Poet intended to
+show, what is too often seen, that men easily forgive wrongs which
+are not committed against themselves.
+
+The novel of Cynthio Giraldi, from which Shakespeare is supposed to
+have borrowed this fable, may be read in Shakespeare illustrated,
+elegantly translated, with remarks which will assist the enquirer
+to discover how much absurdity Shakespeare has admitted or avoided.
+
+I cannot but suspect that some other had new modelled the novel
+of Cynthio, or written a story which in some particulars resembled
+it, and that Cinthio was not the authour whom Shakespeare immediately
+followed. The Emperour in Cinthio is named Maximine, the Duke, in
+Shakespeare's enumeration of the persons of the drama, is called
+Vincentio. This appears a very slight remark; but since the Duke
+has no name in the play, nor is ever mentioned but by his title,
+why should he be called Vincentio among the "Persons", but because
+the name was copied from the story, and placed superfluously
+at the head of the list by the mere habit of transcription? It is
+therefore likely that there was then a story of Vincentio Duke of
+Vienna, different from that of Maximine Emperour of the Romans.
+
+Of this play the light or comick part is very natural and pleasing,
+but the grave scenes, if a few passages be excepted, have more labour
+than elegance. The plot is rather intricate than artful. The time
+of the action is indefinite; some time, we know not how much, must
+have elapsed between the recess of the Duke and the imprisonment
+of Claudio; for he must have learned the story of Mariana in his
+disguise, or he delegated his power to a man already known to be
+corrupted. The unities of action and place are sufficiently preserved.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY IV
+
+None of Shakespeare's plays are more read than the first and second
+parts of Henry the fourth. Perhaps no authour has ever in two
+plays afforded so much delight. The great events are interesting,
+for the fate of kingdoms depends upon them; the slighter occurrences
+are diverting, and, except one or two, sufficiently probable; the
+incidents are multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention, and
+the characters diversified with the utmost nicety of discernment,
+and the profoundest skill in the nature of man.
+
+The prince, who is the hero both of the comick and tragick part,
+is a young man of great abilities and violent passions, whose
+sentiments are right, though his actions are wrong; whose virtues
+are obscured by negligence, and whose understanding is dissipated
+by levity. In his idle hours he is rather loose than wicked, and
+when the occasion forces out his latent qualities, he is great
+without effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is roused into
+a hero, and the hero again reposes in the trifler. This character
+is great, original, and just. Piercy is a rugged soldier, cholerick,
+and quarrelsome, and has only the soldier's virtues, generosity
+and courage.
+
+But Falstaff unimitated, unimitable Falstaff, how shall I describe
+thee? Thou compound of sense and vice; of sense which may be
+admired but not esteemed, of vice which may be despised, but hardly
+detested. Falstaff is a character loaded with faults, and with
+those faults which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief, and a
+glutton, a coward, and a boaster, always ready to cheat the weak,
+and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous and insult the
+defenceless. At once obsequious and malignant, he satirises in their
+absence those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar with the
+prince only as an agent of vice, but of this familiarity he is so
+proud as not only to be supercilious and haughty with common men,
+but to think his interest of importance to the duke of Lancaster.
+Yet the man thus corrupt, thus despicable, makes himself necessary
+to the prince that despises him, by the most pleasing of all
+qualities, perpetual gaiety, by an unfailing power of exciting
+laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his wit is not of
+the splendid or ambitious kind, but consists in easy escapes and
+sallies of levity, which make sport but raise no envy.  It must be
+observed that he is stained with no enormous or sanguinary crimes,
+so that his licentiousness is not so offensive but that it may be
+borne for his mirth.
+
+The moral to be drawn from this representation is, that no man is
+more dangerous than he that with a will to corrupt, hath the power
+to please; and that neither wit nor honesty ought to think themselves
+safe with such a companion when they see Henry seduced by Falstaff.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY V
+
+ACT. II. SCENE iv. (II. iii. 27-8.)
