It
protests
especially against chronicle history plays,
discards tragedy and romance, implies an observance of the pro-
prieties and promises
deeds, and language, such as men do use:
And persons, such as comedy would choose,
When she would show an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes.
discards tragedy and romance, implies an observance of the pro-
prieties and promises
deeds, and language, such as men do use:
And persons, such as comedy would choose,
When she would show an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v06
A large portion belongs to the class headed ‘miscellaneous’
in collected editions, and is of interest rather for the information
which it supplies as to his friends and patrons, and for its satirical
pictures of contemporary life, than for any charm of verse. Few
of the odes, epistles and epigrams show aught but careful writing,
but there are also few that can be praised unreservedly or read with
delight. The Epigrams (1616) are characteristically coarse; and
some of the satirical sort recall the persons of his comedies; as
those on alchemists, Lieutenant Shift, Court Worm, Sir Voluptuous
Beast, or Lady Would Be. Others are laudatory in praise of
Camden, Donne or Sylvester, or the poet's noble patrons, or the
king. Perhaps the best of these is that on Lucy countess of
Bedford But the only epigram that has been widely re-
membered is the beautiful epitaph on the child actor, Salathiel
Pavy. The fifteen poems that compose The Forest, taken as a
whole, are of a higher order than the Epigrams; but, except the
immortal ‘Drink to me only with thine eyes's, none, today, has
much interest beyond what is historical. In spite of occasional fine
lines, their style is fatally marred by that stiffness with which
Swinburne justly charges Jonson's verse. To Penshurst, written
in heroic couplets, is one of the best—sober, dignified, adequate.
The lyric note is absolutely wanting in most. A vocabulary that
seems purposely prosaic and realistic, an absence of figures, correct-
ness and sanity of expression—these are the qualities of Dryden's
verse; but Jonson's has neither Dryden's animation nor his melody,
This description, in general, also applies to Underwoods", a
much larger collection, not published until after Jonson’s death.
1 Cf. ante, vol. iv, pp. 348—9, and see ibid. p. 524, for a list of writings in which
the sources of Discoveries have been investigated. To these should be added Briggs,
W. D. , Mod. Lang. Notes, Feb. 1908.
2 Fleay attempts to date the individual epigrams, vol. I, pp. 316—322.
* Richard Cumberland, in The Observer, No. 74, was the first to point out that
this lyric is a free translation from Philostratus.
• The famous epitaph on the countess of Pembroke, now usually included in
## p. 10 (#28) ##############################################
IO
Ben Jonson
Two groups begin the collection—the first of devotional pieces, and
the second of love poems forming A Celebration of Charis. The
miscellaneous poems that follow include the charming A Nymphs
Passion, the graceful Dreame, a long series of eulogistic verses
the best and most famous of which is the poem to Shakespeare, a
sonnet to lady Mary Wroth and several epistles, of which that
entitled An Epistle to a Friend, to perswade him to the Warres
(Master Colby) (xxxii), in terse, vigorous couplets, may be
instanced as representative of Jonson's satirical verse at its best.
A series of four elegies (lvii—Ix) in regard to a lover's quarrel is
quite different from the rest of the poems, and quite in the manner
of Donne. The second of these (lviii), indeed, appeared in the 1633
edition of Donne's poems, and, doubtless, should be assigned to him.
But if this be given to him, why not the other three? ? It is true
that reminiscences of Donne are found elsewhere in Underwoods,
and that Jonson may have been writing in direct imitation; but
the four poems deal with the same subject and, apparently,
express the feelings of the same lover. The remaining poems in
Underwoods include An Execration upon Vulcan, one of the best
of the occasional poems; the elaborate and regular Pindaric ode on
the death of Sir H. Morison, which contains the beautiful strophe
beginning
It is not growing like a tree
In bulke, doth make men better bee . . . ,
and the curious Eupheme; or, the faire fame. . . of. . . Lady
Venetia Digby, which begins with the dedication of her cradle'
and rises to its height in the picture of the mind':
Thou entertaining in thy brest
But such a Mind, mak'st God thy Guest.
The impression made by Jonson’s non-dramatic poetry, as a
whole, falls far short of that produced by the half-dozen short
lyrics which, alone, have survived in men's memories. These
have a unique and happy grace, a sure touch of immortality. And
the two songs, To Celia (“Drink to me only with thine eyes') and
'Goddess excellently bright*,' have the allurement of Elizabethan
Underwoods, was first printed as Jonson's in the edition of Peter Whalley (1756).
Weighty, though by no means decisive, evidence that it was written by William Browne
is given by Bullen, A. H. , in his article on Browne in Dict. of Nat. Biogr. (Cf. ante,
vol. iv, p. 124, where it is assigned to Browne. )
| The numbering follows Cunningham's edition.
· Castelain, pp. 801—4, would give these to Donne. See, also, Swinburne, p. 106;
Fleay, Biog. Chron. vol. 1, pp. 326, 328 ; and E. K. Chambers's edition of Donne,
vol. 1, p. 241 and vol. 11, p. 307. Cl. , on this subject, ante, vol. 1v, p. 209.
8 The refrain of Hesperus's song in Cynthia's Revels, act v, sc. 3.
## p. 11 (#29) ##############################################
Non-Dramatic Poems. The Sad Shepherd 11
poetry at its best. On the other hand, the great majority of his
poems are lacking in melody, charm, or distinction. They are the
work of a forerunner of classicism, of one who departs from Spenser,
and looks forward to Dryden. The frequent choice of occasional
subjects, the restriction to definite forms, the prevalence of satire
-all tend toward pseudo-classicism. Moreover, as Schelling has
shown, the character of the versification, the use of the rimed
couplet, the prosaic vocabulary, the avoidance of enjambement, the
fixed caesura, point the same way.
That Jonson's verse was very
influential in advancing the change in poetic taste, can, however,
hardly be maintained. Doubtless, his preaching and precepts had
something to do with promoting a tendency toward classicism; but
the tribe of Ben-Carew, Cartwright, Suckling, Herrick and others
did not profit largely from their master's practice. Herrick,
who most imitated him, greatly excelled him; and his general
influence was not comparable to Spenser's or to Donne's 1.
His plays fall into well defined classes: masques, comedies and
tragedies, with the addition of the unfinished pastoral, The Sad
Shepherd. As the pastoral and the masque are treated elsewhere
in this work, Jonson's contributions to these two dramatic types
must be very briefly noticed here. The Sad Shepherds, probably,
represents an attempt of his last years to revise and complete for
the stage (then addicted to pastorals) a play written, in part, many
years before. Whenever his little excursion to Arcadia was first
planned, it has since succeeded in carrying many readers thither.
It is another of those delightful surprises in Jonson's work, not
unlike the trouvaille of the Queen and huntress' hidden in
the impenetrable jungle of Cynthia's Revels. Among later
comedies, The Sad Shepherd is like a breeze in a drowsy lecture-
Its Arcadia is called Sherwood and is inhabited by Robin
Hood and his merry men, but it has visitors from the fantastic
Arcadia of the pastorals, and others from fairyland; and it most
resembles the rural England of Jonson's observation. The plan of
bringing together Robin Goodfellow and Robin Hood, Maudlin
the witch of Paplewick and Aeglamour the sad, was ingenious.
And Jonson managed to write about little fishes without making
6
1 More will be said concerning Jonson's lyric verse in the chapter on Caroline
lyrics in vol. vII.
2 See post, chap. XIII.
* Probably it is not identical with the lost May Lord, but was written, in part,
before Jonson's visit to Drummond. See Fleay, vol. I, pp. 379—381; Greg, The Sad
Shepherd, in Bang's Materialien, 1905, vol. x1, p. xviii; Schelling, Eliz. Drama, vol. 11,
166-8. For discussion of the play, see, also, Greg, W. W. , Pastoral Poetry and
Pastoral Drama, 1906.
pp.
## p. 12 (#30) ##############################################
I 2
Ben Jonson
them talk like whales. He evidently had collected a formidable
array of data in regard to fairies, folklore, rustic terms and habits;
but, as he wrote, sweet fancy, for once, shared with realism in
guiding his pen. No other of his plays can be read from be-
ginning to end with such genuine refreshment.
Less refreshing are the masques', with which Jonson delighted
both the pleasure-loving court and the pedantic king. The
libretti of these splendid entertainments are rather flavourless,
without the music, dancing and spectacle. To the elaboration of
these compositions, however, Jonson devoted his ingenuity and
learning, his dramatic and lyrical gifts, in prodigal effort. Moral
allegory, classical myth, English folklore, with realistic and satirical
pictures of contemporary life, were all summoned to provide
novelty, grandeur, or amusement as might be desired. For the
masque, as for other forms, Jonson conceived definite rules and
restrictions; but he was bound, of course, to respond to the desires
of his royal patrons. Remembering the limitations and conditions,
we must allow that his work in these masques displays in full all
the remarkable talents which he exhibited elsewhere. The anti-
masques gave opportunity for comic scenes, in which persons
similar to those of his comedies find a place. The spectacular
elements called for the play of fantastical invention, such as Jonson
denied to his regular dramas. And the songs gave a free chance
for lyrical verse. It must be said, however, that neither in
dramatic nor lyric effects is there supreme excellence. No lyric
in all the forty masques is unforgettable, and few rise above a
mediocre level of adequacy. But Jonson virtually invented and
perfected the court masque in its Jacobean form. Its history is
mainly the record of his contributions.
