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James Joyce Biography

LIFE OF THE AUTHOR

james joyce biography:James Joyce was born in Dublin. His father, John Stanislaus Joyce, was an impoverished gentleman, who had failed in a distillery business and tried all kinds of professions, including politics and tax collecting. Joyce’s mother, Mary Jane May Murray, was ten years younger than her husband. She was an accomplished pianist, whose life was dominated by the Roman Catholic Church and her husband. In spite of the poverty, the family struggled to maintain solid middle-class facade. From the age of six, Joyce was educated by Jesuits at Clongowes Wood College, at Clane, and then at Belvedere College in Dublin (1893-97). Later the author thanked Jesuit for teaching him to think straight, although he rejected their religious instructions. At school, he once broke his glasses and was unable to do his lesson. This episode was recounted in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). In 1898 he entered the University College, Dublin, where he found his early inspirations from the works of Henrik Ibsen, St. Thomas Aquinas and W.B. Joyce’s first publication was an essay on Ibsen’s play When We Dead Awaken. It appeared in Fortnightly Review in 1900. At this time he began writing lyric poems.

After graduation in 1902 the twenty-year-Old Joyce went to Paris, where he worked as a journalist, teacher and in Other Occupations in difficult financial conditions. He spent in France a year, returning when a telegram arrived saying his mother was dying. Not long after her death, Joyce was traveling again. He left Dublin in 1904 with Nora Barnacle, a chambermaid (they married in 1931), staying in Pola now in Croatia, Austria-Hungary, and in Trieste, which was the world’s seventh busiest port. Joyce gave English lessons in Berlitz School and talked about setting up an agency to sell Irish tweed. He continued to live abroad refusing a post teaching Italian literature in Dublin. The Trieste years were nomadic, poverty-stricken, and productive Joyce and Nora loved this cosmopolitan port city at the head of the Adriatic Sea; where they lived in a number of different addresses. During this period, Joyce wrote most of Dubliners (1914), all of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the play, Exiles (1918), and large sections of Ulysses. Several of Joyce’s siblings joined them, and two children, Giorgio and Lucia, were born. The children grew up speaking the Trieste dialect of Italian. Joyce and Nora stayed together although Joyce fell in love with Anny schleimer, the daughter of an Austrian banker, and Roberto Prezioso, the editor of the newspaper II Piccolo della Sera, fried to seduce Nora. After a short stint in Rome in 1906-07 as a bank clerk ended in illness, Joyce returned to Trieste,

In 1907, Joyce published a collection of poems, Chamber Music. The title was suggested, as the author later stated, by the sound of urine tinkling into a prostitute’s chamber pot, The have with vowels and repetitions such musical quality that many of them have been made into songs. “I have left my book, / I have left my room, / for I heard you singing (through the gloom.” Joyce himself had a fine tenor voice; he greatly liked opera performances. In 1909, Joyce opened a cinema in Dublin, but this affair failed and he was soon back in Trieste still broke and working as a teacher, tweed salesman journalist and

Lecturer. In 1912, he was in Ireland, trying to persuade Maunsel & Co. to fulfill their contract to publish Dubliners. The work contained a series of short stories, dealing with the lives of ordinary people, youth, adolescence, young adulthood, and maturity. The last story, ‘ ‘The Dead”, was adapted into screen by John Huston in 1987. It was Joyce’s last journey to his native country. However, he had become friend with Ezra Pound, who began to market his works. In 1916, appeared A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, an autobiographical novel. It apparently began as a quasi-biographical memoir entitled Stephen Hero between 1904 and 1906. Only a fragment of the original manuscript has survived. The book follows the life of the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, from childhood towards maturity, his education at University College, Dublin, and rebellion to free himself from the claims of family and Irish nationalism. Stephen takes religion seriously, and considers entering a seminary, but then also rejects Roman Catholicism. “—look here, Cranly, he said.

You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using my defense the only arms I allow myself to use — silence, exile, and cunning.” At the end, Stephen resolves to ‘leave Ireland for Paris to encounter “the reality of experience”. He wants to establish himself as a writer. At the outset of the First World War, Joyce moved with his family to Zürich, where Lenin and the poet essayist Tristan Tzara had found their refuge. Joyce’s WW I years with legendary Russian revolutionary and Tzara, who founded the Dadaist movement at the Cabaret Voltaire provide the basis for Tom Stoppard’s play Travesties (1974). In Zürich. Joyce started to develop the early chapters of Ulysses, which was first published in France, because of censorship troubles in the Great Britain and the United States, where the book became legally available in 1933. The theme of jealousy was based partly on a story. A former friend of Joyce claimed that he had been sexually intimate -with the author’s wife, Nora, even while Joyce was courting her. Ulysses takes place on one day in Dublin (June 16, 1904) and reflected the classic work of Homer. The main characters are Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising canvasser, his wife Molly, and Stephen the hero from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. are intended to be modem of Telemachus, Ulysses, and Penelope. Barmaids are the famous Sirens. One of the Model for Bloom was Ettore Schmitz (Italo Svevo), a novelist and businessman who was Joyce’s student at the Berlitz school) in Trieste. Story; using stream-of- consciousness technique, parallels the major events in (Odysseus’ journey towards home. However, Bloom’s adventures are less heroic and his homecoming is less violent. Bloom makes his trip to the underworld by attending a funeral at Glasnevin Cometary. ‘We are now for the repose of his soul. Hoping you’re well and not in hell. Nice changed air; out of the .frying pan of life into the fire of purgatory.” the paths of Stephen and Bloom cross and recross through the day. Joyce’s technical innovations in the art of the novel include an extensive use of interior monologue; he used a complex network of symbolic parallels drawn from the mythology, history, and literature from 1917 to 1930, Joyce endured several eye operations, being totally blind for short intervals. (According to tradition, Homer was also blind.) In March 1923, Joyce began in Paris his second major work, Finnegan’s Wake, suffering at the same time chronic eye troubles caused by glaucoma. The first segment of the novel appeared in Ford Madox Ford’s transatlantic review in April 1924, as part of what Joyce called Work in Progress. Wake occupied Joyce’s time for the next sixteen years — final version was completed late in 1938. A copy of the novel was present at Joyce’s birthday celebration in February 1939. Joyce’s daughter Luda, born in Trieste in 1907, became Carl Jung’s patient in 1934. In her teens, she studied dance, and later The Paris Times praised her skills as choreographer, linguist, and performer. With her father, she collaborated in Pomes Penyeach (1927), for which she did some illustrations. Lucia’s great love was Samuel Beckett, who was not interested in her. In the 1930s, she started to behave erratically. At the Burghölz psychiatric clinic in Zürich, where Jung worked, she was diagnosed schizophrenic. Joyce was left bitter at Jung’s analysis of his daughter — Jung thought that she was too close with her father’s psychic system. In revenge, Joyce played in Finnegan’s Wake with Jung’s of Animus and Anima. Lucia died in a mental hospital in Northampton, England, in 1932. After the fall of France in WW II, Joyce returned to Zurich, where he was taken ill. He was diagnosed of having a perforated duodenal ulcer. Joyce died after an operation, on January 13, 1941, still disappointed with the reception of Finnegan’s Wake, published on 4 May, 1939, by Faber and Faber. His last words were: “Does nobody understand?” Joyce was buried in Zurich at Fluntern Cemetery.

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John Donne Biography

Table of Contents

• John Donne Biography (Life and Works)
  • John Donne— A Short Biographical Sketch
  • Family background:
  • Education and early poems:  
  • Expeditions to Cadiz and the Azores:  
  • Marriage and its consequences:  
  • Writings In verse and prose:  
  • The end of financial worries:  
  • Friendships with Mrs. Herbert and the Countess of Bedford:  
  • Two prose works:  
  • His ordination:  
  • Poetic works of his middle years:  
  • As a churchman:  
  • A great preacher:
  • The last sermon: The monument:  
  • Posthumous publications:  
  • Biographies by Izaac Walton and Edmund Gosse:  

JOHN DONNE BIOGRAPHY (LIFE AND WORKS)

JOHN DONNE— A SHORT BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

John Donne Biography

FAMILY BACKGROUND:

John Donne was born sometime in the first half of 1572 in the City of London. His father was a prosperous merchant of Welsh ancestry, who rose to be warden of the Ironmongers’ Company in 1574. Two years later he died. Donne’s mother was Elizabeth Heywood, daughter of John Heywood, epigrammatist and playwright. The family had a strong Roman Catholic tradition. Donne’s mother’s brothers, Ellis Heywood and Jasper, were both Jesuits who died in exile. His younger brother, Henry, died at the age of nineteen in 1593, having caught a fever in the prison to which he had been committed for providing shelter to priest.

