EPICOENE;
OR, THE SILENT WOMAN
By Ben Jonson
Contents
INTRODUCTION
THE greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary
dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and
criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the
subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his
strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least
in his age.
Ben Jonson came of the stock that was centuries after to give to the world
Thomas Carlyle; for Jonson’s grandfather was of Annandale, over the
Solway, whence he migrated to England. Jonson’s father lost his estate
under Queen Mary, “having been cast into prison and forfeited.” He entered
the church, but died a month before his illustrious son was born, leaving
his widow and child in poverty. Jonson’s birthplace was Westminster, and
the time of his birth early in 1573. He was thus nearly ten years
Shakespeare’s junior, and less well off, if a trifle better born. But
Jonson did not profit even by this slight advantage. His mother married
beneath her, a wright or bricklayer, and Jonson was for a time apprenticed
to the trade. As a youth he attracted the attention of the famous
antiquary, William Camden, then usher at Westminster School, and there the
poet laid the solid foundations of his classical learning. Jonson always
held Camden in veneration, acknowledging that to him he owed,
“All that I am in arts, all that I know;”
and dedicating his first dramatic success, “Every Man in His Humour,” to
him. It is doubtful whether Jonson ever went to either university, though
Fuller says that he was “statutably admitted into St. John’s College,
Cambridge.” He tells us that he took no degree, but was later “Master of
Arts in both the universities, by their favour, not his study.” When a
mere youth Jonson enlisted as a soldier, trailing his pike in Flanders in
the protracted wars of William the Silent against the Spanish. Jonson was
a large and raw-boned lad; he became by his own account in time
exceedingly bulky. In chat with his friend William Drummond of
Hawthornden, Jonson told how “in his service in the Low Countries he had,
in the face of both the camps, killed an enemy, and taken opima spolia
from him;” and how “since his coming to England, being appealed to the
fields, he had killed his adversary which had hurt him in the arm and
whose sword was ten inches longer than his.” Jonson’s reach may have made
up for the lack of his sword; certainly his prowess lost nothing in the
telling. Obviously Jonson was brave, combative, and not averse to talking
of himself and his doings.
In 1592, Jonson returned from abroad penniless. Soon after he married,
almost as early and quite as imprudently as Shakespeare. He told Drummond
curtly that “his wife was a shrew, yet honest”; for some years he lived
apart from her in the household of Lord Albany. Yet two touching epitaphs
among Jonson’s “Epigrams,” “On my first daughter,” and “On my first son,”
attest the warmth of the poet’s family affections. The daughter died in
infancy, the son of the plague; another son grew up to manhood little
credit to his father whom he survived. We know nothing beyond this of
Jonson’s domestic life.
How soon Jonson drifted into what we now call grandly “the theatrical
profession” we do not know. In 1593, Marlowe made his tragic exit from
life, and Greene, Shakespeare’s other rival on the popular stage, had
preceded Marlowe in an equally miserable death the year before.
Shakespeare already had the running to himself. Jonson appears first in
the employment of Philip Henslowe, the exploiter of several troupes of
players, manager, and father-in-law of the famous actor, Edward Alleyn.
From entries in “Henslowe’s Diary,” a species of theatrical account book
which has been handed down to us, we know that Jonson was connected with
the Admiral’s men; for he borrowed 4 pounds of Henslowe, July 28, 1597,
paying back 3s. 9d. on the same day on account of his “share” (in what is
not altogether clear); while later, on December 3, of the same year,
Henslowe advanced 20s. to him “upon a book which he showed the plot unto
the company which he promised to deliver unto the company at Christmas
next.” In the next August Jonson was in collaboration with Chettle and
Porter in a play called “Hot Anger Soon Cold.” All this points to an
association with Henslowe of some duration, as no mere tyro would be thus
paid in advance upon mere promise. From allusions in Dekker’s play,
“Satiromastix,” it appears that Jonson, like Shakespeare, began life as an
actor, and that he “ambled in a leather pitch by a play-wagon” taking at
one time the part of Hieronimo in Kyd’s famous play, “The Spanish
Tragedy.” By the beginning of 1598, Jonson, though still in needy
circumstances, had begun to receive recognition. Francis Meres —
well known for his “Comparative Discourse of our English Poets with the
Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets,” printed in 1598, and for his mention
therein of a dozen plays of Shakespeare by title — accords to Ben
Jonson a place as one of “our best in tragedy,” a matter of some surprise,
as no known tragedy of Jonson from so early a date has come down to us.
That Jonson was at work on tragedy, however, is proved by the entries in
Henslowe of at least three tragedies, now lost, in which he had a hand.
These are “Page of Plymouth,” “King Robert II. of Scotland,” and “Richard
Crookback.” But all of these came later, on his return to Henslowe, and
range from August 1599 to June 1602.
Returning to the autumn of 1598, an event now happened to sever for a time
Jonson’s relations with Henslowe. In a letter to Alleyn, dated September
26 of that year, Henslowe writes: “I have lost one of my company that
hurteth me greatly; that is Gabriel [Spencer], for he is slain in Hogsden
fields by the hands of Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer.” The last word is
perhaps Henslowe’s thrust at Jonson in his displeasure rather than a
designation of his actual continuance at his trade up to this time. It is
fair to Jonson to remark however, that his adversary appears to have been
a notorious fire-eater who had shortly before killed one Feeke in a
similar squabble. Duelling was a frequent occurrence of the time among
gentlemen and the nobility; it was an impudent breach of the peace on the
part of a player. This duel is the one which Jonson described years after
to Drummond, and for it Jonson was duly arraigned at Old Bailey, tried,
and convicted. He was sent to prison and such goods and chattels as he had
“were forfeited.” It is a thought to give one pause that, but for the
ancient law permitting convicted felons to plead, as it was called, the
benefit of clergy, Jonson might have been hanged for this deed. The
circumstance that the poet could read and write saved him; and he received
only a brand of the letter “T,” for Tyburn, on his left thumb. While in
jail Jonson became a Roman Catholic; but he returned to the faith of the
Church of England a dozen years later.
