The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the Whether Shakspeare knew the unities, and relast, that the stage is only a stage, and that thejected them by design, or deviated from them by players are only players. They come to hear a happy ignorance, it is, I think, impossible to decertain number of lines recited with just gesture cide, and useless to inquire. We may reasonably and elegant modulation. The lines relate to some suppose, that, when he rose to notice, he did not action, and an action must be in some place; but want the counsels and admonitions of scholars and the different actions that complete a story may be in critics, and that he at last deliberately persisted in places very remote from each other: and where is a practice, which he might have begun by chance. the absurdity of allowing that space to represent As nothing is essential to the fable, but unity of first Athens, and then Sicily, which was always action, and as the unities of time and place arise known to be neither Sicily nor Athens, but a mo- evidently from false assumptions, and, by circumdern theatre? scribing 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 Shakspeare, and such censures are suitable to the minute and slender criticism of Voltaire:

yet been able to find. The result of my inquiries, is 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 superfluons 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; bat 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 recall 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 Æneas withdrew from the defence of Troy, when he saw Neptune shaking the wall, and Juno heading the besiegers.

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 author'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 authors, were in his time accessible and familiar. 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 critics 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.

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 Shakspeare 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.

Those whom my arguments cannot persuade to give their approbation to the judgment of Shakspeare, will easily, if they consider the condition of his life, make some allowance for his ignorance. His plots, whether historical or fabulous, are Every man's performances, to be rightly esti- always crowded with incidents, by which the atmated, must be compared to the state of the age intention of a rude people was more easily caught which he lived, and with his own particular opportunities; and though to a reader a book be not worse or better for the circumstances of the author, yet as there is always a silent reference of haman works to human abilities, and as the inquiry, 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 particalar 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 bailt without the use of iron?

The English nation, in the time of Shakspeare, 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 Lally, Linacre, 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 public 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, giasts, dragons, and enchantments. The Death of Arthur, was the favourite volume.

The mind, which has feasted on the luxurious

The shews 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 author'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 author'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 Shakspeare of men. We find in Cato innumerable beauties which enamour us of its author, 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 Shakspeare 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 into brightness. Shakspeare 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 Shakspeare owed his excellence to his own native force, or whether he had the common helps of scholastic education, the precepts of critical science, and the ́examples of ancient authors.

works is very justly observed by Pope, but it is often such knowledge as books did not supply. He that will understand Shakspeare, 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 authors were translated, and some of the Greek; the Reformation had filled the kingdom with theological learning; most of the topies 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.

both amongst us, and in some of his happier scenes to have carried them both to the utmost height.

But the greater part of his excellence was the There has always prevailed a tradition that Shak- product of his own genius. He found the English speare wanted learning, that he had no regular stage in a state of the utmost rudeness; no essays education, nor much skill in the dead languages. either in tragedy or comedy had appeared, from Jonson, his friend, affirms, that he had small which it could be discovered to what degree of deLatin, and less Greek;" who, besides that he had light either one or other might be carried. Neither no imaginable temptation to falsehood, wrote at a character nor dialogue were yet understood. Shaktime when the character and acquisitions of Shakspeare may be truly said to have introduced them speare 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 imitation of old writers; but the examples which I have known urged, were drawn from books translated in his time; or were such easy coincidences 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 præ, sequar. I have been told, that when Caliban, after a pleasing dream, says, "I cried to sleep again," the author 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 Menæchmi 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.

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 aught 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. Shakspeare, however favoured by nature, could impart only what he had learned; and as be 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. Shakspeare must have looked upon mankind with perspicacity, in the highest degree curious and attentive. Ŏther 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 auther 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.

All

those inquiries, which from that time that human nature became the fashionable study, have been made sometimes with nice discernment, but often

The contest about the original benevolence or malignity of man had not yet commenced. Speculation had not yet attempted to analyze the mind, to trace the passions to their sources, to unfold the seminal principles of vice and virtue, or sound the It is most likely that he had learned Latin suf-depths of the heart for the motives of action. ficiently to make him acquainted with construction, but that he never advanced to an easy perusal of the Roman authors. Concerning his skill in modern languages, I can find no sufficient ground of determination; but as no imitations of French or Italian authors have been discovered, though the Italian poetry was then in high 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

The

with idle subtilty, were yet unattempted.
tales, with which the infancy of learning was satis-
fied, 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 ba
studied in the closet; he that would know the

DR. JOHNSON'S PREFACE.

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. Shakspeare 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 that he who considers them or to inquiry; so many, 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 Shakspeare was not to be depressed 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 dew-drops from a

lou'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 disposi- | tions; 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 peculi-
arities, 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, who
ever they be, must take their sentiments and de-
scriptions immediately from knowledge; the resem-
blance is therefore just, their descriptions are veri-
fied by every eye, and their sentiments acknow-
ledged 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 an-
other, and imitation, always deviating a little, be-
comes at last capricious and casual. Shakspeare,
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 complete.