We turn now to by far the most important division of Jonson's
writings, the comedies and tragedies which he wrote for the
popular theatres. At the beginning of Jonson's dramatic career,
however, we are confronted by a lack of data. What were the plays
that, by 1598, had gained him praise as one of the best writers of
tragedy? None survives; but there are some hints that his early
work did not differentiate itself from that of his fellow dramatists.
From 1597 to 1602, he wrote at least one play a year for Henslowe,
none of which could have been a comedy of humours. These
include an unnamed play of which he made the plot; Hot Anger
Soon Cold, which he wrote with Porter and Chettle; Page of
Plymouth, a domestic tragedy on the story of a murder of 1581, in
i See under Soesgil, Brotanek and Evans in the bibliography.
## p. 13 (#31) ##############################################
Early Plays
13
collaboration with Dekker; a tragedy, Robert II King of Scots,
with Dekker and Chettle; and another tragedy, Richard Crookback.
At the time when he was writing this last play, he was also engaged
on additions to The Spanish Tragedie. In spite of definite external
evidence, these have sometimes been denied to Jonson because of
their theme and style? The style is not, indeed, like that of his
later plays; but we may fairly assume that it is not unlike that
which he was employing on domestic and historical tragediesa.
Splendidly imaginative in phrasing and conception, rehabilitating
the old Hieronimo, giving his madness and irony new truth and
new impressiveness, the 'additions' far surpass in imaginative
power most of the contemporary attempts at tragedy which they
rivalled. But they imply an unhesitating acceptance of the whole
scheme of the old revenge play at which Jonson was wont to scoff.
Further evidence that his early work was romantic rather than real-
istic may be found in the romantic elements of The Case is Altered,
and in the Italian scene and names with which Every Man in His
Humour was first decked. Of plays still earlier than those named,
we may surmise that, whether realistic or romantic, tragic or comic,
they conformed to the fashions of the time. Jonson was serving his
dramatic apprenticeship and writing the kind of plays demanded;
but he early showed that imaginative power which gave him high
rank among his fellows, at least in tragedy.
The presentation of Every Man in His Humour apparently
marked a change of plan on his part and his devotion to a new
propaganda. By 1598, the drama was long out of its swaddling
clothes. Since the union of poetry and the theatre on the
advent of Marlowe, ten years earlier, the importance of theatres in
the life of London Kad been rapidly increasing, and the drama
had been gaining recognition as a form of literature. Marlowe,
Kyd, Peele, Greene, Lyly and others, as well as Shakespeare, had
played important parts in creating a drama at once national,
popular and poetical. On the whole, this dramatic development,
while breaking away from classical models and rules, had established
no theory or criticism of its own. It had resulted from the indi-
vidual innovations of poets and playwrights, who strove to meet
the demand of the popular stage through the dramatisation of
story. The main divisions of tragedy and comedy were recognised,
1 Castelain, Appendix B, pp. 886–901. Cf. , as to these additions, ante, vol. v,
chap. vii ad fin.
· See Symonds, J. A. , Ben Jonson, English Worthies Series, and Shakespeare's
Predecessors, on the romantic tone' in Jonson’s early work.
## p. 14 (#32) ##############################################
14
Ben Jonson
a
and a third, the chronicle history, created; and there were various
species corresponding to the initiative of individuals, as a Marlowe
type of tragedy or a Lyly type of comedy; but there were no
accepted laws for any species, and hardly any restrictions or
principles guiding the presentation of narratives on the stage.
To those acquainted with classical drama, these tragedies,
comedies and histories offered much that was absurd and lawless.
Frequent change of place, long duration of time represented,
absence of a unified plan or coherent structure, mingling of farce
and tragedy, of clowns and kings, lack of definite aesthetic or
ethical aims, seemed errors that could find little palliation. The
matter was as objectionable as the form, for it was similarly
unrestricted. As Sidney asserted, dramatists did not always
distinguish a dramatic fable from a narrative, and they brought
any matter whatsoever into their plays. They did not mirror
nature or imitate life, they merely told impossible stories.
The impulses that had found freest expression in the popular
drama were, indeed, romantic. Marlowe, Greene, Shakespeare
and the rest had been inspired to give the thrills and glory,
the wonder and sentiment of life. They had dealt with remote
places, idealised persons, marvellous adventures, conquests and
vicissitudes; they had not attempted an orderly analysis of history
or a rationalised imitation of the life of their own day. The drama
was romantic, in the sense that it ran counter to the theory and
practice of the Greeks and Latins, and, also, in the sense that it
departed from a veracious representation of actuality. Inevitably,
criticism cried for classical form and a realistic presentation of life.
While the main tendency was toward romanticism, neither
classicism nor realism had, by any means, been lacking in the
earlier drama, particularly in comedy. In tragedy, classicism had
been driven from the stage to the closet; but, in comedy, Plautus
and Terence were still largely followed as models. The Plautian
model, early anglicised in Ralph Roister Doister, had notable
copies in Lyly's Mother Bombie and Shakespeare's Comedy of
Errors. Moreover, not only its stock characters, its clever
servants, parasites, misers, braggart soldiers and so on, but, also,
its general scheme of a series of tricks brought about through
disguises, had come to be widely adopted in the English drama. This
scheme lent itself readily to realism and formed the basis for most
comedies of intrigue or manners, and of some romantic plays.
Another species of comedy, the satirical, may be traced back to
moralities, and found an important early representative in the
1
1
## p. 15 (#33) ##############################################
His Programme of Reform
15
plays of Wilson? Again, sheer farce, often Plautian in scheme,
naturally took realistic themes, and plays of English domestic
manners were not uncommon. In addition to these incompletely
defined species, there was a good deal of realistic comedy
mingled with the various types of romantic drama. Tragedy,
however gruesome, usually admitted some realistic farce; romantic
comedy had its servants, drunkards, constables and clowns; and
chronicle history delighted in the elbowing of its monarchs by
humorous persons from low life. Falstaff and his crew were already
on the stage, and they certainly betokened the keenest scrutiny of
London manners. In fact, the Elizabethan drama had always
devoted itself to the representation of contemporary manners as
well as to romantic story. It had delighted not only in the
heroisms, villainies and aspirations of romantic vision, but, also, in
the absurdity, frivolity and grossness of daily actuality.
What Jonson intended was to recall comedy from its romantic •
entanglements and to restore it to its ancient province. In 1598, he
was a playwright seeking success on the public stage, and trained
in its conventions and practices. Neither at that time nor at any
other did he plan plays that should break from the popular
theatres and become academic or closet affairs. His purpose was
to alter his own practices, and to reform the stage; and he repre-
sented the critical tendencies already existing: first, a reaction
from the absurdities of current forms; secondly, a recourse to .
classical standards as a cure for lawlessness; and, lastly, the
establishment of a realistic and satirical comedy on a rational
plan. The first two positions were those of Sidney's Apologie,
which must have potently influenced Jonson; the third was being
promoted by contemporary dramatists, especially by the comedies
of his friend Chapman. Chapman's earliest romantic comedy
The Blinde begger of Alexandria, 1598, acted about 1596, was
immediately followed by An Humerous dayes Myrth, realistic in
matter and, apparently, preceding Every Man in His Humour,
and then by his Al Fooles (acted about 1599), a play both
Terentian and Jonsonian. Similarly, Middleton's early romantic
comedies, The Old Law and Blurt Master-Constable, were soon
followed by a series of realistic comedies of manners; and the
romance of Marston's Antonio and Mellida (acted 1598 or 1599) was
followed by the satire of his Malcontent (acted 1601). Moreover,
a series of formal satires by Marston, Donne and Hall had vogue
in the years 1597—9. But, to whatever extent Jonson was
1 As to Robert Wilson, see vol. v, chap. XIII.
## p. 16 (#34) ##############################################
16
Ben Jonson
anticipated by Chapman, and to whatever extent his attitude was
due to the same immediate influences that acted on his fellows,
there is no doubt that he was leader in a movement which gave
to realistic and satirical comedy a new importance, or that, of the
early representative plays of this class, Every Man in His Humour
was the masterpiece. Its famous prologuel sets forth a definite
programme.
It protests especially against chronicle history plays,
discards tragedy and romance, implies an observance of the pro-
prieties and promises
deeds, and language, such as men do use:
And persons, such as comedy would choose,
When she would show an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes.
The play, happily, is free from the laboriousness that often
results from devotion to a theory. The plot, of Jonson's own in-
vention, deals with tricks played upon the elder Knowell and the
jealous Kitely, involving the exposure of various humours and
ending happily with the marriage of young Knowell and Kitely's
sister. The term 'humour,' then applied to any oddity of manner,
is used to designate the prevailing traits of a number of distinctly
defined characters, illustrative of London manners? The braggart
soldier, the clever servant, the avaricious and jealous husband, the
gay young men and even the gulls, are all, obviously, suggested by
the common types in Plautus; to whom, also, are due the plot of
tricks and the device of disguises. Nevertheless, both plot and
persons are developed with abundant originality and represent
Jonson at his best. Bobadill, indeed, is almost the very greatest
of Jonson's creations, and is distinct from the other representa-
tives of miles gloriosus which preceded and followed him in the
Elizabethan drama. Whenever he appears, there is more than
mere satire or farce—an amazing and sustained vis comica that
reaches its culmination in the great scenes in which he meets
with discomfiture. The play is written mainly in terse and
pointed prose, only the two old men and the ladies using blank
One superb purple patch, the defence of poetry, Jonson
ruthlessly cut out in the revised edition.
