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 critics.

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.

Shakspeare, 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 dramatic fable in its materiality was ever credible, or, for a single moment, was ever credited.

Delu

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 nis walk to the theatre has been a voyage to Egypt, and that he lives in the days of Anthony 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 His histories, being neither tragedies nor comedies, half an hour for the promontory of Actium. are not subject to any of their laws; nothing more sion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitais necessary to all the praise which they expect, than tion; if the spectator can be once persuaded, that that the changes of action be so prepared as to be his old acquaintance are Alexander and Cæsar, that understood, that the incidents be various and affect a room illuminated with candles is the plain of Pharing, and the characters consistent, natural, and dis-salia, or the banks of Granicus, he is in a state of tinct. No other unity is intended, and therefore none elevation above the reach of reason, or of truth, and is to be sought. from the heights of empyrean poetry, may despise the circumscriptions of terrestrial nature. There is no reason why a mind thus wandering in ecstacy 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.

In his other works he has well enough preserved the unity of action. He has not, indeed, an intrigue 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 Shakspeare 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 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 complete 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 The necessity of observing the unities of time and duration is the same. If, in the first act, preparaplace arises from the supposed necessity of making tions for war against Mithridates are represented to the drama credible. The critics hold it impossible, be made in Rome, the event of the war may, without that an action of months or years can be possibly absurdity, be represented, in the catastrophe, as hapbelieved to pass in three hours; or that the specta-pening in Pontus; we know that there is neither war, tor can suppose himself to sit in the theatre, while nor preparation for war; we know that we are neither ambassadors go and return between distant kings, in Rome nor Pontus: that neither Mithridates nor Luwhile armies are levied and towns besieged, while cullus are before us. The drama exhibits successive an exile wanders and returns, or till he whom they imitations of successive actions, and why may not saw courting his mistress, shall lament the untimely the second imitation represent an action that hapfall of his son. The mind revolts from evident false-pened years after the first; if it be so connected with hood, and fiction loses its force when it departs from it, that nothing but time can be supposed to interthe resemblance of reality. vene? 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 eal actions, and therefore willingly permit it to be contracted when we only see their imitation.

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 pertainty 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 critic exults over the misery of an irregular poet, and exults commonly without resistance or reply. t is time therefore to tell him, by the authority of

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 no, that the evils before us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we ourselves may be exposed. If

Yet when I speak thus slightly of dramatic rules, I cannot but recollect how much wit and learning Nations, like individuals, have their infancy. A may be produced against me; before such authori-people newly awakened to literary curiosity, being ties I am afraid to stand, not that I think the present yet unacquainted with the true state of things, knows question one of those that are to be decided by mere not how to judge of that which is proposed as its reauthority, but because it is to be suspected, that these semblance. Whatever is remote from common apprecepts have not been so easily received, but for pearances is always welcome to vulgar, as to childish better reasons than I have yet been able to find. The credulity; and of a country unenlightened by learn result of my inquiries, in which it would be ludicrous ing, the whole people is the vulgar. The study of to boast of impartiality, is, that the unities of time those who then aspired to plebeian learning was laid and place are not essential to a just drama; that out upon adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantthough they may sometimes conduce to pleasure, they ments. The Death of Arthur was the favourite volume 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

and Guy of Warwick, have made little impression;

9

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garhe that wrote for such an audience was under the den accurately formed and diligently planted, varied necessity of looking round for strange events and with shades and scented with flowers: the composifabulous transactions, and that incredibility, by tion of Shakspeare is a forest, in which oaks extend which naturer knowledge is offended, was the chief their branches, and pines tower in the air, interrecommendation of writings, to unskilful curiosity.spersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and Our author's plots are generally borrowed from sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses; novels; and it is reasonable to suppose, that he filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the chose the most popular, such as were read by many, mind with endless diversity. Other poets display and related by more; for his audience could not have cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, followed him through the intricacies of the drama, wrought into shape, and polished into brightness. had they not held the thread of the story in their Shakspeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in inexhaustible plenty, though clouded hands. by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals.

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 Saro 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 crowded 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 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.

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.

