Notes to Shakepeares Tragedies by Samuel Johnson

From the General Introduction: Dr. Johnsons reaction to Shakespeares tragedies is a curious one, compounded as it is of deep emotional involvement in a few scenes in some plays and a strange dispassionateness toward most of the others. I suspect that his emotional involvement took root when he read Shakespeare as a boy--one remembers the terror he experienced in reading of the Ghost in _Hamlet_, and it was probably also as a boy that he suffered that shock of horrified outrage and grief at the death of Cordelia that prevented him from rereading the scene until be came to edit the play. Johnsons deepest feelings and convictions, Professor Clifford has recently reminded us, can be traced back to his childhood and adolescence.