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Ben Jonson and his Comedies

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MINISTRY OF HIGHER AND SECONDARY SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF
UZBEKISTAN

GULISTAN STATE UNIVERSITY

The English and Literature Department

Qualification work on speciality English philology

on the theme:

“Ben Jonson and his comedies.”

Tojieva Dilnoza’s qualification work

on speciality 5220100

Supervisor: Tojiev Kh.

Gulistan-2006

Introduction

Some notes on Ben Johnson’s Works

Born in 1572, Jonson began his working life as a bricklayer and then a
soldier, and it is perhaps experiences in these fields – and his
prodigious intake of falling down water – that shaped his no-nonsense,
confrontational personality.

Jonson became an actor after serving in the army in the Netherlands. By
all accounts, he was not a very good actor, but during his time with
Pembroke’s Men he co-authored a play, “Isle of Dogs,” with Nashe. The
play, accused of spreading sedition, would lead to one of many brushes
with the State, and he was imprisoned for some months.

Jonson wrote for the Admiral’s Men until 1856, when a quarrel with
Gabriel Spencer, one of the company’s leading players, led to a duel.
Spencer was killed and Jonson only spared execution by drawing on his
knowledge of Latin to invoke the benefit of the clergy, which enabled
the convicted criminal to pass as a clergyman, and therefore obtain a
discharge from the civil courts. It is believed that while in Newgate
Prison he converted to Roman Catholicism, and here was branded on his
thumb with the “T” for Tyburn (the most famous place of execution in
London after the Tower) to ever more remind him of his lucky escape.

Jonson’s first box office successes came about with comedies like “Every
Man In His Humour,” which featured Shakespeare in the cast. It is
thought Shakespeare was probably the one who first championed Jonson as
a writer of note. Jonson’s method of working began to crystallize about
this time, and he began to produce more hard-edged, biting satire
dispensing with a lot of the farce and frippery that were Shakespeare’s
tools. As his work became ever more distinctive and classically inspired
he began to heap disdain on other writers and their work.

Boys’ Company performance of “Poetaster”In the early 1600’s, Jonson
embraced a new phenomenon. Boys Companies were as seductive to audiences
and as threatening to Shakespeare’s brand of theatre as N*Synch and Boys
2 Men were to today’s Springsteens, REMs and Rolling Stones.

Boys Companies were highly trained in vocal and instrumental music, and
with their youthful looks and skin were probably a lot easier to relate
to in women’s roles than the half shaved, former soldiers of the adult
theatre companies.

Jonson, the classical scholar, and Shakespeare, the populist
crowd-pleaser as Jonson saw him, even came to blows in a “discussion”
over the merits, or otherwise, of the Boys Companies. A protracted, and
wordy, War of the Poets ensued, with both sides of the argument trading
digs and insults through their work.

Imagine an episode of the TV show Frasier that lasts three years, and
features an unbroken argument between Niles and Frasier Crane on the
relative merits of Jung and Freud, and you get the general idea.

Jonson would find himself in trouble with the State time and time again
– for ridiculing the Scots in “Eastward Ho!” and most seriously when he
was questioned over the gunpowder plot, after which he renounced his
“provocative” Roman Catholicism. Later his play, “Sejanus,” would also
fall foul of the censors.

Jonson, always something of a misunderstood outsider in his own writing,
would comment on his lot at the hands of a society rife with envy and
suspicion:

Know, tis a dangerous age,

Wherein who writes had need present his scenes

Forty-fold proof against the conjuring means

Of base detractors and illiterate apes

(It’s interesting that spooky rock person Marilyn Manson has been quoted
as referring to Limp Bizkit’s front man Fred Durst as an “illiterate
ape,” Manson being another artistic figure who felt his work was being
misrepresented after the atrocious events at Columbine.)

With the arrival of James I on the throne, Jonson found himself in favor
once again, and, with his co-writer Inigo Jones, created Court Masques
for Queen Anne until their inevitable quarrel. Jonson and Shakespeare
seem to have called a truce on their dispute and become close again
around 1609. Until Shakespeare’s death they seem to have continued their
almost good natured jibes and sniping, with Jonson typically dismissing
his friend as having “small Latin and less Greek.”

Ben Jonson clearly saw himself as a champion of intellectualism –
totalitarian states often don’t care for intellectuals to the point that
they will generally kill most of them. Shakespeare could ultimately be
said to be cleverer in diluting his classical influences to reach a
wider audience. It’s that old Hollywood-versus-arthouse debate.

It was said at the time that “gentle Will” Shakespeare showed Jonson a
courtesy that was not returned. Jonson certainly seems to have been
brusque and volatile, a matter not helped by his drinking. Everyone
drank alcohol in Elizabethan and Jacobean London because the quality of
the available drinking water was so bad. But Jonson literally turned it
into an art form, composing whole poems about his favorite drinking
holes.

There seems to have been an almost brotherly relationship between Jonson
and Shakespeare. Though their rivalry was strong, and their verbal jibes
at each other cutting, both seemed to recognize the talent in each other
– Jonson grudgingly, Shakespeare more generously. They seem to have
spent a great deal of time in each other’s company. It is believed that
Shakespeare may have become ill prior to his death after a typically
uproarious night out drinking (something strong and noxious, probably
with an odd name like Left Leg) with Jonson and others.

Ultimately it was Jonson – perhaps his greatest and most constant critic
– who gave Shakespeare his most enduring epitaph: “He was not of an age,
but for all time.”

Ben Jonson died in 1637.

Works by Ben Jonson:

“The Alchemist”

“Cynthia’s Revels”

“Every Man in His Humour”

“Every Man out of His Humour”

“Poetaster”

“Volpone”

“Sejanus”

“Catiline”

“Bartholomew Fair”

“The Devil is an Ass”

“Staple of News”

“Eastward Ho!”

“Epicoene”

Main Part

Ben Jonson’s Volpone: Issues and Considerations

1. The opening scene of the play (1.1.1-27) is often considered a satire
of some sort on the Catholic Mass. If this is so and considering that
Jonson was a Catholic at the time of the writing, why would the author
include such a scene?

2. Volpone is set against a background of decadence and corruption in
Venice. Renaissance (and Enlightenment) England was publicly suspicious
of the supposed corruption that traveling to Italy brought. How does
Jonson use this background to further the themes and purpose of his
play? Are the images stereotypical?

3. How much is Volpone a play shaped by monetary fears and concerns? How
much is it a play about the use and abuse of authority?

4. How would you map out the ascent, climax, and denouement of the main
plot? Where does the scene between Celia and Volpone fall? Where do the
two court scenes belong?

5. What is the purpose of the subplot involving Sir Pol, Lady Pol, and
Peregrine? Does it in any way reflect on the larger plot?

6. What is the role of Nano, Castrone, and Androgyno?

7. How would you play the court Avocatori? Are they primarily serious or
farcical characters?

8. How complicit are we as a audience with Volpone and Mosca’s vices?
Are they too attractive (at first) as characters? Why is Volpone given a
chance to address the audience in the closing speech?

9. Is this a comedy? How do you account for the punishments awarded at
the end, the vulgar attempted rape by Volpone, and the play’s more
serious moments? Is the ending comic?

Does this play have (in the end) a positive, ethical message? If so,
what is it? If not, why not?

In addition to the reading assignment on the syllabus, please read
through the material on this well-researched web page by a student
(identified only as “Jason”) in Professor Christy Desmet’s Renaissance
Drama course at the University of Georgia: Venice as the Setting for
Volpone

1. In Act I, scene 1 (pp. 1131-2), Volpone lists the many means of
making money (honestly and dishonestly) that he does not use. What is
his “trade”? How does he make his money?

2. Trace the gold imagery in the first three acts. What functions does
gold serve in the world of Volpone?

3. Jonson draws on animal fables for his characters’ names and
personalities. How does this technique affect your expectations as a
reader? Does the text fulfill those expectations?

4. Other than Mosca, the only members of Volpone’s household are his
three servants (rumored to be his illigitimate children). In each of
them, the natural body of a man has been in some way warped, mutilated,
or curtailed: Nano is a dwarf, Androgyno a hermaphrodite (a person with
characteristics of both sexes), and Castrone a eunuch (a castrated
male). What is the effect of Volpone’s bing surrounded by such
creatures?

5. Note the performance given by Nano, Androgyno, and Castrone in Act 1,
scene 2. It is a dramatic rendering of a popular Italian prose form, the
paradox, in which the writer makes a witty display by considering
(usually scornfully) some supposedly paradoxical assertion. Donne wrote
some such prose paradoxes (e.g., “That a wise man is known by much
laughing,” which defends that idea in face of the usual proverb that you
know a man is a fool if he’s always laughing). Volpone’s minions present
a Praise of Folly. What is the point of this play within a play?

6. In Act 2, scene 1, Peregrine and Sir Politic Would-Be converse. How
is this scene related to Act 1? And what is Peregrine’s function in the
play? How are we (as readers or audience members) to understand his role
in relation to the other characters we have seen thus far?

7. In Act 2, scene 2, Volpone adopts the “disguise” he decided to use at
the end of Act 1. Taking on the role of the mountebank Scoto of Mantua,
he sets up a stage near the house of Corvino. His speeches in the person
of Scoto are printed in italics. His act is to hawk “Scoto’s Oil”
(“oglio del Scoto”), a cure for all ills; how does his performance as
Scoto compare to his performance as a dying man in Act 1?

8. Celia appears at her window and throws down a handkerchief full of
coins to the supposed mountebank below. Why do you suppose she does
this? And what do the various characters in the play assume to be her
motivation? Does her motivation matter in the overall scheme of Jonson’s
play?

9. In scenes 6-7 of Act 2, Corvino’s greed takes precedence over his
jealousy, so that he becomes willing to become a bawd or pander (i.e., a
pimp) selling his own wife to Volpone. Compare his speeches to Celia at
the end of scene 5 (lines 48-73) and in scene 7 (lines 6-18). What
ironies emerge from the language he uses in each case?

1. At the beginning of Act 3, Mosca speaks a grand soliloquy on his
profession: that of the parasite. What is a parasite? Who qualifies as a
“sub-parasite”? If “Almost / All the wise world is little else, in
nature, / But parasites and sub-parasites,” does anyone qualify as
another kind of being?

2. Lady Politic Would-Be is, like Voltore, Corbaccio, and Corvino, a
fortune-hunter. But is she in the same category with the other three?
What, if anything, sets her apart? As you think about this question,
take a look at this web page (again by Jason from the University of
Georgia) on Courtesans in Venice.

3. What means does Volpone use in his attempt to seduce Celia in
3.7.139-154? In 154-164 of the same scene? In the “Song” that follows?
And in 185-239? All of these attempts at seduction fail because of
Celia’s unassailable virtue. At what, if anything, do they succeed? Do
they have an effect on you as a reader?

4. How do Volpone’s addresses to Celia in 3.7 compare with his address
to gold in 1.1?

5. Is there any shift in the degree to which the audience (or reader)
identifies with Volpone and/or Mosca at various points in the play?

6. What does Peregrine’s trick on Sir Pol add to the play’s plot and
theme?

7. With whom, if anyone, do the audience’s (or reader’s) sympathies lie
in the play’s final scenes?

8. Courtroom scenes are versions of the play-within-a-play technique,
for lawyers and witnesses are performers very conscious of the audience
that will judge them. How good are the performances in the courtroom
scene of Act 5, scene 12? How does the courtroom “play” compare to the
earlier plays-within-a-play (such as Volpone’s deathbed act or his
performance as Scoto)? How does the courtroom play-within-a-play relate
to the play Volpone itself? That is, how do the performances in the
courtroom (directed toward the judges) comment on that of the play
Volpone (directed toward the theater audience)?

