SAMUEL JOHNSON
§
Samuel Johnson, known as Dr Johnson, (born Sept. 18, 1709, Lichfield, Staffordshire,
England, died Dec. 13, 1784, London), is an English man of letters, who is one of the
outstanding figures of 18th-century England.
§
He is the son of a poor bookseller, he briefly attended the University of
Oxford.
§
He moved to London after the
failure of a school he had started.
§
He wrote for periodicals and composed
poetry, including The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), the first work he
published under his name.
§
In 1755, after eight years of labour, he produced A Dictionary of the
English Language (1755), the first great English dictionary, which brought him fame. He
continued to write for such periodicals as The Gentleman’s Magazine, and he almost
single-handedly wrote and edited the biweekly The Rambler (1750–52).
§
Rasselas (1759) was his only long work of fiction.
§
In 1765, he produced a critical edition of William Shakespeare with a
preface that did much to establish Shakespeare as the centre of the English
literary canon.
§
Johnson’s travel writings include A Journey to the
Western Islands of Scotland (1775). His Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the
English Poets (1779–81) was a significant critical work. A brilliant conversationalist, he
helped to found the Literary Club (1764), which became famous for
its members of distinction, including David Garrick, Edmund Burke, Oliver
Goldsmith, and Joshua Reynolds.
§
His aphorisms made him to be one
of the most frequently quoted of English writers.
§
The biography of Johnson written
by his contemporary James Boswell is one of the most admired biographies of all
time.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
·
William Shakespeare, (baptized April 26, 1564, Stratford-upon-Avon,
Warwickshire, England, died April 23, 1616, Stratford-upon-Avon), is an English poet and
playwright, who is often considered as the greatest writer in world literature.
·
Shakespeare spent his early life in Stratford-upon-Avon, receiving at
most a grammar-school education, and at age 18, he married a local woman, Anne
Hathaway.
·
By 1594, he was apparently a rising playwright in London and an actor in
a leading theatre company, the Lord Chamberlain’s
Men (later King’s Men); this company also performed at the Globe Theatre from 1599.
·
The order in which Shakespeare’s plays were written and performed is
highly uncertain. His earliest plays seem to date from the late 1580’s to the
mid-1590’s and include the comedies Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream; history plays are based
on the lives of the English kings, including Henry VI (parts 1, 2,
and 3), Richard III,
and Richard II; and the
tragedy Romeo and Juliet.
·
The plays apparently written between 1596 and 1600 are mostly comedies,
including The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing, and As You like it, and histories,
including Henry IV (parts 1 and
2), Henry V, and Julius Caesar.
·
Approximately between 1600 and 1607, he wrote the comedies Twelfth Night, All’s
Well That Ends Well, and Measure
for Measure, as well as the great tragedies Hamlet (probably begun in
1599), Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear, which mark the summit
of his art.
·
Among his later works (about 1607 to 1614) are the tragedies Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus,
and Tymon of Athens, as well as the
fantastical romances The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest.
·
He probably also collaborated on the plays Edward III and The Two Noble Kinsmen.
·
In 2010, a case was made for
Shakespeare as the co-author (with John Fletcher) of Double Falsehood.
·
Shakespeare’s plays, all of them were written largely in iambic
pentameter verse, are marked by extraordinary poetry; vivid, subtle, and
complex characterizations; and a highly inventive use of English.
·
His 154 sonnets, published in 1609 but apparently written mostly in
the 1590s, often expresses a strong feeling within an exquisitely controlled
form.
·
Shakespeare retired to Stratford before 1610 and lived as a country
gentleman until his death.
·
The first collected edition of his plays, or First Folio, was published in 1623.
·
As with most writers of the time,
little is known about his life and work, and other writers, particularly the
17th earl of Oxford, have frequently been proposed as the actual authors of his
plays and poems.