EDUCATION AND EARLY POEMS:  

In 1584, Donne matriculated at Hart Hall, Oxford. As it was impossible for a Roman Catholic to take the oath of supremacy required at graduation, he left without taking a degree. According to Izaac Walton, Donne went to Cambridge on leaving Oxford. He entered as a law student at Thavies Inn, London, in 1591, and moved to Lincoln’s Inn in 1592. He read voraciously and lived gaily. He was described as a great visitor of ladies, a great frequenter of plays, and a great writer of conceited verses. Most probably he traveled extensively during the period between leaving Oxford and entering the rims of Court. According to one account, about the nineteenth year of his age he, being unresolved about what religion to adhere to, put aside other studies m order to survey and consider the body of divinity. But the dandy and wit, and the serious student, are both reflected in the poems Donne wrote at this time. His poems, though not published until after his death, were circulated in manuscript, and like Wyatt’s and Surrey’s, had an immense influence on younger poets. Part of this poetry is in such classical forms as satires, elegies, and epistles (though its style has anything but classical smoothness), and part is written in lyrical forms of extraordinary variety.

EXPEDITIONS TO CADIZ AND THE AZORES:  

In 1596, Donne went on the  Earl of Essex’s Cadiz expedition, an enterprise that ranked for daring with the repulse of the Armada. In 1597, he went on a voyage to the Azores. The Storm and The Calm, brilliant examples of poetical journalism, describe this second expedition. On his return, he became Secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper. He had, by this time, conformed to the Church of England (In other words, he had given up his Catholic faith).

MARRIAGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES:  

In 1601, he fell passionately and seriously in love with Ann More, the young niece of the Lord Keeper and, by his secret marriage to her, ruined his chances of a promising diplomatic career. He was imprisoned for the offence of marrying a minor without her guardian’s consent, and the girl’s father, Sir George More, secured his dismissal from Egerton. On his release, he found himself without employment and, his wife without a dowry. For fourteen years after that, he ate the bitter bread of dependence.

He had spent his patrimony as a young man about town and the following years were years of poverty and humiliation. His marriage proved to be the great error of his life from the worldly point of view. In his mood of despair, he yet wrote wittily to his wife: “John Donne, Ann Donne, Un-done.” At the beginning of his married life, Donne was lucky to be offered board and lodging at Pyrford by his wife’s cousin Sir Francis Wooley. In this quiet Surrey village, he spent three years of retirement increasing his knowledge, reading widely (chiefly in theology), away from the storms and glare of London, where during this time the great Elizabeth Age came slowly to its dose.

Between 1590 and 1602 Donne must have written many of the secular poems we now admire. Residence with Wooley lasted from 1602 to 1604. After the death of Wooley, the Donnes took a house at Mitcham (also in Surrey), until such time (1609) as Sir Robert Drury took them under his protection.

WRITINGS IN VERSE AND PROSE:  

The finest of Donne’s poems, the Songs and Sonnets, cannot be dated with any certainty. But some were certainly written after his marriage since they assume a king upon the throne. The more serious and impassioned of them center, in all probability, round Ann More. The more cynical and outrageous of these poems belong perhaps to Lincoln’s Inn period. To the same period belong the Elegies, and the Paradoxes and Problems (in prose). These last, however, are a warning of the uncertainty of such a conjecture, since Donne was capable of amusing himself with this kind of witty trifling as late as 1607. Donne did not write for publication. He wrote to please himself and his friends. Original as the Songs and Sonnets are, many are brilliant variations on stock themes. The impulse behind any one of them may have been an artistic pleasure in making something new out of an old topic rather than a wish to express personal feeling. According to another view, however, most of these poems convey the personal experiences of the author.

THE END OF FINANCIAL WORRIES:  

From 1602 to 1615 Donne struggled to find ways to support himself and his growing family. His wife bore him twelve children, seven of whom survived her. She died a premature death in 1617. At first, he depended on charity, but after a few years, he found a use for his extensive learning in helping Thomas Morton in his controversies with Roman Catholics. As early as 1607 Morton had urged Donne to take orders, but Donne had refused on grounds of personal unworthiness. Donne was probably also reluctant to give up all hope of a secular career. Sir George More, at last, relented over the dowry, and Donne found himself free from serious financial worry.

FRIENDSHIPS WITH MRS. HERBERT AND THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD:  

Donne had a gift for friendship, and knew well many of the people who mattered most outside the narrow and exalted circle of the court itself. Among his friendships, at this time it is pleasant and important to note one in particular: his association with the Herbert family, and especially with Magdalen Herbert, a remarkable woman and most virtuous. Donne wrote for this woman the lovely elegy The Autumnal where, he says, “affection takes reverence’s name.” The Autumnal is a characteristic metaphysical poem of Donne’s middle period, thoroughly secular in style. An even greater lady among Donne’s friends at this time was his patroness Lucy, Countess of Bedford who lived at Twickenham and to whom Donne addressed some of his Verse Letters. Through her he came into contact with influential persons.

TWO PROSE WORKS:  

His first published work, Pseudo-Martyr (in prose), written to persuade Roman Catholics to take the oath of allegiance, appeared in 1610. It earned him an honorary degree of MA. at Oxford and also brought him to the notice of the King. This weighty work was followed by Ignatius his Conclave (1611), a brilliant and bitter little squib against the Jesuits.

HIS ORDINATION:  

In 1610, Donne found a new patron in Sir Robert Drury who took him abroad from November 1611 to August 1612. On his return, he courted the King’s powerful favorite Viscount Rochester. He wrote to Rochester expressing an intention to lake orders. But a later letter to a friend, asking him to use his influence with Rochester to secure a diplomatic post, shows him wavering. There is no doubt of Donne’s reluctance to take orders. But he finally gave way in obedience to King James’s direct pressure.

He was ordained on the 23rd January 1615 and at the age of forty-three began a new life as a priest. Shortly after his ordination Donne was, by royal command, made a Doctor of Divinity at Cambridge, and his fame as a preacher spread so rapidly that he was offered benefices in many parts of the country. He refused them all, for he did not wish to leave London. When in 1617 his wife died, leaving him with seven children to bring up, he withdrew from the world and became solitary. “In this retiredness”, wrote Izaak Walton, “which was often from the sight of his dearest friends, he became crucified to the world, and all those vanities, those imaginary pleasures, that are daily acted on that restless stage: and they were perfectly crucified to him”

POETIC WORKS OF HIS MIDDLE YEARS:  

During these middle years, Donne wrote two poems for publication, the Anniversaries of 1611 and 1612, in commemoration of the death of Elizabeth Drury, the 15-year-old daughter of his patron. He also composed funeral pieces, complimentary epistles, and two epithalamions: one for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth, and the other for the wedding of Somerset and the Countess of Essex. Most of his “Divine Poems” belong to this period also, notably A Litany and two sets of sonnets: La Corona, a linked sequence on the mysteries of the Christian religion, and the Holy Sonnets, in which with intense feeling and great force of language he treats the age-old themes of meditation: sin, death, and judgment. After his ordination, Donne wrote very little poetry. His creative impulse found a new outlet in preaching.

AS A CHURCHMAN:  

Donne felt a deep satisfaction in the exercise of his functions as a churchman and was conscientious in performing his duties. Like all distinguished churchmen of his day, he was a pluralist, holding country livings as a non-resident and the city living of St. Dunstan-in-the-West. In 1616, he was appointed Reader in Divinity to the Benchers of Lincoln’s Inn. In 1619, he went abroad as chaplain to Viscount Doncaster on a mission to the German princes in an effort to avert the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War. In 1621, he became Dean of St. Paul’s. There was a proposal in 1630 to make him a bishop, but he was by then a very sick man. He died in London on the 31st March 1631, and was buried in St. Paul’s, where his monument still stands.