Perhaps it would not be easy to find any author,
except Homer, who invented so much as Shak-
speare, who so much advanced the studies which
he cultivated, or effused so much novelty upon his
age or country. The form, the character, the lan-
guage, and the shews of the English drama, are his.
to have been the very
"He seems," says Dennis,
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 heroic 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 writ-
ing prose; we make such verse in common conver-
sation."

I know not whether this praise is rigorously just.
The dissyllable termination, which the critic rightly
appropriates to the drama, is to be found, though,
I think, not in Gorboduc, which is confessedly
before our author; yet in Hieronymo, 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
theatrical piece of any older writer, of which the
either tragedy or comedy to please, there being no
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
He has speeches,
to how much smoothness and harmony the English
language could be softened.
perhaps sometimes scenes, which have all the deli-
vours indeed commonly to strike by the force and
cacy of Rowe, without his effeminacy. He endea-
purpose better, than when he tries to sooth by
vigour of his dialogue, but he never executes his
softness.

Yet it must be at last confessed, that as we owe
if much of his praise is paid by perception and
every thing to him, he owes something to us; that,
judgment, much is likewise given by custom and
torn them from his deformities, and endure in him
veneration. We fix our eyes upon his graces, and
endured without praising, respect for the father of
what we should in another loath or despise. If we
our drama might excuse us; but I have seen, in the
book of some modern critic, a collection of anoma-
lies, which shew that he has corrupted language by
has accumulated as a monument of honour.
every mode of depravation, but which his admirer

He has scenes of undoubted and perpetual excel-
now exhibited as the work of a contemporary writer,
lence, but perhaps not one play, which, if it were
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
It is seldom that authors, though more studious of
would satisfy the audience, they satisfied the writer.
of their own age; to add a little to what is best
fame than Shakspeare, rise much above the standard
those who find themselves exalted into fame, are
will always be sufficient for present praise, and
willing to credit their encomiasts, and to spare the
labour of contending with themselves.

It does not appear, that Shakspeare thought his works worthy of posterity, that he levied any ideal tribute upon future times, or had any further proWhen his plays had been acted, his hope was at an spect, than of present popularity and present profit. 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 are concluded by a marriage in a mask, by a deceprecollect, that of Congreve's four comedies, two tion, which perhaps never happened, and which, whether likely or not, he did not invent.

So careless was this great poet of future fame, was yet little declined into the vale of years, before that, though he retired to ease and plenty, while he he could be disgusted with fatigue, or disabled by desired to rescue those that had been already pubinfirmity, he made no collection of his works, nor or secure to the rest a better destiny, by giving lished from the depravations that obscured them, them to the world in their genuine state.

Of the plays which bear the name of Shakspeare in the late editions, the greater part were not pubthe few which appeared in his life are apparently lished till about seven years after his death, and thrust into the world without the care of the author, and therefore probably without his knowledge.

Of all the publishers, clandestine or professed, the negligence and unskilfulness has by the late revisers numerous and gross, and have not only corrupted been sufficiently shewn. The faults of all are indeed 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 author 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 style of Shakspeare 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 errors; 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.

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 author'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 passed 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 author, 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 intrinsic 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 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 author'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 errors, yet he has made many emendations, if they were not made before, which his successors have received without acknowledgment, and which, In his reports of copies and editions he is not to if they had produced them, would have filled pages be trusted without examination. He speaks someand pages with censures of the stupidity by which times indefinitely of copies, when he has only one. the faults were committed, with displays of the In his enumeration of editions, he mentions the two absurdities which they involved, with ostentatious first folios as of high, and the third folio as of middle expositions of the new reading, and self-congratu-authority; but the truth is, that the first is equivalations on the happiness of discovering it. lent to all others, and that the rest only deviate from As of the other editors I have preserved the pre-it by the printer's negligence. Whoever has any of faces, I have likewise borrowed the author's life from Rowe, 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 Shakspeare'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.

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.

excuse the contraction of the rest.

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 panegyric in which he celebrated himself for his achievement. The exuberant excrescence of his diction I have often lopped, bis triumphant exultations over Pope and Rowe I have sometimes suppressed, and his contemptible ostentation I have frequently concealed; but I I know not why he is commended by Dr. War- have in some places shewn him, as he would have burton for distinguishing the genuine from the shewn himself, for the reader's diversion, that the spurious plays. In this choice he exerted no judg-inflated emptiness of some notes may justify or ment of his own; the plays which he received, were given to Hemings and Condell, the first editors; and those which he rejected, though, according to the licentiousness of the press in those times, they were printed during Shakspeare'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 latter 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 critic would ill discharge his duty, without qualities very

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 solicit favour, against those who command reverence; and so casily is he praised, whom no man can envy.

Our author 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 intel