In comparison with Every Man in His Humour, Jonson's
comedies for the next few years do not exhibit any advance. A
1 Not printed until the folio of 1616, but probably connected with an early presenta-
tion of the play. At all events, it represents opinions similar to those set forth in
Every Man out of His Humour.
Cf. , as to the origin and application of the term, ante, vol. iv, chap. xvi.
3 Act iv, sc. 5.
verse.
## p. 17 (#35) ##############################################
Every Man out of His Humour
17
a
large portion of his work, including the additions to The Spanish
Tragedie and other plays for Henslowe, shows a return to old ways.
The comedy entitled The Case is Altered hardly belongs to the
class of humoristic comedies. Never admitted by Jonson among
his collected works, it may be a revision of an earlier play; at least,
it was not approved by his later standards. Though Plautian in
plot and introducing personal satire on Munday, it is romantic
in tone, with its scene in Milan and its element of averted
tragedy.
The comedy of humours was carried on in Every Man out of
His Humour. A vainglorious knight, a public jester, an
affected courtier, a doting husband and others exhibit their
humours and are finally forced out of their affectations through
the agency of Macilente, who, also, is cured of his besetting envy.
In the induction, Asper, representing Jonson himself, presents the
play in a long conversation with two friends, who remain on the
stage to serve as an expository chorus. Jonson announces a
highly satirical and moral purpose, akin to that of Vetus Comoedia:
I will scourge those apes
And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror,
As large as is the stage whereon we act;
Where they shall see the time's deformity
Anatomised in every nerve and sinew,
With constant courage, and contempt of fear.
Jonson's induction and comments show how conscious was his art,
and how carefully considered his aims. He exhibits his knowledge
of the history and rules of classical comedy; but, at the same time,
he declares,
I see not then but we should enjoy the same license, or free power to
illustrate and heighten our invention, as they did; and not be tied to those
strict and regular forms which the niceness of a few, who are nothing but
form, would thrust upon us.
To this extent, he declares for the national tradition; but he
rejects the conventions of romantic comedy,
of a duke to be in love with a countess, and that countess to be in love with
the duke's son, and the son to love the lady's waiting maid; some such
cross-wooing with a clown to their servingman.
He succeeds in removing all elements of romance from his plot;
but what remains, while 'familiarly allied to the time,' has little
dramatic merit. The comedy is long-winded, and didactic, rarely
Fleay (Chronicle History, vol. 1, p. 97), Herford, Penniman and Schelling identify
Carlo Buffone with Marston; but see Small's discussion, op. cit.
LL VI. CH. 1.
2
## p. 18 (#36) ##############################################
18
Ben Jonson
either rapid or amusing. The faults that beset all Jonson's sub-
sequent comedies, even the best, are manifest: an over-elaboration
of uninteresting characters, and a too detailed exposure of
folly.
Cynthia's Revels resembles Every Man out of His Humour
in its general plan of a group of would-be gallants and ladies
whose follies are exposed to ridicule and shame through the efforts
of a censor representing the author's attitude. The devices of
gods, a masque, an echo dialogue, the fountain of self-love and—to
some extent—the gallants and pages, remind one of the plays of
Lyly, which had recently been revived. Apparently, it was with
these suggestions from Lyly and his Aristophanic scheme that
Jonson set at work on his court entertainment. He also intro-
duced personal satire (perhaps already used in Every Man out of
His Humour), though the only part that can with much con-
fidence be identified is that of Anaides, which Dekker promptly
took to himself. In spite of the evident care taken in construction
and phrasing, the play is inordinately tedious, with the exception
of the lively induction. All the persons bathe in the fountain of
self-love, but, in the end, find restoration in the well of knowledge.
In the epilogue, Jonson forestalls the obvious taunt that he has
mistaken the fountain, and proclaims of the play:
By God 'tis good, and if you like't, you may.
Jonson's arrogance had occasioned enmities with his fellow
dramatists. In Poetaster, he undertook their castigation. The
scene is placed in Rome; the story of Ovid's love for Julia is
introduced ; and the satirical scheme is not unlike that in the
preceding comedies-a voluble captain, an actor, a beggar poet
and an affected gallant come in for exposure, and Vergil and
Horace (Jonson) are the censors. In the end, Demetrius (Dekker)
and Crispinus (Marston) are tried for calumniating Horace, and to
Crispinus is administered a purge which causes him to vomit up a
prodigious vocabulary. Probably, other personal references were
intended in addition to those indicated, but they are not dis-
cernible now. Jonson seems to have been attempting a further
extension of comedy on Aristophanic lines, satirical allegory,
praise of himself and direct personal satire.
Jonson now deserted comedy for a time. His additions to The
Spanish Tragedie and the non-extant Richard Crookback were
1 Act II, sc. 1 is based on Horace's ninth satire of book 1; and there are other
imitations of Horace, Lucian and Homer. See Koeppel, E. , Quellenstudien, 1895;
Small, The Stage Quarrel, pp. 25—27, and Mallory's ed. of the play, Yale Studios, 1905.
## p. 19 (#37) ##############################################
His Tragedies
19
acted within the next two years. In connection with Sejanus
(acted 1603)', we may consider Catiline (acted 1611) as repre-
senting Jonson's contribution to tragedy ; The Fall of Mortimer
is only a fragment, and, apparently, was intended to be even
more classical than Catiline.
In these two plays, Jonson attempted in tragedy a reform similar
to that which he had striven for in comedy. He sought to treat
Roman history with scholarly accuracy and to exemplify upon the
public stage what he regarded as the essential rules of tragic art.
Such representations of Roman history as Lodge's The Wounds of
Civill War, or the still more incongruous medley of Heywood's
Lucrece, must have excited in him even greater condemnation than
did the English chronicle plays. We know that Shakespeare's Julius
Caesar provoked a sneer or two from Jonson”, though its drama-
tisation of Plutarch's portraits apparently excited his emulation
and suggested much in his treatment of Sejanus and Catiline.
Mere spectacle and farce disappear, and events are treated in
accord with a well thought-out theory of historical tragedy. But
Jonson's theory proved hampering; while his effort to secure
fidelity to the historical authorities led him to encumber Sejanus
with an absurd paraphernalia of notes, and to transcribe large
portions of Cicero's orations into Catiline. And, as he was forced
to confess, the historical material and the style of action demanded
by the audiences of the day did not readily lend themselves to the
restrictions of classical rules.
His plays, it must be remembered, were intended for the
public stage, and are not to be classed with closet dramas like
those of Fulke Greville and William Alexander. Jonson had
already contributed to current popular forms of tragedy, and he
started with these as a basis, attempting to rebuild them into
something more like classical models. His cardinal error was his
acceptance of the belief of the classicists that the essential
difference between epic and dramatic fable lay in the observance
of the three unities and similar proprieties. In Sejanus, he
gave up unity of time, but kept that of place; he retained the
comic scenes of the courtesan, but avoided any grotesque mixture
of the comic and the tragic. He omitted battles, jigs and
1 In the address prefixed to the 1605 quarto of Sejanus, Jonson acknowledges the
share of. & second pen' in the play as first written and acted, for which he had sub-
stituted his own work in the published play. This ‘so happy a genius' has been
identified as Chapman among other dramatists; but there is no evidence to support
these conjectures.
: Bartholomew Fayre, act II, sc. 1.
2-2
## p. 20 (#38) ##############################################
20
Ben Jonson
.
spectacles, and secured a coherent and carefully integrated
development of the main action. In Catiline, which he boldly
proclaimed a 'dramatic poem,' he adopted the Senecan technique of
an introductory ghost and a segregated chorus. In both plays, he
was following both humanistic and popular practice in choosing
for his themes the evil effects of ambition resulting in conspiracy
and civil war.
When we consider the self-imposed restrictions by which he
was bound, his achievement must seem remarkable. His interest
lay largely in characterisation, and in this resides the chief merit
of the plays. Jonson, to be sure, never learned Shakespeare's art
of transforming incidents and events into terms of a spiritual
conflict His method is rather that of exposition, each scene
illustrating and emphasising some trait without securing much
illusion of life. Yet the chief persons, Sejanus and Tiberius,
Catiline and Cicero, are thoughtfully conceived and faithfully
represented. Moreover, the minor characters are depicted with
care and even with vivacity, so that the picture of Roman life
carries a strong impression of truthfulness, due to the whole-
hearted concentration of Jonson's imagination upon his task as
well as to his painstaking study of authorities. In their interpre-
tation of historical characters, his tragedies resemble those of his
friend Chapman ; but he lacks Chapman's extraordinary elo-
quence. Jonson's style, especially in long speeches, is too often
rhetorical, and rarely displays great beauty or dramatic power.
Yet it is masterly in its way, competent to its purposes and free
from obscurity or over-ornamentation. The two tragedies, how-
ever, in spite of their excellences, must be regarded as repre-
senting another failure to turn popular English tragedy back into
the classical mould.
Jonson's return to comedy after Sejanus was made in 1604/5,
in collaboration with Chapman and Marston, in Eastward Hoe.