A GREAT PREACHER:

Donne received many tributes to his impressiveness in the pulpit. He was a favorite preacher at court, and much approved by that learned theologian, King James. James’s more devout, if less learned, son, Charles I, chose Donne to preach the first sermon of his reign. But Donne’s finest sermons were preached in St. Paul’s on the great feasts. They are splendid examples of the formal sermon, preached under heads given by the dividing of the text and buttressed with massive scriptural and patristic quotations, full of flashes of poetic imagination.

They also display a profound knowledge of the human heart and a firm grasp on the central doctrines of Christianity. A few sermons were printed in his lifetime. His only other publication after his ordination was Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions – (1624), the fruit of a serious illness in the winter of 1623. During this illness, Donne wrote the ‘hymn to God the Father”, and “Hymn to God in My sickness”, although, according to another version, he wrote this last poem on his death-bed.

THE LAST SERMON: THE MONUMENT:  

Donne was too ill to preach at Christmas 1630, but he was able to preach before the King on the 12th February 1631. His appearance, as an obviously dying titan, made a deep impression and many said that Dr. Donne had preached his own funeral sermon. This last sermon, under the title “Death’s Duel”, was published shortly after his death. Between preaching this sermon and his death, Donne had his picture painted in his shroud and composed his epitaph. The picture was lying original of the engraved portrait prefixed to “Death’s Duel”, and from it Nicholas Stone carved the monument in St. Paul’s, where Donne stands in his shroud upon an urn.

POSTHUMOUS PUBLICATIONS:  

Eighty sermons, which Donne had written out in full as a legacy to his son, were published by the latter in 1640, with the first version of Walton’s Life of Donne prefixed. A further fifty sermons appeared in 1649. The younger Donne also published Essays in Divinity and Letters to Several Persons Of Honur in 1651. The Poems, which had circulated widely in manuscript copies, appeared in 1633, and an enlarged edition in 1635. It is not known who was responsible for these editions. There were further editions in 1639, 1649, 1650, 1654, and 1669. Between the last of these and the appearance of Donne in John Bell’s Poets of Great Britain (1779), there is only Jacob Tonson’s edition of 1719.

BIOGRAPHIES BY IZAAC WALTON AND EDMUND GOSSE:  

Walton revised his Life of Donne (1640) in 1658 and again in 1670 and 1675. His declared purpose, to show the world “the best plain picture of the author’s life which my artless pencil, guided by the hand of truth, could present”, does not indicate the degree to which he was prompted by the desire to present his hero in the most edifying light.

Sir Edmund Gosse’s Life and Letters of John Donne (1899) remains the only full biography, but it is extremely unreliable. All students of Donne have to be on their guard against Walton’s gift for charming and probable anecdote, and Gosse’s habitual inaccuracy and constitutional inability to distinguish between fact and conjecture.

The essential truth about Donne lies in these words of Izaak Walton. “He was by nature highly passionate, but more apt to reluct all the excesses of it. A great lover of the offices of humanity, and of so merciful a spirit, that he never beheld the miseries of mankind without pity and relief”

JOHNSON A SHAKESPEAREAN EDITOR

Introduction. The two most outstanding contributions of Dr. Johnson are his Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare’s plays. 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.

The duty of an editor : Johnson’s concept. 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. 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. “If the phraseology is to be changed as words grow uncouth by disuse, or gross by vulgarity, the history of every language will be lost; we shall no longer have the words of any author, and as these alternations will be unskillfully made, we shall in time have very little of his meaning”. Johnson’s edition scrupulously avoids this pitfall.

Textual corruption : reasons. Johnson traces the reasons of textual corruption. 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. Yet rioter factor, which is a characteristic feature of Shakespeare himself, itarnely, “the fullness of idea, which might sometimes load his words with more sentiment than they could conveniently convey and that rapidity of imagination which might hurry him to a second liought before he had fully explained the first.” In such contexts Johnson is careful to leave the text Without emendation. 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. Johnson can also be called the first ‘Variorum’ editor of Shakespeare’s plays.

Johnson’s notes. 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. Besides giving his own notes in a particular context, he also seeks out other editors’ opinion and notes, and in this aspect of his performance as an editor he is wise and scholarly. It helped other later editors to a great extent and it is not rare to see that many modern editors have reproduced some part pf these notes in their annotations of Shakespeare’s plays.

Defects as an editor. As one critic says, “His knowledge (of Elizabethan language) was casual, unsystematic, fragmentary, and almost dilettante, not only by present day standards but by those which were to be introduced by his immediate successors his indolence often prevented him from doing what he knew perfectly well ought to be done”. 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.

Conclusion. 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.

THE PUBLICATION OF JOHNSONS EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS

Introduction. Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare was twenty years in gestation before finally appearing in 1765. In 1745 he published a pamphlet entitled “Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth” along with a single sheet in the form of an advertisement, setting forth “Proposals for a New Edition of Shakespeare.” But due to various reasons, Johnson could not carry on the project: instead, in the following year he began work on his l)dictionary. Though this necessitated shelving his project on Shakespeare, his interest in the plays remained strong.
The delay in the publication. In 1756 Johnson returned to Shakespeare with the publication of his Proposals for Printing by Subscription, the Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare, Corrected and Illustrated by Samuel. Johnson. 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.
Boswell felt that it was Johnson’s “indolence (that) prevented him from pursuing (this project) with that diligence which alone can collect those scattered facts that genius, however acute, penetrating, and luminous, cannot discover by its own force”.

Public reproach. The delay in bringing out the edition stirred public criticism. Johnson’s rivals took this opportunity to spread scandal against Johnson. Even his friends began to doubt the sincerity of Johnson’s promise and prospects. Boswell indicates that Johnson’s troubles in bringing out the edition of Shakespeare “had been severe and remit-tent”. At last on October 2, 1765 Johnson released his historic edition of Shakespeare. As can be seen, the title of Johnson’s edition gave no hint of his Preface , but to the contemporary writers and readers this was the most notable aspect of his edition.

The public reaction towards the edition. The public reaction towards Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare varied. Some writers (like William Kendrick) attacked it bitterly and this attack was duly answered by some student of Oxford. But the most important fact is that his Preface to the edition of Shakespeare’s plays was accepted as the best statement concerning the nature and scope of Shakespeare’s achievement.

Conclusion. It must be pointed out that Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare’s did not fulfill the expectations raised by his Proposals. 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. A critic holds “Those who have waded through the notes in any of the great American Variorum editions know that three names are sure to arrest the mind; they are those of Johnson, Goethe, and Coleridge.”

JOHNSON AS A LITERARY CRITIC

Introduction. Among the most renowned critics Johnson’s position is second to none. It is true that we often find ourselves disagreeing with what he says, and some of his arguments may not be convincing, yet most of his view points are well argued and intelligible. He is generally regarded as a pillar of the new-classical school, although he sometimes seems to challenge some of its basic theories and turns quite amazingly imaginative and impressionistic. So far as his ways of expression are concerned he is a true new-classicist, but regarding his views we must not blindly stamp him as a neo-classicist. Johnson as a critic, is unmistakable a moralist, but he does not seem incapable of enjoying and valuing works of pure literary qualities. As a critic and prose-writer and also as an editor of Shakespeare’s plays his influence on the later critics was deep and enduring.