On his release, in disgrace with Henslowe and his former associates,
Jonson offered his services as a playwright to Henslowe’s rivals, the Lord
Chamberlain’s company, in which Shakespeare was a prominent shareholder. A
tradition of long standing, though not susceptible of proof in a court of
law, narrates that Jonson had submitted the manuscript of “Every Man in
His Humour” to the Chamberlain’s men and had received from the company a
refusal; that Shakespeare called him back, read the play himself, and at
once accepted it. Whether this story is true or not, certain it is that
“Every Man in His Humour” was accepted by Shakespeare’s company and acted
for the first time in 1598, with Shakespeare taking a part. The evidence
of this is contained in the list of actors prefixed to the comedy in the
folio of Jonson’s works, 1616. But it is a mistake to infer, because
Shakespeare’s name stands first in the list of actors and the elder
Kno’well first in the dramatis personae, that Shakespeare took that
particular part. The order of a list of Elizabethan players was generally
that of their importance or priority as shareholders in the company and
seldom if ever corresponded to the list of characters.
“Every Man in His Humour” was an immediate success, and with it Jonson’s
reputation as one of the leading dramatists of his time was established
once and for all. This could have been by no means Jonson’s earliest
comedy, and we have just learned that he was already reputed one of “our
best in tragedy.” Indeed, one of Jonson’s extant comedies, “The Case is
Altered,” but one never claimed by him or published as his, must certainly
have preceded “Every Man in His Humour” on the stage. The former play may
be described as a comedy modelled on the Latin plays of Plautus. (It
combines, in fact, situations derived from the “Captivi” and the
“Aulularia” of that dramatist). But the pretty story of the beggar-maiden,
Rachel, and her suitors, Jonson found, not among the classics, but in the
ideals of romantic love which Shakespeare had already popularised on the
stage. Jonson never again produced so fresh and lovable a feminine
personage as Rachel, although in other respects “The Case is Altered” is
not a conspicuous play, and, save for the satirising of Antony Munday in
the person of Antonio Balladino and Gabriel Harvey as well, is perhaps the
least characteristic of the comedies of Jonson.
“Every Man in His Humour,” probably first acted late in the summer of 1598
and at the Curtain, is commonly regarded as an epoch-making play; and this
view is not unjustified. As to plot, it tells little more than how an
intercepted letter enabled a father to follow his supposedly studious son
to London, and there observe his life with the gallants of the time. The
real quality of this comedy is in its personages and in the theory upon
which they are conceived. Ben Jonson had theories about poetry and the
drama, and he was neither chary in talking of them nor in experimenting
with them in his plays. This makes Jonson, like Dryden in his time, and
Wordsworth much later, an author to reckon with; particularly when we
remember that many of Jonson’s notions came for a time definitely to
prevail and to modify the whole trend of English poetry. First of all
Jonson was a classicist, that is, he believed in restraint and precedent
in art in opposition to the prevalent ungoverned and irresponsible
Renaissance spirit. Jonson believed that there was a professional way of
doing things which might be reached by a study of the best examples, and
he found these examples for the most part among the ancients. To confine
our attention to the drama, Jonson objected to the amateurishness and
haphazard nature of many contemporary plays, and set himself to do
something different; and the first and most striking thing that he evolved
was his conception and practice of the comedy of humours.
As Jonson has been much misrepresented in this matter, let us quote his
own words as to “humour.” A humour, according to Jonson, was a bias of
disposition, a warp, so to speak, in character by which
But continuing, Jonson is careful to add:
Jonson’s comedy of humours, in a word, conceived of stage personages on
the basis of a ruling trait or passion (a notable simplification of actual
life be it observed in passing); and, placing these typified traits in
juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck the spark of comedy.
Downright, as his name indicates, is “a plain squire”; Bobadill’s humour
is that of the braggart who is incidentally, and with delightfully comic
effect, a coward; Brainworm’s humour is the finding out of things to the
end of fooling everybody: of course he is fooled in the end himself. But
it was not Jonson’s theories alone that made the success of “Every Man in
His Humour.” The play is admirably written and each character is vividly
conceived, and with a firm touch based on observation of the men of the
London of the day. Jonson was neither in this, his first great comedy (nor
in any other play that he wrote), a supine classicist, urging that English
drama return to a slavish adherence to classical conditions. He says as to
the laws of the old comedy (meaning by “laws,” such matters as the unities
of time and place and the use of chorus): “I see not then, but we should
enjoy the same licence, or free power to illustrate and heighten our
invention as they [the ancients] did; and not be tied to those strict and
regular forms which the niceness of a few, who are nothing but form, would
thrust upon us.” “Every Man in His Humour” is written in prose, a novel
practice which Jonson had of his predecessor in comedy, John Lyly. Even
the word “humour” seems to have been employed in the Jonsonian sense by
Chapman before Jonson’s use of it. Indeed, the comedy of humours itself is
only a heightened variety of the comedy of manners which represents life,
viewed at a satirical angle, and is the oldest and most persistent species
of comedy in the language. None the less, Jonson’s comedy merited its
immediate success and marked out a definite course in which comedy long
continued to run. To mention only Shakespeare’s Falstaff and his rout,
Bardolph, Pistol, Dame Quickly, and the rest, whether in “Henry IV.” or in
“The Merry Wives of Windsor,” all are conceived in the spirit of humours.