5. How do the various punishments meted out to Volpone, Mosca, and the
others compare? Why are they so inequitable?

6. In Act 3, attempting to defend against the foul plans of her husband,
Mosca, and Volpone, Celia declares her dedication to the preservation of
honor (her own and her husband’s). Corvino’s response dismisses her
scruples. Is Celia’s view of honor vindicated by the end of the play?

7. The Norton introduction to the play speculates “that what Venice is
in the play, England is about to become, in the city of London, the year
of our Lord 1606”; and that Jonson, given his “vigorous social morality,
would not have rejected” such an interpretation. Do you agree that
Jonson’s play is a warning for Englishmen about their own society?

Ben Jonson : Volpone

In his earlier plays, Jonson had made characters speak bitterly,
expressing direct and dangerous attacks on the social manners of the
higher classes. In Volpone that never happens. The Prologue boasts that
it was written in five weeks (Jonson was usually a slow writer), all by
Jonson himself. Then the play is compared with the more vulgar kind of
play where there is horseplay and clowning:

And so presents quick comedy refined,

As best critics have designed;

The laws of time, place, persons he observeth,

From no needful rule he swerveth.

All gall and copperas from his ink he draineth,

Only a little salt remaineth. . .

The setting is Venice. Act One begins, as Volpone (the ‘fox’) and his
close servant Mosca (the ‘fly’) celebrate Volpone’s morning ‘worship’ of
his gold:

VOLPONE. Good morning to the day; and next, my gold!

Open the shrine, that I may see my saint.

(Mosca opens the curtain that hides much treasure)

Hail the world’s soul, and mine! more glad than is the teeming earth to
see the longed-for sun peep through the horns of the celestial ram, am
I, to view thy splendour darkening his;

That lying here, amongst my other hoardes, show’st like a flame by
night, or like the day Struck out by chaos, when all darkness fled unto
the centre. O thou son of Sol, but brighter than thy father, let me
kiss, with adoration, thee, and every relic of sacred treasure in this
blessed room. Well did wise poets by thy glorious name title that age
which they would have the best;

Thou being the best of things, and far transcending all style of joy, in
children, parents, friends, or any other waking dream on earth. Thy
looks when they to Venus did ascribe, they should have given her twenty
thousand Cupids, such are thy beauties and our loves! Dear saint,
Riches, the dumb god, that givest all men tongues, that canst do nought,
and yet mak’st men do all things;

The price of soul; even hell, with thee to boot, is made worth heaven.
Thou art virtue, fame, honour and all things else. Who can get thee, he
shall be noble, valiant, honest, wise – After this blasphemous
adoration, Mosca flatters Volpone, stressing that his fortune was was
not made by oppressing the poor. Then in a soliloquy, Volpone exposes
his method:

I have no wife, no parent, child, ally, to give my substance to, but
whom I make must be my heir; and this makes men observe me.

This draws new clients daily to my house, women and men of every sex and
age, that bring me presents, send me plate, coin, jewels, with hope that
when I die (which they expect each greedy minute) it shall then return
Tenfold upon them.

Shakespeare, in Richard III and other plays, had already exploited the
fact that, in theatre, ‘all the world loves a villain.’ Volpone is a
shameless villain, quite open about his deceptions, inviting the
audience (through Mosca) to admire his skills at manipulating human
greed. The play then has an ‘interlude’ in which Volpone’s ‘creatures’
— a dwarf, an eunuch and a fool — entertain him in grotesque imitation
of court entertainments.

The action begins with the arrival, one by one, of Volpone’s ‘clients,’
whom he despises. To receive them he pretends to be terribly sick. The
first is Signor Voltore (the ‘vulture’) who is a lawyer. Mosca assures
him that he is Volpone’s only heir. Then comes Corbaccio (the ‘raven’),
who is old and deaf and impatient. He offers some medecine that Mosca
recognizes as a poison, then produces a bag of gold. Mosca says he will
use it to excite Volpone to make a will in Corbaccio’s favour, then
suggests that Corbaccio should make a will naming Volpone his sole heir,
in place of his son, as proof of his love. When the next client comes,
Corvino the merchant (the ‘crow’), Volpone seems to be at death’s door,
though he still has the strength to grasp a pearl and diamond Corvino
has brought. Mosca invites his to shout insults at him, saying that he
is quite unconscious, then suggests that they should suffocate Volpone
with a pillow; this frightens Corvino, though he does not condemn Mosca
for the idea. Finally, after mentioning the English visitor Lady
Would-be, Mosca tells Volpone of the beauty of Corvino’s young wife, who
is jealously guarded. This makes Volpone long to see her.

Act Two begins with the play’s sub-plot, that is often omitted in modern
productions; the English traveller Sir Politic Would-be holds a
conversation with another English traveller, Peregrine, showing himself
to be vain and foolish. Volpone arrives disguised as a mountebank and
begins a long speech boasting of the qualities of his special medicine.
Corvino’s wife, Celia, throws down some money from a window and Volpone
tosses back his potion. Corvino suddenly appears and chases him away.

Volpone is love-struck and asks Mosca to get Celia for him. Meanwhile we
see Corvino violently abusing his wife, mad with jealousy. Mosca
arrives, saying that Volpone is a little better after using the
mountebank’s potion! The doctors, he says, have decided that he should
have a young woman in bed with him, so that some of her energy may pass
into him. Mosca says that one of the doctors offered his daughter, a
virgin, sure that Volpone would not be able to harm her, and he urges
Corvino to find someone first, since Volpone might change his will.
Corvino decides to offer Celia!

Act Three begins with Mosca’s praise of himself; the true parasite, he
says, Is a most precious thing, droppped from above, Not bred ‘mongst
clods and clodpoles here on earth. I muse the mystery was not made a
science, It is so liberally professed! Almost All the wise world is
little else, in nature, But parasites or sub-parasites. He meets
Corbaccio’s son, Bonario, who belongs to a different universe; he is
honest and frank, and despises Mosca. Mosca pretends to weep, and
Bonario is at once touched with pity. Mosca then tells him that his
father is making a will leaving everything to Volpone, disinheriting
him! He offers to bring him to the place where it will be done.

There follows an interview between Volpone and Lady Politic Would-be,
who settles down and offers to make him some medecines. Volpone finds
her a torment; Mosca arrives and urges her to leave quickly because he
has just seen Sir Politic rowing off with a famous prostitute! As she
leaves, he brings Bonario into the house, telling him to hide in a
cupboard from where he will hear his father disinherit him. Then things
become complicated, Corvino arrives with Celia, earlier than Mosca had
expected them. He sends Bonario out into the corridor, while Corvino
tells Celia why she is here. As a noble and faithful wife, she is
horrified and begs him not to ask her to do such a thing. He insists,
with horrible threats if she does not obey. At last Mosca drags him out,
leaving Celia alone with Volpone who leaps from the bed, and begins to
woo her, even singing an erotic carpe diem song:

Come, my Celia, let us prove, while we can, the sports of love;

Time will not be ours forever, he at length our good will sever;

Spend not then his gifts in vain. Suns that set may rise again;

But if once we lose this light, ‘Tis with us perpetual night. Why should
we defer our joys? Fame and rumour are but toys. Cannot we delude the
eyes of a few poor household spies? Or his easier ears beguile, Thus
removed by our wile? This no sin love’s fruits to steal;

But the sweet theft to reveal, to be taken, to be seen, those have
crimes accounted been.

Volpone is almost mad with desire, and begins to describe various kinds
of erotic activities they could perform. She prays for pity, and when he
seizes her, screams. Bonario rushes in to save her, and carries her off,
wounding Mosca on the way. Volpone and Mosca are horrified, but
Corbaccio’s arrival gives Mosca an idea. He tells Corbaccio that Bonario
has learned of his plan with the will and is threatening to kill him;
Voltore has also come, unseen, and overhears Mosca being flattering to
Corbaccio. He challenges him, and Mosca at once explains that he had
planned that Bonario should kill his father, whose property would come
to Volpone and so to Voltore. Voltore believes him; Mosca then says that
Bonario has run off with Celia, intending to say that Volpone had tried
to rape her so as to discredit him. Voltore decides to bring this matter
to the judges, in order to stop Bonario.

Act Four begins with the continuation of the Sir Politic sub- plot; Lady
Would-be thinks that Peregrine is the famous prostitute disguised and
begins to scold him. Mosca comes and tells her that she is wrong, that
the woman in question has been brought to the judges. The court scene
begins. As the judges enter they are on the side of the young people,
and order Volpone to be brought, although Mosca and the others assert he
is too weak to move.

Voltore speaks, claiming that Celia and Bonario had long been lovers,
that they had been caught, but forgiven by Corvino; that Corbaccio had
decided to disown his son for his vice, and that Bonario had come to
Volpone’s house intending to kill his father. Unable to do so, he says,
he attacked Volpone and Mosca, and resolved with Celia to accuse Volpone
of rape. Corbaccio publicly rejects Bonario as his son, Corvino swears
that his wife has cheated him with Bonario. Mosca supports their story
with his wound. In addition, he claims to have seen Celia in the company
of Sir Politic, and Lady Politic bursts in, claiming that she has seen
them too!

The entry of Volpone, carried in apparently dying, seemingly quite
unconscious and paralysed, is decisive for the judges. The two young
people are arrested and Mosca sends away the hopeful clients, each of
them convinced that Volpone’s fortune is their’s.

Act Five finds Volpone recovering from the strain. He orders his
creatures to announce his death in the streets; then he makes a will in
which Mosca is declared his heir and goes to hide behind a curtain,
intending to watch the effect on each one. Voltore arrives first, as
Mosca is busy making a list of goods; Corbaccio follows, then Corvino,
and Lady Politic. Each is surprised to see the others. Volpone comments
on their conduct in asides from behind the curtain. Mosca continues to
write, then hands them the will, that they read together, although
Corbaccio only finds Mosca’s name a while later than the others. Mosca
sends Lady Politic away first, then Corvino, Corbaccio, and finally
Voltore, after giving to each a moralizing summary of their previous
actions.

Volpone is delighted, wishes he could see their disappointment out on
the streets. Mosca suggests that he disguise himself as a common
sergeant. There is an interlude where Peregrine in disguise tells Sir
Politic that he has been denounced as a foreign agent. Sir Politic
decides to disguise himself in a huge turtle’s shell; Peregrine brings
in some merchants to admire the beast, and they torment Sir Politic. He
decides to leave at once. Volpone dresses as a soldier, Mosca has put on
a nobleman’s dress; they plan to go walking in the streets, but Mosca
tells us he plans to make Volpone share his fortune with him, and stays
behind in control of the house. Volpone congratulates each of the
clients on their good fortune, and enjoys their fury.

They are all going to the court, where Bonario and Celia are to be
sentenced. Voltore suddenly begins to repent, and is about to tell the
truth, it seems. He has written certain aspects of the truth in his
notes. The others claim that he has been bewitched; news of Volpone’s
death supports their story. As Voltore is about to speak, the disguised
Volpone whispers to him that Mosca wants him to know that in fact
Volpone is not yet dead and that he is still the heir. Voltore pretends
to collapse and Volpone declares that an evil spirit has just left him.
He rises, and declares that Volpone is alive. Mosca comes in, and
insists Volpone is dead. Meanwhile, Volpone has realized Mosca’s plan
against him; he tries to negociate in whispers, but Mosca rejects him
and asks the judges to punish him.