ON PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE
Samuel Johnson’s preface to The Plays
of Shakespeare has long been considered as a classic document of
English literary criticism. It was originally published in 1765. In this preface, Johnson sets forth his editorial
principles and provides an appreciative analysis of the excellences and defects
of the work of a good Elizabethan dramatist. Many of his
points became fundamental tenets of recent criticism;
others give greater insight into Johnson’s prejudices than into Shakespeare’s
genius. The resonant prose of the preface adds authority to the views
of its author.
No other document exhibits the character of
eighteenth-century literary criticism better
than what’s commonly referred to as Johnson’s Preface
to Shakespeare. Written after Johnson had spent nine years, labouring to
supply an edition of Shakespeare’s plays, the Preface to Shakespeare is
characterized by sweeping generalizations about the dramatist’s work and by
stunning pronouncements about its merits, judgments that elevated Shakespeare
to the highest spot among European writers of any century. At times,
Johnson displays the tendency of his contemporaries to fault Shakespeare for
his propensity for wordplay and for ignoring the stress for just
deserts in his plays; readers of subsequent generations have found these
criticisms to reflect the inadequacies of the critic quite acceptable
as they are doing those of the dramatist.
Approach towards
antiquity
Some people lament that the dead are praised unreasonably. They hold
that the criteria of evaluating a writer should be the excellence of his work
and not his antiquity. They are generally people, who have nothing to
contribute to the universal truth and therefore try to win fame by offering controversial
arguments or hope that posterity will be kind and sympathetic and will bestow
them with the name that their contemporaries deny. Admittedly, antiquity has
its blind votaries who indiscriminately praise everything merely because it
dates back to the remote days. It is also true that spotlighting the merits of
the ancients and the faults of contemporaries is more congenial to many
critics. As long as an author is alive, the tendency is to judge him in the ‘light
of his worst work’, and after his death the practice is to regard his best
work as his most characteristic one and judge him from that view point.
Continuation of
esteem: a criterion of merit
The criteria for judging works of art cannot be absolute as in case of
works based on scientific principles. Johnson says that in the field of
literature excellence is not absolute, but gradual and comparative. In
weighing works of literature, the only test that can be aptly applied is length
of duration and continuation of esteem. It is quite natural that mankind
examines and compares works which they have possessed long, and in case they go
on praising them, it shows that they have found them to be really valuable. No
production of genius can be termed excellent until it has been impartially
compared with other such works, just as no one can call a river deep unless he
has seen and known several rivers and judges the particular one in comparison
with the others.
A literary work is primarily tentative and can be estimated only by its
proportion to the general and collective of humanity, as this ability has been discovered in a long
succession of endeavours. Scientific works can be adjudged perfect because of
their objective base, whereas the greatness of Homers poems has not been given
any specific explanation except that they have appealed to generation after
generation. The reason why the works of antiquity are held in esteem is not
blind adulation or superstitious brief in their superior wisdom but the fact
that they have stood up to scrutiny of time.
The enduring
eminence of Shakespeare
The works of Shakespeare have come to assume the status of a classic.
They are credited with enduring fame and respect. As these works have outlived
one whole century, which is the test normally laid down in such cases, they
have attained the prestigious position of antiquity, the topical
allusions to local customs and prevailing manners in Shakespeare’s works are no
longer relevant and his works are read for the literary pleasure they provide.
His works can hardly support any
faction at present, nor can they satisfy the vanity or feelings of enmity, in
people closely associated with him, since all such people have passed away. It
is astonishing that they have withstood changes of manners and customs, and are
read just for the pleasure they offer. They are thus praised
disinterestedly by generation after generation. However, it would not do to
blindly believe that human judgement is never infallible. Even though a few
works have met with popular approval for a long period, it is possible that
this approval may have been based on prejudice or fashion. It is indispensable
therefore to probe into the facts which enable the works of Shakespeare to
attain and retain the respect or esteem of his countrymen.
Merits of Shakespeare's Plays
Just representation
of general nature
It is the just representation of general nature that brings immortality
and enduring approbation to literary works. A faithful portrayal of the
prevailing manners of combinations of fanciful inventions is insufficient to
confer immortality upon a work of art. Such pieces can only evoke pleasure or
wonder which can be exhausted soon. It is the only truth that can afford a
consistent place for the mind to rest upon. Shakespeare is, more than any one
else, a poet of nature. Through his works, he reflects life.
