Steve Harris, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Together with selected notes on some of the plays
By Samuel Johnson
[Johnson published his annotated edition of Shakespeare's Plays in1765.]
PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE
Some of the notes to
Measure for Measure
Henry IV
Henry V
King Lear
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
Othello
That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that thehonours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaintlikely to be always continued by those, who, being able to addnothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox;or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatoryexpedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the presentage refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yetdenied by envy, will be at last bestowed by time.
Antiquity, like every other quality that attracts the noticeof mankind, has undoubtedly votaries that reverence it, not fromreason, but from prejudice. Some seem to admire indiscriminatelywhatever has been long preserved, without considering that timehas sometimes co-operated with chance; all perhaps are more willingto honour past than present excellence; and the mind contemplatesgenius through the shades of age, as the eye surveys the sun throughartificial opacity. The great contention of criticism is to find thefaults of the moderns, and the beauties of the ancients. While anauthour 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 anddefinite, but gradual and comparative; to works not raised uponprinciples demonstrative and scientifick, but appealing whollyto observation and experience, no other test can be applied thanlength of duration and continuance of esteem. What mankind havelong possessed they have often examined and compared, and if theypersist to value the possession, it is because frequent comparisonshave confirmed opinion in its favour. As among the works of natureno man can properly call a river deep or a mountain high, withoutthe knowledge of many mountains and many rivers; so in the productionsof genius, nothing can be stiled excellent till it has been comparedwith other works of the same kind. Demonstration immediatelydisplays its power, and has nothing to hope or fear from the fluxof years; but works tentative and experimental must be estimatedby their proportion to the general and collective ability of man,as it is discovered in a long succession of endeavours. Of the firstbuilding that was raised, it might be with certainty determinedthat it was round or square, but whether it was spacious or loftymust have been referred to time. The Pythagorean scale of numberswas at once discovered to be perfect; but the poems of Homer weyet 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, newname his characters, and paraphrase his sentiments.
The reverence due to writings that have long subsisted arisestherefore not from any credulous confidence in the superior wisdomof 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