In despair, Volpone throws off his disguise, and everything becomes
clear; Bonario and Celia are freed, Mosca is condemned to be a
‘perpetual prisoner in our galleys,’ prison ships where no one survived
long. All Volpone’s fortune is confiscated to help the sick, and he is
to stay in prison until he is ‘sick and lame indeed.’ Voltore is
banished, Corbaccio sent to a monastery to die, Corvino will be rowed
round Venice wearing ass’s ears then put in the pillory, and Celia is
returned to her family with three times her dowry.

Ben Jonson’s Volpone: black comedy from the dawn of the modern era

In response to the Sydney Theatre Company’s (STC) production of Ben
Jonson’s Volpone last year, I determined to undertake a study of the
life and work of this extraordinary playwright and poet. Although his
work is seldom performed these days, Jonson was one of the leading
protagonists in the most vibrant period of early English theatre. For a
time, he was considered the virtual Poet Laureate of England. His
literary stature rivalled, and for the century after his death, even
overshadowed that of Shakespeare.

Volpone is recognised as one of Jonson’s major works. Some 400 years
after it was written, the play, about compulsive acquisitiveness and
abuse of privilege, still resonates with its audience. The characters—or
caricatures—remain recognisable, as does Jonson’s exposure of the
pomposity of the legal system and the hypocrisy of wealthy lawyers who
are prepared to argue anything for a price.

Understanding Jonson’s life and work proved to be more difficult than I
imagined. Although much has been written on the subject, most of it
divorces the playwright and his plays from their historical context in
England and the wider social and political ferment that was underway in
Europe. Jonson, like his literary creation Volpone, was very much larger
than life. But he can be easily lost in an examination of the minutiae
of his work.

I hope that in my preliminary investigations, I have managed to avoid
this pitfall.

Ben Jonson’s Literary Activity

Jonson’s life story reads like a tragic novel. Born in London the
posthumous son of a clergyman and trained by his stepfather as a
bricklayer, Jonson became a mercenary, then an actor and leading
playwright. At the height of his career, he was unchallenged in his
chosen profession and a companion to some of the leading figures of his
day. But he died virtually alone and impoverished eight years after
suffering a debilitating stroke. He was buried beneath Westminster Abbey
under the inscription “O Rare Ben Johnson”.

Jonson’s life spanned the years 1573 to 1637, a period of extraordinary
change in English society: from the latter years of the reign of Queen
Elizabeth I through to the eve of the English Civil War in 1642.
Passionate and volatile, he was a man with a clear eye for the world
around him. His plays are noted for their satirical view of the
modern—capitalist—class relations that were beginning to develop.

Bourgeois monetary relations were breaking down the old feudal ties that
had existed in England and which had been grounded in a largely
subsistence agricultural economy. London was experiencing an explosive
expansion—a process driven by the impact of trade and the early market
economy. A century before Volpone was written, the city’s population
numbered just 60,000. By the time of the play’s first performance in
1606, it had more than trebled to over 200,000. London was soon to
become Europe’s largest city.

The growth continued despite bouts of the plague and other epidemics. In
the years 1603 and 1625, for example, between one fifth and one quarter
of the residents died from disease. One of Jonson’s later major works,
The Alchemist, is set in London during an outbreak of the plague and
concerns a wealthy home owner who has fled the capital, leaving the
servants in charge of his city mansion.

The expansion of trade along the Thames, and the broadening power of the
royal court led to a London property boom. England’s foreign trade,
which extended from Russia to the Mediterranean and the New World, grew
tenfold between 1610 and 1640.

Economic growth was also accompanied by deepening social inequality. The
real wage of carpenters, for instance, halved from Elizabeth’s reign to
that of Charles I. Side by side with opulent wealth were squalid
tenements. Yet the poor from elsewhere in the country and from
continental Europe were drawn to London by the prospect of wages that
were more than 50 percent higher than the rest of southern England.

The city became a place of business and of fashion for the rural-based
aristocracy, and Jonson parodies in some of his plays the tendency of
young aristocrats to sell acres of their land to pay for city fineries.
London was the heart of the royal court and the state bureaucracy. At
any time over a thousand gentlemen connected with parliament or the law
courts could be found residing at the city’s inns.

These inns became a hub of intellectual ferment where writers and actors
like Jonson met with merchants, gentlemen and other leading figures of
the day. Jonson dedicated his first major work, Every Man In His Humour,
to these inns, calling them “the noblest nurseries of humanity and
liberty in the kingdom”.

London’s economic expansion and the aggregation of so many and varied
social elements stimulated the cultural development expressed in
Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre. At the same time, the social tensions
brewing within the growing metropolis created a receptive audience for
the satire for which Jonson was to become famous.

The English theatre

Established theatre was still a relatively new phenomenon in sixteenth
century England. The first permanent legal theatre was established up in
London in 1552. Before that, performances were carried out on temporary
platforms set up in taverns and inns. Entertainment at the new venues
ranged from bear baiting to performances for the royal court.

Jonson was almost a generation younger than the major Elizabethan
writers Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare who led the
theatrical exploration of new aspects of the human experience. He
records his appreciation of Shakespeare in a poem where he notes that
“he was not of an age but for all time.”

The first mention of Jonson in the theatre comes in 1597 in a note for a
four-pound loan given to him for his work as an actor by the
entrepreneur William Henslowe. That same year Jonson was imprisoned for
his part in writing a play called The Isle of Dogs, a satirical work
mocking the Scots.

Released soon after, Jonson quickly became better known for his writing
than his acting, producing works for the leading theatres of the day.
Every Man in His Humour, finished in late 1598, established him as a
major writer of comedy and satire. Its first performance was at
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

But Jonson was again imprisoned, this time for killing an associate
actor in a duel. He was acquitted only after successfully pleading
“benefit of clergy”—a law allowing for the pardoning of defendants due
to their literacy.

Jonson was one of the most educated writers of the day. He had a
profound knowledge of Latin and Greek theatre and poetry and, like many
artists of the period, he developed his work within the framework
established by the classics. In all the arts and sciences, the heritage
of Greece and Rome was being rediscovered and re-assimilated.

The English Renaissance writers reworked classical, traditional and
contemporary stories. Shakespeare, for example, reworked an already
rephrased English translation of an Italian story for his Romeo and
Juliet (1595), which the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega retold as a
tragicomedy in 1608. Christopher Marlowe’s epic poem Hero and Leander,
which is based on an ancient Greek myth, says more about the customs of
contemporary England than of the ancient Greeks. The art was in the
telling, not in the creation, of the stories.

Jonson is often accused of being constricted in his writing by classical
references. But he was in no way overawed by the classics. In fact, part
of his creative genius was his ability to rework themes and ideas to fit
the contemporary setting. Many of the sources were so seamlessly
integrated into his stories that only after centuries of scholarship
were the connections established between his work and that of earlier
writers.

He drew directly on ancient mythology in his masques for the royal
court. Masques were highly stylised theatrical events performed for and
by the members of the aristocracy. With Jonson and his sometime
collaborator, architect Inigo Jones, the masque developed from a
relatively simplistic entertainment into an elaborate (although rather
self indulgent and hugely expensive) art form.

The playwright was also influenced by European theatre, particularly the
Italian Commedia dell’arte. Commedia dell’arte troupes had toured London
in the late 1590s and a number of the characters in Volpone have their
direct counterparts in this Italian theatrical form. Jonson’s Volpone,
for example, fits well within the range of the Commedia’s Pantalone,
whose character ranged from a miserly and ineffectual old man to an
energetic cuckolder with “almost animal ferocity and agility”. In the
play, Jonson integrates this influence with classical references, as
well as English and European folk mythology and theatrical styles.

Jonson also drew on the English tradition of medieval morality plays,
where actors personified human characteristics such as Virtue, Vice,
Lechery or Curiosity to illustrate moral lessons. The plots were
generally limited, since the moral points were universal rather than
specific.

Jonson welded all these influences into a theatre that was purposeful
and aimed at playing a critical role in society. His comedies brought a
new realism as well as a sharp eye for outlining human character types.
As one writer commented, he gave “a new sense of the interdependence of
character and society”.

While Volpone was set in Venice, London audiences were well able to
recognise its themes. For his realism, Jonson was attacked at the time
as “a meere Empyrick, one that gets what he hath by observation”. But
four centuries on, his ability to capture social contradictions and
present them in a captivating form continues to resonate.

Through the play, considered by some his masterpiece, Jonson portrays
with a black humour a society in which the pursuit of wealth and
individual self-interest have become primary. Venice was regarded as the
epitome of a sophisticated commercial city and virtually all the
characters are revealed as corrupt or compromised.

Volpone means “fox” in Italian. Jonson based his story around medieval
and Aesopian tales in which a fox pretends to be dead in order to catch
the carrion birds that come to feed on its carcass. In the play, Volpone
is a single and aging Venetian “magnifico” who has devised a trick to
fleece his neighbours while simultaneously nourishing his sense of
superiority over his hapless victims. For three years he has pretended
to be dying, so as to encourage legacy hunters to bring gifts in the
hope of being named as his beneficiary.

With the aid of his servant Mosca, Volpone strings along his
suitors—Voltore, Corbaccio and Corvino—extracting their wealth by
feeding their avarice. (Voltore Corbaccio and Corvino are the Italian
names for vulture, crow and raven.) Voltore, a lawyer, offers Volpone a
platter made of precious metal. Corbaccio, a doddering gentleman, is
talked into disinheriting his son Bonario in favour of Volpone, while
Corvino, a miserly merchant and hugely jealous husband, is driven by
greed to offer his young wife Celia to bed and comfort the supposedly
dying Volpone.

Here Volpone, a rogue whose victims trap themselves by their own
weaknesses (and are therefore deserving of their respective fates)
becomes overwhelmed by his own passions. Definitely not at death’s door
and completely obsessed, he tries to force himself onto Celia and is
only stopped by the lucky appearance of Bonario. The two innocents bring
charges in court against the old man. But countercharges of adultery and
fornication against Celia and Bonario are laid by the three legacy
hunters who are desperate to defend what each considers his own future
wealth.

Volpone revels in these ever-widening displays of degradation. He
decides to stage his own death so he can witness their frenzy when they
see him bequeathing his wealth to Mosca. However, after Mosca begins
preparing the elaborate funeral, he ceases to acknowledge his former
master. As the heir to Volpone’s great wealth, Mosca is transformed in
the eyes of the courtroom judges—who are as self-serving as the
rest—from a lowly servant into an eligible young man to whom they might
marry their daughters.

Desperate not to be outfoxed by his servant, Volpone reveals himself,
thus exposing his own and everyone else’s guilt. He is stripped of his
wealth, which is given to charity, and sentenced to prison, while Mosca
is condemned to the galleys for passing himself off as a person of
breeding. Voltore, the advocate, is debarred from the court and
Corbaccio’s wealth is transferred to his son Bonario. Corvino is paraded
through Venice as an ass, while his wife Celia is sent home to her
family with triple her dowry.

Jonson skillfully manipulates the audience so that it identifies with
Volpone and his brazen schemes. The old magnifico’s zest is infective
and the audience is swept along with his machinations only to find
itself, along with the anti-hero, hovering at the edge of criminality.
In this way, the author tries to confront us with the dangers of
unrestrained self-interest and with what Jonson considers to be a
necessary sense of social responsibility.

Genre: Comic drama, but also a satire.

Form: blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) mixed with comic song.
Since the “plot” is a low criminal conspiracy (but what was the
rebellion against Henry IV or Lear?), the “subplot” is a parody of
criminal conspiracy set in Venice but involving an English traveler, an
English nobleman and his wife, all of whom are on tour.