Johnson’s temperament as a critic. Johnson’s literary doctrines involve some salient features. First and foremost Johnson relied upon reason (opposed to imagination) and hence the rationality in his approach. He was, in a sense, experimental and logical rather than sticking to a particular point of view which is established and unquestioned for a long period. Secondly, his conservative tendencies played a crucial role in the making of his critical I perspective. The third point is that Johnson’s views are often tinged with his personal judgement. They are based on sturdy common sense’, his experience and wide knowledge acquired from reading literary works and the classics. The fourth important factor is his own moral and religious outlook developed from an austere philosophy of life. The nucleus of Johnson’s critical tenets is a combined product of all the above factors. Johnson is not, in the least, a romantic, yet a certain amount of emotion can be seen to have influenced his rationalism. But, at the same time, he was against sentimentalism. He was a man of dictatorial views, yet he showed no reluctance to accept all that was verified, basically sound and tested. Johnson’s approach an author is not as a critic who sets out fully armed and prepared to tear him down—but as a man of mature intellect, an open mind and sound standards of judgement. Thus, his approach towards Shakespeare is intimate and judicious. But his own code in turn attained a dogmatic character, and became hardened against all threat of a change. He showed an utter distrust of any innovation in literature. He looked upon the heroic couplet as the best form of verse. He thought that rhyme was indispensable to poetry. He discarded all the proposals of imitating the Spenserian stanza. Thus classicism now became a dogma kept alive through its connection with the moral and social needs of authority, orderliness, and tradition, rather than through the direct and simple demands of aesthetic tastes.

Definition and function of criticism. Johnson has, at more than one place, endeavoured to define criticism. The definition of a critic in his dictionary runs as ‘a man skilled in the art of judging in literature’. He also passes his approval on Dryden’s opinion that by criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle was meant a “standard of judging well.” Johnson calls Aristotle the father of criticism and Dryden the father of English criticism. He admires Dryden’s contribution to English criticism and maintains that it was he who first taught Englishmen “to determine upon principle the merits of composition”. Criticism, for Johnson, was both an art and a science. It can immortalise a work of art and illuminate it as well as unveil its hidden truths and values, he was much concerned about the perversion of criticism in the hands of ‘modern’ critics. “In practice, criticism is a study by which men grow important and fi)rmidable at very small expense he whom nature has made weak, and idleness kept ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic”. Johnson believed that the task of criticism is to establish principles and improve opinion into knowledge. It demands a disciplined approach because it is a vocation rather than a profession or even a career. According to Johnson criticism is not merely the art of appreciation, nor are its principles to be grounded in fancy or imagination; instead, it is to be built on the solid ground of reason and intelligence. He never goes about telling how a given work of art has been appealing to his heart unless it is equally appealing to the majority of readers. In this sense we see him opposed to the ‘impressionistic’ school of criticism.

Johnson relied much upon experience and experimental investigation and considered the faculty of memory crucial since it is the faculty in which experience is stored. This is convincingly put in the following passage that comes in the early part of his Preface to Shakespeare: “To works of which the excellence is not absolute and definite, but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon principles demonstrative and scientific, but appealing wholly to observation and experience, no other test can be applied than length of duration and continuance of esteem what mankind have long possessed they have often examined and compared and if they persist to value the possession it is because frequent comparisons have confirmed opinions in their favour….in the productions of genius, nothing can be styled excellent till it has been compared with other works of the same kind. Demonstration immediately displays its power, and has nothing to hope or fear from the flux of years; but works tentative and experimental must be estimated by their proportion to the general and collective in a long succession of endeavours.”

The aim of poetry. Although Johnson follows the classical concept that the chief objective of a work of art its to please and instruct, he gives it a new colouring. For him the main end of art is to instruct by pleasing. To put it in a different way, great art stirs an awareness, ushers in a process of enlightenment in those who experience it, which is inseparable from the action of providing delight. When Johnson maintains that literature instructs us by Pleasing, we may have a sense of emphasis being laid on the aspect of moral instruction. But Johnson clearly assents that pleasure should be the medium of instruction. There can be literature which merely pleases, but according to him, there can be no literature which merely instructs.

Johnson and the traditional creeds. Generally, Dr. Johnson is regarded as one of the advocates of neo-classicism. This is true in a certain sense, yet, from another perspective he seems to oppose the neo classical principles. However, he clearly believes in the neo classical concept of ‘generality’ or universality. He also conforms to the new-classical preference for ‘types’ in character, but he is not prepared to take this doctrine to the extreme; he firmly disregards the objection that Shakespeare’s Romans are not sufficiently Roman.It is enough for Johnson that they are sufficiently human. He also opposes the neo-classical insistence on purity of genres. He does not accept the view that the tragic and the comic must never be mixed. The exponents of this rule advance two justifications in support of their argument. Firstly, they maintain that a tragedy must never admit a comic scene because it may spoil the purity of lie genre and hinder the even flow. Secondly, they consider tragedy and comedy to be separate genres, distinct and exclusive in their effect and hence alternate comic and tragic scenes may prove to be mutually cancelling in effect. Johnson established how both these arguments are untenable. According to him the basic thing in art is truth, and the mingling of the comic elements with the tragic is acceptable because it is true to life. What is true can hardly be inartistic. Again, the mingled drama provides us with pleasure through its variety. If the basic function of art is to instruct by pleasing, mingled drama, due to its variety of pleasure, should be in a better position to discharge this function than pure drama (i.e., pure comedy or pure tragedy). Thus he proves that a mingling of the serious and light elements is not merely permissible but, in fact, effective in fulfilling the function of literature.

Johnson and the unities. The period of neo-classicism is a period of rules. There was a tendency to bring art inside the framework of orderliness and discipline. Thus, the champions of this literary movement insisted on sense and reason in art. They accepted the classics as their models. Proper word at proper place was the guideline for their style. In drama too they had certain pre-determined notions about structure, plot and characterization. One of these was their insistence on the three unites. Neo-classical critics criticized Shakespeare because of his disregard. of the unities. But Johnson is more open-minded and he appeals to reason and common sense rather than rigid rules in judging a play. He chides the blind followers of absolute realism in a play and points out that drama has aspects other than realism and these aspects are equally important in a critical evaluation of a dramatic piece. Change of scene and passage of time do not spoil the dramatic illusion. The proof of this argument lies in the fact that a spectator, who thinks that by. entering a theater he has moved from the London of his own times to the Rome of Antony, can equally take it for granted that in another act he has moved from Rome to Alexandria. In fact the spectators are thoroughly conscious that the theater is only a theater and the players are only players. It is the power of human imagination that leads them to compare the enacted incidents to real life and evaluate the worth and significance of the dramatic performance. The attempt of neo-classicism was to build, mainly on one side of experience, on order, arrangement, unity and uniformity. Its aim was to transform the purely subjective content of experience into a highly stylized, general product. Aristotle holds that art is an imitation of nature. Unity of impact is the ultimate ideal of classicism. But this unity of impact is not the least hurt by either the shifting of place or by the duration of the action being more than a day. Nor is it affected by the mingling of the tragic and the comic within the same work—if done artistically.

Johnson and poetic fidelity. The doctrine on which Johnson refutes poetic justice is quite antithetical to the one which he uses in criticizing the doctrine of unities. His inherent bias for a moral conclusion in a work of art might have made him sympathetic to the idea of rewarding the good and chastising the bad. Thus the death of innocent Cordelia in King Lear was unbearable to him. However, he does not approve of the validity of poetic justice as an artistic device or critical principle. Johnson rules out Dennis’s criticism of Addison’s Cato on the ground that it violates the principle of poetic justice. His contention is that dramatic poetry is nothing but an emulation of reality and so its rules are not broken by displaying the world in its true nature. Johnson might have been aware of the fact that the works of writers who rigidly observe Poetic justice are poor whereas Shakespeare’s plays are exceptionally powerful in spite of their violation of the so-called poetic justice. It may be on account of this inward awareness that he defends the plays by stating that they show the real state of sublunary things.

Johnson’s sound common sense. In the present age Johnson is remembered most of all for his critical studies and his novel Rasselas. As a critic Johnson has established his position and his two works, The Preface and the Lives of the Poets, are the most popular of all that he has written. The value of his opinions as a critic, especially in his Preface, rests on the massive strength and keen penetration into the heart of Shakespeare’s art. But this perception, admirably accurate on the whole, is not devoid of certain fallacies when it comes to details. Johnson’s critical analyses of Shakespeare’s plays are based on his preconceived opinions. That is why he is shocked at Shakespeare’s indifference to morality, anachronism and craze for word play and quibbles. Actually, Johnson’s emphasis is on the points in which Shakespeare’s aesthetics differed from his own. Even if most of his remarks are justified and even if his positive appreciation is wholly animated by a warm sympathy, it be said that his judgement remains essentially dogmatic.

