Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies

Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III:
The Tragedies

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III:
The
Tragedies, by Samuel Johnson This eBook is for the use of anyone
anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You
may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project
Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.net
Title: Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies
Author: Samuel Johnson
Editor: Arthur Sherbo
Release Date: April 6, 2005 [EBook #15566]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES TO
SHAKESPEARE ***

Produced by David Starner, David King, and the PG Online Distributed
Proofreading Team

THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY

SAMUEL JOHNSON
NOTES TO SHAKESPEARE
Vol. III
Tragedies
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
ASSISTANT EDITOR
W. Earl Britton, University of Michigan
ADVISORY EDITORS
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_
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
Edna C. Davis, Clark Memorial Library

Introduction on Tragedies
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.

TRAGEDIES
Vol. IV
MACBETH
(392) Most of the notes which the present editor has subjoined to this
play were published by him in a small pamphlet in 1745.
I.i (393,*) _Enter three Witches_] In order to make a true estimate of
the abilities and merit of a writer, it it always necessary to examine the
genius of his age, and the opinions of his contemporaries. A poet who
should now make the whole action of his tragedy depend upon
enchantment, and produce the chief events by the assistance of
supernatural agents, would be censured as transgressing the bounds of
probability, be banished from the theatre to the nursery, and
condemned to write fairy tales instead of tragedies; but a survey of the
notions that prevailed at the time when this play was written, will prove
that Shakespeare was in no danger of such censures, since he only
turned the system that was then universally admitted, to his advantage,
and was far from overburthening the credulity of his audience.
The reality of witchcraft or enchantment, which, though not strictly the

same, are confounded in this play, has in all ages and countries been
credited by the common people, and in most, by the learned themselves.
These phantoms have indeed appeared more frequently, in proportion
as the darkness of ignorance has been more gross; but it cannot