Shakespeare’s characters do not belong to the society of a particular place or
time; they are universal, representing every man. They are the genuine
progeny of common humanity such as will always remain in this world and whom
our eyes will always continue to meet. What motivates his characters to speak
and act are those general principles and emotions which stir all hearts;
whereas in the works of other poets a character is often an individual, in
Shakespeare it is commonly a species. The wide expanse of Shakespeare’s
design is the main source of the wealth of instruction that his plays
convey and owing to this fact, they are filled with practical axioms and
domestic wisdom.
Critics used to say that even the
verse of Euripides is essentially a percept in itself and it may be said of
Shakespeare’s plays that a whole pantheon of civil and economic prudence may be
collected from them. Still, it is not in the grandeur of particular passages
but in the total progress of the fable and the tenor of the dialogue that
Shakespeare’s spontaneity is unfolded. To reveal his genius through singled out
passages is like describing the endurance and beauty of a house by showing a
brick.
In order to know
how and why Shakespeare excels other writers in depicting the sentiments
that are true to life, we have to compare him with other renowned authors
and their practices.
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A patient and laborious perusal of his plays does not disqualify the
reader for the feasible world, whereas this may be the case of almost every
other dramatist. In the dramas of these writers, we meet characters who are
never seeing the human world, their characters converse in a language which was
never heard before; the topics upon which they speak are not of any consequence
in real life. In Shakespeare’s plays, the dialogue is not accidental, it
is occasioned by the incident which products it. It is so realistic and lucid
that one does not come to think of it as belonging to a fanciful fiction.
It seems rather than the dialogue has been gleaned out of common conversation
through a wise selection.
·
Shakespeare
never assigns any excessive role to passion in his plays, for he catches
his clues from the world of day-to-day life and exhibits in his plays what
he finds in life.
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Theme of love is not over - emphasized in Shakespeare’s plays
In a majority of the plays written by other playwrights, love is the
universal agent that causes all good and evil and hastens or retards every
action. In their fables, we meet stock characters such as a lover, a lady or a
rival. These characters are involved in contrary obligations and are haunted
with violent as well as inconsistent desires. They are made to speak out in
hyperbolic or exaggerated joy and outrageous sorrow. Actually, by doing so,
these dramatists are violating the probability and misrepresenting life. They also
deprive the language. Love is not the only passion, it is just one among the other
virtues. But, Shakespeare knew that any passion would cause happiness or
disaster depending on its being moderated or left uncontrolled.
· Shakespeare’s Method of Characterization
Shakespeare’s methods of characterization is
not individualized but universal in nature.
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Shakespeare’s characters are universally delineated but it is easy to
distinguish one character from another character. Most of the speeches are so
apt that they cannot be transplanted from the character to whom Shakespeare has
given it. Shakespeare’s characters are not exaggerated. He does not give
us purely virtuous or utterly deprived characters. We may even say he has no
heroes as such in his plays; on the contrary it is the common humanity
that he depicts. The characters act and speak in a way which appears to the
reader sto be what he himself would have done in a similar situation. Even when
the plot requires a supernatural agency, the tone of the dialogues of various
characters are life-like and realistic, other writers draw the most
natural passions and most common incidents in a way which makes them
unrecognizable. Shakespeare ‘approximates the remote and familiarizes the
wonderful’. Even when he describes an impossible incident, he makes it seem
probable; we feel it would have been just the way in which Shakespeare has
described it if it took place. He presents human nature not merely as it reacts
to the common situations of real life but also as it may act in extraordinary
situations.
·
Shakespeare’s
plays are informative and instructive, no matter who the reader is.
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Reflection of life
Other dramatists gain attention only by presenting fabulous, exaggerated
characters which may confuse our imagination, but those feverish experiences
can be cured by reading Shakespeare’s- plays where we meet human sentiments
in human language. A confessor as well as a sagacious hermit can draw
lessons of practical wisdom from them.