No success has attended any endeavour to disentangle the con-
tributions of the three authors, and their cooperation was probably
very intimate! It seems likely that Jonson aided largely in plan
and suggestion, and that comparatively little of the prose text was
by him.
The four comedies which followed rank with Every Man in
His Humour as his masterpieces. They are all comedies of
humours; but each is a peculiar development of the type. In
!
· Cf. post, chap. 11, and see the edition of this play by Schelling, F. E. (Belles
Lettres Series), 1903.
1
## p. 21 (#39) ##############################################
Volpone
21
Volpone, the Plautian model appears only in the use of the clever
servant as the mainspring of the action, and of entanglements
based on the trickster-tricked type of plot. The subject and
persons, however, are different from those usual in either Latin
or English comedy? Volpone, a miser and sensualist, works on the
greed of his acquaintances, and, by false reports of his sickness
and death, excites their hopes of inheriting his fortune, and lures
them into all kinds of abominable knavery. A shameless lawyer,
a father who disinherits his son in order to satisfy his own greed
and a wittol who offers his wife in return for an inheritance, are
the chief dupes; while Sir Politick Would Be, a foolish English
traveller, and his affected wife, who quotes Plato and knows of
Pastor Fido and 'Montaignie,' play lesser parts. The play has
little mirth; but it is a vigorous exposure of greed and iniquity.
Its purpose is not amusement but satire, its subject not folly but
vice, its protagonist not the managing servant but his master,
a inobster of villainy. Utterly bad men are common in Elizabethan
tragedy, and are found, occasionally, in comedy. But nowhere
else, unless in Iago, has vice been drawn with such fulness of
detail and yet with such consistency as in Volpone. No tragic
elevation lends majesty to the theme. The play depicts human
meanness, unrelieved by any greatness of purpose or unselfishness
of passion. It presents men as beasts, with the greed of swine, the
craft of foxes and the rapacity of wolves.
Plot, characters and blank verse, unusually vigorous and
flowing, all show Jonson at his best ; and he was justly proud, as
he boasted in the prologue, of having written in five weeks a
comedy that observed the laws of time, place and persons, and
swerved from no needful rule. In the dedication to both
universities, he excuses the punishment of the vicious in comedy,
defending himself by the example of the ancients, and still more
because 'it is the office of a comic poet to imitate justice, and
instruct to life. ' This is interesting as an adumbration of Rymer's
'poetic justice,' and as an expression of the purpose of Jonson's
satiric comedy. Other passages in this same dedication give noble
expression to the aims at which his art had now arrived,
to reluce not only the ancient forms, but manners of the scene, the easiness,
the propriety, the innocence, and last, the doctrine, which is the principal
end of poesie, to inform men in the best reason of living.
? As to the actual source, Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, r—Ix, see Adams, J. Q. ,
Molern Philology, vol. II, p. 289 (1905), and Browne, W. H. , Modern Language
$('? B, vol. III, p. 113 (1906).
## p. 22 (#40) ##############################################
22
Ben Jonson
It must be confessed, however, that Jonson's vainglorious pro-
clamation of reform exhibits an insolent disregard of his great
predecessors and contemporaries. He promises
the maturing of some worthier fruits; wherein, if my muses be true to me,
I shall raise the despised head of poetry again, and stripping her out of
those rotten and base rags wherewith the times have adulterated her form,
restore her to her primitive habit, feature, and majesty, and render her
worthy to be embraced and kist of all the great and master-spirits of our
world.
The Silent Woman' is much less intent on moral castigation
than is Volpone, and, also, much merrier. Its plot is farcical,
.
dealing with the entrapping of Morose, who hates noise, into
marriage with Epicoene, who turns out to be a noisy tartar,
and, after Morose has forgiven his nephew, proves to be a boy.
Sir Dauphine, the nephew, and his friends, are the wits; Daw,
La Foole and the Ladies Collegiates, the butts of their jests.
There is abundant satire of the manners and affectations of the
day; but the skilfully complicated action depends on numerous
disguises, and does not rise above the level of admirable farce.
In The Alchemist, Jonson essays another large canvas of
tricksters and gulls. Subtle, the alchemist, Dol Conmon and Face,
a housekeeper, have set up their snares in the house of Face's
master. Hither come an extraordinary procession of gulls, whose
very names are enough to recall the lifelike characters-Dapper, a
lawyer's clerk; Abel Drugger, a credulous tobacco man; Sir Epicure
Mammon, a voluptuary with a Micawber-like gift of eloquent
anticipation ; Pertinax Surly, a doubting Thomas; Tribulation
Wholesome and Ananias, two brethren of Amsterdam, who make
an effort to serve both God and Mammon, without forgetting the
weaker brethren; Kastrill, a foolish heir and Dame Pliant, his sister,
a widow. One after another, they expose their folly and greed, and
add to the fun and entanglement, until the master of the house
returns and joins with Face to keep the spoils, including the
widow, and to lock the doors on dupers and duped. Perhaps
in no other play has Jonson so completely succeeded in accom-
plishing what he intended as he has in this. There are no tiresome
excursuses, as in Volpone and Bartholomew Fayre; in everything,
he uses 'election and a mean. ' The entire play is in blank verse,
1 The edition of the play by Aurelia Henry, Yale Studies, 1906, discusses
suggestions for this play in Libanius and Plautus.
2 On the relation of The Alchemist to Il Candelaio of Giordano Bruno, see a note by
Child, C. G. , in The Nation, 28 July 1904. See, also, Schelling, Elix. Drama,
vol. 1, pp. 540, 541.
.
## p. 23 (#41) ##############################################
23
Bartholomew Fayre
which is most-skilfully adapted to the rapid dialogue or to the
orations of Tribulation and Sir Epicure. The language is varied,
idiomatic and precise ; the style, finished and animated. The
ingenuity of the plot, which Coleridge ranked among the three
most perfect in literature, the liveliness of the action and the
delineation of manners, harmonise in a work which, of its kind,
could hardly be bettered. The satire on alchemy, which was not
.
winout daring in the days of Simon Forman, flavours the fun
without destroying it; and the picture of Elizabethan London is L
without an equal, unless it be in Bartholomew Fayre.
In the presentation of manners and character, Bartholomew
Fayre may, indeed, be held to outrank even The Alchemist. In
many respects, however, its inferiority is palpable. It is unwieldy
in structure; its fun is often gross and farcical ; and it is over-
crowded with persons and incidents. There are thirty speaking
parts and many supernumeraries. Nowhere else, perhaps, in
literature, have so many people been so vividly presented in a
three hour entertainment as here. The usual pair of witty friends, a
pompous judge bent on reform, a proctor who has written a puppet
show! , a foolish widow, a puritan zealot, Cokes, a booby, and his
rran Waspe, mingle in the fair with a cutpurse, a ballad singer, a
tapster, a bawd, a bully and that Falstaffia of the stews, Ursula
the pig woman. The trouble here, as in other plays by Jonson, is
tl at every character is worked out with elaborate detail. If some
of the subordinate parts were removed, and others reduced in
proportion, the play, doubtless, would be improved. Certainly,
much of Littlewit's puppet play could be spared. But all the
personages mentioned, and as many more, are drawn not only with
painstaking exactness, but, also, with unflagging animation. A
play which unites such masterpieces of comic characterisation as
justice Overdo, Cokes and Zeal-of-the-land Busy, together with
much uproarious fun, must, surely, be accounted an amazing
arliievement of comic invention.
In the amusing induction, Jonson protests against the attribu-
tion of personal satire to the play, and against the tendency of
the public to judge everything by their old favourites, such as
Jeronimo and Andronicus. His protests, in fact, are directed at
the whole field of romantic drama, and include scoffs at A
Winter's Tale and The Tempest.
If there be never a servant-monster in the fair, who can help it, he
the author of Bartholomew Fayre] says, nor a nest of antiques ? he is loth
| Littlewit is identified by Fleay, Penniman and Schelling with the poet Daniel.
1
1
## p. 24 (#42) ##############################################
24
Ben Jonson
to make nature afraid in his plays, like those that beget tales, tempeste,
and such like drollerier, to mix his head with other men's heels; let the
concupiscence of jigs and dances reign as strong as it will amongst you ;
yet if the puppets please any body, they shall be intreated to come in.
* The concupiscence of jigs and dances,' to which he also alludes in
the address 'To the Reader' prefixed to The Alchemist, seems to refur
to the introduction of dances and other elements from court masques
into comedy, as in A Winter's Tale, The Tempest and other con-
temporary plays. Jonson, always a precisian, preferred to keep his
masques and comedies separate. It seems clear that he intended to
make Bartholomeu Fayre an example of pure realism. Perhaps for
this reason he wrote it, like Epicoene, wholly in prose, remarkable
for its clearness and flexibility, admirably suited to the different
speakers and imitative of the manners of the time. Characters and
incidents, also, are freer from imitation of Plautus or Aristophanes
than are those of any other of his comedies, though the usual
scheme of gulls and knaves is preserved and amplified. Further
removed from classical models than his other comedies, neverthe-
less, it is Aristophanic in the breadth and liveliness of its mirth and
in its unhesitating realism. Original in its scheme and subject,
dariug in its invention, it marks the highest development of the
comedy of humours as a national type. The kind of comedy wbich
it presents has continued in prose fiction, in Fielding, Smollett and
Dickens ; but, since the Elizabethan period, our theatre has never
permitted such robust fun and so unvarnished a presentation of
the absurdities of human nature.
