Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare by Samuel Johnson

“Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare” by Samuel Johnson. In this essay Johnson has analyse both the side of Shakespearean plays, good as well as bad. Shakespeare as a writer has a great name in literature. In this essay he has described how Shakespeare was able to make his name immortal. Johnson in this essay says that Shakespeare has created only characters, which are like normal humans. The situations are also same as the problems of normal human beings. In time of Shakespeare all writers were writing about Queens and Kings but Shakespeare has choose to write about normal human beings. It is also written in the essay that Shakespeare was more comfortable with comedy than tragedy. His comedies are far better than his tragedies. It seems like he made efforts in writing tragedies but comedies comes naturally to him. He also has every elements in his plays. There is always something for everyone. These are the good points which Johnson has said about and he has also write some faults of Shakespeare. In bad side of Shakespeare’s writing Johnson has said that in plays of Shakespeare everything happens by chance. There are no Ifs and Buts. Second thing is that Shakespeare is clear about the start of his plays but not the ending. At the end he just made chaos and then either he made every character die or he made everyone meet at the end. This is how his plays ends. Johnson also describes that sometimes plot of Shakespeare’s plays are loosely connected. So this is how Johnson has described the good and bad sides of Shakespeare’s writing.