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Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies, a non-fiction book by Samuel Johnson |
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_ Edited, with an Introduction, by Arthur Sherbo Los Angeles William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California 1958 GENERAL EDITORS Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan Ralph Cohen, University of California, Los Angeles Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles Lawrence Clark Powell, Clark Memorial Library
W. Earl Britton, University of Michigan
Emmett L. Avery, State College of Washington Benjamin Boyce, Duke University Louis Bredvold, University of Michigan John Butt, King's College, University of Durham James L. Clifford, Columbia University Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago Louis A. Landa, Princeton University Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota Ernest C. Mossner, University of Texas James Sutherland, University College, London H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
Edna C. Davis, Clark Memorial Library
Dr. Johnson's reaction to Shakespeare's tragedies is a curious one, compounded as it is of deep emotional involvement in a few scenes in some plays and a strange dispassionateness toward most of the others. I suspect that his emotional involvement took root when he read Shakespeare as a boy--one remembers the terror he experienced in reading of the Ghost in Hamlet, and it was probably also as a boy that he suffered that shock of horrified outrage and grief at the death of Cordelia that prevented him from rereading the scene until be came to edit the play. Johnson's deepest feelings and convictions, Professor Clifford has recently reminded us, can be traced back to his childhood and adolescence. But it is surprising to learn, as one does from his commentary, that other scenes in these very plays (Hamlet and King Lear, and in Macbeth, too) leave him unmoved, if one can so interpret the absence of any but an explanatory note on, say, Lear's speech beginning "Pray, do not mock me;/I am a very foolish fond old man." Besides this negative evidence there is also the positive evidence of many notes which display the dispassionate editorial mind at work where one might expect from Johnson an outburst of personal feeling. There are enough of these outbursts to warrant our expecting others, but we are too frequently disappointed. Perhaps Johnson thought of most of Shakespeare's tragedies as "imperial tragedies" and that is why he could maintain a stance of aloofness; conversely, "the play of Timon is a domestick Tragedy, and therefore strongly fastens on the attention of the reader." But the "tragedy" of Timon does not capture the attention of the modern reader, and perhaps all attempts to fix Johnson's likes and dislikes, and the reasons for them, in the canon of Shakespeare's plays must circle endlessly without ever getting to their destination. _ |
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