So are the captains, Welsh, Scotch, and Irish of “Henry V.,” and Malvolio
especially later; though Shakespeare never employed the method of humours
for an important personage. It was not Jonson’s fault that many of his
successors did precisely the thing that he had reprobated, that is,
degrade the humour: into an oddity of speech, an eccentricity of manner,
of dress, or cut of beard. There was an anonymous play called “Every Woman
in Her Humour.” Chapman wrote “A Humourous Day’s Mirth,” Day, “Humour Out
of Breath,” Fletcher later, “The Humourous Lieutenant,” and Jonson,
besides “Every Man Out of His Humour,” returned to the title in closing
the cycle of his comedies in “The Magnetic Lady or Humours Reconciled.”
With the performance of “Every Man Out of His Humour” in 1599, by
Shakespeare’s company once more at the Globe, we turn a new page in
Jonson’s career. Despite his many real virtues, if there is one feature
more than any other that distinguishes Jonson, it is his arrogance; and to
this may be added his self-righteousness, especially under criticism or
satire. “Every Man Out of His Humour” is the first of three “comical
satires” which Jonson contributed to what Dekker called the poetomachia or
war of the theatres as recent critics have named it. This play as a fabric
of plot is a very slight affair; but as a satirical picture of the manners
of the time, proceeding by means of vivid caricature, couched in witty and
brilliant dialogue and sustained by that righteous indignation which must
lie at the heart of all true satire — as a realisation, in short, of
the classical ideal of comedy — there had been nothing like Jonson’s
comedy since the days of Aristophanes. “Every Man in His Humour,” like the
two plays that follow it, contains two kinds of attack, the critical or
generally satiric, levelled at abuses and corruptions in the abstract; and
the personal, in which specific application is made of all this in the
lampooning of poets and others, Jonson’s contemporaries. The method of
personal attack by actual caricature of a person on the stage is almost as
old as the drama. Aristophanes so lampooned Euripides in “The Acharnians”
and Socrates in “The Clouds,” to mention no other examples; and in English
drama this kind of thing is alluded to again and again. What Jonson really
did, was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual
burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and
permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon
eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder that
Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal quarrels with
his fellow-authors. The circumstances of the origin of this ‘poetomachia’
are far from clear, and those who have written on the topic, except of
late, have not helped to make them clearer. The origin of the “war” has
been referred to satirical references, apparently to Jonson, contained in
“The Scourge of Villainy,” a satire in regular form after the manner of
the ancients by John Marston, a fellow playwright, subsequent friend and
collaborator of Jonson’s. On the other hand, epigrams of Jonson have been
discovered (49, 68, and 100) variously charging “playwright” (reasonably
identified with Marston) with scurrility, cowardice, and plagiarism;
though the dates of the epigrams cannot be ascertained with certainty.
Jonson’s own statement of the matter to Drummond runs: “He had many
quarrels with Marston, beat him, and took his pistol from him, wrote his
“Poetaster” on him; the beginning[s] of them were that Marston represented
him on the stage.”*
[footnote] *The best account of this whole subject is to be found in the
edition of “Poetaster” and “Satiromastrix” by J. H. Penniman in “Belles
Lettres Series” shortly to appear. See also his earlier work, “The War of
the Theatres,” 1892, and the excellent contributions to the subject by H.
C. Hart in “Notes and Queries,” and in his edition of Jonson, 1906.
Here at least we are on certain ground; and the principals of the quarrel
are known. “Histriomastix,” a play revised by Marston in 1598, has been
regarded as the one in which Jonson was thus “represented on the stage”;
although the personage in question, Chrisogonus, a poet, satirist, and
translator, poor but proud, and contemptuous of the common herd, seems
rather a complimentary portrait of Jonson than a caricature. As to the
personages actually ridiculed in “Every Man Out of His Humour,” Carlo
Buffone was formerly thought certainly to be Marston, as he was described
as “a public, scurrilous, and profane jester,” and elsewhere as the grand
scourge or second untruss [that is, satirist], of the time (Joseph Hall
being by his own boast the first, and Marston’s work being entitled “The
Scourge of Villainy”). Apparently we must now prefer for Carlo a notorious
character named Charles Chester, of whom gossipy and inaccurate Aubrey
relates that he was “a bold impertinent fellow…a perpetual talker and
made a noise like a drum in a room. So one time at a tavern Sir Walter
Raleigh beats him and seals up his mouth (that is his upper and nether
beard) with hard wax. From him Ben Jonson takes his Carlo Buffone [‘i.e.’,
jester] in “Every Man in His Humour” [‘sic’].” Is it conceivable that
after all Jonson was ridiculing Marston, and that the point of the satire
consisted in an intentional confusion of “the grand scourge or second
untruss” with “the scurrilous and profane” Chester?
We have digressed into detail in this particular case to exemplify the
difficulties of criticism in its attempts to identify the allusions in
these forgotten quarrels. We are on sounder ground of fact in recording
other manifestations of Jonson’s enmity. In “The Case is Altered” there is
clear ridicule in the character Antonio Balladino of Anthony Munday,
pageant-poet of the city, translator of romances and playwright as well.
In “Every Man in His Humour” there is certainly a caricature of Samuel
Daniel, accepted poet of the court, sonneteer, and companion of men of
fashion. These men held recognised positions to which Jonson felt his
talents better entitled him; they were hence to him his natural enemies.
