Samuel Johnson's Critical Opinions

Résumé du livre

While the notes on Shakespeare form the single largest body of critical opinions on one writer, this volume also reprints critical opinions on a host of other writers and works derived from Johnson's other writings and from his conversations as recorded by James Boswell and Hester Piozzi, among others. To Professor Brown's original compilation, Sherbo has added some four hundred new notes from more than 130 authors and works. He has also made a few comments on Johnson's notes and on his other critical opinions, particularly to point out how Johnson used books he owned at one time or another. This work also includes a short essay entitled "What Johnson Did Not 'Understand' in Shakespeare's Plays," in which Sherbo isolates those notes in which Johnson confessed he did not "understand" and then compares the notes to the same passages in a modern edition.