...describes the imaginative, fictive experience of Shakespeare's drama in mnemonic terms, in which "we rather lament the possibility than suppose the presence...babe, when she remembers that death may take it from her.":1"1 That possibility becomes real and "natural" within the context of Shakespeare's drama by...

...human experience, are intentionally signified and embodied in them. In the words of Samuel Johnson, "imitations produce pain or pleasure not because they...for realities, but because they bring realities to mind."32 Perceiving or grasping likeness is interpreted by Aristotle as an important mode of discernment...

...first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players. . . . The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness...murders and treasons real, they would please no more' (Johnson 1969: 27-8). Johnson is well aware that the audience's 'consciousness of fiction' raises a...

...to say that Shakespeare invented us, but he does intimate the true tenor of Shakespearean mimesis: 'Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because...for realities, but because they bring realities to mind.'40 You shall have no god but Shakespeare, Johnson argued, and the men of Edinburgh, just as they...

...moment, was ever credited. . . . Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation .... The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness...for realities, but because they bring realities to mind."?8 "A play read," Johnson observes, "affects the mind like a play acted. It is therefore evident,...

...fallacy, it is not that we fancy the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment; but we rather lament the possibility than suppose the presence...when she remembers that death may take it from her. (Preface to Shakespeare 1765) But the mother is weeping over her baby as much as over herself, or if...

...fallacy it is not that we fancy the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment; but we rather lament the possibility than suppose the presence...murders and treasons real, they would please no more [Shakespeare's] plots, whether historical or fabulous, are always crowded with incidents, by which...