It seems almost certain that he pursued both in the personages of his
satire through “Every Man Out of His Humour,” and “Cynthia’s Revels,”
Daniel under the characters Fastidious Brisk and Hedon, Munday as
Puntarvolo and Amorphus; but in these last we venture on quagmire once
more. Jonson’s literary rivalry of Daniel is traceable again and again, in
the entertainments that welcomed King James on his way to London, in the
masques at court, and in the pastoral drama. As to Jonson’s personal
ambitions with respect to these two men, it is notable that he became, not
pageant-poet, but chronologer to the City of London; and that, on the
accession of the new king, he came soon to triumph over Daniel as the
accepted entertainer of royalty.
“Cynthia’s Revels,” the second “comical satire,” was acted in 1600, and,
as a play, is even more lengthy, elaborate, and impossible than “Every Man
Out of His Humour.” Here personal satire seems to have absorbed
everything, and while much of the caricature is admirable, especially in
the detail of witty and trenchantly satirical dialogue, the central idea
of a fountain of self-love is not very well carried out, and the persons
revert at times to abstractions, the action to allegory. It adds to our
wonder that this difficult drama should have been acted by the Children of
Queen Elizabeth’s Chapel, among them Nathaniel Field with whom Jonson read
Horace and Martial, and whom he taught later how to make plays. Another of
these precocious little actors was Salathiel Pavy, who died before he was
thirteen, already famed for taking the parts of old men. Him Jonson
immortalised in one of the sweetest of his epitaphs. An interesting
sidelight is this on the character of this redoubtable and rugged
satirist, that he should thus have befriended and tenderly remembered
these little theatrical waifs, some of whom (as we know) had been
literally kidnapped to be pressed into the service of the theatre and
whipped to the conning of their difficult parts. To the caricature of
Daniel and Munday in “Cynthia’s Revels” must be added Anaides (impudence),
here assuredly Marston, and Asotus (the prodigal), interpreted as Lodge
or, more perilously, Raleigh. Crites, like Asper-Macilente in “Every Man
Out of His Humour,” is Jonson’s self-complaisant portrait of himself, the
just, wholly admirable, and judicious scholar, holding his head high above
the pack of the yelping curs of envy and detraction, but careless of their
puny attacks on his perfections with only too mindful a neglect.
The third and last of the “comical satires” is “Poetaster,” acted, once
more, by the Children of the Chapel in 1601, and Jonson’s only avowed
contribution to the fray. According to the author’s own account, this play
was written in fifteen weeks on a report that his enemies had entrusted to
Dekker the preparation of “Satiromastix, the Untrussing of the Humorous
Poet,” a dramatic attack upon himself. In this attempt to forestall his
enemies Jonson succeeded, and “Poetaster” was an immediate and deserved
success. While hardly more closely knit in structure than its earlier
companion pieces, “Poetaster” is planned to lead up to the ludicrous final
scene in which, after a device borrowed from the “Lexiphanes” of Lucian,
the offending poetaster, Marston-Crispinus, is made to throw up the
difficult words with which he had overburdened his stomach as well as
overlarded his vocabulary. In the end Crispinus with his fellow,
Dekker-Demetrius, is bound over to keep the peace and never thenceforward
“malign, traduce, or detract the person or writings of Quintus Horatius
Flaccus [Jonson] or any other eminent man transcending you in merit.” One
of the most diverting personages in Jonson’s comedy is Captain Tucca. “His
peculiarity” has been well described by Ward as “a buoyant blackguardism
which recovers itself instantaneously from the most complete exposure, and
a picturesqueness of speech like that of a walking dictionary of slang.”
It was this character, Captain Tucca, that Dekker hit upon in his reply,
“Satiromastix,” and he amplified him, turning his abusive vocabulary back
upon Jonson and adding “an immodesty to his dialogue that did not enter
into Jonson’s conception.” It has been held, altogether plausibly, that
when Dekker was engaged professionally, so to speak, to write a dramatic
reply to Jonson, he was at work on a species of chronicle history, dealing
with the story of Walter Terill in the reign of William Rufus. This he
hurriedly adapted to include the satirical characters suggested by
“Poetaster,” and fashioned to convey the satire of his reply. The
absurdity of placing Horace in the court of a Norman king is the result.
But Dekker’s play is not without its palpable hits at the arrogance, the
literary pride, and self-righteousness of Jonson-Horace, whose “ningle” or
pal, the absurd Asinius Bubo, has recently been shown to figure forth, in
all likelihood, Jonson’s friend, the poet Drayton. Slight and hastily
adapted as is “Satiromastix,” especially in a comparison with the better
wrought and more significant satire of “Poetaster,” the town awarded the
palm to Dekker, not to Jonson; and Jonson gave over in consequence his
practice of “comical satire.” Though Jonson was cited to appear before the
Lord Chief Justice to answer certain charges to the effect that he had
attacked lawyers and soldiers in “Poetaster,” nothing came of this
complaint. It may be suspected that much of this furious clatter and
give-and-take was pure playing to the gallery. The town was agog with the
strife, and on no less an authority than Shakespeare (“Hamlet,” ii. 2), we
learn that the children’s company (acting the plays of Jonson) did “so
berattle the common stages…that many, wearing rapiers, are afraid of
goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither.”
Several other plays have been thought to bear a greater or less part in
the war of the theatres. Among them the most important is a college play,
entitled “The Return from Parnassus,” dating 1601-02. In it a much-quoted
passage makes Burbage, as a character, declare: “Why here’s our fellow
Shakespeare puts them all down; aye and Ben Jonson, too. O that Ben Jonson
is a pestilent fellow; he brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill, but
our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his
credit.” Was Shakespeare then concerned in this war of the stages? And
what could have been the nature of this “purge”? Among several
suggestions, “Troilus and Cressida” has been thought by some to be the
play in which Shakespeare thus “put down” his friend, Jonson. A wiser
interpretation finds the “purge” in “Satiromastix,” which, though not
written by Shakespeare, was staged by his company, and therefore with his
approval and under his direction as one of the leaders of that company.
