Preface to Shakespeare
1985
In 1756, Samuel Johnson issued a radical challenge to the literary establishment: why do we worship ancient authors while ignoring the genius living among us? His answer, this preface to Shakespeare's collected plays, became one of the most influential critical essays in the English language. Johnson dismantles the fashionable reverence for antiquity, arguing instead that Shakespeare deserves our attention not because he is old, but because he understood human nature with startling clarity. His characters, Johnson contends, are not medieval relics but mirrors reflecting universal passions that transcend their Elizabethan setting. With characteristic precision, Johnson defends Shakespeare's mingling of tragedy and comedy, his rejection of stiff moralizing, and his willingness to depict life as it actually unfolds. This is criticism as intellectual combat, a brilliant lexicographer and essayist taking on four hundred years of lazy adulation and demanding we read Shakespeare with fresh eyes. For anyone who has ever wondered what it means to defend a writer against the weight of their own reputation, Johnson offers both method and model.