+
+     Cold as any stone. Such is the end of Falstaff,
+
+from whom Shakespeare had promised us in his epilogue to Henry
+IV.  that we should receive more entertainment. It happened to
+Shakespeare as to other writers, to have his imagination crowded
+with a tumultuary confusion of images, which, while they were yet
+unsorted and unexamined, seemed sufficient to furnish a long train
+of incidents, and a new variety of merriment, but which, when he
+was to produce them to view, shrunk suddenly from him, or could
+not be accommodated to his general design. That he once designed
+to have brought Falstaff on the scene again, we know from himself;
+but whether he could contrive no train of adventures suitable
+to his character, or could match him with no companions likely to
+quicken his humour, or could open no new vein of pleasantry, and
+was afraid to continue the same strain lest it should not find the
+same reception, he has here for ever discarded him, and made haste
+to dispatch him, perhaps for the same reason for which Addison
+killed Sir Roger, that no other hand might attempt to exhibit him.
+
+Let meaner authours learn from this example, that it is dangerous
+to sell the bear which is yet not hunted, to promise to the publick
+what they have not written.
+
+
+
+
+KING LEAR
+
+The Tragedy of Lear is deservedly celebrated among the dramas of
+Shakespeare. There is perhaps no play which keeps the attention so
+strongly fixed; which so much agitates our passions and interests
+our curiosity. The artful involutions of distinct interests, the
+striking opposition of contrary characters, the sudden changes of
+fortune, and the quick succession of events, fill the mind with a
+perpetual tumult of indignation, pity, and hope. There is no scene
+which does not contribute to the aggravation of the distress or
+conduct of the action, and scarce a line which does not conduce
+to the progress of the scene. So powerful is the current of the
+poet's imagination, that the mind, which once ventures within it,
+is hurried irresistibly along.
+
+On the seeming improbability of Lear's conduct it may be observed,
+that he is represented according to histories at that time vulgarly
+received as true. And perhaps if we turn our thoughts upon the
+barbarity and ignorance of the age to which this story is referred,
+it will appear not so unlikely as while we estimate Lear's manners
+by our own. Such preference of one daughter to another, or resignation
+of dominion on such conditions, would be yet credible, if told of
+a petty prince of Guinea or Madagascar.  Shakespeare, indeed, by the
+mention of his Earls and Dukes, has given us the idea of times more
+civilised, and of life regulated by softer manners; and the truth
+that though he so nicely discriminates, and so minutely describes
+the characters of men, he commonly neglects and confounds the
+characters of ages, by mingling customs ancient and modern, English
+and foreign.
+
+My learned friend Mr. Warton, who has in the Adventurer very minutely
+criticised this play, remarks, that the instances of cruelty are too
+savage and shocking, and that the intervention of Edmund destroys
+the simplicity of the story. These objections may, I think, be
+answered, by repeating, that the cruelty of the daughters is an
+historical fact, to which the poet has added little, having only
+drawn it into a series by dialogue and action.  But I am not able to
+apologise with equal plausibility for the extrusion of Gloucester's
+eyes, which seems an act too horrid to be endured in dramatick
+exhibition, and such as must always compel the mind to relieve its
+distress by incredulity. Yet let it be remembered that our authour
+well knew what would please the audience for which he wrote.
+
+The injury done by Edmund to the simplicity of the action is abundantly
+recompensed by the addition of variety, by the art with which he
+is made to co-operate with the chief design and the opportunity
+which he gives the poet of combining perfidy with perfidy, and
+connecting the wicked son with the wicked daughters, to impress
+this important moral, that villany is never at a stop, that crimes
+lead to crimes, and at last terminate in ruin.
+
+But though this moral be incidentally enforced, Shakespeare has
+suffered the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause contrary
+to the natural ideas of justice, to the hope of the reader, and,
+what is yet more strange, to the faith of chronicles. Yet this
+conduct is justified by the Spectator, who blames Tate for giving
+Cordelia success and happiness in his alteration, and declares,
+that, in his opinion, the tragedy has lost half its beauty. Dennis
+has remarked, whether justly or not, that, to secure the favourable
+reception of Cato, "the town was poisoned with much false and
+abominable criticism," and that endeavours had been used to discredit
+and decry poetical justice. A play in which the wicked prosper,
+and the virtuous miscarry, may doubtless be good, because it is a
+just representation of the common events of human life: but since
+all reasonable beings naturally love justice, I cannot easily be
+persuaded, that the observation of justice makes a play worse; or,
+that if other excellencies are equal, the audience will not always
+rise better pleased from the final triumph of persecuted virtue.