The Divell is an Asse betrays a flagging invention, as was to
be expected after the prodigal expenditure of the four preceding
comedies. The machinery of the devils is not very happy. Pug, a
lesser devil, is despatched by Satan to do some mischief; but his -
stupidity renders his expedition unsuccessful, and, indeed, leaves it
without effect on the action of the play. Jonson, apparently, planned
to enlarge his collection of gulls by proving the devil one ; but the
result of this humorous conception is merely to add another stupid
and uninteresting person to the dramatis personae. The other
characters are more or less repetitions of those in earlier plays,
though the chief gull, Fitzdottrel, who aims to become 'Duke of
Brownlands' through taking part in a project for draining the
waste lands of the kingdom, gives rise to plenty of humour. The
satire is lively, especially that on the exorcism of supposed evil
spirits, and that on projectors and projects-among which is one
for ‘serving the whole state with toothpicks. ' Mrs Fitzdottrel is
## p. 25 (#43) ##############################################
Later Comedies
25
drawn with more sympathy than is common in the case of Jonson's
female characters, and all the characters are, as usual, carefully
differentiated. But the comic entanglements are cumbersome, and
the play moves heavily.
Nine years intervened before the appearance of Jonson's next
comedy, The Staple of Newes. Though his prologue is as boastful
as ever, yet, in the induction and the intercalary scenes, there are
nications that he felt the uncertainty of his powers and was driven
back to the stage by want. He went to Aristophanes for a model,
composing an allegorical satire based on Plutus, from which and
from The Wasps he borrowed certain passages. The main allegory
of Pecunia, Pennyboy, Mortgage and the rest, is tiresome; but
the secondary plot, dealing with the Staple-of-News office, has
excellent satire and fun.
in collected editions, and is of interest rather for the information
which it supplies as to his friends and patrons, and for its satirical
pictures of contemporary life, than for any charm of verse. Few
of the odes, epistles and epigrams show aught but careful writing,
but there are also few that can be praised unreservedly or read with
delight. The Epigrams (1616) are characteristically coarse; and
some of the satirical sort recall the persons of his comedies; as
those on alchemists, Lieutenant Shift, Court Worm, Sir Voluptuous
Beast, or Lady Would Be. Others are laudatory in praise of
Camden, Donne or Sylvester, or the poet's noble patrons, or the
king. Perhaps the best of these is that on Lucy countess of
Bedford But the only epigram that has been widely re-
membered is the beautiful epitaph on the child actor, Salathiel
Pavy. The fifteen poems that compose The Forest, taken as a
whole, are of a higher order than the Epigrams; but, except the
immortal ‘Drink to me only with thine eyes's, none, today, has
much interest beyond what is historical. In spite of occasional fine
lines, their style is fatally marred by that stiffness with which
Swinburne justly charges Jonson's verse. To Penshurst, written
in heroic couplets, is one of the best—sober, dignified, adequate.
The lyric note is absolutely wanting in most. A vocabulary that
seems purposely prosaic and realistic, an absence of figures, correct-
ness and sanity of expression—these are the qualities of Dryden's
verse; but Jonson's has neither Dryden's animation nor his melody,
This description, in general, also applies to Underwoods", a
much larger collection, not published until after Jonson’s death.
1 Cf. ante, vol. iv, pp. 348—9, and see ibid. p. 524, for a list of writings in which
the sources of Discoveries have been investigated. To these should be added Briggs,
W. D. , Mod. Lang. Notes, Feb. 1908.
2 Fleay attempts to date the individual epigrams, vol. I, pp. 316—322.
* Richard Cumberland, in The Observer, No. 74, was the first to point out that
this lyric is a free translation from Philostratus.
• The famous epitaph on the countess of Pembroke, now usually included in
## p. 10 (#28) ##############################################
IO
Ben Jonson
Two groups begin the collection—the first of devotional pieces, and
the second of love poems forming A Celebration of Charis. The
miscellaneous poems that follow include the charming A Nymphs
Passion, the graceful Dreame, a long series of eulogistic verses
the best and most famous of which is the poem to Shakespeare, a
sonnet to lady Mary Wroth and several epistles, of which that
entitled An Epistle to a Friend, to perswade him to the Warres
(Master Colby) (xxxii), in terse, vigorous couplets, may be
instanced as representative of Jonson's satirical verse at its best.
A series of four elegies (lvii—Ix) in regard to a lover's quarrel is
quite different from the rest of the poems, and quite in the manner
of Donne. The second of these (lviii), indeed, appeared in the 1633
edition of Donne's poems, and, doubtless, should be assigned to him.
But if this be given to him, why not the other three? ? It is true
that reminiscences of Donne are found elsewhere in Underwoods,
and that Jonson may have been writing in direct imitation; but
the four poems deal with the same subject and, apparently,
express the feelings of the same lover. The remaining poems in
Underwoods include An Execration upon Vulcan, one of the best
of the occasional poems; the elaborate and regular Pindaric ode on
the death of Sir H. Morison, which contains the beautiful strophe
beginning
It is not growing like a tree
In bulke, doth make men better bee . . . ,
and the curious Eupheme; or, the faire fame. . . of. . . Lady
Venetia Digby, which begins with the dedication of her cradle'
and rises to its height in the picture of the mind':
Thou entertaining in thy brest
But such a Mind, mak'st God thy Guest.
The impression made by Jonson’s non-dramatic poetry, as a
whole, falls far short of that produced by the half-dozen short
lyrics which, alone, have survived in men's memories. These
have a unique and happy grace, a sure touch of immortality. And
the two songs, To Celia (“Drink to me only with thine eyes') and
'Goddess excellently bright*,' have the allurement of Elizabethan
Underwoods, was first printed as Jonson's in the edition of Peter Whalley (1756).
Weighty, though by no means decisive, evidence that it was written by William Browne
is given by Bullen, A. H. , in his article on Browne in Dict. of Nat. Biogr. (Cf. ante,
vol. iv, p. 124, where it is assigned to Browne. )
| The numbering follows Cunningham's edition.
· Castelain, pp. 801—4, would give these to Donne. See, also, Swinburne, p. 106;
Fleay, Biog. Chron. vol. 1, pp. 326, 328 ; and E. K. Chambers's edition of Donne,
vol. 1, p. 241 and vol. 11, p. 307. Cl. , on this subject, ante, vol. 1v, p. 209.
8 The refrain of Hesperus's song in Cynthia's Revels, act v, sc. 3.
## p. 11 (#29) ##############################################
Non-Dramatic Poems. The Sad Shepherd 11
poetry at its best. On the other hand, the great majority of his
poems are lacking in melody, charm, or distinction. They are the
work of a forerunner of classicism, of one who departs from Spenser,
and looks forward to Dryden. The frequent choice of occasional
subjects, the restriction to definite forms, the prevalence of satire
-all tend toward pseudo-classicism. Moreover, as Schelling has
shown, the character of the versification, the use of the rimed
couplet, the prosaic vocabulary, the avoidance of enjambement, the
fixed caesura, point the same way.
That Jonson's verse was very
influential in advancing the change in poetic taste, can, however,
hardly be maintained. Doubtless, his preaching and precepts had
something to do with promoting a tendency toward classicism; but
the tribe of Ben-Carew, Cartwright, Suckling, Herrick and others
did not profit largely from their master's practice. Herrick,
who most imitated him, greatly excelled him; and his general
influence was not comparable to Spenser's or to Donne's 1.
His plays fall into well defined classes: masques, comedies and
tragedies, with the addition of the unfinished pastoral, The Sad
Shepherd. As the pastoral and the masque are treated elsewhere
in this work, Jonson's contributions to these two dramatic types
must be very briefly noticed here. The Sad Shepherds, probably,
represents an attempt of his last years to revise and complete for
the stage (then addicted to pastorals) a play written, in part, many
years before. Whenever his little excursion to Arcadia was first
planned, it has since succeeded in carrying many readers thither.
It is another of those delightful surprises in Jonson's work, not
unlike the trouvaille of the Queen and huntress' hidden in
the impenetrable jungle of Cynthia's Revels. Among later
comedies, The Sad Shepherd is like a breeze in a drowsy lecture-
Its Arcadia is called Sherwood and is inhabited by Robin
Hood and his merry men, but it has visitors from the fantastic
Arcadia of the pastorals, and others from fairyland; and it most
resembles the rural England of Jonson's observation. The plan of
bringing together Robin Goodfellow and Robin Hood, Maudlin
the witch of Paplewick and Aeglamour the sad, was ingenious.
And Jonson managed to write about little fishes without making
6
1 More will be said concerning Jonson's lyric verse in the chapter on Caroline
lyrics in vol. vII.
2 See post, chap. XIII.
* Probably it is not identical with the lost May Lord, but was written, in part,
before Jonson's visit to Drummond. See Fleay, vol. I, pp. 379—381; Greg, The Sad
Shepherd, in Bang's Materialien, 1905, vol. x1, p. xviii; Schelling, Eliz. Drama, vol. 11,
166-8. For discussion of the play, see, also, Greg, W. W. , Pastoral Poetry and
Pastoral Drama, 1906.
pp.
## p. 12 (#30) ##############################################
I 2
Ben Jonson
them talk like whales. He evidently had collected a formidable
array of data in regard to fairies, folklore, rustic terms and habits;
but, as he wrote, sweet fancy, for once, shared with realism in
guiding his pen. No other of his plays can be read from be-
ginning to end with such genuine refreshment.