Characters and Summary: This plot closely parallels Horace’s satire on
legacy hunters (Book II.7) but dramatizes it with characters whose
flattened, comic/satiric personas represent various types of human
personality as they are distorted by greed, lust, and sheer perversity.
Jonson alerts us to the symbolic order of the action’s meaning by means
of the names he assigns the primary characters: Volpone (fox–deceiver),
Mosca (fly–parasite), Voltore (vulture–scavenger/lawyer), Corbaccio
(crow–wealthy but still greedy man), and Corvino (raven, another
scavenger–the wealthy merchant who can’t get enough). These characters
all seek to be named Volpone’s heir in order to gain his treasure, but
they offer him gifts to achieve that honor, and he (though nowhere near
death) strings them along, more in love with his delight in deceiving
them than even his beloved gold. A love plot is attached to this
legacy-hunt, involving Corvino’s wife (Celia) and Corbaccio’s son
(Bonario), but one of the play’s puzzles is that they are such
relatively lifeless, though moral, characters. Below these levels, three
more sets of characters populate the stage. Nano (a dwarf), Castrone (an
eunuch), and Androgyno (a hermaphrodite) join Mosca as Volpone’s
courtiers, Sir Poltic Would-be and his wife are deceived by Peregrine
(the young English man on the Continental tour), and the elders of
Venice alternately try to profit from and to bring justice to the
confusion (Commendatori [sheriffs], Mercatori [merchants], Avocatori
[lawyers, brothers of Corvino], and Notario [the court’s registrar]).

So the plot, in brief, is that the conspirators try to deceive Volpone,
but he’s really deceiving them, until his agent (Mosca) deceives him
(and them) and they bring him to the court, which they all try to
deceive, until they are unmasked (while Peregrine is being deceived by
and deceiving Sir and Lady Politic Would-be). Got it?

1. You have seen, in Marlowe and Shakespeare, the strategies of pitting
a subplot’s comic agenda against that of a tragic main plot.

o How would you discuss sub-plot and main plot in this play?

o What does that tell you about Volpone’s basic strategy regarding the
play’s goals and his manipulation of the audience’s sympathies? For
instance, compare the characters of Volpone and Henry IV or Lear, and
try to argue for which is the more attractive title character.)

2. Jonson argues, elsewhere, that drama should be evaluated with respect
to some special forms of truth. For instance, he considers “truth to
type” as a good test of characters, asking whether that sort of person
would have done what the character did.

o What kinds of normative judgments does this require, and how does that
affect the play’s socio-political agendas?

3. Jonson parodies many classical lyric forms (see below re: Catullus)
but his most outrageous is his first, a satire on the aubade or dawn
song usually sung by a lover to the beloved (and answered by her) upon
their seeing the first rays of light which end their illicit night of
passion.

o Volpone’s, which begins Act I.i, praises the beauty of some other
phenomenon–what is it, and how does he describe it? His character here
is almost a literal transcription of some medieval morality play “vice”
figures.

o Where would you go in Shakespeare to find a similar meditation wherein
a character reveals his soul, inner nature, strategy, etc.?

4. A typical measure of dramatic structure is the relationship between
chaos and order. As the comedy unwinds, chaos increases, and as it
approaches its end, the chaos ought either to increase to a catastrophe
(duck blows up hunter, dog, hunter’s house, doghouse) or to a
restoration of order (duck returned to wild, hunter to home, dog to
doghouse). Generally speaking, many comedies approach an apex of their
disorder around the third act.

o What’s happening when Mosca walks on stage in III.i?

o Especially, how does his soliloquy illustrate the dangers of Count
Canossa’s prescription for a courtier’s development in Hoby’s
translation of The Courtier?

o How might this relate to Jonson’s politics in the Jacobean period,
especially to the rise of new courtiers to power in James I’s reign?

o This play ends with the “Volpone” character coming to the edge of the
stage to deliver a curious apology for the play’s bad behavior and to
ask the audience for forgiving applause. What does this suggest about
Jonson’s view of the play’s “moral center” vs. the astonishing success
of immorality for most of the play’s acts?

5. The play’s content and style draw upon an aesthetic trend called
neoclassicism, a set of rules and habits of composition based on
imitation of Greek and Roman classical models for literature. You can
see this in the prologue’s boast about following the so-called
“Aristotelian unities” of place, time and action. Volpone’s paen to
Celia (III.7) is sung in a voice borrowed from Catullus (#5), the song
to “Lesbia” which dares her to defy convention and old men’s jealousy to
seek the plenitude of pleasure her lover promises. Compare the two. To
read a Roman poem Jonson may have had in mind re: “legacy hunting,”
check out Project Perseus’s online version of Horace’s satire on the
topic (Book II, number 5). (Horace imagines a satiric/comic addition to
the scene in Homer’s Odyssey Book 12 when Odysseus, in the Underworld,
asks the spirit of the prophet Teiresias to tell him how to return home
to Ithaka where young bachelors are devouring his household while
waiting for his wife to choose one of them.)

o What does Catullus offer and how does it differ from Volpone’s deal
for Celia?

Those of you who have taken English 215 (Critical Methods) and those who
have discovered something of literary criticism’s theoretical bases on
their own may be ready to start thinking about final papers even now.
Imagine how good a paper you could write if you started working on it
with six weeks left to go in the semester! Imagine how thoroughly you
could think through the argument and polish your own prose. The final
paper assignment stipulates only that the topic should be based mainly
on one text we’ve read since the midterm exam and that it also should
deal with at least one text from the first half of the semester.
(Exceptions might be two sections from a very large work we read after
the midterm, like Paradise Lost or Oroonoko.) You can center your
analysis on one text, using the other for comparison and contrast, or
you can do a balanced analysis of both. You also could refer to more
than one subordinate text to help unpack your argument about the main,
post-midterm text. Though you may have “hunches” or even full-blown
insights about the play that typical audiences would not detect, those
hunches and insights all depend on some basic assumptions about how to
read plays which you probably have unconsciously absorbed from your
previous teachers. Rather than charging at the play’s evidence without
being aware of your theoretical approach’s assumptions, you may benefit
from approaching the task of writing with a theory of interpretation in
mind. Jonson’s social outlook

Ben Jonson’s realism relates to his view of the role of artist/poet in
society. As a child, he had been fortunate to attend Westminster School,
where he came under the influence of the noted historian and antiquarian
William Camden. There he embraced the humanist outlook of the
Renaissance, which emphasised respect for the dignity and rights of man
and the idea that knowledge advanced the human condition.

This was a time of political and social convulsion throughout Europe.
The humanist ideas of the Renaissance were followed by the Reformation.
Within the framework of the day, Jonson was no radical. Like others, he
viewed the absolute monarchy, balanced between the old aristocracy and
the emerging capitalist class, as a guarantor of culture against the
challenge from parliament and the Puritan church. Along with figures
like Sir Francis Bacon, he distrusted parliament as a vehicle for the
self-interest of landowners, merchants and their agents.

In his posthumously published writings—Timber: or, Discoveries Made Upon
Men and Matter: As they have flow’d out of his daily Readings; or had
their refluxe to his peculiar Notion of the Times—Jonson wrote:
“Suffrages in Parliament are numbred, not weigh’d: nor can it bee
otherwise in those publike Councels, where nothing is so unequall, as
the equality: for there, how odde soever mens braines, or wisdomes are,
their power is alwayes even, and the same.”

In a Europe that was still struggling to reappropriate the intellectual
conquests of the classical civilisations, and where the vast majority
had little or no education, Jonson’s emphasis on the differing “weight”
of people’s opinions was at least understandable. In his view, the
monarchy provided an environment in which learning and culture could
develop. In turn, that enlightened climate would nurture an enlightened
and benevolent monarch.

Jonson wrote in Timber: “Learning needs rest: Soveraignty gives it.
Soveraignty needs counsell: Learning affords it. There is such a
Consociation of offices, betweene the Prince, and whom his favour
breeds, that they may helpe to sustaine his power, as hee their
knowledge.” He added further on: “A Prince without Letters, is a Pilot
without eyes … And how can he be counsell’d that cannot see to read
the best Counsellors (which are books).”

Jonson conceived his role as providing insight into the problems of the
day. Thus, he approached society critically. His works are infused with
a refusal to sidestep social contradictions. For Jonson, “Truth is mans
proper good; and the onely immortall thing, was given to our mortality
to use”. His creative function was to express the complexities of life
and truth in a form that could be appreciated by the common man.

Jonson’s plays challenged the audience to examine the impact of a
society governed by deceit and subterfuge. His strength lay in his
ability to confront those watching with life as he saw it. In his
ability to recreate theatrically the contemporary world and identify
both general and specific aspects of the human experience, he was
opening new ground that would be further explored in the ensuing
centuries.

The Alchemist

Having the good fortune of living in NYC where not one, but two
Elizabethan plays are being produced within walking distance of our
apartment, Stan and I went to see Ben Johnson’s The Alchemist on
Saturday afternoon.

The Classic Stage Company takes exactly the opposite approach to the
staging the classics as does The Pearl, so it was fun to see these two
plays on the same weekend. Philosophically, it appears that the CSC
wants to bring out the similarities between early 17th century England
and early 21st century USA. With The Alchemist they have found the
perfect play. The characters in this very funny production are all
looking for the quick buck, easy magic to solve the unsolvable, and
generally anything that will feed into their insatiable fantasies. And
of course, there are the con artists to take advantage of the gullible.
Does this sound familiar? Well, apparently it was familiar in the 17th
century as well.

This production is definitely not for traditionalists. It is in the
Joanne Akalitis school of direction, although we have Barry Edelstein
directing. He has pulled out the motorcycle outfit, the stereo systems
and a great flashing Christmas light costume worn by Johann Carlo in her
“Queen of Fairy” con. There are chemical reactions of all types and
colors in attempts to turn metal to gold, and explosions with lots of
smoke. Since we’re dealing with a satirical comedy here and not a
Shakespearean tragedy, somehow it seems all in good fun.

The Alchemist is about a trio of con artists who decide to make easy
cash by turning base metal into gold. Face, a servant whose master has
left town to avoid the plague, has turned the house into their “criminal
headquarters.” The criminals quickly come up with clients for 5
different cons, each suited to the customer’s needs. And, as expected,
they are all willing to give over huge amounts of money for anticipated
future rewards.

Although I’m not a big fan of using modern equipment in 17th century
drama, somehow The Alchemist lends itself to update. I guess the basic
greed in humans has not changed all that much over the last 400 years.
Certainly, with all the psychic fads, get rich quick schemes and other
promises of quick fixes for difficult situations, I’m quite sure a
clever alchemist could con many of us very easily even today. Evans, C.
Robert. Habits of Mind: Evidence and Effects of Ben Jonson’s Reading.
Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, 1995

Naturally, the language is rich in this play and doesn’t lend itself
quite as easily to understanding as a Seinfeld episode on a similar
subject, however, that’s what the theater is all about. We work a little
harder to get a much higher level of reward.

The actors give it their all. Jeremy Shamos is continuously changing his
costumes as well as character. Dan Castillaneta is terrific as the
Alchemist and Johann Carlo is very funny as the tough, scheming ‘working
woman’ of the con. All their pathetic clients come one at a time for
their individual scalping. I particularly enjoyed the performances of
Michael Showalter as a low clerk, Umit Celebi as Tribulation Wholesome
as a pastor and Lee Sellars as Sir Epicure Mammon, a Knight. Jonson,
Ben, Brockbank, Philip (Editor). Volpone. New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 1976.

Let’s face it. Maybe this would be better in a more traditional style
and maybe we should be annoyed with the liberties taken with text and
production. However, beggars can’t be choosers. When was the last
production of The Alchemist in NYC and when will the next one appear? I
say thank you to the CSC for presenting this work. I suggest you not
wait for perfection, but try to relax and have fun.