+
+In the present case the publick has decided. Cordelia, from the
+time of Tate, has always retired with victory and felicity. And,
+if my sensations could add any thing to the general suffrage, I
+might relate, that I was many years ago so shocked by Cordelia's
+death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last
+scenes of the play till I undertook to revise them as an editor.
+
+
+
+
+ROMEO AND JULIET
+
+ACT I. SCENE ii. (I. i. 181 foll.)
+
+     Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate! &c.
+
+Of these lines neither the sense nor occasion is very evident. He
+is not yet in love with an enemy, and to love one and hate another
+is no such uncommon state, as can deserve all this toil of antithesis.
+
+ACT I. SCENE iii. (I. ii. 25.)
+
+     Earth-treading stars that make dark HEAVEN's light.
+
+This nonsense should be reformed thus,
+
+     Earth-treading stars that make dark EVEN light.
+                    --Warburton.
+
+But why nonsense? Is anything more commonly said, than that beauties
+eclipse the sun? Has not Pope the thought and the word?
+
+     Sol through white curtains shot a tim'rous ray,
+     And ope'd those eyes that must eclipse the day.
+
+Both the old and the new reading are philosophical nonsense, but
+they are both, and both equally poetical sense.
+
+ACT I. SCENE iii. (I. ii. 26-8.)
+
+     Such comfort as do lusty young men feel,
+     When well-apparel'd April on the heel
+     Of limping winter treads.
+
+To say, and to say in pompous words, that a "young man shall feel"
+as much in an assembly of beauties, "as young men feel in the month
+of April," is surely to waste sound upon a very poor sentiment.
+I read, Such comfort as do lusty YEOMEN feel. You shall feel from
+the sight and conversation of these ladies such hopes of happiness
+and such pleasure, as the farmer receives from the spring, when the
+plenty of the year begins, and the prospect of the harvest fills
+him with delight.
+
+ACT I. SCENE iv. (l. iii. 92.)
+
+     That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.
+
+The "golden story" is perhaps the "golden legend", a book in the
+darker ages of popery much read, and doubtless often exquisitely
+embellished, but of which Canus, one of the popish doctors, proclaims
+the author to have been homo ferrei oris, plumbei cordis.
+
+ACT I. SCENE vi. (1. v. 34.)
+
+     Good cousin Capulet.
+
+This cousin Capulet is "unkle" in the paper of invitation, but as
+Capulet is described as old, "cousin" is probably the right word
+in both places. I know not how Capulet and his lady might agree,
+their ages were very disproportionate; he has been past masking
+for thirty years, and her age, as she tells Juliet is but eight
+and twenty.
+
+ACT I. CHORUS. (II. PROLOGUE.)
+
+The use of this chorus is not easily discovered, it conduces nothing
+to the progress of the play, but relates what is already known or
+what the next scenes will shew; and relates it without adding the
+improvement of any moral sentiment.
+
+ACT II. SCENE vi. (ii. vi. 15.)
+
+     Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
+
+He that travels too fast is as long before he comes to the end of
+his journey, as he that travels slow.
+
+     Precipitation produces mishap.
+
+ACT III. SCENE i. (III. i. 2.)
+
+     The day is hot.
+
+It is observed that in Italy almost all assassinations are committed
+during the heat of summer.
+
+ACT III. SCENE iii. (III. i. 183.)
+
+     Affection makes him false.
+
+The charge of falshood on Bentivolio, though produced at hazard,
+is very just. The authour, who seems to intend the character of
+Bentiolio as good, meant perhaps to shew, how the best minds, in
+a state of faction and discord, are detorted to criminal partiality.
+
+ACT III. SCENE viii. (III. v. 84.)
+
+     And, yet, no Man like he doth grieve my heart.
+
+Juliet's equivocations are rather too artful for a mind disturbed
+by the loss of a new lover.
+
+ACT IV. SCENE iii. (IV. iii. 2-3.)
+
+          Leave me to myself to-night;
+     For I have need of many orisons.
+
+Juliet plays most of her pranks under the appearance of religion:
+perhaps Shakespeare meant to punish her hypocrisy.
+
+ACT V. SCENE i. (V. i. 3.)
+
+     My bosom's Lord sits lightly on this throne, &c.
+
+These three lines are very gay and pleasing. But why does Shakespeare
+give Romeo this involuntary cheerfulness just before the extremity
+of unhappiness? Perhaps to shew the vanity of trusting to those
+uncertain and casual exaltations or depressions, which many consider
+as certain foretokens of good and evil.