The last years of the reign of Elizabeth thus saw Jonson recognised as a
dramatist second only to Shakespeare, and not second even to him as a
dramatic satirist. But Jonson now turned his talents to new fields. Plays
on subjects derived from classical story and myth had held the stage from
the beginning of the drama, so that Shakespeare was making no new
departure when he wrote his “Julius Caesar” about 1600. Therefore when
Jonson staged “Sejanus,” three years later and with Shakespeare’s company
once more, he was only following in the elder dramatist’s footsteps. But
Jonson’s idea of a play on classical history, on the one hand, and
Shakespeare’s and the elder popular dramatists, on the other, were very
different. Heywood some years before had put five straggling plays on the
stage in quick succession, all derived from stories in Ovid and dramatised
with little taste or discrimination. Shakespeare had a finer conception of
form, but even he was contented to take all his ancient history from
North’s translation of Plutarch and dramatise his subject without further
inquiry. Jonson was a scholar and a classical antiquarian. He reprobated
this slipshod amateurishness, and wrote his “Sejanus” like a scholar,
reading Tacitus, Suetonius, and other authorities, to be certain of his
facts, his setting, and his atmosphere, and somewhat pedantically noting
his authorities in the margin when he came to print. “Sejanus” is a
tragedy of genuine dramatic power in which is told with discriminating
taste the story of the haughty favourite of Tiberius with his tragical
overthrow. Our drama presents no truer nor more painstaking representation
of ancient Roman life than may be found in Jonson’s “Sejanus” and
“Catiline his Conspiracy,” which followed in 1611. A passage in the
address of the former play to the reader, in which Jonson refers to a
collaboration in an earlier version, has led to the surmise that
Shakespeare may have been that “worthier pen.” There is no evidence to
determine the matter.
In 1605, we find Jonson in active collaboration with Chapman and Marston
in the admirable comedy of London life entitled “Eastward Hoe.” In the
previous year, Marston had dedicated his “Malcontent,” in terms of fervid
admiration, to Jonson; so that the wounds of the war of the theatres must
have been long since healed. Between Jonson and Chapman there was the
kinship of similar scholarly ideals. The two continued friends throughout
life. “Eastward Hoe” achieved the extraordinary popularity represented in
a demand for three issues in one year. But this was not due entirely to
the merits of the play. In its earliest version a passage which an
irritable courtier conceived to be derogatory to his nation, the Scots,
sent both Chapman and Jonson to jail; but the matter was soon patched up,
for by this time Jonson had influence at court.
With the accession of King James, Jonson began his long and successful
career as a writer of masques. He wrote more masques than all his
competitors together, and they are of an extraordinary variety and poetic
excellence. Jonson did not invent the masque; for such premeditated
devices to set and frame, so to speak, a court ball had been known and
practised in varying degrees of elaboration long before his time. But
Jonson gave dramatic value to the masque, especially in his invention of
the antimasque, a comedy or farcical element of relief, entrusted to
professional players or dancers. He enhanced, as well, the beauty and
dignity of those portions of the masque in which noble lords and ladies
took their parts to create, by their gorgeous costumes and artistic
grouping and evolutions, a sumptuous show. On the mechanical and scenic
side Jonson had an inventive and ingenious partner in Inigo Jones, the
royal architect, who more than any one man raised the standard of stage
representation in the England of his day. Jonson continued active in the
service of the court in the writing of masques and other entertainments
far into the reign of King Charles; but, towards the end, a quarrel with
Jones embittered his life, and the two testy old men appear to have become
not only a constant irritation to each other, but intolerable bores at
court. In “Hymenaei,” “The Masque of Queens,” “Love Freed from Ignorance,”
“Lovers made Men,” “Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue,” and many more will be
found Jonson’s aptitude, his taste, his poetry and inventiveness in these
by-forms of the drama; while in “The Masque of Christmas,” and “The
Gipsies Metamorphosed” especially, is discoverable that power of broad
comedy which, at court as well as in the city, was not the least element
of Jonson’s contemporary popularity.
But Jonson had by no means given up the popular stage when he turned to
the amusement of King James. In 1605 “Volpone” was produced, “The Silent
Woman” in 1609, “The Alchemist” in the following year. These comedies,
with “Bartholomew Fair,” 1614, represent Jonson at his height, and for
constructive cleverness, character successfully conceived in the manner of
caricature, wit and brilliancy of dialogue, they stand alone in English
drama. “Volpone, or the Fox,” is, in a sense, a transition play from the
dramatic satires of the war of the theatres to the purer comedy
represented in the plays named above. Its subject is a struggle of wit
applied to chicanery; for among its dramatis personae, from the villainous
Fox himself, his rascally servant Mosca, Voltore (the vulture), Corbaccio
and Corvino (the big and the little raven), to Sir Politic Would-be and
the rest, there is scarcely a virtuous character in the play. Question has
been raised as to whether a story so forbidding can be considered a
comedy, for, although the plot ends in the discomfiture and imprisonment
of the most vicious, it involves no mortal catastrophe. But Jonson was on
sound historical ground, for “Volpone” is conceived far more logically on
the lines of the ancients’ theory of comedy than was ever the romantic
drama of Shakespeare, however repulsive we may find a philosophy of life
that facilely divides the world into the rogues and their dupes, and,
identifying brains with roguery and innocence with folly, admires the
former while inconsistently punishing them.
“The Silent Woman” is a gigantic farce of the most ingenious construction.
