...brains that can make the stage a field. The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know from the first act to the last that the stage...must be in some place; but the different actions that compleat a story may be in places very remote from each other; and where is the 1 'Delusion': 'A cheat;...

...Johnson stresses the ficri tiousness of Shakespearean drama, and when he insists that the spectators 'know, from the first act to the last, that the stage...only a stage, and that the players are only players', he is denying that the play asks us to take it for real life.6 Coleridge thinks the spectator - temporarily...

...parameters set by the Poetics. While Johnson maintains that "the spectators are always in their senses, and know from the first act to the last, that the...only a stage, and that the players are only players" ("Preface to Shakespeare," Selections, 24), Coleridge insists that the audience makes no determination...

...or diminish its effect," he wrote in 1 765 in the Preface to his edition of Shakespeare; spectators come "to hear a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation" (my italics). Warrilow held that the text speaks best for itself, when allowed to, through cultivated...

...happening. In point of fact, and as Johnson also spells out, "the spectators are always in their senses and know, from the first act to the last that the...only a stage, and that the players are only players" (Johnson 1960 [1765]: 38). To which we need only add that the spectators also know that the whole thing...

...other aesthetic consideration: "The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses . . . They come to hear a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation" (77) . Hume's essay "Of Tragedy" spells out that which Johnson strongly implies: a passion that would...

...reconsider this presupposition. I Samuel Johnson's claim that theatre audiences 'are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the...only a stage, and that the players are only players' is typical of its period.2 When they came to discuss the large matter of the relationship between artistic...

...theater? Why are we there? — anyway, not for longer than it takes to answer, ". . . the spectators . . . come to hear a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation." It is not clear to me how seriously this straight-faced remark is meant. Its rhetoric may be that of...

...reconsider this presupposition. Samuel Johnson's claim that theatre audiences 'are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the...only a stage, and that the players are only players' is typical of its period.2 When they came to discuss the large matter of the relationship between artistic...

...stated by Dr Johnson, who states that 'The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the...only a stage, and that the players are only players. . . . The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and...