THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY
SAMUEL JOHNSON
NOTES TO SHAKESPEARE
Vol. III
Tragedies
Edited, with an Introduction, by Arthur Sherbo
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
University of California
1958
GENERAL EDITORS
Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan
Ralph Cohen, University of California, Los Angeles
Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, LosAngeles
Lawrence Clark Powell, Clark Memorial Library
ASSISTANT EDITOR
W. Earl Britton, University of Michigan
ADVISORY EDITORS
Emmett L. Avery, State College of Washington
Benjamin Boyce, Duke University
Louis Bredvold, University of Michigan
John Butt, King's College, University of Durham
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Louis A. Landa, Princeton University
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Ernest C. Mossner, University of Texas
James Sutherland, University College, London
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, LosAngeles
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
Edna C. Davis, Clark Memorial Library
Introduction on Tragedies
Dr. Johnson's reaction to Shakespeare's tragedies is a curiousone, compounded as it is of deep emotional involvement in a fewscenes in some plays and a strange dispassionateness toward most ofthe others. I suspect that his emotional involvement took root whenhe read Shakespeare as a boy—one remembers the terror heexperienced in reading of the Ghost in Hamlet, and it wasprobably also as a boy that he suffered that shock of horrifiedoutrage and grief at the death of Cordelia that prevented him fromrereading the scene until be came to edit the play. Johnson'sdeepest feelings and convictions, Professor Clifford has recentlyreminded us, can be traced back to his childhood and adolescence.But it is surprising to learn, as one does from his commentary,that other scenes in these very plays (Hamlet and KingLear, and in Macbeth, too) leave him unmoved, if one canso interpret the absence of any but an explanatory note on, say,Lear's speech beginning "Pray, do not mock me;/I am a very foolishfond old man." Besides this negative evidence there is also thepositive evidence of many notes which display the dispassionateeditorial mind at work where one might expect from Johnson anoutburst of personal feeling. There are enough of these outburststo warrant our expecting others, but we are too frequentlydisappointed. Perhaps Johnson thought of most of Shakespeare'stragedies as "imperial tragedies" and that is why he could maintaina stance of aloofness; conversely, "the play of Timon is adomestick Tragedy, and therefore strongly fastens on the attentionof the reader." But the "tragedy" of Timon does not capture theattention of the modern reader, and perhaps all attempts to fixJohnson's likes and dislikes, and the reasons for them, in thecanon of Shakespeare's plays must circle endlessly without evergetting to their destination.
TRAGEDIES
Vol. IV
MACBETH
(392) Most of the notes which the present editor has subjoinedto this play were published by him in a small pamphlet in 1745.
I.i (393,*) Enter three Witches] In order to make a trueestimate of the abilities and merit of a writer, it it alwaysnecessary to examine the genius of his age, and the opinions of hiscontemporaries. A poet who should now make the whole action of histragedy depend upon enchantment, and produce the chief events bythe assistance of supernat