Ben Jonson’s other comedies

English dramatist, born probably in Westminster, in the beginning of the
year 1573 (or possibly, if he reckoned by the unadopted modern calendar,
1572). By the poet’s account his grandfather had been a gentleman who
came from Carlisle, and originally, the grandson thought, from
Annandale. His arms, “three spindles or rhombi”, are the family device
of the Johnstones of Annandale, a fact which confirms his assertion of
Border descent. Ben Jonson further related that he was born a month
after the death of his father, who, after suffering in estate and person
under Queen Mary, had in the end “turned minister.” Two years after the
birth of her son the widow married again; she may be supposed to have
loved him in a passionate way peculiar to herself, since on one occasion
we find her revealing an almost ferocious determination to save his
honor at the cost of both his life and her own. Jonson’s stepfather was
a master bricklayer, living in Hartshorn Lane, near Charing Cross, who
provided his stepson with the foundations of a good education. After
attending a private school in St. Martin’s Lane, the boy was sent to
Westminster School at the expense, it is said, of William Camden.
Jonson’s gratitude for an education to which in truth he owed an almost
inestimable debt concentrated itself upon the “most reverend head” of
his benefactor, then second and afterwards head master of the famous
school, and the firm friend of his pupil in later life.

After reaching the highest form at Westminster, Jonson is stated, but on
unsatisfactory evidence, to have proceeded to Cambridge — according to
Fuller, to St. John’s College. He says, however, himself that he studied
at neither university, but was put to a trade immediately on leaving
school. He soon had enough of the trade, which was no doubt his father’s
bricklaying, for Henslowe in writing to Edward Alleyne of his affair
with Gabriel Spenser calls him “bergemen [sic] Jonson, bricklayer.”
Either before or after his marriage — more probably before, as Sir
Francis Vere’s three English regiments were not removed from the Low
Countries until 1592 — he spent some time in that country soldiering,
much to his own subsequent satisfaction when the days of self-conscious
retrospect arrived, but to no further purpose beyond that of seeing
something of the world.

Ben Jonson married not later than 1592. The registers of St. Martin’s
Church state that his eldest daughter Maria died in November 1593 when
she was, Jonson tells us (epigram 22), only six months old. His eldest
son Benjamin died of the plague ten years later (epigram 45). A younger
Benjamin died in 1635. His wife Jonson characterized to Drummond as “a
shrew, but honest”; and for a period (undated) of five years he
preferred to live without her, enjoying the hospitality of Lord Aubigny
(afterwards duke of Lennox). Long burnings of oil among his books, and
long spells of recreation at the tavern, such as Jonson loved, are not
the most favored accompaniments of family life. But Jonson was no
stranger to the tenderest of affections: two at least of the several
children whom his wife bore to him he commemorated in touching little
tributes of verse; nor in speaking of his lost eldest daughter did he
forget “her mother’s tears.” By the middle of 1597 we come across
further documentary evidence of him at home in London in the shape of an
entry in Philip Henslowe’s diary (July 28) of 3s. 6d. “received of
Bengemenes Johnsones share.” He was therefore by this time — when
Shakespeare, his senior by nearly nine years, was already in prosperous
circumstances and good esteem — at least a regular member of the acting
profession, with a fixed engagement in the lord admiral’s company, then
performing under Henslowe’s management at the Rose. Perhaps he had
previously acted at the Curtain (a former house of the lord admiral’s
men), and “taken mad Jeronimo’s part” on a play-wagon in the highway.
This latter appearance, if it ever took place, would, as was pointed out
by Gifford, probably have been in Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, since in
The First Part of Jeronimo Jonson would have had, most inappropriately,
to dwell on the “smallness” of his “bulk.” He was at a subsequent date
(1601) employed by Henslowe to write up The Spanish Tragedy, and this
fact may have given rise to Wood’s story of his performance as a
stroller. Jonson’s additions, which were not the first changes made in
the play, are usually supposed to be those printed with The Spanish
Tragedy in the edition of 1602; Charles Lamb’s doubts on the subject,
which were shared by Coleridge, seem an instance of that subjective kind
of criticism which it is unsafe to follow when the external evidence to
the contrary is so strong.

According to Aubrey, whose statement must be taken for what it is worth,
“Jonson was never a good actor, but an excellent instructor.” His
physique was certainly not well adapted to the histrionic conditions of
his — perhaps of any — day; but, in any case, it was not long before
he found his place in the organism of his company. In 1597, as we know
from Henslowe, Jonson undertook to write a play for the lord admiral’s
men; and in the following year he was mentioned by Meres in his Palladis
Tamia as one of “the best for tragedy”, without any reference to a
connection on his part with the other branch of the drama. Whether this
was a criticism based on material evidence or an unconscious slip, Ben
Jonson in the same year 1598 produced one of the most famous of English
comedies, Every Man in his Humour, which was first acted — probably in
the earlier part of September — by the lord chamberlain’s company at
the Curtain. Shakespeare was one of the actors in Jonson’s comedy, and
it is in the character of Old Knowell in this very play that, according
to a bold but ingenious guess, he is represented in the half-length
portrait of him in the folio of 1623, beneath which were printed
Jonson’s lines concerning the picture. Every Man in his Humour was
published in 1601; the critical prologue first appears in the folio of
1616, and there are other divergences. After the Restoration the play
was revived in 1751 by David Garrick (who acted Kitely) with
alterations, and long continued to be known on the stage. It was
followed in the same year by The Case is Altered, acted by the children
of the queen’s revels, which contains a satirical attack upon the
pageant poet, Anthony Munday. This comedy, which was not included in the
folio editions, is one of intrigue rather than of character; it contains
obvious reminiscences of Shylock and his daughter. The earlier of these
two comedies was indisputably successful.

Before the year 1598 was out, however, Jonson found himself in prison
and in danger of the gallows. In a duel, fought on the 22nd of September
in Hogsden Fields, he had killed an actor of Henslowe’s company named
Gabriel Spenser. The quarrel with Henslowe consequent on this event may
account for the production of Every Man in his Humour by the rival
company. In prison Jonson was visited by a Roman Catholic priest, and
the result (certainly strange, if Jonson’s parentage is considered) was
his conversion to the Church of Rome, to which he adhered for twelve
years. Jonson was afterwards a diligent student of divinity; but, though
his mind was religious, it is not probable that its natural bias much
inclined it to dwell upon creeds and their controversies. He pleaded
guilty to the charge brought against him, as the rolls of Middlesex
sessions show; but, after a short imprisonment, he was released by
benefit of clergy, forfeiting his “goods and chattels”, and being
branded on his left thumb. The affair does not seem to have affected his
reputation; in 1599 he is found back again at work for Henslowe,
receiving together with Thomas Dekker, Chettle and “another gentleman”,
earnest-money for a tragedy (undiscovered) called Robert II, King of
Scots. In the same year he brought out through the lord chamberlain’s
company (possibly already at the Globe, then newly built or building)
the elaborate comedy of Every Man out of his Humour (quarto 1600; folio
1616) — a play subsequently presented before Queen Elizabeth. The
sunshine of court favor, rarely diffused during her reign in rays
otherwise than figuratively golden, was not to bring any material
comfort to the most learned of her dramatists, before there was laid
upon her the inevitable hand of which his courtly epilogue had besought
death to forget the use. Indeed, of his Cynthia’s Revels, performed by
the chapel children in 1600 and printed with the first title of The
Fountain of Self-Love in 1601, though it was no doubt primarily designed
as a compliment to the queen, the most marked result had been to offend
two playwrights of note — Dekker, with whom he had formerly worked in
company, and who had a healthy if rough grip of his own; and Marston,
who was perhaps less dangerous by his strength than by his versatility.
According to Jonson, his quarrel with Marston had begun by the latter
attacking his morals, and in the course of it they came to blows, and
might have come to worse. In Cynthia’s Revels, Dekker is generally held
to be satirized as Hedon, and Marston as Anaides (Fleay, however, thinks
Anaides is Dekker, and Hedon Daniel), while the character of Crites most
assuredly has some features of Jonson himself. Learning the intention of
the two writers whom he had satirized, or at all events of Dekker, to
wreak literary vengeance upon him, he anticipated them in The Poetaster
(1601), again played by the children of the queen’s chapel at the
Blackfriars and printed in 1602; Marston and Dekker are here ridiculed
respectively as the aristocratic Crispinus and the vulgar Demetrius. The
play was completed fifteen weeks after its plot was first conceived. It
is not certain to what the proceedings against author and play before
the lord chief justice, referred to in the dedication of the edition of
1616, had reference, or when they were instituted. Fleay’s supposition
that the “purge”, said in the Returne from Parnassus (Part II, act IV,
scene III) to have been administered by Shakespeare to Jonson in return
for Horace’s “pill to the poets” in this piece, consisted of Troilus and
Cressida is supremely ingenious, but cannot be examined here. As for
Dekker, he retaliated on The Poetaster by the Satiromastix, or The
Untrussing of the Humorous Poet (1602). Some more last words were indeed
attempted on Jonson’s part, but in the Apologetic Dialogue added to The
Poetaster in the edition of 1616, though excluded from that of 1602, he
says he intends to turn his attention to tragedy. This intention he
apparently carried out immediately, for in 1602 he received F10 from
Henslowe for a play, entitled Richard Crookbacke, now lost —
unfortunately so, for purposes of comparison in particular, even if it
was only, as Fleay conjectures, “an alteration of Marlowe’s play.”
According to a statement by Overbury, early in 1603, “Ben Johnson, the
poet, now lives upon one Townesend”, supposed to have been the poet and
masque-writer Aurelian Townshend, at one time steward to the 1st earl of
Salisbury, “and scornes the world.” To his other early patron, Lord
Aubigny, Jonson dedicated the first of his two extant tragedies,
Sejanus, produced by the king’s servants at the Globe late in 1603,
Shakespeare once more taking a part in the performance. Either on its
performance or on its appearing in print in 1605, Jonson was called
before the privy council by the Earl of Northampton. But it is open to
question whether this was the occasion on which, according to Jonson’s
statement to Drummond, Northampton “accused him both of popery and
treason.” Though, for one reason or another, unsuccessful at first, the
endurance of its reputation is attested by its performance, in a German
version by an Englishman, John Michael Girish, at the court of the
grandson of James I at Heidelberg.

When the reign of James I opened in England and an adulatory loyalty
seemed intent on showing that it had not exhausted itself at the feet of
Gloriana, Jonson’s well-stored brain and ready pen had their share in
devising and executing ingenious variations on the theme “Welcome —
since we cannot do without thee!” With extraordinary promptitude his
genius, which, far from being “ponderous” in its operations, was
singularly swift and flexible in adapting itself to the demands made
upon it, met the new taste for masques and entertainments — new of
course in degree rather than in kind — introduced with the new reign
and fostered by both the king and his consort. The pageant which on the
7th of May 1603 bade the king welcome to a capital dissolved in joy was
partly of Jonson’s, partly of Dekker’s, devising; and he was able to
deepen and diversify the impression by the composition of masques
presented to James I when entertained at houses of the nobility. The
Satyr (1603) was produced on one of these occasions, Queen Anne’s
sojourn at Althorpe, the seat of Sir Robert Spencer, afterwards Lord
Althorpe, who seems to have previously bestowed some patronage upon him.
The Penates followed on Mayday 1604 at the house of Sir William
Cornwallis at Highgate, and the queen herself with her ladies played his
Masque of Blackness at Whitehall in 1605. He was soon occasionally
employed by the court itself — already in 1606 in conjunction with
Inigo Jones, as responsible for the “painting and carpentry” — and thus
speedily showed himself master in a species of composition for which,
more than any other English poet before Milton, he secured an enduring
place in the national poetic literature. Personally, no doubt, he
derived considerable material benefit from the new fashion — more
especially if his statement to Drummond was anything like correct, that
out of his plays (which may be presumed to mean his original plays) he
had never gained a couple of hundred pounds.

