Summary
Summary of Preface to Shakespeare
Who it’s for
For readers of Shakespeare, students of literature, and anyone curious how a sharp eighteenth-century mind judged a famous writer. For anyone who enjoys witty arguments about human nature, comedy and tragedy, and what makes plays last.
What this book is
In 1765 Samuel Johnson published an eight-volume edition of the plays of William Shakespeare. At its head he placed a preface of some twenty thousand words, and it has been read on its own ever since. Johnson was by then the author of the great Dictionary of the English Language. He was also England's most trusted critic. He wrote the preface to settle a question: why do these plays, written more than a century earlier, still hold an audience?
His answer is neither worship nor fault-finding. Johnson praises Shakespeare for truth to human nature, and he defends his mixing of comedy and tragedy. He brushes aside the rule-bound critics who demanded neat unity of time and place. Then he lists the faults he sees, plainly and without apology. Last, he explains what an editor owes a text that printers and earlier editors had damaged. You will hear the case in six steps, beginning with how Johnson thinks a writer's worth should be measured.
In this summary
- 1Time is the fairest test of meritFree
- 2Shakespeare shows people as they really are
- 3Mixing tragedy and comedy is true to life
- 4The unities of time and place are not required
- 5Johnson lists Shakespeare's faults without flinching
- 6An editor must clean the text and guide the reader
Key point 1 of 6
Time is the fairest test of merit
Johnson begins with a question about how we judge writers. For living authors, he says, praise is tangled up with envy, friendship and fashion. Nobody can be sure that applause today will last. The dead are different. Once an author has been gone a long time, the readers who remain are those who value the work itself.
Johnson therefore treats the age of a work as evidence. A book that has pleased many readers through many years has passed a test that no single critic could set. He is careful to add a warning. Age alone proves nothing, because some old works survive only out of habit. The test counts only when the praise comes from readers who compare, judge and still return.
By 1765 Shakespeare had been dead for about a century and a half, and the plays had outlasted the changes of taste around them. Johnson argues that this record is a fairer measure than any theory. Fashions in manners and language had shifted again and again, and still audiences laughed and wept at the same scenes. The plays had won the verdict of time.
This opening matters for a modern reader too. It gives you a way to think about any book from the past. Ask what has kept it alive, and whether the reason lies in the book or only in its reputation. Johnson spends the rest of the preface answering that question for Shakespeare, and he does not let the answer rest on reputation alone.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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