Johnson_the renovator of ‘Rules’. Although Johnson is a follower neo-classical rules, he has done much to improve them and make them sensible and relevant in their application to all works. He renovates the classical doctrine with an appeal to inner observation and to the resources of literary psychology. He compares reality if life with that of art and defends the tragic-comedies of Shakespeare. A’ life is enriched by various experiences, he seems to argue, a work but this is, undoubtedly, enriched by various elements of sorrow and pleasure. Shakespeare was thus right in inserting comic scenes  among tragic ones. It may not be according to the rules, but it conforms to the realities of human life. Dryden had already advanced a similar argument but Johnson’s daring intellect broadened it further. He attacks the unities boldly and promotes, quite adventurously, the idea of experimentation in the field of drama. 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. The fictitious change from one place to another or from one period to another does not demand more credulity from the audience than that general goodwill without which no dramatic performance is possible. In this matter, again, Dryden’s wavering intuition is improved upon, and the Romantic theory of freedom is advocated. 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. We even feel a hint of irony in his praise of a ‘regular and correct’ writer. 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.

Conclusion. Most often, Dr. Johnson is regarded merely as a judicial critic of the “indispensable eighteenth century” of English literature. 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 .and common sense. 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. Johnson’s wide scholarship, his reliance on psychological principles and his refusal to be cowed down by any prescriptive authority are the significant aspects of his literary criticism. 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. establish. From its beginning to its end, both in the earlier topical essays on such matters as the pastorals, versification, cordial verses, romances, and letter-writing and in the later consideration of specific literary works one by one, as they had appeared chronologically in the production of an author’s life-time, he waged relentless war upon authority, prescription, and outworn tradition. 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. Johnson’s reader is never asked to believe that a general law has been operative from Homer to Black more or Virgil to Pom-fret. 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. the reasoning are lost in a sudden conclusion. 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.

JOHNSON AS A SHAKESPEAREAN EDITOR

Ans. Introduction. Bringing to his task as editor his own already vast prestige as lexicographer, poet and moral essayist, Johnson was in a position to edit the plays of Shakespeare in a scholarly as well as critically sound manner. Johnson with his edition initiated that phase of English literary history which is known today as “The Genesis of Shakespeare Idolatory” or “The Grass Roots of Bardolatry”, as some critics have pointed out.

Johnson’s concept of the role of an editor. Certain generally received opinions concerning Johnson’s achievement as Shakespeare editor would appear to be substantially correct. Johnson entertained sound views about the philological part of an editor’s duties. His performance in this respect was, by modern standards, uneven, capricious, often notably deficient. But by any standards existing in his own day, his performance was extraordinary. Johnson did only a sketchy job in the department of textual collation. At the same time, he restored many readings of the First Folio and was the first editor to realize its sole authority among the Folios. In the department of explication, or as it was then called, ‘elucidation,’ of the difficult passages in Shakespeare, Johnson relied for the most part on his own sturdy good sense and general awareness of human nature, but now and then he made good use of the historical perspective which he had learned in his ‘Dictionary’ labours and in which he had great confidence and took a justifiable pride. He wrote a number of notes which were repeated by Shakespearean editors until at least as recently as the Furriness ‘Variorum volumes and which perhaps still deserve to be repeated more often than they are. Perhaps the largest philological virtue which Johnson displayed was that of restraint in the department of emendation, and humility in the face of Ills author’s text. He was much less classically squeamish, he was less confident in or hopeful for, any kind if traditional purity, than most of his predecessors.

Johnson’s Critical estimate of Shakespeare. Let us now turn to Johnson’s critical estimate of Shakespeare, and especially to the Preface . Johnson rises to his occasion and succeeds not only in formulating a general praise, or encomium but in lifting this a few degrees above the level of the already eloquent tradition. Dryden in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy had demonstrated the idiom in prose. “Shakespeare, wrote Dryden, “was the man, who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them. not laboriously but luckily. When he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too “ Johnson quotes this passages at the end of his Preface to Shakespeare. He has opened and conducted the discussion in his Preface , however not precisely in the manner of Dryden, but at his own pace, with his own series of majestic comments

“The poet of whose works I have undertaken the revision may now begin to assume the dignity of an ancient and claim the privilege of established fame and prescriptive veneration”, “Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature.

“Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature, the poet that holds up to his readers faithful mirror of manners and of life.”

“In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species”.

Johnson a dissenter against the rules. Johnson’s critical estimate of Shakespeare is marked by views which express outright dissent with the neoclassical rules and proprieties. These views had for long inhibited and continued to inhibit, the full appreciation of Shakespeare, and thwarted the free response to his mystery. True, Johnson too makes comments on Shakespeare’s defects which are not seen as defects by the modern critic : Shakespeare “makes no just distribution of good or evil”; “He omits opportunities of instructing or delighting”, he “is guilty of anachronisms:”, his jests are commonly’ gross” and his “pleasantry licentious” , in his tragedies he runs into “tumor, meanness, tediousness and obscurity”, and so on. However, Johnson’s response to Shakespeare, in general, is not like that of the pedant in Hierocles who carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen of a house. Not “the splendor of particular passages” but the whole “progress of the fable and the tenor of the dialogue” was what he found irresistible in Shakespeare. Just how this division in Johnson’s appreciation was possible—how he got to the heart of Shakespeare—except through the aesthetic surface, the particulars of actions and words, may be difficult to understand. Doubtless we confront here an unresolved tension between the neo-classical conscience and the liberating impulse.
Johnson’s defence of Shakespeare’s irregularities, his Gothicism, takes place in respect to broad principles of dramatic structure—principles which neoclassic critics (Rymer to name one) had been just as much inclined to censure as the licentious diction. What is even more to the point, Johnson deserves credit for meeting this issue in a characteristic display of two of his most valuable powers. For one thing, he goes immediately to the heart of the matter, putting his finger on the false premise by which the exaggerated doctrine of the unities had so long been sustained—namely, the assumption that the aim of drama is literal verisimilitude,” the supposed necessity of making the drama credible. ‘For another thing, even if he is not, as some critics argue, raising any new points in defence of Shakespeare, he expresses his points with noteworthy energy and gusto. How succinctly but with telling effects he makes the observation:

“The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage and that players are only players.”

Conclusion. One difference between Johnson and most other literary critics, especially those of his own time, is the fullness and depth with which he responds to work of literature and to its author. Johnson’s personality can be seen in his Shakespeare editing in a number of ways — his numerous retorts and rebukes, his tart dismissals of the previous editors, his solemn astonishment at their vanity and their bungling. Johnson is a man of powerful and spontaneous responses to Shakespearean drama, but his emotional responses are more like the standard ones of his time; they are fairly close to the theoretical neoclassic norm, to the ideal of rational orderliness, the contemporary spirit of optimism and benevolism. In his Preface we have a response to Shakespeare in the most direct, the least theoretical fashion. Although Johnson has for long enjoyed a reputation as the last of the neoclassic giants, there is a trend among learned readers of Johnson today to see his classicism as very much altered from the Augustan norm. In his confrontation of Shakespeare, especially, we discover Johnson to be far from the perfect neoclassic critic, and, in a much deeper sense, far from the representative illuminator of that day.

JOHNSON ON POETIC JUSTICE AND SHAKESPEARE’S MORALITY

Joseph Wood Krutch : It should also be remembered that in one respect, at least, Johnson’s effort to discover the moral as well as the other qualities of Shakespeare carried him a definite step beyond his contemporaries; he saw, as most of them did not, that one must always contemplate the whole of a play rather than its constituent parts. In so far as his predecessors had attempted analytical appreciations, they had tended to discuss “the beauties of Shakespeare”—i.e., isolated poetic passages—or, at most, to analyse individual characters in the plays. If Johnson had really been as much merely a moralist in his attitude toward literature as he is sometimes said to have been, he would have followed in this tradition and added the weight of his influence to those who delight in selecting copy book maxims or proving Shakespeare’s greatness by the number of such sayings as “Unto thine own self be true” and “0 that men should put an enemy in their mouths” which he has to his credit. But Johnson does nothing of that sort. He may have had little conception of what later and more esoteric critics mean by the “unity of Shakespeare’, but if so, he at least made a step forward by ‘ recognizing that this unity is of the first importance. It would, then seem reasonable to say that Johnson the moralist seldom gets seriously in the way of Johnson the aesthetic critic of Shakespeare and that, at the cost of a certain amount of consistency, he treats what he proclaims a major deficiency as though it were, in reality, a very minor one.