Less refreshing are the masques', with which Jonson delighted
both the pleasure-loving court and the pedantic king. The
libretti of these splendid entertainments are rather flavourless,
without the music, dancing and spectacle. To the elaboration of
these compositions, however, Jonson devoted his ingenuity and
learning, his dramatic and lyrical gifts, in prodigal effort. Moral
allegory, classical myth, English folklore, with realistic and satirical
pictures of contemporary life, were all summoned to provide
novelty, grandeur, or amusement as might be desired. For the
masque, as for other forms, Jonson conceived definite rules and
restrictions; but he was bound, of course, to respond to the desires
of his royal patrons. Remembering the limitations and conditions,
we must allow that his work in these masques displays in full all
the remarkable talents which he exhibited elsewhere. The anti-
masques gave opportunity for comic scenes, in which persons
similar to those of his comedies find a place. The spectacular
elements called for the play of fantastical invention, such as Jonson
denied to his regular dramas. And the songs gave a free chance
for lyrical verse. It must be said, however, that neither in
dramatic nor lyric effects is there supreme excellence. No lyric
in all the forty masques is unforgettable, and few rise above a
mediocre level of adequacy. But Jonson virtually invented and
perfected the court masque in its Jacobean form. Its history is
mainly the record of his contributions.
We turn now to by far the most important division of Jonson's
writings, the comedies and tragedies which he wrote for the
popular theatres. At the beginning of Jonson's dramatic career,
however, we are confronted by a lack of data. What were the plays
that, by 1598, had gained him praise as one of the best writers of
tragedy? None survives; but there are some hints that his early
work did not differentiate itself from that of his fellow dramatists.
From 1597 to 1602, he wrote at least one play a year for Henslowe,
none of which could have been a comedy of humours. These
include an unnamed play of which he made the plot; Hot Anger
Soon Cold, which he wrote with Porter and Chettle; Page of
Plymouth, a domestic tragedy on the story of a murder of 1581, in
i See under Soesgil, Brotanek and Evans in the bibliography.
## p. 13 (#31) ##############################################
Early Plays
13
collaboration with Dekker; a tragedy, Robert II King of Scots,
with Dekker and Chettle; and another tragedy, Richard Crookback.
At the time when he was writing this last play, he was also engaged
on additions to The Spanish Tragedie. In spite of definite external
evidence, these have sometimes been denied to Jonson because of
their theme and style? The style is not, indeed, like that of his
later plays; but we may fairly assume that it is not unlike that
which he was employing on domestic and historical tragediesa.
Splendidly imaginative in phrasing and conception, rehabilitating
the old Hieronimo, giving his madness and irony new truth and
new impressiveness, the 'additions' far surpass in imaginative
power most of the contemporary attempts at tragedy which they
rivalled. But they imply an unhesitating acceptance of the whole
scheme of the old revenge play at which Jonson was wont to scoff.
Further evidence that his early work was romantic rather than real-
istic may be found in the romantic elements of The Case is Altered,
and in the Italian scene and names with which Every Man in His
Humour was first decked. Of plays still earlier than those named,
we may surmise that, whether realistic or romantic, tragic or comic,
they conformed to the fashions of the time. Jonson was serving his
dramatic apprenticeship and writing the kind of plays demanded;
but he early showed that imaginative power which gave him high
rank among his fellows, at least in tragedy.
The presentation of Every Man in His Humour apparently
marked a change of plan on his part and his devotion to a new
propaganda. By 1598, the drama was long out of its swaddling
clothes. Since the union of poetry and the theatre on the
advent of Marlowe, ten years earlier, the importance of theatres in
the life of London Kad been rapidly increasing, and the drama
had been gaining recognition as a form of literature. Marlowe,
Kyd, Peele, Greene, Lyly and others, as well as Shakespeare, had
played important parts in creating a drama at once national,
popular and poetical. On the whole, this dramatic development,
while breaking away from classical models and rules, had established
no theory or criticism of its own. It had resulted from the indi-
vidual innovations of poets and playwrights, who strove to meet
the demand of the popular stage through the dramatisation of
story. The main divisions of tragedy and comedy were recognised,
1 Castelain, Appendix B, pp. 886–901. Cf. , as to these additions, ante, vol. v,
chap. vii ad fin.
· See Symonds, J. A. , Ben Jonson, English Worthies Series, and Shakespeare's
Predecessors, on the romantic tone' in Jonson’s early work.
## p. 14 (#32) ##############################################
14
Ben Jonson
a
and a third, the chronicle history, created; and there were various
species corresponding to the initiative of individuals, as a Marlowe
type of tragedy or a Lyly type of comedy; but there were no
accepted laws for any species, and hardly any restrictions or
principles guiding the presentation of narratives on the stage.
To those acquainted with classical drama, these tragedies,
comedies and histories offered much that was absurd and lawless.
Frequent change of place, long duration of time represented,
absence of a unified plan or coherent structure, mingling of farce
and tragedy, of clowns and kings, lack of definite aesthetic or
ethical aims, seemed errors that could find little palliation. The
matter was as objectionable as the form, for it was similarly
unrestricted. As Sidney asserted, dramatists did not always
distinguish a dramatic fable from a narrative, and they brought
any matter whatsoever into their plays. They did not mirror
nature or imitate life, they merely told impossible stories.
The impulses that had found freest expression in the popular
drama were, indeed, romantic. Marlowe, Greene, Shakespeare
and the rest had been inspired to give the thrills and glory,
the wonder and sentiment of life. They had dealt with remote
places, idealised persons, marvellous adventures, conquests and
vicissitudes; they had not attempted an orderly analysis of history
or a rationalised imitation of the life of their own day. The drama
was romantic, in the sense that it ran counter to the theory and
practice of the Greeks and Latins, and, also, in the sense that it
departed from a veracious representation of actuality. Inevitably,
criticism cried for classical form and a realistic presentation of life.
While the main tendency was toward romanticism, neither
classicism nor realism had, by any means, been lacking in the
earlier drama, particularly in comedy. In tragedy, classicism had
been driven from the stage to the closet; but, in comedy, Plautus
and Terence were still largely followed as models. The Plautian
model, early anglicised in Ralph Roister Doister, had notable
copies in Lyly's Mother Bombie and Shakespeare's Comedy of
Errors. Moreover, not only its stock characters, its clever
servants, parasites, misers, braggart soldiers and so on, but, also,
its general scheme of a series of tricks brought about through
disguises, had come to be widely adopted in the English drama. This
scheme lent itself readily to realism and formed the basis for most
comedies of intrigue or manners, and of some romantic plays.
Another species of comedy, the satirical, may be traced back to
moralities, and found an important early representative in the
1
1
## p. 15 (#33) ##############################################
His Programme of Reform
15
plays of Wilson? Again, sheer farce, often Plautian in scheme,
naturally took realistic themes, and plays of English domestic
manners were not uncommon. In addition to these incompletely
defined species, there was a good deal of realistic comedy
mingled with the various types of romantic drama. Tragedy,
however gruesome, usually admitted some realistic farce; romantic
comedy had its servants, drunkards, constables and clowns; and
chronicle history delighted in the elbowing of its monarchs by
humorous persons from low life. Falstaff and his crew were already
on the stage, and they certainly betokened the keenest scrutiny of
London manners. In fact, the Elizabethan drama had always
devoted itself to the representation of contemporary manners as
well as to romantic story. It had delighted not only in the
heroisms, villainies and aspirations of romantic vision, but, also, in
the absurdity, frivolity and grossness of daily actuality.
What Jonson intended was to recall comedy from its romantic •
entanglements and to restore it to its ancient province. In 1598, he
was a playwright seeking success on the public stage, and trained
in its conventions and practices. Neither at that time nor at any
other did he plan plays that should break from the popular
theatres and become academic or closet affairs. His purpose was
to alter his own practices, and to reform the stage; and he repre-
sented the critical tendencies already existing: first, a reaction
from the absurdities of current forms; secondly, a recourse to .
classical standards as a cure for lawlessness; and, lastly, the
establishment of a realistic and satirical comedy on a rational
plan. The first two positions were those of Sidney's Apologie,
which must have potently influenced Jonson; the third was being
promoted by contemporary dramatists, especially by the comedies
of his friend Chapman. Chapman's earliest romantic comedy
The Blinde begger of Alexandria, 1598, acted about 1596, was
immediately followed by An Humerous dayes Myrth, realistic in
matter and, apparently, preceding Every Man in His Humour,
and then by his Al Fooles (acted about 1599), a play both
Terentian and Jonsonian. Similarly, Middleton's early romantic
comedies, The Old Law and Blurt Master-Constable, were soon
followed by a series of realistic comedies of manners; and the
romance of Marston's Antonio and Mellida (acted 1598 or 1599) was
followed by the satire of his Malcontent (acted 1601). Moreover,
a series of formal satires by Marston, Donne and Hall had vogue
in the years 1597—9. But, to whatever extent Jonson was
1 As to Robert Wilson, see vol. v, chap. XIII.
## p. 16 (#34) ##############################################
16
Ben Jonson
anticipated by Chapman, and to whatever extent his attitude was
due to the same immediate influences that acted on his fellows,
there is no doubt that he was leader in a movement which gave
to realistic and satirical comedy a new importance, or that, of the
early representative plays of this class, Every Man in His Humour
was the masterpiece. Its famous prologuel sets forth a definite
programme.
