 | Howard B. White - History - 1970 - 174 pages
...characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpracticed by the rest of the world His persons act and speak by the influence of those...character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species.20 Whether a knowledge of nature, in Johnson's sense, designates... | |
 | Greg Clingham - Literary Criticism - 2002 - 238 pages
...of common humanity" - and by the absence of a judgmental perspective in Johnson's appraisal of "the general passions and principles ... by which all minds...and the whole system of life is continued in motion" (Shakespeare 1, 62). It has become axiomatic that Johnson's conception of literature is ethical, for... | |
 | Marjorie B. Garber - Allusions - 2003 - 332 pages
...interest in them." For Johnson, Shakespearean characters transcend the time-bound and the temporary. They are "the genuine progeny of common humanity, such...always supply, and observation will always find." Thus they are exemplary, and, in the profoundest sense, ethicaL What did Johnson think of Shakespeare's... | |
 | Joan Fitzpatrick - History - 2004 - 198 pages
...operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as...character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species. (Johnson 1765, viii-ix) The notion that Shakespeare depicts the... | |
| |
His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world, by the peculiarities of studies or professions which can operate but upon small numbers, or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary... 
