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It may not be according to the rules, but it conforms to the realities of human life. He attacks the unities boldly and promotes, quite adventurously, the idea of experimentation in the field of drama.


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He acknowledges only the unity of action and holds the unites of place and time to have been the outcome of an abstract notion of theatrical illusion. It has already been averred that in many instances Johnson rises above the limits of neo-classicism and shows his independent intellect with its mature insight and perception. He admires Shakespeare in colourful words, speaks highly of the ages of youthful freshness and vigour when literature relied upon pure observation and natural intuition, borrowed nothing from books.

It shows that in his subconscious mind he too shared the change which was in the process of asserting itself among his contemporaries. Most often, Dr. But a curious student of literature may easily discover that he was an artist, a philosopher, a moralist and to an extent a man who based his judgement on instinct.


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He cherished a fine sense of relationship between form and content, and in the majority of cases he judged form with felicity and sureness. He attached great significance tO construction, structure, harmony of tone and various other literary techniques.

He was one who recognized the charm, the evocative force, the music, the sublime beauty and the superb rhythm of a verse or image. He was also a critic or a writer of creative intuition. But in spite of all these healthy virtues, he was a man of limitations and reservations.

He was not prepared to accept new movements that were too new for him. He criticized Gray and Collins who were the fore-runners of the Romantic Revival and who differed from the traditional literary standards and notions. He was not able to foresee the advent of Romanticism: instead, his attempt was to consolidate classicism in the field of literature. But, after all, one cannot help admitting that his arguments are intellectually stimulating and thought-provoking. His whole critical career is as notable for what it attacked as for what it attempted to. He attempted to cut away the overlaying and obscuring growth of pseudo-statement and to substitute only such determinations as were capable of verification by first hand experience.

He is asked instead only to accept whatever general principle seems to arise from an inductive and empirical process of specific examination, sometimes line by line and stanza by stanza and sometimes work by work through the entire career of an author. Often the treatment is too brief and summary, and the steps of. But more often than not such evaluations are intended as vigorous challenge to the reader to make an examination himself.

As Professor Tinker has said, the opinions of Johnson make us review the evidence, restate the case, and criticize the critic. The highest praise of his critical endeavors is that they are empirically lively in themselves and the cause of empirical liveliness in others. The two most outstanding contributions of Dr. As far as the latter is concerned, Johnson was amply qualified for the task which required tremendous zeal and endless endeavor.

Johnson, as an editor, had, a clear plan of what he had to do and his ways and approaches we almost unerring. It is true that his edition was delayed, but as his Proposals show, he had to accomplish a herculean task. Johnson possessed a clear idea of the responsibilities of an editor. He clearly stated that the duty of an editor was to establish as far as possible what an author had-written rather than what, in the opinion of the editor or his contemporaries, he ought to have written. The business of republishing an ancient book involves the correcting of what is corrupt and the explanation of what is obscure.

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But in correction one must avoid the method of conjecture as far as possible; conjecture is to be adopted only if all the other methods have proved futile. An editor is not supposed to modernize the work he is editing or make it more regular. Textual corruption : reasons.

Johnson traces the reasons of textual corruption.

The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page: Quotes on Perspective and Importance

One is careless printing. But in the case of Shakespeare the matter is quite different, Many of his allusions and references are obscure to later readers. Another fact is that Shakespeare wrote his plays at a time when the language was unified and so used words and phrases which are almost obsolete now.

He adopts all the other methods such as collating, examining the given text in the light of Elizabethan customs, habits and language. Conjectural ernendation is his last resort. Wherever Johnson confronts a serious difficulty in a passage he offers a good selection of notes by previous editors. In his selection of these notes he is judicious and impartial. Defects as an editor. For example Johnson is responsible for not collating all the editions prevailing then. He avoided, for instance, the copies in the possession of Garrick simply because of the fact that he was afraid of courting an actor.

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Those editors who followed Johnson, especially those who accepted him as an ideal model, have paid him valuable tributes. We may assuredly say that Johnson is the best of the early school of Shakespearean editors. Good sense, knowledge and research were his strong points. Though this necessitated shelving his project on Shakespeare, his interest in the plays remained strong.

The delay in the publication. Though he promised with reckless confidence to bring out the work the following year it was only after nine year that the set of eight volumes finally appeared. Public reproach. The delay in bringing out the edition stirred public criticism. At last on October 2, Johnson released his historic edition of Shakespeare. The public reaction towards the edition. Some writers like William Kendrick attacked it bitterly and this attack was duly answered by some student of Oxford. There were only a few textual emendations; and Johnson confesses that he did not use many of the emendations which he at first made, for he learned to use conjecture less and less as he went along.

He restored many readings of the First Folio and some of the Quartos as he had aimed to. He maintained that the First Folio was superior to the second. But his brief notes to the text are significant. But quite unlike his predecessors the credit of conveying his own individual response goes to him. Due to this fact his assessment is more complex and sophisticated, and also more interesting.

Shakespeare seen as the poet of nature.

Deformities of Dr Samuel Johnson. Selected from His Works

When Johnson says that in the writings of other poets the character is too often an individual and in those of Shakespeare a character is commonly a species, he is not frankly saying that the Shakespearean character is left individualized. Elsewhere Johnson maintains that perhaps no poet has ever kept his personages more distinct from each other. It was attested also by some of the eighteenth century writers that Shakespearean drama conveyed a favourable view of human nature. Lack of moral purpose. Johnson remarks that Shakespeare lacks moral purpose at the end of his plays.

He believed that the feat of punishment was a necessary stimulus to virtue, and that men would desist from evil only if justice was seen to be operating in the world. As a strongly moralistic critic he hoped for a work of art to demonstrate the same kind of rigid justice that he wanted to find in real life. Therefore, the death of innocent Cordelia was not acceptable to Johnson. Johnson favourable to the comedies. Many of the remarks and notes in the Preface are rendered from the perspective of eighteenth century literary and dramatic conventions.

The eighteenth century critics regarded a play as an emulation of real events and real people. Therefore they were particular that the soliloquies be properly motivated and not just addressed to the spectators. Hence they also thought in undesirable that a character feeling the throbs of strong emotion should employ highly wrought imagery or word play in his speeches.

In tragedy he is always struggling after some occasion to be comic, but in comedy he seems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a mood of thinking congenial to his nature. His comedy pleases by the thoughts and. His tragedy seems to be skill his comedy to be instinct.

Though Samuel Johnson abided by the literary rules and regulations of the eighteenth century, there are two crucial instants in which he defended Shakespearean drama with such an emphasis that he has been hailed as an outright dissenter against the neoclassic rules and proprieties. He considers these unities to be spurious and maintains that those who back them fail to distinguish between the real world and the imaginary world of the play.

As an editor, Johnson has brought about sound adjustments designed to accommodate lapses of time and changes of place by more convenient distribution of acts and scenes. He showed sound sense in overlooking all Folios save the First, but his edition is defective largely because he failed to take the texts of several Quartos into consideration. Nor did the existing approach towards the poetic language and dramatic dialogue encourage him to produce, by modern norms, a good text. The majority of the eighteenth century editors felt it justifiable to suggest emendation wherever a text seemed corrupt to them.

In this regard, Johnson is far less guilty than many of his predecessors.