W.K. Wimsatt : Johnson is a man of powerful and spontaneous responses to Shakespearean drama, but it is apparently not just these responses, or not these responses in their purest, simplest or most immediate shape, that give him his theoretical, his reasoned, his celebrated defence of Shakespeare’s adulteration’s. Johnson’s emotional responses are more like the standard ones of his time; they are fairly close to the theoretical neo-classic norm, to the ideal of rational orderliness, the contemporary spirit of idealism and benevolism. This might be taken to mean that Johnson’s defence of mingled drama was a mere abstract and thin cerebration which for some reason he undertook in opposition to this own genuine responses. But perhaps not. It is difficult to imagine any external reason which could have coerced him. The defence of mingled drama is indeed a testimony to Johnson’s theoretical intelligence, but at the same time it would seem to be tied into something very deep, though sometimes less articulate and clear, in Johnson’s nature — that is, his strongly religious sense of mystery in the universe, of the inscrutable — the supernatural. This sense, when it. is operating, induces in him a much less demanding attitude towards the terrestrial distribution of good and evil, rewards and punishments. It is this sense largely which moves the Johnson who wrote the pleasantly darkened fable of Rasselas, the Johnson who turned his withering scorn on the complacent rationalism of Soame Jenyn’s Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil.

JOHNSON ON SHAKESPEARE’S DEFECTS

“Shakespeare with his excellences has likewise faults sufficient to obscure and overwhelm many other merit”. Bring out the main criticism Johnson levels against Shakespeare and examine their validity in detail.
Or,What, according to Johnson, are the shortcomings of the plays of Shakespeare? To what measure do you agree with him in this regard?

Ans. Introduction. In his Preface , Johnson first considers the excellences of Shakespeare and then turns to his defects. He does not consider Shakespeare as a faultless or perfect dramatist. On the contrary, he is of the opinion that Shakespeare’s faults are profound enough to overwhelm the merits if they had only belonged to some other dramatist. Johnson sets down, these faults just as they appear to him, without prejudice or superstitious veneration. Here he values, truthfulness more than courtesy. It is said that once Johnson told one of his contemporaries that it was necessary to point out Shakespeare’s faults in order that his merits may – be better appreciated. However, in his ultimate assessment of Shakespeare he does not seem to bother much about the numerous faults which he himself has pointed out. This makes us feel that Johnson is paying lip service to neo-classicism and does not attach serious importance to the defects which his neo-classical affiliation obliges him to notice and criticize.

Virtue is not distributed wisely. According to Johnson, Shakespeare’s first and foremost defects is that ‘he sacrifices virtue to convenience’ and plays more attention to conveying pleasure than instruction. It seems to Johnson that Shakespeare writes without any moral purpose. There is much of moral wisdom in his plays but they are indirectly stated : “His precepts and axioms drop from him casually. Johnson also points out that Shakespeare does not make a just distribution of good and evil—that he does not observe poetic justice. Johnson laments that Shakespeare does not always unambiguously present his virtuous characters being victorious over the evil ones. Rather, he takes his characters through right and wrong indiscriminately and dismisses them carelessly at the end. The didactic message that may be derived from their situation is hardly made explicit; it is left to chance. One may attribute this defect to the barbarity of the age in which Shakespeare lived, but Johnson is not ready to condone the fault. He says : “It is a always a writer’s duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent of time or place”. We do not have any doubt that it is Johnson’s training and practice as a neo classical critic which leads him to lay such an emphasis on explicit moralizing or didacticism.

Defect in plot. Next, Johnson turns his attention towards the plots of Shakespeare’s plays. Here his objection that the plots are very loosely knit and that Shakespeare could have improved it had he paid just a little more attention. Likewise, they are unravelled so carelessly that one doubts if Shakespeare was really conscious of what he was aiming at as he developed plot. Johnson also complains that Shakespeare does not fully utilize the opportunities that could have been used to instruct. Similarly he often adopts a course which is more convenient and easy •and lets slip the more touching, but more difficult one. Another defect he detects in Shakespeare is that in his plays the latter part is hastily rounded of so that the plays do not appear to be as artistically ordered in their concluding sections as in their earlier part. Johnson deems that it may be because Shakespeare was desirous of cutting short the labour in order to gain the profits as early as possible. He says : “When he found himself near the end of his work, he shortened the labour to snatch the profit. tie therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them and his catastrophe is improbably, produced or imperfectly represented.” Much of Dr. Johnson’s objections about Shakespeare’s plots are justified. Concerning Shakespeare’s neglect of opportunities for moralizing we may agree that they are, admittedly, missed. But it is debatable if this mars the effect of the plays as a whole. More than anything else we se Johnson as a mouthpiece of neo-classical sentiments in this piece of criticism.

Anachronism in Shakespeare. Another defect in Shakespeare’s plays is, that in them no distinction of time or place is observed but the customs, opinions and manners of one age or one country are freely attributed to another. This gives the plays a colour of improbability and often of impossibility.. For instance, in one instance Shakespeare makes Hector cite the words of Aristotle, which is absurd on historical grounds. Johnson does not accept Pope’s justification the such anachronisms, or historical fallacies, are to be traced to the interpolators and not to the author. Its frequent presence in his plays is enough to convince us that he himself was responsible for it. But Shakespeare is not the only writer who has let such mistakes• creep into his plays, Philip Sidney intermingles the feudal and pastoral ages in his Arcadia though there was a great difference between the atmospheres of these two periods. Modern critics agree with Johnson on this point.

Dialogues in comedy. Another objection raised by Dr. Johnson is with regard to “reciprocations of smartness and contests ‘of sarcasm” which are frequently seen in Shakespeare’s comedies. Johnson asserts ‘that the jests in which the comic characters indulge are often coarse and licentious. Since a majority of the characters are guilty ‘of this, the distinction between refined characters and low characters is. lost. ‘Johnson attributes this practice to the Elizabethan life: their usual conversation was ‘stately, formal and reserved, but whenever these customary norms are relaxed the resultant effect is the licentious dialogues in Shakespeare’s comedies. Johnson feels that Shakespeare should have been more judicious in his selection of modes of gaiety.

Fault in style and expression. Next Johnson ‘ reprehends Shakespeare’s style and expression. According to him there are many passages in the tragedies over which Shakespeare seems to have laboured hard, only to ruin his own performance. The moment Shakespeare strains his faculties, or strains his inventive powers unnecessarily, t’he result is tediousness and obscurity. Johnson does not agree to the pompous and unreasonably stretched out passages of Shakespeare because, according to Johnson these defects detract from the splendour and dignity of the passage. He finds the stock speeches or declamations cold and weak. Elsewhere it seems to Johnson that Shakespeare has been led astray by some unwieldy sentiment, which he is not able to express well, but clings to and expresses anyhow the result is that the reader has to work hard over such passages to unwind their sense. Intricacy of language is not an index of subtlety of thought; nor is a line crowded with words and phrases always one that contains a great image. Shakespeare does not often maintain reasonable proportion between his words and the things they express. It is unwise to use sonorous epithets and swelling figures of speech for paltry things and ideas. However, most of this censure on Shakespeare’s style and expression is exaggerated.