It protests especially against chronicle history plays,
discards tragedy and romance, implies an observance of the pro-
prieties and promises
deeds, and language, such as men do use:
And persons, such as comedy would choose,
When she would show an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes.
The play, happily, is free from the laboriousness that often
results from devotion to a theory. The plot, of Jonson's own in-
vention, deals with tricks played upon the elder Knowell and the
jealous Kitely, involving the exposure of various humours and
ending happily with the marriage of young Knowell and Kitely's
sister. The term 'humour,' then applied to any oddity of manner,
is used to designate the prevailing traits of a number of distinctly
defined characters, illustrative of London manners? The braggart
soldier, the clever servant, the avaricious and jealous husband, the
gay young men and even the gulls, are all, obviously, suggested by
the common types in Plautus; to whom, also, are due the plot of
tricks and the device of disguises. Nevertheless, both plot and
persons are developed with abundant originality and represent
Jonson at his best. Bobadill, indeed, is almost the very greatest
of Jonson's creations, and is distinct from the other representa-
tives of miles gloriosus which preceded and followed him in the
Elizabethan drama. Whenever he appears, there is more than
mere satire or farce—an amazing and sustained vis comica that
reaches its culmination in the great scenes in which he meets
with discomfiture. The play is written mainly in terse and
pointed prose, only the two old men and the ladies using blank
One superb purple patch, the defence of poetry, Jonson
ruthlessly cut out in the revised edition.
In comparison with Every Man in His Humour, Jonson's
comedies for the next few years do not exhibit any advance. A
1 Not printed until the folio of 1616, but probably connected with an early presenta-
tion of the play. At all events, it represents opinions similar to those set forth in
Every Man out of His Humour.
Cf. , as to the origin and application of the term, ante, vol. iv, chap. xvi.
3 Act iv, sc. 5.
verse.
## p. 17 (#35) ##############################################
Every Man out of His Humour
17
a
large portion of his work, including the additions to The Spanish
Tragedie and other plays for Henslowe, shows a return to old ways.
The comedy entitled The Case is Altered hardly belongs to the
class of humoristic comedies. Never admitted by Jonson among
his collected works, it may be a revision of an earlier play; at least,
it was not approved by his later standards. Though Plautian in
plot and introducing personal satire on Munday, it is romantic
in tone, with its scene in Milan and its element of averted
tragedy.
The comedy of humours was carried on in Every Man out of
His Humour. A vainglorious knight, a public jester, an
affected courtier, a doting husband and others exhibit their
humours and are finally forced out of their affectations through
the agency of Macilente, who, also, is cured of his besetting envy.
In the induction, Asper, representing Jonson himself, presents the
play in a long conversation with two friends, who remain on the
stage to serve as an expository chorus. Jonson announces a
highly satirical and moral purpose, akin to that of Vetus Comoedia:
I will scourge those apes
And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror,
As large as is the stage whereon we act;
Where they shall see the time's deformity
Anatomised in every nerve and sinew,
With constant courage, and contempt of fear.
Jonson's induction and comments show how conscious was his art,
and how carefully considered his aims. He exhibits his knowledge
of the history and rules of classical comedy; but, at the same time,
he declares,
I see not then but we should enjoy the same license, or free power to
illustrate and heighten our invention, as they did; and not be tied to those
strict and regular forms which the niceness of a few, who are nothing but
form, would thrust upon us.
To this extent, he declares for the national tradition; but he
rejects the conventions of romantic comedy,
of a duke to be in love with a countess, and that countess to be in love with
the duke's son, and the son to love the lady's waiting maid; some such
cross-wooing with a clown to their servingman.
He succeeds in removing all elements of romance from his plot;
but what remains, while 'familiarly allied to the time,' has little
dramatic merit. The comedy is long-winded, and didactic, rarely
Fleay (Chronicle History, vol. 1, p. 97), Herford, Penniman and Schelling identify
Carlo Buffone with Marston; but see Small's discussion, op. cit.
LL VI. CH. 1.
2
## p. 18 (#36) ##############################################
18
Ben Jonson
either rapid or amusing. The faults that beset all Jonson's sub-
sequent comedies, even the best, are manifest: an over-elaboration
of uninteresting characters, and a too detailed exposure of
folly.
Cynthia's Revels resembles Every Man out of His Humour
in its general plan of a group of would-be gallants and ladies
whose follies are exposed to ridicule and shame through the efforts
of a censor representing the author's attitude. The devices of
gods, a masque, an echo dialogue, the fountain of self-love and—to
some extent—the gallants and pages, remind one of the plays of
Lyly, which had recently been revived. Apparently, it was with
these suggestions from Lyly and his Aristophanic scheme that
Jonson set at work on his court entertainment. He also intro-
duced personal satire (perhaps already used in Every Man out of
His Humour), though the only part that can with much con-
fidence be identified is that of Anaides, which Dekker promptly
took to himself. In spite of the evident care taken in construction
and phrasing, the play is inordinately tedious, with the exception
of the lively induction. All the persons bathe in the fountain of
self-love, but, in the end, find restoration in the well of knowledge.
In the epilogue, Jonson forestalls the obvious taunt that he has
mistaken the fountain, and proclaims of the play:
By God 'tis good, and if you like't, you may.
Jonson's arrogance had occasioned enmities with his fellow
dramatists. In Poetaster, he undertook their castigation. The
scene is placed in Rome; the story of Ovid's love for Julia is
introduced ; and the satirical scheme is not unlike that in the
preceding comedies-a voluble captain, an actor, a beggar poet
and an affected gallant come in for exposure, and Vergil and
Horace (Jonson) are the censors. In the end, Demetrius (Dekker)
and Crispinus (Marston) are tried for calumniating Horace, and to
Crispinus is administered a purge which causes him to vomit up a
prodigious vocabulary. Probably, other personal references were
intended in addition to those indicated, but they are not dis-
cernible now. Jonson seems to have been attempting a further
extension of comedy on Aristophanic lines, satirical allegory,
praise of himself and direct personal satire.
Jonson now deserted comedy for a time. His additions to The
Spanish Tragedie and the non-extant Richard Crookback were
1 Act II, sc. 1 is based on Horace's ninth satire of book 1; and there are other
imitations of Horace, Lucian and Homer. See Koeppel, E. , Quellenstudien, 1895;
Small, The Stage Quarrel, pp. 25—27, and Mallory's ed. of the play, Yale Studios, 1905.
## p. 19 (#37) ##############################################
His Tragedies
19
acted within the next two years. In connection with Sejanus
(acted 1603)', we may consider Catiline (acted 1611) as repre-
senting Jonson's contribution to tragedy ; The Fall of Mortimer
is only a fragment, and, apparently, was intended to be even
more classical than Catiline.
In these two plays, Jonson attempted in tragedy a reform similar
to that which he had striven for in comedy. He sought to treat
Roman history with scholarly accuracy and to exemplify upon the
public stage what he regarded as the essential rules of tragic art.
Such representations of Roman history as Lodge's The Wounds of
Civill War, or the still more incongruous medley of Heywood's
Lucrece, must have excited in him even greater condemnation than
did the English chronicle plays. We know that Shakespeare's Julius
Caesar provoked a sneer or two from Jonson”, though its drama-
tisation of Plutarch's portraits apparently excited his emulation
and suggested much in his treatment of Sejanus and Catiline.
Mere spectacle and farce disappear, and events are treated in
accord with a well thought-out theory of historical tragedy. But
Jonson's theory proved hampering; while his effort to secure
fidelity to the historical authorities led him to encumber Sejanus
with an absurd paraphernalia of notes, and to transcribe large
portions of Cicero's orations into Catiline. And, as he was forced
to confess, the historical material and the style of action demanded
by the audiences of the day did not readily lend themselves to the
restrictions of classical rules.
His plays, it must be remembered, were intended for the
public stage, and are not to be classed with closet dramas like
those of Fulke Greville and William Alexander. Jonson had
already contributed to current popular forms of tragedy, and he
started with these as a basis, attempting to rebuild them into
something more like classical models. His cardinal error was his
acceptance of the belief of the classicists that the essential
difference between epic and dramatic fable lay in the observance
of the three unities and similar proprieties. In Sejanus, he
gave up unity of time, but kept that of place; he retained the
comic scenes of the courtesan, but avoided any grotesque mixture
of the comic and the tragic. He omitted battles, jigs and
1 In the address prefixed to the 1605 quarto of Sejanus, Jonson acknowledges the
share of. & second pen' in the play as first written and acted, for which he had sub-
stituted his own work in the published play. This ‘so happy a genius' has been
identified as Chapman among other dramatists; but there is no evidence to support
these conjectures.
: Bartholomew Fayre, act II, sc. 1.
2-2
## p. 20 (#38) ##############################################
20
Ben Jonson
.
spectacles, and secured a coherent and carefully integrated
development of the main action. In Catiline, which he boldly
proclaimed a 'dramatic poem,' he adopted the Senecan technique of
an introductory ghost and a segregated chorus. In both plays, he
was following both humanistic and popular practice in choosing
for his themes the evil effects of ambition resulting in conspiracy
and civil war.