+
+ACT V. SCENE v. (v. iii. 229.)
+
+     FRIAR. I will be brief.
+
+It is much to be lamented that the Poet did not conclude the dialogue
+with the action, and avoid a narrative of events which the audience
+already knew. This play is one of the most pleasing of our Author's
+performances. The scenes are busy and various, the incidents
+numerous and important, the catastrophe irresistably affecting
+and the process of the action carried on with such probability at
+least with such congruity to popular opinions, as tragedy requires.
+
+Here is one of the few attempts of Shakespeare to exhibit the
+conversation of gentlemen, to represent the airy sprightliness
+of juvenile elegance. Mr. Dryden mentions a tradition which might
+easily reach his time, of a declaration made by Shakespeare, that
+he was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third act, lest he should
+have been killed by him. Yet he thinks him no such formidable
+person, but that he might have lived through the play, and died in
+his bed, without danger to a poet. Dryden well knew, had he been in
+quest of truth, that, in a pointed sentence, more regard is commonly
+had to the word than the thought, and that it is very seldom to
+be rigorously understood. Mercutio's wit, gaiety and courage, will
+always procure him friends that wish him a longer life; but his
+death is not precipitated, he has lived out the time allotted him
+in the construction of the play; nor do I doubt the ability of
+Shakespeare to have continued his existence, though some of his
+sallies are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden; whose genius was
+not very fertile of merriment, nor ductile to humour, but acute,
+argumentative, comprehensive, and sublime.
+
+The Nurse is one of the characters in which the Authour delighted:
+he has, with great subtility of distinction, drawn her at once
+loquacious and secret, obsequious and insolent, trusty and dishonest.
+
+His comick scenes are happily wrought, but his pathetick strains
+are always polluted with some unexpected depravations. His persons,
+however distressed, HAVE A CONCEIT LEFT THEM IN THEIR MISERY, A
+MISERABLE CONCEIT.
+
+
+
+
+HAMLET
+
+ACT II. SCENE ii. (II. i. 114-17.)
+
+     It is as proper to our age
+     To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions,
+     As it is common for the younger sort
+
+To lack discretion. This is not the remark of a weak man. The vice
+of age is too much suspicion. Men long accustomed to the wiles
+of life "cast" commonly "beyond themselves", let their cunning go
+further than reason can attend it. This is always the fault of a
+little mind, made artful by long commerce with the world.
+
+ACT II. SCENE iv. (II. ii.)
+
+Polonius is a man bred in courts, exercised in business, stored with
+observation, confident of his knowledge, proud of his eloquence,
+and declining into dotage. His mode of oratory is truly represented
+as designed to ridicule the practice of those times, of prefaces
+that made no introduction, and of method that embarrassed rather
+than explained. This part of his character is accidental, the rest
+is natural. Such a man is positive and confident, because he knows
+that his mind was once strong, and knows not that it is become
+weak. Such a man excels in general principles, but fails in the
+particular application. He is knowing in retrospect, and ignorant
+in foresight. While he depends upon his memory, and can draw from
+his repositories of knowledge, he utters weighty sentences, and
+gives useful counsel; but as the mind in its enfeebled state cannot
+be kept long busy and intent, the old man is subject to sudden
+dereliction of his faculties, he loses the order of his ideas, and
+entangles himself in his own thoughts, till he recovers the leading
+principle, and falls again into his former train. This idea of
+dotage encroaching upon wisdom, will solve all the phenomena of
+the character of Polonius.
+
+If the dramas of Shakespeare were to be characterised, each by the
+particular excellence which distinguishes it from the rest, we must
+allow to the tragedy of HAMLET the praise of variety. The incidents
+are so numerous, that the argument of the play would make a long
+tale. The scenes are interchangeably diversified with merriment and
+solemnity; with merriment that includes judicious and instructive
+observations, and solemnity, not strained by poetical violence above
+the natural sentiments of man. New characters appear from time to
+time in continual succession, exhibiting various forms of life and
+particular modes of conversation. The pretended madness of HAMLET
+causes much mirth, the mournful distraction of OPHELIA fills the
+heart with tenderness, and every personage produces the effect
+intended, from the apparition that in the first act chills the
+blood with horror, to the fop in the last that exposes affectation
+to just contempt.
