Samuel Johnson Dictonary and Shakespeare

The dictionary:
The Language most likely to continue long without alteration would be that of a nation raised a little and but a little, above barbarity, secluded from strangers, and totally employed in recurring the conveniencies of life; either without books, or, like some of the Mahometan countries, with very few: men thus busied and unlearned, having only such words as common use requires, would perhaps long continue to express the same notions by the same signs."

What's happening today with language was happening in Sam J's time as well. We have languages like Ebonics and slang talk just like he had in England. I think he wrote this dictionary to more clearly define the classes in England through the written word. Have you ever seen My Fair Lady? (I think Dr. Doolittle was like a Sam J). In My Fair Lady they take a lower class Londoner and make her a lady just by teaching her to speak like the upper class. Inside she was still the same lower class flower girl but because she spoke so sophisticatedly she was now an upper class person. Oh, if that's all it took to change your status, none of us would have to go to college! It just goes to show how defined the classes were in England and how important it was to the citizens, especially the upper class because they were the ones who benefited from the lower class.


Shakespeare:

"Upon every other statge the universal agent is love, by whose power all good and evil is distributed and every action quickend or retarted. To bring a lover, a lady, and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in contradictory obligations, perplex them with opposition of interest, and harass then with violence of desires inconsistent with eachother; etc........."

Sam J goes on to say that love is only one passion of life and it has no great influence on the sum of life. I think that's total BS. People do some crazy things for love. I think Sam J is an insensitive prick with to much time on his hands.What's his problem? I think he took this essay writing stuff a little too serious. He writes like he's doing the world a favor by telling them his opinion. What makes his opinion better then anyone else's? Why couldn't he have just enjoyed Shakespeare's plays for what they were and not rip them apart with no thought or reason. He ruined it for me by analyzing Shakespeare the way he did. Love may not be the only passion of the world but that's the point of making a play where it is, so that the audience can escape for the reality of life for 2 seconds and enjoy something for themselves. really you could say that love is the only passion of life in essence because people do what they love. You can test that theory it works everytime.