The Project Gutenberg EBook of Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The
Tragedies, by Samuel Johnson

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Title: Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies

Author: Samuel Johnson

Editor: Arthur Sherbo

Release Date: April 6, 2005 [EBook #15566]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY

SAMUEL JOHNSON

NOTES TO SHAKESPEARE

Vol. III

Tragedies

Edited, with an Introduction, by
Arthur Sherbo

Los Angeles
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, Los Angeles_

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, Los Angeles_

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY

Edna C. Davis, _Clark Memorial Library_

Introduction on Tragedies

Dr. Johnson's reaction to Shakespeare's tragedies is a curious one,
compounded as it is of deep emotional involvement in a few scenes in
some plays and a strange dispassionateness toward most of the others. I
suspect that his emotional involvement took root when he read
Shakespeare as a boy--one remembers the terror he experienced in reading
of the Ghost in _Hamlet_, and it was probably also as a boy that he
suffered that shock of horrified outrage and grief at the death of
Cordelia that prevented him from rereading the scene until be came to
edit the play