Preface to Shakespeare : Summary

Summary

Preface to Shakespeare was written by Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784). It was published in 1765. The entire book has 72 pages. Samuel Johnson wanted to finish reading all of Shakespeare’s works within a year and write the book Preface to Shakespeare. But it took 9 years for Samuel Johnson to finish reading all the books of Shakespeare. That means that he gave nine years to write the Preface to Shakespeare.

Samuel Johnson was a famous critic of his time. He wrote the book Preface to Shakespeare to criticize Shakespeare. In this book, he highlights the merits and demerits of Shakespeare’s writing. Samuel Johnson highlights Shakespeare’s plays and tries to show that Shakespeare is a famous playwright but there are some mistakes in his writing.

In the 18th century, classical writers were highly valued. However, the writers who were contemporaries were not valued in any way. Similarly, the writings of William Shakespeare were not evaluated in the same way. But Samuel Johnson wanted to show that Shakespeare was a famous playwright.

William Shakespeare has faced many criticisms during his lifetime. But he ignored these criticisms and wrote in his own way, which is why he is so famous today.

In the Preface to Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson presents three aspects. For example,

• Shakespeare’s General Nature: Excellency

• Shakespeare’s Faults
• Three Unities

Shakespeare as a Realistic Writer: Samuel Johnson praised Shakespeare’s realism. He said that Shakespeare really deserves to be praised because he has portrayed human nature and human psychology truthfully in his writing. He did not borrow conceptions from anyone else while writing his literary works. He wrote his literary works entirely by himself. His literary works are practical and full of everyday knowledge. If we want to understand easily, it will stand how many hundred years ago Shakespeare wrote his writings but those writings are exactly matching in our real life. So, we can say that his writing is full of practical knowledge.

He did not express love as the main emotion and motive of human beings in his writings. He believed that love is only full of emotion. Love is very different from real life. So, he wrote about reality. Samuel Johnson highly praised Shakespeare’s character selection. The type of characters that Shakespeare selected in his plays and the types of scenes presented by those characters are absolutely admirable. Especially the real-life heroines of his plays are truly admirable.

For all these reasons, Samuel Johnson called Shakespeare the Poet of Natur,e and his thoughts or his literary works reflect real life and manners.

Shakespeare’s Use of Tragic Comedy: Shakespeare was mostly criticized during his life for writing tragic comedies. Some contemporary writers write tragedy and comity together. For this, no one could accept this tendency. Because of this, everyone criticized Shakespeare. But Samuel Johnson was different. He supports Shakespeare for his work and shows that Shakespeare was right.

Shakespeare originally wrote tragedies combining tragedy and comedy. If we look at real life, we can see that a person’s life cannot have only tragedies. That means that there can be comedy in one’s life. This is why Shakespeare’s writing was correct. And because of this, he is still so famous among everyone.

Shakespeare’s Comic Genius: Shakespeare created beautiful comic scenes in his comedies. He did not borrow his conception from any other writer or anything else to create comic scenes in his comedies. His inner effort to create these comic scenes is highlighted. Through this, he has been able to entertain his readers beautifully. Samuel Johnson praised this comic genius of Shakespeare.

Three Unities: The practice of writing plays has been going on since ancient times. Ancient writers maintained several rules for writing plays. The most notable of which are the three dramatic unities. These were Unities of Time, Place and Action. If someone wrote a play maintaining these three things, his play would be appreciated and accepted by everyone. But Shakespeare did not follow this rule and he did not use three unities in his plays.

Shakespeare’s plays can be called “neither tragedy nor comedy”. Due to this, Shakespeare did not follow the rules of dramatic unities in his plays. He maintained only one unity in his plays and that is continuity and normality between the characters.

Unities of Time and Place: Shakespeare did not maintain the unity of time and place. According to Samuel Johnson, these Shakespearean plays troubled Shakespeare more than they pleased the audience. Samuel Johnson felt that it was necessary to use these unities to give credibility to the play. But he says that the story in drama can never be real and the audience knows this. If a viewer can bring the characters of the play to his mind’s imagination, why can’t he bring the places of the play to his imagination? So, Jonson says that there is no absurdity in telling the story of the play in different places in the same period. Regarding the unity of time, Shakespeare said that a play has a continuous plot. And they can happen in different places as well as they can happen in different times. Here the point is whether the events are connected to each other.

Johnson praises Shakespeare and says his plays really move our minds. Because his plays are made by reality.

Faults of Shakespeare: Samuel Johnson finds several faults in Shakespeare’s literature. Johnson points out that Shakespeare wrote plays without moral and didactic themes. He gave more importance to giving pleasure to people than guiding them on the right path. There is no Poetic Justice in his plays. Poetic judgment is the greatest quality of a play. This poetic judgment is not found in Shakespeare’s plays, which is why Johnson criticizes it as Shakespeare’s major fault.

Then, he wrote the plot of the play in random order. He could improve upon them if he wished. He gave more importance while writing the first part of his play but not so much importance to the later parts.

There are many errors in the continuity of the play during his time. The comedy scenes used in his plays are vulgar and sensual. He used unnecessary dialogue and words in his plays. He used riddles and obscure words in his writings. All these errors in Shakespeare’s plays are severely criticized by Jonson.