· Objection of some critics were answered
Shakespeare’s
story or plot may demand Romans or kings but what Shakespeare thinks about mainly
is the human element in them.
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Shakespeare’s emphasis on general human nature has
invited censure and hostility from some critics. Dennis and Rymer
complain that Shakespeare’s Romans are not sufficiently Roman. Voltaire’s
protest is that his kings are not kingly in the strict sense; that one of them,
Claudius in Hamlet, is depicted as a drunkard. In reality, Shakespeare assigns nature
as a prominent role and gives less room to its accidental features.
Romans and kings are essentially
human beings. What befalls all human beings may befall them too. A usurper and
murderer like Claudius can certainly be a lover of wine; buffoon may well be
picked from among Roman senators. Objections of the critics regarding this
issue merely proves their petty mindedness.
· Mixture of tragic and comic
elements were defended
Another allegation levelled against Shakespeare is that he was careless enough
to mix tragedy and comedy in the same- play. Johnson takes this point for a
detailed consideration. Johnson agrees in a strictest sense,
that,
Shakespeare’s
plays are neither comedies nor tragedies. They are compositions of a
distinct kind which show the real state of nature.
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Life is a flow of sorrow and
happiness, and it is also ill in various permutations and combinations. Hence a
portrait of life should consist of both; such an intermingled expression life
is unexceptionable; the loss of one is the gain of another. In this world the treacherousness of one is sometimes
beaten by the frolic of another, and at times people may contrive to help or
harm others without least intending to do so. Ancient poets used select crimes
and foolishness, vicissitudes and lighter incidents, kills of distress and joys
of prosperity and modified them in several of their plays. It must have been
thus that tragedy and comedy arose. But
it comes to our particular attention that no single lurk or Roman author
has attempted depicting both these aspects either in separate plays or in the
same composition. Shakespeare’s genius is proved in his power to give rise to joy
and sorrow through the same play. Almost all his plays have serious as
well as absurd characters and thus sometimes cause seriousness and
sorrow, and sometimes levity and laughter.
· Nature as a higher court of appeal rather than
rules of criticism
From the point of view of the rules of dramatic writing, Shakespeare’s
mingling of the tragic and the comic incidents may be considered as unfavourable
but the rules are less important than the claims of realism; there is always a
room for appealing criticism to nature. The aim of poetry is to please and
instruct and we may justify the drama which mingles the comic and the tragic,
because it achieves this aim better than pure drama; for it is closer to
reality. Critics justified in alleging that such mingling results in the
suspension of passions and interruption in their progress so that the principle
event loses the power of moving the hearts of the spectators.
The mingling of
tragic and comic scenes in Shakespeare’s plays succeeds in enhancing the
intensity of passions among the characters present in the plays.
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In
any case, mingled drama can give greater pleasure because pleasure consists in
variety.
· Classification of Shakespeare’s plays as artificial
in nature
Shakespeare has interchanged
scenes of seriousness and happiness in his plays.
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Besides rigorous differentiation between tragedy
and comedy that hardly existed in the time of Shakespeare, any play which had a
denouement providing happiness for its chief characters was regarded as a comedy,
and any play which had a catastrophe depicting death or disaster of the chief
character was labelled as a tragedy. A history play was believed
to be one which depicted a series of actions in a chronological order. It was
not always clearly distinguished from tragedy.
This technique soothes the mind on one hand and exalts it on the other
hand. Shakespeare always succeeds in achieving his purpose, whether it is to
gladden or to depress, he carries the story without vehemence or emotion. He
makes us laugh or mourn, to keep silent in quite expectation, tranquil but not
indifferent. Once we come to grasp Shakespeare’s plan in a particular play,
much of the criticism of Rymer and Voltaire loses its validity. Hamlet opens,
without any impropriety, with a dialogue between two sentinels. In Othello Iago’s shouting at
Brabantio’s window in the first Act does not harm the scheme of the play,
although his phraseology may be too, vulgar for, a modern spectator. There is
no gross impropriety either in the character of Polonius or in the grave-digger’s
conversation.