Word-play and conceits. Johnson turns censorious about Shakespeare’s tendency to use conceits as well as ambiguous word play. Johnson says that Shakespeare’s craze for conceit and quibbles spoils many passages which are otherwise sad and tender, or could – have evoked pity or terror. Shakespeare’s uncurbed enthusiasm for quibbles leads him to utter senselessness just as the will-o-the-wisp misleads a wayfarer. Whenever he gets a chance to pay with words, he forgets everything else and chases it blindly. Johnson says : “A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation. A quibble, poor and barren as it as, gave him such delight, that he was content to purchase it, by the sacrifice, of reason, propriety and truth. A quibble ‘was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it.” It is true that Shakespeare indulges in puns and quibbles — at times too much of it. But it does seems to us as annoying as it was to Johnson.

Conclusion. Johnson points, out two supposed errors of Shakespeare which, in his opinion, are really merits. One of these is Shakespeare’s violation of unities of time and place, another is his fusion of tragedy and comedy. On both these points Johnson leaves the neo-classicist camp by defending Shakespeare’s practice. Johnson also defends Shakespeare by arguing that some of the shortcomings that we find in his plays are actually the faults of the age he lived in. He considers the charge that the Roman characters of Shakespeare are not sufficiently Roman, or that his kings and queens are wanting in royal dignity. He correctly calls these allegations ill conceived. In all such cases Shakespeare has adhered to the truth of generality and ignored particularly. It may be noted that this defence, although not unfounded, is in typically neo-classic terms. The faults listed by Johnson are not. serious faults to us today. But they certainly show Johnson as a neo-classical critic.

JOHNSON ON SHAKESPEARE’S MERITS

Johnson Wood Krutch : If, as may certainly be maintained, the final test of a critic is willingness and ability to recognize excellence even when he cannot account for it, to be able to put loyalty to greatness before loyalty to his own theories, then Johnson passes that test with flying colours like all critics of his century — perhaps like all critics of our own — he did not always know why the good was good or the bad was bad; but in the case of Shakespeare, at least, he not only seldom failed to acknowledge what was good but also seldom failed to realize just how good it was. No doubt it was because he thus recognized that a poet can be understood only if we open our minds to receive his impact, that he gave in the Preface that excellent advice which ought to be surprising to those to whom “Johnson’ and ‘pedant” seem equivalent terms. Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. Let him that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who desires to feel the highest pleasure that drama can give, read every play from the first to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let it not stoop at correction or explanation. When his attention is strongly engaged, let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theobald and of Pope. Let him read on through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption,; let him preserve his comprehension of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness, and read the commentators.

JOHNSON ON THE MERITS OF SHAKESPEARE

Q.9. ‘It is proper to inquire by what peculiarities of excellences Shakespeare has gained and kept the favour of his countrymen.” Substantiate the points Johnson cites in favour of Shakespeare’s dramatic art.
Or,What merits does Dr. Johnson find in Shakespeare ? How
far do you agree with him in this respect?

Ans. Introduction. Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare is mainly in the nature of an essay prefixed to the plays he has edited. Johnson’s views are coloured by the critical creed of his time, namely, the rules of neo-classicism; however, what he says is of everlasting significance. In his Preface we come across some points which are valid even now, especially the praise that the confers on Shakespeare and the sound principles on which he evaluates the bard’s greatness.

Truth to nature. A close examination of the neo-classical period reveals that the renowned literary advocates of the period attached a profound importance to generality and universality. Johnson’s intention in editing Shakespeare was to recommend the plays to his own contemporaries. He lays an enormous stress on Shakespeare’s adherence to general nature. He states: “Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident; and if he preserves the essential character, is not very careful of distinctions superinduced and adventitious. His story requires Romans or kings, but he thinks only on men.” This is how Johnson defends Shakespeare against Dennis and Rymer’s charge that Shakespeare’s Romans are not sufficiently Roman. In the – same manner, he scorns at the criticism of Voltaire that Shakespeare’s’ kings and queens are not royal and dignified. According to Dr. Johnson, the most important thing is preserve the characters’ truth to human nature and this Shakespeare does amazingly well. Johnson aptly says that Shakespeare’s plays have no heroes, but merely men who act and speak as we ourselves would have done in the same circumstances. As for Voltaire’s censure of Shakespeare Johnson calls it the petty cavils of petty men. His own view is that a poet “overlooks the casual distinctions, of country and condition, as a painter, satisfied with the figure, neglects the drapery.” However, when Johnson turns to the demerits of Shakespeare he seems to forget this observation and accuses Shakespeare of not following the distinctions of country and age and giving one age and country the manners of another.

Drama an imitation of real life. Although Johnson is all admiration for Shakespeare’s faithful mirroring of real life there is a trace of confusion when, on another instance, he denies that drama aims at literal verisimilitude. Perhaps Johnson may be accentuating the point that Shakespeare is representing life as it appears to him as dramatist. But in this case we feel that the word mirror’ used by him is not suitable. He employs it, probably because it occurs in Hamlet where, while directing the players. Hamlet maintains that the objective of drama is to hold the mirror to life and disclose to the age its own spirit. Johnson adds “this therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has massed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise before him, may here be. cured of his delirious ecstasies, by reading human sentiments in human language by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and confessor predict the progress of passions”. Elsewhere too Johnson heaps praise on Shakespeare’s handling of the supernatural and wonderful and even admits that had such creatures or beings existed this may be how they would have acted. In this connection he says: “Shakespeare approximate that remote, and familiarizes the wonderful, the event which he represents will not happen but if it were possible, its effects would probably be such as he has assigned; and it may be said, that he has not only shown human nature as it acts in real exigencies but as it would be found in trials, to which it cannot be exposed.”

Characterization. Johnson is right on admitting that Shakespeare kept his characters distinct from one another. There is no blurring or confounding of characters. While stressing on their individuality Johnson pays due attention to their universality too. With regard to Shakespeare’s characters he says that they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply and observation will always find. Johnson’s keen observation as a critic is evidenced from his conclusion that no writer before Shakespeare, with the possible exception of Chaucer, had delineated human character in so realistic a manner Shakespeare emerges much greater when we know that no investigation into the study of psychology or human diaractor had been there to help him with date or theoretical hints for his character portrayal. Shakespeare acquired his knowledge of human nature and human character from his own personal observation. In this case he had none to follow except his own perception and senses. Yet none of his works or characterization be branded as second-rate. His plays are full of principles and axioms, true for all times.

Theme : diversity of passions. Johnson argues that Shakespeare’s play give no undue importance to a singular passion such as love which the vogue of the day with other authors. He deals with diverse passions. and human emotions and escapes the stereotype. Johnson holds that in developing the theme of love, a dramatist will, at times, violate probability and misrepresent life. Comparing Addison’s Cato and Shakespeare’s Othello Johnson says that Othello is the vigorous product of genius working upon factual observation of life, while Addition’s Cato fails to familiarize us with the human sentiments. Shakespeare was not, to be sure, a ‘correct’ or ‘regular’ writer in the neo-classical sense of the phrase, but his plays are profusely rich, though this richness is often woven with much of what is crude.. This crudeness is no fault of the playwright but the result of the age and its barbarity.

Shakespeare: the father of English drama. Johnson attributes to Shakespeare the credit of being the father of English drama. He was the giver of breath and life to “the form, the character, the language and the shows” of English drama. He was the first, except for Spenser, to discover and expose the degree or level of harmony and smoothness which the English language was capable of attaining.

Conclusion. Johnson’s admiration for Shakespeare was not merely passionate but instinctive too, though, as a neo-classicist he was naturally obliged to introduce Shakespeare to his contemporaries in particular critical idiom with which they were acquainted. As a neo-classical critic he had to approve look at Shakespeare’s plays in the light of ‘rules’ but the moment he comes to compare Cato and Othello he relies, not upon the man-made rules, but upon his own instincts. Thus we see that Johnson’s rules, as a professional critic, way hold C’ato to be superior, but his instinctive liking admits that Cato is no match for Othello.

