Johnson S Preface To Shakespeare

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Preface to Shakespeare" by Samuel Johnson. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

The Preface to Shakespeare Samuel Johnson Preface to Shakespeare is a classic Shakespeare studies text by Samuel Johnson. That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at last bestowed by time. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

Challenging the long-held view that Johnson's criticism of Shakespeare is of historical interest only, having been assimilated and superseded by later work, this study argues that Johnson's interpretaion of Shakespeare as "the poet of nature" is actually a radical and provocative proposition. Parker provides an illuminating series of contrasts of the leading Romantic critics--Coleridge, Schlegel, and Hazlitt--arguing that the dichotomies that emerge from their writings reflect tensions exhibited by or explored within the plays themselves. He relates Johnson's feeling for general nature to the characteristic scepticism of his thought, and concludes with a fresh discussion of Johnson's response to the "unnatural deeds" of Shakespearean tragedy. Parker also includes the central portion of the Preface to Shakespeare, as well as critically interesting notes, offering a fully developed anthology of Johnson's criticism and commentary on Shakespeare.