· Shakespeare’s natural affinity towards comedy
Shakespeare wrote his plays by
keeping his natural disposition. He was unaware of the rules of dramatic
writing. Rymer’s argument that Shakespeare’s natural disposition lay in the
direction of comedy is correct. In writing tragedy, Shakespeare seems to have –
toiled hard. His comic scenes, on the other hand, are spontaneous and
successful. Comedy was congenial to his nature. In his tragic scenes
there is always something longing in nature but his comic scenes often surpass
our expectations. His comedy pleases through the thoughts and language
whereas his tragedy pleases mainly through incidents and action.
Shakespeare’s
tragedy is a testimony of his skill whereas, his comedy is the product of
his instinct.
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Though time has brought in many changes of customs and manner,s the
force of his comic scenes has not abated. The intrigues and vexations of the
characters in the comic scenes still continue to please us because of their originality
or genuineness. The appeal of his comedies has stood the test of time.
Shakespeare seems to have obtained his comic dialogues from the common
intercourses of life, and not from the language of polite society or from
that of the learned people who tend to depart from the established forms of
speech. Shakespeare’s familiar dialogue is smooth and clear yet not wholly free
of ruggedness or difficulty.
WEAKNESSES OF SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS
·
Virtue is sacrificed
to convenience
He sacrifices
virtue to convenience, and is more careful to please than to instruct.
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The excellence of Shakespeare must not blind us to
the fact that his works also have numerous defects. These defects are so
serious that they would have sufficed to overwhelm the merit of any other
writer. The first impropriety in Shakespeare is that,
It is not incorrect to say that Shakespeare seems to write without any moral
purpose. Although we can select a whole system of axioms in his plays it is
not because he has paid any conscious thought to morality. These precepts seem
to come from him in a casual manner. In Shakespeare’s plays there is no just
distribution of evil and good. His virtuous characters do not always show a
disapproval of the wicked ones. His characters pass through right and wrong
indifferently and at the end if they serve as examples, they do so by chance
and not by the author’s efforts. The fact that the period in which he lived was
not too refined is not an excuse for this defect, because every writer has the
duty of trying to make the world a better place to live in.
·
Carelessness in plot
development
Shakespeare’s plots are often loosely knit and carelessly developed.
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In majority of the cases, just a little more attention would have been
enough to improve them. In fact, in his plays there are plenty of opportunities
to instruct or delight, but he makes use of some theatre tricks that makes the
work easy and rejects those which demand more effort and labour. In many of his
plays the later part appears to have been neglected. It seems that when he was
approaching the end of his work and the reward seemed near at hand, he exerted
less labour on the work in order to complete the work quickly and derive the
profits immediately. As a matter of fact, it is the conclusion at which he
ought to have exerted his maximum labour; lack of attention has resulted in the
catastrophe in several of his plays being improbably produced or imperfectly
represented.
·
Anachronism
Another fault in Shakespeare’s plays is anachronism; his violation of
chronology, or his indifference to historical accuracy.
Shakespeare is indifferent about the
distinctions of time and place and gives to one age or nation, the manners
and opinions which pertain to another.
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This is detrimental to the effect
of likelihood of the incidents. Alexander Pope opines that this defect is to be
attributed not to Shakespeare himself but to those who interpolated unnecessary
details of their own into his plays. But Johnson does not agree with this
statement. Shakespeare makes Hector quote Aristotle in Troilus and Cressida and
mingles classical legend with Gothic mythology in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. However, it
must be confessed that he was not the only violator of chronology. Sidney, a
contemporary writer, who was also learned and popular, in his Arcadia confounded the
pastoral period with the feudal age, whereas the two ages were quite opposite
to each other.
·
Coarseness of
dialogues
Shakespeare’s plays also has faults of
dialogue and diction.
