Four. Shakespeare (I)

Implicit in Johnson's understanding of the function of language in poetry is a redefinition of the traditional idea of poetic imitation. Though poetry, in his view, is not divorced from reality, its representational element is minimised. When the main thrust of language in poetry is to reenact mental movements and the nature of consciousness itself, it ceases to be directly imitative. Working as it does, at the level of the intellect, it applies itself directly to the mind, and offers a moral perspective on its greatly diminished representational substratum. Interestingly enough, it was the encounter between his own intellectual appraisal of poetry and the highly imitative art of Shakespeare's dramas, that led Johnson to an articulation of these views.

The eighteenth century rejoiced in the realistic potential of drama. The unities of time and place were endorsed, and verisimilitude in stage presentation attempted, with a view to enlisting the credulity of the audience. Johnson however, not only denied the power of dramatic illusion - ‘the spectators are always in their senses’ - but pointed to the crucial role of language: ‘they come to hear a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation’ (VII. 77). Johnson's comments are born of a moral imperative that distrusts the primacy his age accorded to the senses. The distinction that he made between stage presentation which is perceived through the senses and seeks its validation from reality, and the organisational power of poetical language which addresses itself to the mind, is a moral distinction. To mistake dramatic action for reality is ‘to mistake the use of [the] eyes for effects of [the] understanding, and confound accidental knowledge with just reasoning’ (II. 384).

Dryden, in his Preface to The Spanish Friar, had preceded Johnson with a smiliar moral indictment of the theatre:

in a playhouse everything contributes to impose upon the judgment; the lights, the scenes, the habits, and, abo