The whole comedy hinges on a huge joke, played by a heartless nephew on
his misanthropic uncle, who is induced to take to himself a wife, young,
fair, and warranted silent, but who, in the end, turns out neither silent
nor a woman at all. In “The Alchemist,” again, we have the utmost
cleverness in construction, the whole fabric building climax on climax,
witty, ingenious, and so plausibly presented that we forget its departures
from the possibilities of life. In “The Alchemist” Jonson represented,
none the less to the life, certain sharpers of the metropolis, revelling
in their shrewdness and rascality and in the variety of the stupidity and
wickedness of their victims. We may object to the fact that the only
person in the play possessed of a scruple of honesty is discomfited, and
that the greatest scoundrel of all is approved in the end and rewarded.
The comedy is so admirably written and contrived, the personages stand out
with such lifelike distinctness in their several kinds, and the whole is
animated with such verve and resourcefulness that “The Alchemist” is a new
marvel every time it is read. Lastly of this group comes the tremendous
comedy, “Bartholomew Fair,” less clear cut, less definite, and less
structurally worthy of praise than its three predecessors, but full of the
keenest and cleverest of satire and inventive to a degree beyond any
English comedy save some other of Jonson’s own. It is in “Bartholomew
Fair” that we are presented to the immortal caricature of the Puritan,
Zeal-in-the-Land Busy, and the Littlewits that group about him, and it is
in this extraordinary comedy that the humour of Jonson, always open to
this danger, loosens into the Rabelaisian mode that so delighted King
James in “The Gipsies Metamorphosed.” Another comedy of less merit is “The
Devil is an Ass,” acted in 1616. It was the failure of this play that
caused Jonson to give over writing for the public stage for a period of
nearly ten years.
“Volpone” was laid as to scene in Venice. Whether because of the success
of “Eastward Hoe” or for other reasons, the other three comedies declare
in the words of the prologue to “The Alchemist”:
“Our scene is London, ’cause we would make known No country’s mirth is
better than our own.”
Indeed Jonson went further when he came to revise his plays for collected
publication in his folio of 1616, he transferred the scene of “Every Man
in His Humour” from Florence to London also, converting Signior Lorenzo di
Pazzi to Old Kno’well, Prospero to Master Welborn, and Hesperida to Dame
Kitely “dwelling i’ the Old Jewry.”
In his comedies of London life, despite his trend towards caricature,
Jonson has shown himself a genuine realist, drawing from the life about
him with an experience and insight rare in any generation. A happy
comparison has been suggested between Ben Jonson and Charles Dickens. Both
were men of the people, lowly born and hardly bred. Each knew the London
of his time as few men knew it; and each represented it intimately and in
elaborate detail. Both men were at heart moralists, seeking the truth by
the exaggerated methods of humour and caricature; perverse, even
wrong-headed at times, but possessed of a true pathos and largeness of
heart, and when all has been said — though the Elizabethan ran to
satire, the Victorian to sentimentality — leaving the world better
for the art that they practised in it.
In 1616, the year of the death of Shakespeare, Jonson collected his plays,
his poetry, and his masques for publication in a collective edition. This
was an unusual thing at the time and had been attempted by no dramatist
before Jonson. This volume published, in a carefully revised text, all the
plays thus far mentioned, excepting “The Case is Altered,” which Jonson
did not acknowledge, “Bartholomew Fair,” and “The Devil is an Ass,” which
was written too late. It included likewise a book of some hundred and
thirty odd “Epigrams,” in which form of brief and pungent writing Jonson
was an acknowledged master; “The Forest,” a smaller collection of lyric
and occasional verse and some ten “Masques” and “Entertainments.” In this
same year Jonson was made poet laureate with a pension of one hundred
marks a year. This, with his fees and returns from several noblemen, and
the small earnings of his plays must have formed the bulk of his income.
The poet appears to have done certain literary hack-work for others, as,
for example, parts of the Punic Wars contributed to Raleigh’s “History of
the World.” We know from a story, little to the credit of either, that
Jonson accompanied Raleigh’s son abroad in the capacity of a tutor. In
1618 Jonson was granted the reversion of the office of Master of the
Revels, a post for which he was peculiarly fitted; but he did not live to
enjoy its perquisites. Jonson was honoured with degrees by both
universities, though when and under what circumstances is not known. It
has been said that he narrowly escaped the honour of knighthood, which the
satirists of the day averred King James was wont to lavish with an
indiscriminate hand. Worse men were made knights in his day than worthy
Ben Jonson.
From 1616 to the close of the reign of King James, Jonson produced nothing
for the stage. But he “prosecuted” what he calls “his wonted studies” with
such assiduity that he became in reality, as by report, one of the most
learned men of his time. Jonson’s theory of authorship involved a wide
acquaintance with books and “an ability,” as he put it, “to convert the
substance or riches of another poet to his own use.” Accordingly Jonson
read not only the Greek and Latin classics down to the lesser writers, but
he acquainted himself especially with the Latin writings of his learned
contemporaries, their prose as well as their poetry, their antiquities and
curious lore as well as their more solid learning. Though a poor man,
Jonson was an indefatigable collector of books. He told Drummond that “the
Earl of Pembroke sent him 20 pounds every first day of the new year to buy
new books.” Unhappily, in 1623, his library was destroyed by fire, an
accident serio-comically described in his witty poem, “An Execration upon
Vulcan.” Yet even now a book turns up from time to time in which is
inscribed, in fair large Italian lettering, the name, Ben Jonson. With
respect to Jonson’s use of his material, Dryden said memorably of him:
“[He] was not only a professed imitator of Horace, but a learned plagiary
of all the others; you track him everywhere in their snow….But he has
done his robberies so openly that one sees he fears not to be taxed by any
law. He invades authors like a monarch, and what would be theft in other
poets is only victory in him.” And yet it is but fair to say that Jonson
prided himself, and justly, on his originality. In “Catiline,” he not only
uses Sallust’s account of the conspiracy, but he models some of the
speeches of Cicero on the Roman orator’s actual words. In “Poetaster,” he
lifts a whole satire out of Horace and dramatises it effectively for his
purposes. The sophist Libanius suggests the situation of “The Silent
Woman”; a Latin comedy of Giordano Bruno, “Il Candelaio,” the relation of
the dupes and the sharpers in “The Alchemist,” the “Mostellaria” of
Plautus, its admirable opening scene. But Jonson commonly bettered his
sources, and putting the stamp of his sovereignty on whatever bullion he
borrowed made it thenceforward to all time current and his own.