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The dialogues in the comedies are
exposed to objection when the characters are made to engage in contests of
wit and sarcasm. Many of their jests are generally indecent and gross and
there is much licentiousness and indelicacy even where ladies join the
conversation. Even the refined characters speak on the same level as the clowns
and often all distinction between the two is lost. Whether, this was the real
conversation of ladies and gentlemen of his period is difficult to say. But the
coarseness of this conversation in Shakespeare’s plays cannot be approved; it
is the writer’s duty to make suitable selection even in the forms of gaiety.
·
Performance in
tragedies is found to be worse when more labour is spent
In his tragedies, Shakespeare’s performance is found to be worse
where he seems to have spent the most labour. When he works hard to be
effective, the result is unimpressive, tedious and obscure in nature.
·
Undue verbosity and
prolixity of words
The narrative parts of Shakespeare’s plays show an undue pomp of
diction and verbosity engaged with full of repetition. Instead of
enlivening the narration by making it brief, Shakespeare endeavours to make it
effective through dignity and splendour.
·
Use of flamboyant
speeches and inflated vocabulary
The set speeches in some of his plays are despiriting, cold and feeble.
It appears that as Shakespeare’s powers were natural, he performs badly
whenever he endeavours to create a particular effect deliberately. Often, he
seems to be involved in some unwieldy sentiment which he seems unable to
express and unwilling to drop. Complexity or intricacy of language does not
always accompany subtlety of thought. Quite often the quality of words does
not correspond to the thought or image for which they were employed. Trivial
sentiments and vulgar ideas are clothed in sonorous epithets and
high-sounding images. He often loses the heights of poetic loftiness by the
use of some idle conceit or dry equivocation. In such cases
terror and pity are degraded into a sort of frigidity. Thus, the intense
feelings aroused by him suddenly lost their intensity and became weak.
·
Craze for puns or
word play
Lastly, Shakespeare could never resist a quibble. Whatever be the
occasion of the dialogue, whether the situation be amusing or tense,
Shakespeare seizes the opportunity of employing a pun. Love of
quibbling misleads Shakespeare just as the will-o-the wisp misleads the
traveller in marshy places. A quibble is, after all, a trivial thing. But it
had such a fascination for Shakespeare that he would sacrifice reason,
propriety, and truth for its sake. It is to him like the golden apple for
which he would always turn aside from his path; his fatal Cleopatra for which
he would lose the world and be content to lose it. He was prepared to spoil his
whole play for the sake of quibble.
THE THREE UNITIES OF SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS
·
Shakespeare’s
disregard of unites is not a defect
Shakespeare had no consideration for the unities of time and place.
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One practice in Shakespeare’s writing of dramas,
which is regarded by critics as a defect but which is not really a defect, is his
neglect of the unities of time and place. It is held that these
rules have been laid down by the joint authority of poets and critics and hence
ought not to be violated. Johnson does not agree with this view, and defends
Shakespeare. One is not required to look for the unities in the history
plays. They need consistency and spontaneity of characterization
alone. The events in them are not subject to the writer’s control. In other
plays, Shakespeare has observed the unity of action. His plays has a beginning,
a middle and an end as laid down by Aristotle. Here and there we may
find an incident which could be easily spared, but, on the whole, there is
nothing superfluous in them. There is a logical sequence of incidents and the
conclusion follows naturally
In this case, the issue is
closely examined and it is found that unlike the unity of action, the
other two unities are no essential. They have given more trouble to the
dramatist than pleasure to the spectator
·
Unities of time and
place: Pros and Cons
The argument given in favour of the unities of time and place is that if
they are limit preserved, and
the credibility of the play is affected. No one will believe that an action
of months or years can take place within hours, that the scene can change from
Greece to Rome in the span if mimic acts. Our mind is averted, where revolts
against apparent falsehood makes fiction lose its impact when it does not
resemble reality. Johnson calls this argument stupid. It is a mistake to
imagine that the change of scene from Alexandria to Rome strains credibility;
to do so would imply that the spectator actually imagines himself at Alexandria
in the first act while he himself is sitting at a theatre in London. On the
same grounds, we can say, that no audience can actually believe in the point of
time that they are witnessing events that took place in the days of Antony and
Cleopatra. But if the audience can believe that in the first act they are at
Alexandria they can also believe that in the next act, they are in Rome, and
similarly they can also believe the changes in respect of time.