Good humor seems to have come back with good fortune. Joint employment
In The King’s Entertainment (1604) had reconciled him with Dekker; and
with Marston also, who in 1604 dedicated to him his Malcontent, he was
again on pleasant terms. When, therefore, in 1604 Marston and Chapman
(who, Jonson told Drummond, was loved of him, and whom he had probably
honored as “Virgil” in The Poetaster, and who has, though on doubtful
grounds, been supposed to have collaborated in the original Sejanus)
produced the excellent comedy of Eastward Ho, it appears to have
contained some contributions by Jonson. At all events, when the authors
were arrested on account of one or more passages in the play which were
deemed insulting to the Scots, he “voluntarily imprisoned himself” with
them. They were soon released, and a banquet at his expense, attended by
Camden and Selden, terminated the incident. If Jonson is to be believed,
there had been a report that the prisoners were to have their ears and
noses cut, and, with reference apparently to this peril, “at the midst
of the feast his old mother drank to him, and showed him a paper which
she had intended (if the sentence had taken execution) to have mixed in
the prison among his drink, which was full of lusty strong poison; and
that she was no churl, she told him, she minded first to have drunk of
it herself.” Strange to say, in 1605 Jonson and Chapman, though the
former, as he averred, had so “attempered” his style as to have “given
no cause to any good man of grief”, were again in prison on account of
“a play”; but they appear to have been once more speedily set free, in
consequence of a very manly and dignified letter addressed by Jonson to
the Earl of Salisbury. The play in question, in which both Chapman and
Jonson took part, was likely Sir Gyles Goosecappe, and this last
imprisonment of the two poets was shortly after the discovery of the
Gunpowder Plot. In the mysterious history of the Gunpowder Plot Jonson
certainly had some obscure part. On the 7th of November, very soon after
the discovery of the conspiracy, the council appears to have sent for
him and to have asked him, as a loyal Roman Catholic, to use his good
offices in inducing the priests to do something required by the council
— one hardly likes to conjecture it to have been some tampering with
the secrets of confession. In any case, the negotiations fell through,
because the priests declined to come forth out of their hiding-places to
be negotiated with — greatly to the wrath of Ben Jonson, who declares
in a letter to Lord Salisbury that “they are all so enweaved in it that
it will make 500 gentlemen less of the religion within this week, if
they carry their understanding about them.” Jonson himself, however, did
not declare his separation from the Church of Rome for five years
longer, however much it might have been to his advantage to do so.

His powers as a dramatist were at their height during the earlier half
of the reign of James I; and by the year 1616 he had produced nearly all
the plays which are worthy of his genius. They include the tragedy of
Catiline (acted and printed 1611), which achieved only a doubtful
success, and the comedies of Volpone, or the Fox (acted 1605 and printed
in 1607 with a dedication “from my house in the Blackfriars”), Epicoene,
or the Silent Woman (1609; entered in the Stationers’ Register 1610),
the Alchemist (1610; printed in 1610), Bartholomew Fair and The Devil is
an Ass (acted respectively in 1614 and 1616). During the same period he
produced several masques, usually in connection with Inigo Jones, with
whom, however, he seems to have quarrelled already in this reign, though
it is very doubtful whether the architect is really intended to be
ridiculed in Bartholomew Fair under the character of Lanthorn
Leatherhead. Littlewit, according to Fleay, is Daniel. Among the most
attractive of his masques may be mentioned the Masque of Blackness
(1606), the Masque of Beauty (1608), and the Masque of Queens (1609),
described by Swinburne as “the most splendid of all masques” and as “one
of the typically splendid monuments or trophies of English literature.”
In 1616 a modest pension of 100 marks a year was conferred upon him; and
possibly this sign of royal favor may have encouraged him to the
publication of the first volume of the folio collected edition of his
works (1616), though there are indications that he had contemplated its
production, an exceptional task for a playwright of his times to take in
hand, as early as 1612.

He had other patrons more bountiful than the Crown, and for a brief
space of time (in 1613) had travelled to France as governor (without
apparently much moral authority) to the eldest son of Sir Walter
Raleigh, then a state prisoner in the Tower, for whose society Jonson
may have gained a liking at the Mermaid Tavern in Cheapside, but for
whose personal character he, like so many of his contemporaries, seems
to have had but small esteem. By the year 1616 Jonson seems to have made
up his mind to cease writing for the stage, where neither his success
nor his profits had equalled his merits and expectations. He continued
to produce masques and entertainments when called upon; but he was
attracted by many other literary pursuits, and had already accomplished
enough to furnish plentiful materials for retrospective discourse over
pipe or cup. He was already entitled to lord it at the Mermaid, where
his quick antagonist in earlier wit-combats (if Fuller’s famous
description be authentic) no longer appeared even on a visit from his
comfortable retreat at Stratford. That on the other hand Ben carried his
wicked town habits into Warwickshire, and there, together with Drayton,
made Shakespeare drink so hard with them as to bring upon himself the
fatal fever which ended his days, is a scandal with which we may fairly
refuse to load Jonson’s memory. That he had a share in the preparing for
the press of the first folio of Shakespeare, or in the composition of
its preface, is of course a mere conjecture.

It was in the year 1618 that, like Samuel Johnson a century and a half
afterwards, Ben resolved to have a real holiday for once, and about
midsummer started for his ancestral country, Scotland. He had (very
heroically for a man of his habits) determined to make the journey on
foot; and he was speedily followed by John Taylor, the water-poet, who
still further handicapped himself by the condition that he would
accomplish the pilgrimage without a penny in his pocket. Jonson, who put
money in his good friend’s purse when he came up with him at Leith,
spent more than a year and a half in the hospitable Lowlands, being
solemnly elected a burgess of Edinburgh, and on another occasion
entertained at a public banquet there. But the best-remembered
hospitality which he enjoyed was that of the learned Scottish poet,
William Drummond of Hawthornden, to which we owe the so-called
Conversations. In these famous jottings, the work of no extenuating
hand, Jonson lives for us to this day, delivering his censures, terse as
they are, in an expansive mood whether of praise or of blame; nor is he
at all generously described in the postscript added by his fatigued and
at times irritated host as “a great lover and praiser of himself, a
contemner and scorner of others.” A poetical account of this journey,
with all the adventures, was burned with Jonson’s library.

After his return to England Jonson appears to have resumed his former
course of life. Among his noble patrons and patronesses were the
countess of Rutland (Sidney’s daughter) and her cousin Lady Wroth; and
in 1619 his visits to the country seats of the nobility were varied by a
sojourn at Oxford with Richard Corbet, the poet, at Christ Church, on
which occasion he took up the master’s degree granted to him by the
university; whether he actually proceeded to the same degree granted to
him at Cambridge seems unknown. He confessed about this time that he was
or seemed growing “restive” (lazy), though it was not long before he
returned to the occasional composition of masques. The extremely
spirited Gipsies Metamorphosed (1621) was thrice presented before the
king, who was so pleased with it as to grant to the poet the reversion
of the office of master of the revels, besides proposing to confer upon
him the honor of knighthood. This honor Jonson (hardly in deference to
the memory of Sir Petronel Flash) declined; but there was no reason why
he should not gratefully accept the increase of his pension in the same
year (1621) to F200 — a temporary increase only, inasmuch as it still
stood at 100 marks when afterwards augmented by Charles I.

The close of King James I’s reign found the foremost of its poets in
anything but a prosperous condition. It would be unjust to hold the Sun,
the Dog, the Triple Tun, or the Old Devil with its Apollo club-room,
where Ben’s supremacy must by this time have become established,
responsible for this result; taverns were the clubs of that day, and a
man of letters is not considered lost in our own because he haunts a
smoking-room in Pall Mall. Disease had weakened the poet’s strength, and
the burning of his library, as his Execration upon Vulcan sufficiently
shows, must have been no mere transitory trouble to a poor poet and
scholar. Moreover he cannot but have felt, from the time of the
accession of Charles I early in 1625 onwards, that the royal patronage
would no longer be due in part to anything like intellectual sympathy.
He thus thought it best to recur to the surer way of writing for the
stage, and in 1625 produced, with no faint heart, but with a very clear
anticipation of the comments which would be made upon the reappearance
of the “huge, overgrown play-maker”, The Staple of News, a comedy
excellent in some respects, but little calculated to become popular. It
was not printed until 1631. Jonson, whose habit of body was not more
conducive than were his ways of life to a healthy old age, had a
paralytic stroke in 1626, and a second in 1628. In the latter year, on
the death of Middleton, the appointment of city chronologer, with a
salary of 100 nobles a year, was bestowed upon him. He appears to have
considered the duties of this office as purely ornamental; but in 1631
his salary was suspended until he should have presented some fruits of
his labors in his place, or — as he more succinctly phrased it —
“yesterday the barbarous court of aldermen have withdrawn their
chandlerly pension for verjuice and mustard, F33, 6s. 8d.” After being
in 1628 arrested by mistake on the utterly false charge of having
written certain verses in approval of the assassination of Buckingham,
he was soon allowed to return to Westminster, where it would appear from
a letter of his “son and contiguous neighbor”, James Howell, he was
living in 1629, and about this time narrowly escaped another
conflagration. In the same year (1629) he once more essayed the stage
with the comedy of The New Inn, which was actually, and on its own
merits not unjustly, damned on the first performance. It was printed in
1631, “as it was never acted but most negligently played”; and Jonson
defended himself against his critics in his spirited Ode to Himself. The
epilogue to The New Inn having dwelt not without dignity upon the
neglect which the poet had experienced at the hands of “king and queen”,
King Charles immediately sent the unlucky author a gift of F100, and in
response to a further appeal increased his standing salary to the same
sum, with the addition of an annual tierce of canary — the
poet-laureate’s customary royal gift, though this designation of an
office, of which Jonson discharged some of what became the ordinary
functions, is not mentioned in the warrant dated the 26th of March 1630.
In 1634, by the king’s desire, Jonson’s salary as chronologer to the
city was again paid. To his later years belong the comedies, The
Magnetic Lady (1632) and The Tale of a Tub (1633), both printed in 1640,
and some masques, none of which met with great success. The patronage of
liberal-minded men, such as the earl, afterwards duke, of Newcastle —
by whom he must have been commissioned to write his last two masques
Love’s Welcome at Welbeck (1633) and Love’s Welcome at Bolsover (1634)
— and Viscount Falkland, was not wanting, and his was hardly an
instance in which the fickleness of time and taste could have allowed a
literary veteran to end his career in neglect. He was the acknowledged
chief of the English world of letters, both at the festive meetings
where he ruled the roast among the younger authors whose pride it was to
be “sealed of the tribe of Ben”, and by the avowal of grave writers, old
or young, not one of whom would have ventured to dispute his titular
pre-eminence. Nor was he to the last unconscious of the claims upon him
which his position brought with it. When, nearly two years after he had
lost his surviving son, death came upon the sick old man on the 6th of
August 1637, he left behind him an unfinished work of great beauty, the
pastoral drama of The Sad Shepherd (printed in 1641). For forty years,
he said in the prologue, he had feasted the public; at first he could
scarce hit its taste, but patience had at last enabled it to identify
itself with the working of his pen.