There has always prevailed a tradition, that Shakspeare wanted learning, that he had no regular education, nor much skill in the dead languages. Jonson, his friend, affirms, that he had small Latin, and less Greek; who, besides that he had no imaginable temptation to falsehood, wrote at a time when the character and acquisitions of Shakspeare 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 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 I have found it remarked, that in this important transmitted through the world in proverbial sentences. 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 à few passages which may pass for imi tations, 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 snows 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 The Comedy of Errors is confessedly taken from practice is more agreeable to nature, or whether his example has prejudiced the nation, we still find that the Menachmi of Plautus; from the only play of on our stage something must be done as well as said, Plautus which was then in English. What can be and inactive declamation is very coldly heard, how-more probable, than that he who copied that, would ever musical or elegant, passionate or sublime.

have copied more; but that those which were not translated were inaccessible?

Whether he knew the modern languages is uncerVoltaire 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 tain. That his plays have some French scenes proves Addison speaks the language of poets, and Shak- but little; he might easily procure them to be writspeare, of men. We find in Cato innumerable beau- ten, and probably, even though he had known the ties which enamour us of its author, but we see no- language in the common degree, he could not have thing that acquaints us with human sentiments or written it without assistance. In the story of Romeo human actions; we place it with the fairest and the and Juliet he is observed to have followed the Engnoblest progeny which judgment propagates by con- lish translation, where it deviates from the Italian; junction with learning; but Othello is the vigorous but this on the other part proves nothing against his and vivacious offspring of observation impregnated knowledge of the original. He was to copy, not what by genius. Cato affords a splendid exhibition of he knew himself, but what was known to his audience. 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

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 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 the heart for the motives of action. all those in-
poetry was then high in esteem, I am inclined to be-
lieve, 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 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 some-
times 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 topics 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. Shakspeare 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 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 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.

quiries, which from that time that human nature be-
came the fashionable study, have been made some-
times 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 neces-
sity 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 or to
inquiry; so many, that he who considers them is
inclined to think that he sees enterprize and perse
verance predominating over all external agency, and
bidding help and hindrance banish before them.
The genius of Shakspeare was not to be depressed by
the weight of poverty, nor limited by the narrow con-
versation to which men in want are inevitably con-
demned: the incumbrances of his fortune were
shaken from his mind, as dew drops 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 maxims of theoretical knowledge, or more rules of practical prudence, can be collected, than he alone has given to his country.

more

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 There is a vigilance of observation and accuracy sentiments acknowledged by every breast. Those of distinction which books and precepts cannot con- whom their fame invites to the same studies, copy fer; from this almost all original and native excel- partly them, and partly nature, till the books of one lence proceeds. Shakspeare must have looked upon age gain such authority, as to stand in the place of mankind with perspicacity, in the highest degree nature to another, and imitation, always deviating a curious and attentive. Other writers borrow their little, becomes at last capricious and casual. Shak characters from preceding writers, and diversify them speare, whether life or nature be his subject, shews only by the accidental appendages of present man- plainly, that he has seen with his own eyes; he gives ners; the dress is a little varied, but the body is the the image which he receives, not weakened or dissame. Our author had both matter and form to pro-torted by the intervention of any other mind; the vide; for, except the characters of Chaucer, to whom ignorant feel his representations to be just, and the I think he is not much indebted, there were no writers learned see that they are complete. 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

Perhaps it would not be easy to find any author, except Homer, who invented so much as Shakspeare, 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 seem says Dennis, to have been the very original of

DR. JOHNSON'S PREFACE.

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 writing prose; we make such verse in common conversation.

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 Gorbodue, 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 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 soothe 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 judgment, much is likewise given by custom and veneraton. 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 critic, 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 authors, though more studious of fame than Shakspeare, rise much above the standard of their own age; to add a little to 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 Shakspeare 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 infir-
mity, 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 Shakspeare 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 author, and therefore probably without his knowledge.

Of all the publishers, clandestine or professed, the negligence and unskilfulness has by the late revisers been sufficiently shewn. The faults of all are indeed numerous and gross, and have not only cor rupted many passages, perhaps beyond recovery, bu 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.

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 At last an edition was much negligence of English printers, that they could very patiently endure it. 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 acknowwith censures of ledgment, and which, if they had produced them, pages and pages would have filled the stupidity by which the faults were committed, with displays of the absurdities which they involved, with ostentatious expositions of the new reading, and self-congratulations on the happiness of discovering it.

As of the other editors I have preserved the prefaces, 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