The spectators are fully aware, from the first act to the last, that the
stage on which events are being presented is only a stage and that the players
are only players. There is nothing wrong in representing the stage as Athens in
the first act of the drama and as Sicily in the second act when the stage is
only a stage, and neither Athens nor Sicily. If we accept that the unity of
place is dispensable, it is easy to accept that an extension of time is
also valid. Drama presents successive imitations of sequential actions, and
there is no reason why lapse of time is not to be allowed between cause and
effect, or in other words, between one act and the next act. The belief of the
audience is not adversely affected by lapse of time between acts.
·
The credulity of the
audience: dramatic illusion
The fact that the spectators do not believe that they are witnessing
actual events taking place at actual places does not mean that they are totally
incredulous of the various happenings on the stage. They take the dramatic performance
not as reality itself but as a just representation of reality. The evils
and vices that they see on the stage are not believed by the spectators as real
evils, but they are accepted as evils to which they themselves may be exposed.
If there is any illusion, it lies in the fact that the spectator fancies
himself unhappy for a moment when he sees the actor represent unhappiness; it
is not that the spectator believes the actor to be unhappy. The audience knows
that they are witnessing only a fiction, and it is this consciousness of
fiction that is a source of the pleasure of tragedy. If the audience took the
murders in tragedy for reality it may no longer amuse them.
·
Events enacted on the stage cause pain or
pleasure to the spectators not because they are seen as realities, but
because they bring realities to the mind.
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The stage brings life’s realities to mind
For instance, when we view
fountains or trees painted on a canvas, we do not, in fact, feel their
refreshing coolness and comfort, but we do imagine the freshness we may derive
if we were actually amidst the trees and fountains. We are agitated when we
read Henry the Fifth but never
do we take the pages of this play to be the battlefield of court again.
Witnessing a dramatic performance on the stage is similar to reading a book.
Comedy - mere
powerful on stage, and tragedy - more effective when read
Shakespeare’s Comedy is really more effective
when seen on the stage, but tragedy is often more stirring when read.
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Comic action enhances the
pleasure conveyed by words in a comedy, but neither voice nor gesture can add
dignity or force to the soliloquy of a tragic character like Cato.
·
About the
spectators, acceptance of scenic change and the passage of time
A reader acknowledges the changes of location and the lapse of time in a
narrative poem; similarly, one accepts these abnormalities in the case of a
drama enacted on the stage or read at home. It is a matter of indifference if
the unities of time and place are disregarded by a dramatist and if a longer or
shorter time is shown to have lapsed between the acts or if changes of scenes
are implied.
·
Possible ignorance
of Shakespeare in regard to the rules of the unities
It is not known whether Shakespeare was aware of the rules regarding the
unities and deliberately rejected them or if he violated the rules in sheer
ignorance of their existence. However, there must have been scholars enough to
advise him on this matter when he gained reputation.
Shakespeare
neglected the rules first in ignorance but later on deliberately.
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In the either way, the neglect is not lamentable. Such violations of
rules keeps the comprehensive genius of Shakespeare, and only petty-minded
critics would disapprove of such deviations from rules in his case.
·
Unities of time and
place are not essential
To keep the unities of time and place is not necessary although authority
is on the side of rules. True, the unities of time and place at time adds much
to the totality of the play; but there is no harm in sacrificing them for the
sake of the nobler beauties of variety and instruction. A play that
scrupulously observes the rules may be regarded as the product of superfluous
and showy art.
The greatest attributes of a play are to copy nature and instruct
life.
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If a dramatist complies in this matter and can yet observe all the
unities, he deserves honour for his accomplishment. Some of the critics who
advocate these unities are men of renown and worthy of respect. But perhaps, Johnson
says that the principles governing drama are in need of a fresh examination.