+
+The conduct is perhaps not wholly secure against objections. The
+action is indeed for the most part in continual progression, but
+there are some scenes which neither forward nor retard it. Of the
+feigned madness of Hamlet there appears no adequate cause, for he
+does nothing which he might not have done with the reputation of
+sanity. He plays the madman most, when he treats Ophelia with so
+much rudeness, which seems to be useless and wanton cruelty.
+
+Hamlet is, through the whole play, rather an instrument than an
+agent. After he has, by the stratagem of the play, convicted the
+King, he makes no attempt to punish him, and his death is at last
+effected by an incident which Hamlet has no part in producing.
+
+The catastrophe is not very happily produced; the exchange of
+weapons is rather an expedient of necessity, than a stroke of art.
+A scheme might easily have been formed, to kill Hamlet with the
+dagger, and Laertes with the bowl.
+
+The poet is accused of having shewn little regard to poetical justice,
+and may be charged with equal neglect of poetical probability.
+The apparition left the regions of the dead to little purpose; the
+revenge which he demands is not obtained but by the death of him
+that was required to take it; and the gratification which would
+arise from the destruction of an usurper and a murderer, is abated
+by the untimely death of Ophelia, the young, the beautiful, the
+harmless, and the pious.
+
+
+
+
+OTHELLO
+
+ACT V. SCENE vi. (v. ii. 63-5.)
+
+     Oh perjur'd woman! Thou dost stone my heart,
+     And mak'st me call, what I intent to do,
+     A murder, which I thought a sacrifice.
+
+This line is difficult. Thou hast harden'd my heart, and makest
+me kill thee with the rage of a MURDERER, when I thought to have
+sacraficed thee to justice with the calmness of a priest striking
+a victim.
+
+It must not be omitted, that one of the elder quarto's reads, "Thou
+dost stone THY heart:" which I suspect to be genuine. The meaning
+then will be, thou forcest me to dismiss thee from the world in
+the state of the murdered without preparation for death, when I
+intended that thy punishment should have been "a sacrifice" atoning
+for thy crime.
+
+I am glad that I have ended my revisal of this dreadful scene. It
+is not to be endured.
+
+The beauties of this play impress themselves so strongly upon the
+attention of the reader, that they can draw no aid from critical
+illustration. The fiery openness of Othello, magnanimous, artless,
+and credulous, boundless in his confidence, ardent in his affection,
+inflexible in his resolution, and obdurate in his revenge; the cool
+malignity of Iago, silent in his resentment, subtle in his designs,
+and studious at once of his interest and his vengeance; the soft
+simplicity of Desdemona, confident of merit, and conscious of
+innocence, her artless perseverance in her suit, and her slowness
+to suspect that she can be suspected, are such proofs of Shakespeare's
+skill in human nature, as, I suppose, it is vain to seek in any
+modern writer. The gradual progress which Iago makes in the Moor's
+conviction, and the circumstances which he employs to inflame him,
+are so artfully natural, that, though it will perhaps not be said
+of him as he says of himself, that he is "a man not esily jealous,"
+yet we cannot but pity him when at last we find him "perplexed in
+the extreme."
+
+There is always danger lest wickedness conjoined with abilities
+should steal upon esteem, though it misses of approbation but the
+character if Iago is so conducted, that he is from the first scene
+to the last hated and despised.
+
+Event he inferiour characters of this play would be very conspicuous
+in any other piece, not only for their justness but their strength.
+Cassio is brave, benevolent, and honest, ruined only by his want
+of stubbornness  to resist an insidious invitation of Rodegigo's
+suspicious credulity, and impatient submission of the cheats which
+he sees practised upon him, and which by persuasion he suffers to
+be repeated, exhibit a strong picture of a weak mind betrayed by
+unlawful desires, to a false friend and the virtue of AEmilia is
+such as we often find, worn loosely but not cast off, easy to commit
+small crimes, but quickend and alarmed at atrocious villanies.
+
+The Scenes from the beginning to the end are busy, varied but happy
+interchanges, and regularly promoting the progression of the story;
+and the narrative in the end, though it tells but what is known
+already, yet is necessary to produce the death of Othello.
+
+Had the scene opened in Cyprus, and the preceding incidents been
+occasionally related, there had been little wanting of a drama of the
+most exact and scrupulous regularity.
+
+
+
+
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