We are so accustomed to think of Ben Jonson presiding, attentive to his
own applause, over a circle of younger followers and admirers that we
are apt to forget the hard struggle which he had passed through before
gaining the crown now universally acknowledged to be his. Howell
records, in the year before Ben’s death, that a solemn supper at the
poet’s own house, where the host had almost spoiled the relish of the
feast by vilifying others and magnifying himself, “T. Ca.” (Thomas
Carew) buzzed in the writer’s ear “that, though Ben had barrelled up a
great deal of knowledge, yet it seemed he had not read the Ethics,
which, among other precepts of morality, forbid self-commendation.”
Self-reliance is but too frequently coupled with self-consciousness, and
for good and for evil self-confidence was no doubt the most prominent
feature in the character of Ben Jonson. Hence the combativeness which
involved him in so many quarrels in his earlier days, and which jarred
so harshly upon the less militant and in some respects more pedantic
nature of Drummond. But his quarrels do not appear to have entered
deeply into his soul, or indeed usually to have lasted long. He was too
exuberant in his vituperations to be bitter, and too outspoken to be
malicious. He loved of all things to be called “honest”, and there is
every reason to suppose that he deserved the epithet. The old
superstition that Jonson was filled with malignant envy of the greatest
of his fellow-dramatists, and lost no opportunity of giving expression
to it, hardly needs notice. Those who consider that William Shakespeare
was beyond criticism may find blasphemy in the saying of Jonson that
Shakespeare “wanted art.” Occasional jesting allusions to particular
plays of Shakespeare may be found in Jonson, among which should hardly
be included the sneer at “mouldy” Pericles in his Ode to Himself. But
these amount to nothing collectively, and to very little individually;
and against them have to be set, not only the many pleasant traditions
concerning the long intimacy between the pair, but also the lines,
prefixed to the first Shakespeare folio, as noble as they are judicious,
dedicated by the survivor to “the star of poets”, and the adaptation,
clearly sympathetic notwithstanding all its buts, “de Shakespeare
nostrat.” in the Discoveries. But if Gifford had rendered no other
service to Jonson’s fame he must be allowed to have once for all
vindicated it from the cruellest aspersion which has ever been cast upon
it. That in general Ben Jonson was a man of strong likes and dislikes,
and was wont to manifest the latter as vehemently as the former, it
would be idle to deny. He was at least impartial in his censures,
dealing them out freely to Puritan poets like Wither and (supposing him
not to have exaggerated his free-spokenness) to princes of his church
like Cardinal du Perron. And, if sensitive to attack, he seems to have
been impervious to flattery — to judge from the candor with which he
condemned the foibles even of so enthusiastic an admirer as Beaumont.
The personage that he disliked the most, and openly abused in the
roundest terms, was unfortunately one with many heads and a tongue to
hiss in each — no other than that “general public” which it was the
fundamental mistake of his life to fancy he could “rail into
approbation” before he had effectively secured its goodwill. And upon
the whole it may be said that the admiration of the few, rather than the
favor of the many, has kept green the fame of the most independent among
all the masters of an art which, in more senses than one, must please to
live.

Jonson’s learning and industry, which were alike exceptional, by no
means exhausted themselves in furnishing and elaborating the materials
of his dramatic works. His enemies sneered at him as a translator — a
title which the preceding generation was inclined to esteem the most
honorable in literature. But his classical scholarship shows itself in
other directions besides his translations from the Latin poets (the Ars
poetica in particular), in addition to which he appears to have written
a version of Barclay’s Argenis; it was likewise the basis of his English
Grammar, of which nothing but the rough draft remains (the manuscript
itself having perished in the fire in his library), and in connection
with the subject of which he appears to have pursued other linguistic
studies (Howell in 1629 was trying to procure him a Welsh grammar). And
its effects are very visible in some of the most pleasing of his
non-dramatic poems, which often display that combination of polish and
simplicity hardly to be reached — or even to be appreciated — without
some measure of classical training.

Exclusively of the few lyrics in Jonson’s dramas (which, with the
exception of the stately choruses in Catiline, charm, and perhaps may
surprise, by their lightness of touch), his nondramatic works are
comprised in the following collections. The book of Epigrams (published
in the first folio of 1616) contained, in the poet’s own words, the
“ripest of his studies.” His notion of an epigram was the ancient, not
the restricted modern one — still less that of the critic (R.C., the
author of The Times’ Whistle) in whose language, according to Jonson,
“witty” was “obscene.” On the whole, these epigrams excel more in
encomiastic than in satiric touches, while the pathos of one or two
epitaphs in the collection is of the truest kind. In the lyrics and
epistles contained in the Forest (also in the first folio), Jonson shows
greater variety in the poetic styles adopted by him; but the subject of
love, which John Dryden considered conspicuous by its absence in the
author’s dramas, is similarly eschewed here. The Underwoods (not
published collectively until the second and surreptitious folio) are a
miscellaneous series, comprising, together with a few religious and a
few amatory poems, a large number of epigrams, epitaphs, elegies and
odes, including both the tributes to Shakespeare and several to royal
and other patrons and friends, besides the Execration upon Vulcan, and
the characteristic ode addressed by the poet to himself. To these pieces
in verse should be added the Discoveries — Timber, or Discoveries made
upon Men and Matters, avowedly a commonplace book of aphorisms noted by
the poet in his daily readings — thoughts adopted and adapted in more
tranquil and perhaps more sober moods than those which gave rise to the
outpourings of the Conversations at Hawthornden. As to the critical
value of these Conversations it is far from being only negative; he knew
how to admire as well as how to disdain. For these thoughts, though
abounding with biographical as well as general interest, Jonson was
almost entirely indebted to ancient writers, or (as has been shown by
Professor Spingarn and by Percy Simpson) indebted to the humanists of
the Renaissance.

The extant dramatic works of Ben Jonson fall into three or, if his
fragmentary pastoral drama be considered to stand by itself, into four
distinct divisions. The tragedies are only two in number — Sejanus his
Fall and Catiline his Conspiracy. Of these the earlier, as is worth
noting, was produced at Shakespeare’s theater, in all probability before
the first of Shakespeare’s Roman dramas, and still contains a
considerable admixture of rhyme in the dialogue. Though perhaps less
carefully elaborated in diction than its successor, Sejanus is at least
equally impressive as a highly wrought dramatic treatment of a complex
historic theme. The character of Tiberius adds an element of curious
psychological interest on which speculation has never quite exhausted
itself and which, in Jonson’s day at least, was wanting to the figures
of Catiline and his associates. But in both plays the action is
powerfully conducted, and the care bestowed by the dramatist upon the
great variety of characters introduced cannot, as in some of his
comedies, be said to distract the interest of the reader. Both these
tragedies are noble works, though the relative popularity of the subject
(for conspiracies are in the long run more interesting than camarillas)
has perhaps secured the preference to Catiline. Yet this play and its
predecessor were alike too manifestly intended by their author to court
the goodwill of what he calls the “extraordinary” reader. It is
difficult to imagine that (with the aid of judicious shortenings) either
could altogether miss its effect on the stage; but, while Shakespeare
causes us to forget, Jonson seems to wish us to remember, his
authorities. The half is often greater than the whole; and Jonson, like
all dramatists and, it might be added, all novelists in similar cases,
has had to pay the penalty incurred by too obvious a desire to underline
the learning of the author.

Perversity — or would-be originality — alone could declare Jonson’s
tragedy preferable to his comedy. Even if the revolution which he
created in the comic branch of the drama had been mistaken in its
principles or unsatisfactory in its results, it would be clear that the
strength of his dramatic genius lay in the power of depicting a great
variety of characters, and that in comedy alone he succeeded in finding
a wide field for the exercise of this power. There may have been no very
original or very profound discovery in the idea which he illustrated in
Every Man in his Humour, and, as it were, technically elaborated in
Every Man out of his Humour — that in many men one quality is
observable which so possesses them as to draw the whole of their
individualities one way, and that this phenomenon “may be truly said to
be a humour.” The idea of the master quality or tendency was, as has
been well observed, a very considerable one for dramatist or novelist.
Nor did Jonson (happily) attempt to work out this idea with any
excessive scientific consistency as a comic dramatist. But, by refusing
to apply the term “humour” to a mere peculiarity or affectation of
manners, and restricting its use to actual or implied differences or
distinctions of character, he broadened the whole basis of English
comedy after his fashion, as Moliere at a later date, keeping in closer
touch with the common experience of human life, with a lighter hand
broadened the basis of French and of modern Western comedy at large. It
does not of course follow that Jonson’s disciples, the Bromes and the
Cartwrights, always adequately reproduced the master’s conception of
“humorous” comedy. Jonson’s wide and various reading helped him to
diversify the application of his theory, while perhaps at times it led
him into too remote illustrations of it. Still, Captain Bobadil and
Captain Tucca, Macilente and Fungoso, Volpone and Mosca, and a goodly
number of other characters impress themselves permanently upon the
memory of those whose attention they have as a matter of course
commanded. It is a very futile criticism to condemn Jonson’s characters
as a mere series of types of general ideas; on the other hand, it is a
very sound criticism to object, with Barry Cornwall, to the “multitude
of characters who throw no light upon the story, and lend no interest to
it, occupying space that had better have been bestowed upon the
principal agents of the plot.”

In the construction of plots, as in most other respects, Jonson’s at
once conscientious and vigorous mind led him in the direction of
originality; he depended to a far less degree than the greater part of
his contemporaries (Shakespeare with the rest) upon borrowed plots. But
either his inventive character was occasionally at fault in this
respect, or his devotion to his characters often diverted his attention
from a brisk conduct of his plot. Barry Cornwall has directed attention
to the essential likeness in the plot of two of Jonson’s best comedies,
Volpone and The Alchemist; and another critic, W. Bodham Donne, has
dwelt on the difficulty which, in The Poetaster and elsewhere, Ben
Jonson seems to experience in sustaining the promise of his actions. The
Poetaster is, however, a play sui generis, in which the real business
can hardly be said to begin until the last act.

Dryden, when criticizing Ben Jonson’s comedies, thought fit, while
allowing the old master humor and incontestable “pleasantness”, to deny
him wit and those ornaments thereof which Quintilian reckons up under
the terms urbana, salsa, faceta and so forth. Such wit as Dryden has in
view is the mere outward fashion or style of the day, the euphuism or
“sheerwit” or chic which is the creed of Fastidious Brisks and of their
astute purveyors at any given moment. In this Ben Jonson was no doubt
defective; but it would be an error to suppose him, as a comic
dramatist, to have maintained towards the world around him the attitude
of a philosopher, careless of mere transient externalisms. It is said
that the scene of his Every Man in his Humour was originally laid near
Florence; and his Volpone, which is perhaps the darkest social picture
ever drawn by him, plays at Venice. Neither locality was ill-chosen, but
the real atmosphere of his comedies is that of the native surroundings
amidst which they were produced; and Ben Jonson’s times live for us in
his men and women, his country gulls and town gulls, his alchemists and
exorcists, his “skeldring” Riggs, David. Ben Jonson: A Life. Harvard
University Press, 1989. captains and whining Puritans, and the whole
ragamuffin rout of his Bartholomew Fair, the comedy par excellence of
Elizabethan low life. After he had described the pastimes, fashionable
and unfashionable, of his age, its feeble superstitions and its
flaunting naughtinesses, its vaporing affectations and its lying
effronteries, with an odour as of “divine tabacco” pervading the whole,
little might seem to be left to describe for his “sons” and successors.
Enough, however, remained; only that his followers speedily again threw
manners and “humours” into an undistinguishable medley.

The gift which both in his art and in his life Jonson lacked was that of
exercising the influence or creating the effects which he wished to
exercise or create without the appearance of consciousness. Concealment
never crept over his efforts, and he scorned insinuation. Instead of
this, influenced no doubt by the example of the free relations between
author and public permitted by Attic comedy, he resorted again and
again, from Every Man out of his Humour to The Magnetic Lady, to
inductions and commentatory intermezzos and appendices, which, though
occasionally effective by the excellence of their execution, are to be
regretted as introducing into his dramas an exotic and often vexatious
element. A man of letters to the very core, he never quite understood
that there is and ought to be a wide difference of methods between the
world of letters and the world in the theater.

