The Plays of William Shakespeare in perspective, we have only to remind ourselves what Johnson brought to it – an assemblage of almost every qualification we should ideally like to have brought to this kind of work with the single exception of patience... Operating in and through these qualities was his own extensive knowledge of human nature and life. No Shakespearean critic or editor has ever approached him in this respect. John Wain, another of Johnson's biographers, claimed, "There is no better statement of the reason why Shakespeare needs to be edited, and what aims an editor can reasonably set himself" than Johnson's "Proposal". The
The Plays of William Shakespeare has been able to do little more than transpose his incidents, new name his characters, and paraphrase his sentiments. The reverence due to writings that have long subsisted arises therefore not from any credulous confidence in the superior wisdom of past ages, or gloomy persuasion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is the consequence of acknowledged and indubitable positions, that what has been longest known has been most considered, and what is most considered is best understood. Johnson then introduces Shakespeare: The poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revision, may now begin to assume the dignity of an