JOHNSON ON THE ‘UNITIES’

JOHNSON ON THE ‘UNITIES’

Ans. Introduction. In order to have a clear idea of all that concerns the three unities, we have to see first what neo-classicism considered them to be. The neo-classicists held them as having the genuine sanction of the real classicists of ancient Greece and Rome. These unities are mentioned in Aristotle’s Poetics as practices of the Greek writers. Nowhere does he lay them down as rules which should be followed by every writer for the sake of making his work realistic or true to life. Aristotle emphasizes the unity of action and merely mentions that it was the general practice to confine the action to twenty-four hours period. Actually, it was the French neo-classicists who established the unifies as rules which an artist is obliged to follow. It was they who attached profound importance to the unity of place, which Aristotle himself seems to have ignored. Johnson is a neo-classical critic; but in the controversy of the unities he abides by a point of view which is thoroughly contrary to the critical attitude prevailing in his time. In this case he anticipates the Romantic critics. Moreover, his daring departure from his contemporaries shows his intellectual integrity and faculty of independent thinking. Perhaps, this is the most striking feature of the Preface. Johnson was so revolutionary enough to think that rather than rules, it is arts proximity to life that renders it magnificent and appealing.

The neo-classicist view. Johnson states the case of neo-classicists quite fairly, and marks that they are in favour of the unities. But he does not leave it at that. He examines each. view and refutes it with proper and sound reasons. Neo-classical critics held it impossible that the audience, could believe the action of a drama in which events that require months and years to happen in real life are presented as having taken place within three hours. They said that it was impossible that the spectator can suppose himself to sit in the theatre, “while ambassadors go and return between distant kings, while armies are levied and towns besieged, while an exile wanders, and returns or till he whom we saw courting his mistress, shall lament the untimely fall of his son.” Johnson sums up the neo-classical contention: ‘The mind revolt from evident falsehood and fiction loses its force when it departs from the resemblance of reality.

The unity of place. The neo-classicists also held it inevitable that if the time of presentation of an event is to be in proportion to the time of action; then changes of place must be such as can be reasonable thought to be possible within the span of action. If the span of the action is one day, no change of place which is impossible within that time would become credible. ‘The spectator who knows that he saw the first act at Alexandria, cannot suppose that he sees the next at Rome,’ a distance to which not the dragons of Medea could, in so short a time, have transported him; he knows with certainty that he has not ‘changed his place, and he knows that the place cannot change itself, that what was a house cannot become a plain; that what was Thebes can never be Persepolis.”

Johnson creed. While refuting the arguments of the neo-classicists Johnson puts forward his own sane and sensible point of view, and attacks the fundamental assumptions of the neo-classicists of which the view of the unities is only one manifestation. Johnson’s refutation of the rules is not merely based on his own critical dogmas;’ he has the authority of the success of Shakespeare. The question is chiefly one of diamatic credibility. The neo-classicists argued that the aim of a dramatist is to deceive the spectators into believing that they ‘are seeing reality. But, in fact. this is not the way in which dramatic.. representations acquire credibility. They are enjoyed and appreciated not because they are real but because, being emulations of realities, they bring realities to the minds of the spectators. Even if delusion were to be the basis of dramatic credibility, neo-classicist objections would have been invalid, for then there is no question of setting a limit to the operation of delusion. If the spectator really thinks that he is watching Antony and Cleopatra of history in Alexandria, then he can believe most anything in the following scenes without any difficulty: “Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation,, if the spectators can be once persuaded, that his old acquaintance (the actors whom he knows personally) are Alexander and Caesar, that a room illuminated with candles is the plain of Pharsalla, or the bank of Granicus, he is a state of elevation above the reach of reason, or of the truth, and from the heights of empyrean poetry, may despise the circumspection’s of terrestrial nature. There is no reason why a mind, thus wandering in ecstasy should count the clock, or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture of the brains that can make the stage a field. “In this way Johnson refutes the neo-classicists and shows that their viewpoint is baseless. None of the spectators takes the action on the stage as true but they willingly participate in its illusion; “the truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only stage and that the players are only players. They came to hear a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation. The lines relate to some action and an action must be in some place, but the different actions that complete a story may be in places -very remote’ from each other, and where is absurdity of allowing that, space to represent first Athens, and then Sicily, which was always known to be neither Sicily, nor Athens, but a modern theater?”

Shakespeare and his disregard of unities. Johnson is not quite sure if Shakespeare’s violation of the unities of place and time was deliberate and conscious or if it emerged from his ignorance of them. According to Johnson, Shakespeare may have disregarded the unities in the beginning out of ignorance, but later, even when his fellow dramatists or critics censured this drawback he did not mind them because he would have thought the rules of unities immaterial and absurd. In any case, Johnson thinks that the one unity that is, important is. that of action and Shakespeare’s plays preserve this unity satisfactorily. Coming, therefore to the other two unities of time and place Johnson justifies the stand of Shakespeare: “As nothing is essential to the fable but unity of action, and as the unities of time and place arise evidently from false assumptions, and, by circumscribing the extent of the drama, lessen its variety, I cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known by him, or not observed. Nor if such another poet could arise, should I very vehemently reproach him, that his first act passed at Venice and his next in Cyprus. Such violations of rules, merely. positive, become the comprehensive genius of Shakespeare, and such censures are suitable to the minute and slender criticism of Voltaire.” What Johnson implies is that a comprehensive genius like Shakespeare ought to be permitted to violate them because the rules do not have any inevitable binding power. It is true that the unities provide pleasure and delight to the spectator, but to stick to them rigidly is to lose other chances to express many other beauties of variety and instruction. A play that observes the unities keenly may of course be a great play. Its scope may be profound and elaborate. There is no harm in preserving the unities if it does not disturb the other more salient aspects of the play. But we should not regard the unities as an end by themselves and hence give them no too high a status or position. “He that without diminution of any other excellence, shall preserve all the unities unbroken deserves the like applause with the architect, who shall display all the orders of architectures in a citadel, without any deduction from its strength, but the principal beauty of a citadel is to exclude the enemy; and the greatest graces of a play are to copy nature and instruct life.” Here we see that Johnson i taking dramatic representation into consideration rather than the path ordained by the blind adherence to established rules.

Enjoying the drama. “A dramatic exhibition is a book recited with concomitants that increase or diminish its effect.” Johnson finds no difference in the type of pleasure which the reading of a drama gives and that which is obtained from seeing a representation of it on the stage. He continues to say that though familiar comedy may seem more impressive on the stage, imperial tragedy is always more impressive in reading than in performance. In reading a play, we are seldom bothered about the unities and this should be the very attitude of the spectator too. Our imagination does not, in fact, revolt against the passage of shorter or longer time, nor does it find it unbelievable if the actions are carried out at two different, distant places. Hence it is erroneous to say that we cannot honour a playwright who thwarts the unities of place and time, We enjoy drama not as a realistic piece of life but as an imitation of the realities of life. “It is credited with all the credit due to a drama. It . is credited, whenever.g moves, as a just picture of a real original; as representing to the auditor what he would himself feel, if he were to do or suffer what is there feigned to be suffered or to be done. The reflection that strikes the heart is not that the evils before us are real evils, but they are evils to which we ourselves may be exposed. If there be any fallacy, it is not that we fancy the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment, but we rather lament the possibility than suppose the presence of misery, as a mother weeps over her babe, when she remembers that death may take it from her.”

Conclusion. Though the period in which he lived may label Johnson as a neo-classicist, he is, in many instances, proved to be no blind follower of the baseless rules of neo-classical criticism. At crucial junctures Johnson’s mature and keen perception disagrees with the established traditional views of his contemporaries and shows independence. This is true especially with regard to his assessment of Shakespeare’s adherence to the unities. He is close to the modern view when he declares that the only essential unity is that of action. His intellectual independence often leads him to be impressionistic and brings him to a stand which the Romantic critics of Shakespeare were to adopt. His attack on the unities is most rational and as one critic says: “Johnson deserves credit for meeting this issue of a characteristic display of two of his most valuable powers. For one thing, he goes immediately to the heart of the matter, putting his finger on the false premise by which the exaggerated doctrine of the unities had so long been sustained, namely, the assumption that the aim of drama is literal verisimilitude, ‘the supposed necessity of making the drama credible.’ For another thing, even if he is only kicking an open door, does this with such ample energy and gusto, such resonance, reverberation of splintering material, that it is doubtful if carpenters will be able very soon to mend this door.”