The richness and versatility of Jonson’s genius will never be fully
appreciated by those who fail to acquaint themselves with what is
preserved to us of his “masques” and cognate entertainments. He was
conscious enough of his success in this direction — “next himself”, he
said, “only Fletcher and Chapman could write a masque.” He introduced,
or at least established, the ingenious innovation of the anti-masque,
which Schlegel has described, as a species of “parody added by the poet
to his device, and usually prefixed to the serious entry”, and which
accordingly supplies a grotesque antidote to the often extravagantly
imaginative main conception. Jonson’s learning, creative power and
humorous ingenuity — combined, it should not be forgotten, with a
genuine lyrical gift — all found abundant opportunities for displaying
themselves in these productions. Though a growth of foreign origin, the
masque was by him thoroughly domesticated in the high places of English
literature. He lived long enough to see the species produce its poetic
masterpiece in Comus Hayes, Tom. The Birth of Popular Culture: Ben
Jonson, Maid Marian and Robin Hood. Pennsylvania: Duquesne University
Press, 1992.

The Sad Shepherd, of which Jonson left behind him three acts and a
prologue, is distinguished among English pastoral dramas by its
freshness of tone; it breathes something of the spirit of the greenwood,
and is not unnatural even in its supernatural element. While this piece,
with its charming love scenes between Robin Hood and Maid Marion,
remains a fragment, another pastoral by Jonson, the May Lord, has been
lost, and a third, of which Loch Lomond was intended to be the scene,
probably remained unwritten.

Though Ben Jonson never altogether recognized the truth of the maxim
that the dramatic art has properly speaking no didactic purpose, his
long and laborious life was not wasted upon a barren endeavor. In
tragedy he added two works of uncommon merit to our dramatic literature.
In comedy his aim was higher, his effort more sustained, and his success
more solid than were those of any of his fellows. In the subsidiary and
hybrid species of the masque, he helped to open a new and attractive
though undoubtedly devious path in the field of dramatic literature. His
intellectual endowments surpassed those of most of the great English
dramatists in richness and breadth; and in energy of application he
probably left them all behind. Inferior to more than one of his fellow
dramatists in the power of imaginative sympathy, he was first among the
Elizabethans in the power of observation; and there is point in Barrett
Wendell’s paradox, that as a dramatist he was not really a poet but a
painter. Yet it is less by these gifts, or even by his unexcelled
capacity for hard work, than by the true ring of manliness that he will
always remain distinguished among his peers.

Jonson was buried on the north side of the nave in Westminster Abbey,
and the inscription, “O Rare Ben Jonson”, was cut in the slab over his
grave. In the beginning of the 18th century a portrait bust was put up
to his memory in the Poets’ Corner by Harley, earl of Oxford. Of
Honthorst’s portrait of Jonson at Knole Park there is a copy in the
National Portrait Gallery; another was engraved by W. Marshall for the
1640 edition of his Poems.

Conclusion

Ben Jonson and his role in English literature

Known primarily as a writer of comedies such as Every Man in His Humor
(1598) and Every Man out of His Humor (1599) in the reign of Elizabeth,
Ben Jonson’s (1572-1637) most interesting plays were performed during
the reign (called the Jacobean period) of her successor, King James I.
Volpone (1606) and The Alchemist (1610) stand today as Jonson’s most
often produced plays. Both are broad comedies: Volpone plays on the
foxiness of a dying man who is anxious to see which of his heirs is
worthy, and The Alchemist is a satire on the wiliness of con men who
pretend to know how to transmute base metal into gold. All of these
plays were highly regarded in Jacobean times. In addition to his
comedies, Jonson’s tragedies Sejanus (1603) and Catiline (1611) earned
him the description of “best in tragedy” from a contemporary who
maintained a diary devoted to his experiences in the theater. Burt,
Richard. Licensed by Authority: Ben Jonson and the Discourses of
Censorship. New York: Cornell University Press, 1993

Jonson led an exciting life. Born after his father died, he was placed
in the Westminster School at the expense of its master, William Camden,
author of the famous survey Britannia. There Jonson learned Latin and
Greek, but he himself said that instead of attending a university, he
practiced his trade. Because Jonson’s stepfather was a bricklayer, it
has been assumed that Jonson learned that trade. He eventually grew
tired of bricklaying and managed to get a job as an actor. In 1598,
while a member of Philip Henslowe’s theater, he killed a fellow actor in
a brawl. He claimed self-defense and was granted “benefit of clergy,”
which was accorded those who could read and translate a Latin passage,
but as punishment he carried a brand on his thumb from Tyburn, the place
of execution and punishment, for the rest of his life.

For Jonson the stage was a way of making a living. He aspired to be a
pure poet and was accorded great honor in his lifetime by other poets.
But he could not, even with the patronage of important noblemen, eke out
a sufficient living writing only poetry. Jonson was imprisoned in
Elizabeth’s reign for writing an offensive play, the Isle of Dogs
(1597), and in the early years of King James’s reign, which began on
March 24, 1603, play writing continued to be dangerous. Toward the end
of 1606, Jonson teamed with George Chapman and William Marston to write
Eastward Ho!, a comedy that ridiculed the Scots (James I was a Scot).
Jonson and Chapman were imprisoned, but Jonson eventually contacted
enough important people to secure his release, probably in October,
claiming that the few offensive lines had been written by Marston, who
had fled London to avoid prison. Then in November the great Gunpowder
Plot—remembered today with bonfires on November 5, Guy Fawkes Day—cast a
dangerous shadow over him. Led by the Catholic conspirator Guy Fawkes,
the Gunpowder Plot was a plan to kill the king, his advisers, and all
members of the hierarchy of the Church and Parliament. Guy Fawkes’s use
of the pseudonym John Johnson, together with Jonson’s conversion to
Catholicism, may have resulted in the playwright’s becoming a suspect.
Luckily, he was well-known in James’s court and was able to demonstrate
his loyalty and innocence. Johnson, A.W. Ben Jonson: Poetry and
Architecture (Oxford English Monographs). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.

Jonson won considerable acclaim as a writer in the court of James I and
Queen Anne. He composed entertainments and masques designed to be
associated with important state occasions. The masque was a dramatic
form that enjoyed great popularity for close to a century and a half. It
was restricted to the entertainment and participation of royalty and
courtiers. As its name implies, characters were sometimes masked to
represent abstract ideas such as Blackness or Beauty or mythic
characters such as Albion, an allegory for England itself.

In the group of playwrights immediately surrounding Shakespeare, Jonson,
Ben, Cain Tom (Editor). Poetaster (Revels Plays). New York: Manchester
University Press, 1996. who with him were perhaps accustomed to gather
in the Mermaid Tavern, were Ben Jonson, Webster, Ford, Beaumont and
Fletcher, Chapman, Marston, and Dekker. Among these Jonson was easily
the first, both in the quality of his genius and the amount of his work.
He was a man of enormous learning, poet laureate, a soldier in Flanders,
an actor, and hack writer for Henslowe. He appeared first as a
playwright in the late years of the sixteenth century, at the moment
when Shakespeare and the romantic comedies were at the height of their
popularity. To some extent he was obliged to conform to the prevailing
taste; but his natural inclination was toward the classic and regular
style rather than toward the romantic; and his “humour” was satirical
rather than sentimental.

Jonson’s plays fall roughly into three groups: the realistic comedies,
the tragedies, and the masques. As a contribution to drama the realistic
comedies are most important. Even in his ‘prentice work, the two plays
The Case is Altered and The Tale of a Tub, it is evident that he was
influenced more by classic models than by contemporary fashion. The Case
Is Altered is based upon two plays of Plautus and the old familiar theme
of the abduction of infants. The action is completed in one place and
covers but a single day. Jonson’s importance, however, is not owing to
this return to the classical form, but to his keenness in portraying
contemporaneous types. He took from the Plautine plays some of the most
successful stock characters such as Miles Gloriosus (whom he named
Captain Bobadil), the spendthrift son, the jealous husband, and so
transformed them that they stand forth revived and recreated, as true
comic figures belonging to Elizabethan London. McCanles, Michael.
Jonsonian Discriminations: The Humanist Poet

The play Every Man in His Humour (1598) inaugurated the school of
realistic comedy, unlike anything which had hitherto appeared on the
English stage. It deals not with the passions, but with the follies, the
“humours” of mankind. The scene is laid in London, and different sorts
of city characters are pictured to the life. The play was the sensation
of the hour, and was enacted before the queen by the company to which
Shakespeare belonged, and in which he at one time acted.

Jonson was brilliant, but apparently neither genial nor lovable —
indeed he had the reputation of being pompous and arrogant. Though manly
and honorable, he seems to have been lacking in sympathy. As a
dramatist, he was resourceful in the creation of character and in the
invention of comic situations. While for the most part he confined
himself to laughing at the more obvious, surface absurdities of society,
yet his wit was so keen and his humor so robust as to make a lasting
impression upon English drama. He influenced nearly all the writers of
the seventeenth century, and his peculiar type of play has persisted on
the English speaking stage to the present time.

Bibliography

1. Abrams, M.H. The Norton Anthology. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
1993.

2. Adams, Robert. Ben Johnson’s Plays and Masques. 1979.

3. Bamborough, J.B. Ben Jonson. Hutchinson University Library, 1970.

4. Burt, Richard. Licensed by Authority: Ben Jonson and the Discourses
of Censorship. New York: Cornell University Press, 1993.

5. Butler, Martin. The Selected Plays of Ben Jonson. London: Cambridge
University Press, 1989.

6. Magnusson, Magnus. Cambridge Biographical Dictionary. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1990.

7. Eisaman Maus, Katherine. Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984.

8. Evans, C. Robert. Habits of Mind: Evidence and Effects of Ben
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9. Evans, C. Robert. Jonson and the Contexts of His Time. Pennsylvania:
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10. Hayes, Tom. The Birth of Popular Culture: Ben Jonson, Maid Marian
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11. Haynes, Jonathan. The Social Relations of Jonson’s Theatre. London:
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12. Herford, C.H. and Simpson Percy and Evelyn. Ben Jonson. Oxford:
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13. Jonson, Ben, Cain Tom (Editor). Poetaster (Revels Plays). New York:
Manchester University Press, 1996.

14. Jonson, Ben. Three Comedies: Volpone, The Alchemist, Bartholomew
Fair. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.

15. Johnson, A.W. Ben Jonson: Poetry and Architecture (Oxford English
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16. Jonson, Ben, Brockbank, Philip (Editor). Volpone. New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 1976.

17. Kay, David W. Ben Jonson: A Literary Life (Literary Lives). St.
Martins Press, 1995.

18. McCanles, Michael. Jonsonian Discriminations: The Humanist Poet and
the Praise of True Nobility. Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1992.

19. Maclean, Hugh. Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets. New York: Norton,
1974.

20. Magill. Critical Survey of Poetry-English Lang Series. California:
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21. Riddell, James, Stewart, Stanley. Jonson’s Spenser: Evidence and
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22. Riggs, David. Ben Jonson: A Life. Harvard University Press, 1989.

23. Smith, Barbara. The Women of Ben Jonson’s Poetry: Female
Representations in the Non-Dramatic Verse. New York: Scolar Press, 1995.

24. Van den Berg, Sara J. The Action of Ben Jonson’s Poetry. Newark:
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25. Writers of the Restoration and 18th Century. Concise Dictionary of
British Literary Biography, Volume Two. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research
International Limited, 1992.

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