The lyric and especially the occasional poetry of Jonson has a peculiar
merit. His theory demanded design and the perfection of literary finish.
He was furthest from the rhapsodist and the careless singer of an idle
day; and he believed that Apollo could only be worthily served in singing
robes and laurel crowned. And yet many of Jonson’s lyrics will live as
long as the language. Who does not know “Queen and huntress, chaste and
fair.” “Drink to me only with thine eyes,” or “Still to be neat, still to
be dressed”? Beautiful in form, deft and graceful in expression, with not
a word too much or one that bears not its part in the total effect, there
is yet about the lyrics of Jonson a certain stiffness and formality, a
suspicion that they were not quite spontaneous and unbidden, but that they
were carved, so to speak, with disproportionate labour by a potent man of
letters whose habitual thought is on greater things. It is for these
reasons that Jonson is even better in the epigram and in occasional verse
where rhetorical finish and pointed wit less interfere with the
spontaneity and emotion which we usually associate with lyrical poetry.
There are no such epitaphs as Ben Jonson’s, witness the charming ones on
his own children, on Salathiel Pavy, the child-actor, and many more; and
this even though the rigid law of mine and thine must now restore to
William Browne of Tavistock the famous lines beginning: “Underneath this
sable hearse.” Jonson is unsurpassed, too, in the difficult poetry of
compliment, seldom falling into fulsome praise and disproportionate
similitude, yet showing again and again a generous appreciation of worth
in others, a discriminating taste and a generous personal regard. There
was no man in England of his rank so well known and universally beloved as
Ben Jonson. The list of his friends, of those to whom he had written
verses, and those who had written verses to him, includes the name of
every man of prominence in the England of King James. And the tone of many
of these productions discloses an affectionate familiarity that speaks for
the amiable personality and sound worth of the laureate. In 1619, growing
unwieldy through inactivity, Jonson hit upon the heroic remedy of a
journey afoot to Scotland. On his way thither and back he was hospitably
received at the houses of many friends and by those to whom his friends
had recommended him. When he arrived in Edinburgh, the burgesses met to
grant him the freedom of the city, and Drummond, foremost of Scottish
poets, was proud to entertain him for weeks as his guest at Hawthornden.
Some of the noblest of Jonson’s poems were inspired by friendship. Such is
the fine “Ode to the memory of Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Moryson,” and
that admirable piece of critical insight and filial affection, prefixed to
the first Shakespeare folio, “To the memory of my beloved master, William
Shakespeare, and what he hath left us,” to mention only these. Nor can the
earlier “Epode,” beginning “Not to know vice at all,” be matched in
stately gravity and gnomic wisdom in its own wise and stately age.
But if Jonson had deserted the stage after the publication of his folio
and up to the end of the reign of King James, he was far from inactive;
for year after year his inexhaustible inventiveness continued to
contribute to the masquing and entertainment at court. In “The Golden Age
Restored,” Pallas turns the Iron Age with its attendant evils into statues
which sink out of sight; in “Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue,” Atlas figures
represented as an old man, his shoulders covered with snow, and Comus,
“the god of cheer or the belly,” is one of the characters, a circumstance
which an imaginative boy of ten, named John Milton, was not to forget.
“Pan’s Anniversary,” late in the reign of James, proclaimed that Jonson
had not yet forgotten how to write exquisite lyrics, and “The Gipsies
Metamorphosed” displayed the old drollery and broad humorous stroke still
unimpaired and unmatchable. These, too, and the earlier years of Charles
were the days of the Apollo Room of the Devil Tavern where Jonson
presided, the absolute monarch of English literary Bohemia. We hear of a
room blazoned about with Jonson’s own judicious “Leges Convivales” in
letters of gold, of a company made up of the choicest spirits of the time,
devotedly attached to their veteran dictator, his reminiscences, opinions,
affections, and enmities. And we hear, too, of valorous potations; but in
the words of Herrick addressed to his master, Jonson, at the Devil Tavern,
as at the Dog, the Triple Tun, and at the Mermaid,
But the patronage of the court failed in the days of King Charles, though
Jonson was not without royal favours; and the old poet returned to the
stage, producing, between 1625 and 1633, “The Staple of News,” “The New
Inn,” “The Magnetic Lady,” and “The Tale of a Tub,” the last doubtless
revised from a much earlier comedy. None of these plays met with any
marked success, although the scathing generalisation of Dryden that
designated them “Jonson’s dotages” is unfair to their genuine merits. Thus
the idea of an office for the gathering, proper dressing, and promulgation
of news (wild flight of the fancy in its time) was an excellent subject
for satire on the existing absurdities among newsmongers; although as much
can hardly be said for “The Magnetic Lady,” who, in her bounty, draws to
her personages of differing humours to reconcile them in the end according
to the alternative title, or “Humours Reconciled.” These last plays of the
old dramatist revert to caricature and the hard lines of allegory; the
moralist is more than ever present, the satire degenerates into personal
lampoon, especially of his sometime friend, Inigo Jones, who appears
unworthily to have used his influence at court against the broken-down old
poet. And now disease claimed Jonson, and he was bedridden for months. He
had succeeded Middleton in 1628 as Chronologer to the City of London, but
lost the post for not fulfilling its duties. King Charles befriended him,
and even commissioned him to write still for the entertainment of the
court; and he was not without the sustaining hand of noble patrons and
devoted friends among the younger poets who were proud to be “sealed of
the tribe of Ben.”
Jonson died, August 6, 1637, and a second folio of his works, which he had
been some time gathering, was printed in 1640, bearing in its various
parts dates ranging from 1630 to 1642. It included all the plays mentioned
in the foregoing paragraphs, excepting “The Case is Altered;” the masques,
some fifteen, that date between 1617 and 1630; another collection of
lyrics and occasional poetry called “Underwoods”, including some further
entertainments; a translation of “Horace’s Art of Poetry” (also published
in a vicesimo quarto in 1640), and certain fragments and ingatherings
which the poet would hardly have included himself. These last comprise the
fragment (less than seventy lines) of a tragedy called “Mortimer his
Fall,” and three acts of a pastoral drama of much beauty and poetic
spirit, “The Sad Shepherd.” There is also the exceedingly interesting
“English Grammar” “made by Ben Jonson for the benefit of all strangers out
of his observation of the English language now spoken and in use,” in
Latin and English; and “Timber, or Discoveries” “made upon men and matter
as they have flowed out of his daily reading, or had their reflux to his
peculiar notion of the times.” The “Discoveries,” as it is usually called,
is a commonplace book such as many literary men have kept, in which their
reading was chronicled, passages that took their fancy translated or
transcribed, and their passing opinions noted. Many passages of Jonson’s
“Discoveries” are literal translations from the authors he chanced to be
reading, with the reference, noted or not, as the accident of the moment
prescribed. At times he follows the line of Macchiavelli’s argument as to
the nature and conduct of princes; at others he clarifies his own
conception of poetry and poets by recourse to Aristotle. He finds a choice
paragraph on eloquence in Seneca the elder and applies it to his own
recollection of Bacon’s power as an orator; and another on facile and
ready genius, and translates it, adapting it to his recollection of his
fellow-playwright, Shakespeare. To call such passages — which Jonson
never intended for publication — plagiarism, is to obscure the
significance of words. To disparage his memory by citing them is a
preposterous use of scholarship. Jonson’s prose, both in his dramas, in
the descriptive comments of his masques, and in the “Discoveries,” is
characterised by clarity and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting in a
fine sense of form or in the subtler graces of diction.
When Jonson died there was a project for a handsome monument to his
memory. But the Civil War was at hand, and the project failed. A memorial,
not insufficient, was carved on the stone covering his grave in one of the
aisles of Westminster Abbey:
“O rare Ben Jonson.”
FELIX E. SCHELLING. THE COLLEGE, PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.
The following is a complete list of his published works: —
DRAMAS:
To Jonson have also been attributed additions to Kyd’s Jeronymo, and
collaboration in The Widow with Fletcher and Middleton, and in the Bloody
Brother with Fletcher.
POEMS:
Epigrams, The Forrest, Underwoods, published in fols., 1616, 1640;
Selections: Execration against Vulcan, and Epigrams, 1640; G. Hor. Flaccus
his art of Poetry, Englished by Ben Jonson, 1640; Leges Convivialis, fol.,
1692. Other minor poems first appeared in Gifford’s edition of Works.
PROSE:
Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter, fol., 1641; The English
Grammar, made by Ben Jonson for the benefit of Strangers, fol., 1640.
Masques and Entertainments were published in the early folios.
WORKS:
SELECTIONS:
LIFE:
EPICOENE; OR, THE SILENT WOMAN
TO THE TRULY NOBLE BY ALL TITLES SIR FRANCIS STUART
Sir,
My hope is not so nourished by example, as it will conclude, this dumb
piece should please you, because it hath pleased others before; but by
trust, that when you have read it, you will find it worthy to have
displeased none. This makes that I now number you, not only in the names
of favour, but the names of justice to what I write; and do presently call
you to the exercise of that noblest, and manliest virtue; as coveting
rather to be freed in my fame, by the authority of a judge, than the
credit of an undertaker. Read, therefore, I pray you, and censure. There
is not a line, or syllable in it, changed from the simplicity of the first
copy. And, when you shall consider, through the certain hatred of some,
how much a man’s innocency may be endangered by an uncertain accusation;
you will, I doubt not, so begin to hate the iniquity of such natures, as I
shall love the contumely done me, whose end was so honourable as to be
wiped off by your sentence.
Your unprofitable, but true Lover,
BEN JONSON.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
MOROSE, a Gentleman that loves no noise.
SIR DAUPHINE EUGENIE, a Knight, his Nephew.
NED CLERIMONT, a Gentleman, his Friend.
TRUEWIT, another Friend.
SIR JOHN DAW, a Knight.
SIR AMOROUS LA-FOOLE, a Knight also.
THOMAS OTTER, a Land and Sea Captain.
CUTBEARD, a Barber.
MUTE, one of MOROSE’s Servants.
PARSON.
Page to CLERIMONT.
EPICOENE, supposed the Silent Woman.
LADY HAUGHTY, LADY CENTAURE, MISTRESS DOL MAVIS, Ladies Collegiates.
MISTRESS OTTER, the Captain’s Wife, MISTRESS TRUSTY, LADY HAUGHTY’S Woman,
Pretenders.
Pages, Servants, etc.
SCENE — LONDON.