When we consider the self-imposed restrictions by which he
was bound, his achievement must seem remarkable. His interest
lay largely in characterisation, and in this resides the chief merit
of the plays. Jonson, to be sure, never learned Shakespeare's art
of transforming incidents and events into terms of a spiritual
conflict His method is rather that of exposition, each scene
illustrating and emphasising some trait without securing much
illusion of life. Yet the chief persons, Sejanus and Tiberius,
Catiline and Cicero, are thoughtfully conceived and faithfully
represented. Moreover, the minor characters are depicted with
care and even with vivacity, so that the picture of Roman life
carries a strong impression of truthfulness, due to the whole-
hearted concentration of Jonson's imagination upon his task as
well as to his painstaking study of authorities. In their interpre-
tation of historical characters, his tragedies resemble those of his
friend Chapman ; but he lacks Chapman's extraordinary elo-
quence. Jonson's style, especially in long speeches, is too often
rhetorical, and rarely displays great beauty or dramatic power.
Yet it is masterly in its way, competent to its purposes and free
from obscurity or over-ornamentation. The two tragedies, how-
ever, in spite of their excellences, must be regarded as repre-
senting another failure to turn popular English tragedy back into
the classical mould.
Jonson's return to comedy after Sejanus was made in 1604/5,
in collaboration with Chapman and Marston, in Eastward Hoe.
No success has attended any endeavour to disentangle the con-
tributions of the three authors, and their cooperation was probably
very intimate! It seems likely that Jonson aided largely in plan
and suggestion, and that comparatively little of the prose text was
by him.
The four comedies which followed rank with Every Man in
His Humour as his masterpieces. They are all comedies of
humours; but each is a peculiar development of the type. In
!
· Cf. post, chap. 11, and see the edition of this play by Schelling, F. E. (Belles
Lettres Series), 1903.
1
## p. 21 (#39) ##############################################
Volpone
21
Volpone, the Plautian model appears only in the use of the clever
servant as the mainspring of the action, and of entanglements
based on the trickster-tricked type of plot. The subject and
persons, however, are different from those usual in either Latin
or English comedy? Volpone, a miser and sensualist, works on the
greed of his acquaintances, and, by false reports of his sickness
and death, excites their hopes of inheriting his fortune, and lures
them into all kinds of abominable knavery. A shameless lawyer,
a father who disinherits his son in order to satisfy his own greed
and a wittol who offers his wife in return for an inheritance, are
the chief dupes; while Sir Politick Would Be, a foolish English
traveller, and his affected wife, who quotes Plato and knows of
Pastor Fido and 'Montaignie,' play lesser parts. The play has
little mirth; but it is a vigorous exposure of greed and iniquity.
Its purpose is not amusement but satire, its subject not folly but
vice, its protagonist not the managing servant but his master,
a inobster of villainy. Utterly bad men are common in Elizabethan
tragedy, and are found, occasionally, in comedy. But nowhere
else, unless in Iago, has vice been drawn with such fulness of
detail and yet with such consistency as in Volpone. No tragic
elevation lends majesty to the theme. The play depicts human
meanness, unrelieved by any greatness of purpose or unselfishness
of passion. It presents men as beasts, with the greed of swine, the
craft of foxes and the rapacity of wolves.
Plot, characters and blank verse, unusually vigorous and
flowing, all show Jonson at his best ; and he was justly proud, as
he boasted in the prologue, of having written in five weeks a
comedy that observed the laws of time, place and persons, and
swerved from no needful rule. In the dedication to both
universities, he excuses the punishment of the vicious in comedy,
defending himself by the example of the ancients, and still more
because 'it is the office of a comic poet to imitate justice, and
instruct to life. ' This is interesting as an adumbration of Rymer's
'poetic justice,' and as an expression of the purpose of Jonson's
satiric comedy. Other passages in this same dedication give noble
expression to the aims at which his art had now arrived,
to reluce not only the ancient forms, but manners of the scene, the easiness,
the propriety, the innocence, and last, the doctrine, which is the principal
end of poesie, to inform men in the best reason of living.
? As to the actual source, Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, r—Ix, see Adams, J. Q. ,
Molern Philology, vol. II, p. 289 (1905), and Browne, W. H. , Modern Language
$('? B, vol. III, p. 113 (1906).
## p. 22 (#40) ##############################################
22
Ben Jonson
It must be confessed, however, that Jonson's vainglorious pro-
clamation of reform exhibits an insolent disregard of his great
predecessors and contemporaries. He promises
the maturing of some worthier fruits; wherein, if my muses be true to me,
I shall raise the despised head of poetry again, and stripping her out of
those rotten and base rags wherewith the times have adulterated her form,
restore her to her primitive habit, feature, and majesty, and render her
worthy to be embraced and kist of all the great and master-spirits of our
world.
The Silent Woman' is much less intent on moral castigation
than is Volpone, and, also, much merrier. Its plot is farcical,
.
dealing with the entrapping of Morose, who hates noise, into
marriage with Epicoene, who turns out to be a noisy tartar,
and, after Morose has forgiven his nephew, proves to be a boy.
Sir Dauphine, the nephew, and his friends, are the wits; Daw,
La Foole and the Ladies Collegiates, the butts of their jests.
There is abundant satire of the manners and affectations of the
day; but the skilfully complicated action depends on numerous
disguises, and does not rise above the level of admirable farce.
In The Alchemist, Jonson essays another large canvas of
tricksters and gulls. Subtle, the alchemist, Dol Conmon and Face,
a housekeeper, have set up their snares in the house of Face's
master. Hither come an extraordinary procession of gulls, whose
very names are enough to recall the lifelike characters-Dapper, a
lawyer's clerk; Abel Drugger, a credulous tobacco man; Sir Epicure
Mammon, a voluptuary with a Micawber-like gift of eloquent
anticipation ; Pertinax Surly, a doubting Thomas; Tribulation
Wholesome and Ananias, two brethren of Amsterdam, who make
an effort to serve both God and Mammon, without forgetting the
weaker brethren; Kastrill, a foolish heir and Dame Pliant, his sister,
a widow. One after another, they expose their folly and greed, and
add to the fun and entanglement, until the master of the house
returns and joins with Face to keep the spoils, including the
widow, and to lock the doors on dupers and duped. Perhaps
in no other play has Jonson so completely succeeded in accom-
plishing what he intended as he has in this. There are no tiresome
excursuses, as in Volpone and Bartholomew Fayre; in everything,
he uses 'election and a mean. ' The entire play is in blank verse,
1 The edition of the play by Aurelia Henry, Yale Studies, 1906, discusses
suggestions for this play in Libanius and Plautus.
2 On the relation of The Alchemist to Il Candelaio of Giordano Bruno, see a note by
Child, C. G. , in The Nation, 28 July 1904. See, also, Schelling, Elix. Drama,
vol. 1, pp. 540, 541.
.
## p. 23 (#41) ##############################################
23
Bartholomew Fayre
which is most-skilfully adapted to the rapid dialogue or to the
orations of Tribulation and Sir Epicure. The language is varied,
idiomatic and precise ; the style, finished and animated. The
ingenuity of the plot, which Coleridge ranked among the three
most perfect in literature, the liveliness of the action and the
delineation of manners, harmonise in a work which, of its kind,
could hardly be bettered. The satire on alchemy, which was not
.
winout daring in the days of Simon Forman, flavours the fun
without destroying it; and the picture of Elizabethan London is L
without an equal, unless it be in Bartholomew Fayre.
In the presentation of manners and character, Bartholomew
Fayre may, indeed, be held to outrank even The Alchemist. In
many respects, however, its inferiority is palpable. It is unwieldy
in structure; its fun is often gross and farcical ; and it is over-
crowded with persons and incidents. There are thirty speaking
parts and many supernumeraries. Nowhere else, perhaps, in
literature, have so many people been so vividly presented in a
three hour entertainment as here. The usual pair of witty friends, a
pompous judge bent on reform, a proctor who has written a puppet
show! , a foolish widow, a puritan zealot, Cokes, a booby, and his
rran Waspe, mingle in the fair with a cutpurse, a ballad singer, a
tapster, a bawd, a bully and that Falstaffia of the stews, Ursula
the pig woman. The trouble here, as in other plays by Jonson, is
tl at every character is worked out with elaborate detail. If some
of the subordinate parts were removed, and others reduced in
proportion, the play, doubtless, would be improved. Certainly,
much of Littlewit's puppet play could be spared. But all the
personages mentioned, and as many more, are drawn not only with
painstaking exactness, but, also, with unflagging animation. A
play which unites such masterpieces of comic characterisation as
justice Overdo, Cokes and Zeal-of-the-land Busy, together with
much uproarious fun, must, surely, be accounted an amazing
arliievement of comic invention.
In the amusing induction, Jonson protests against the attribu-
tion of personal satire to the play, and against the tendency of
the public to judge everything by their old favourites, such as
Jeronimo and Andronicus. His protests, in fact, are directed at
the whole field of romantic drama, and include scoffs at A
Winter's Tale and The Tempest.
If there be never a servant-monster in the fair, who can help it, he
the author of Bartholomew Fayre] says, nor a nest of antiques ? he is loth
| Littlewit is identified by Fleay, Penniman and Schelling with the poet Daniel.
1
1
## p. 24 (#42) ##############################################
24
Ben Jonson
to make nature afraid in his plays, like those that beget tales, tempeste,
and such like drollerier, to mix his head with other men's heels; let the
concupiscence of jigs and dances reign as strong as it will amongst you ;
yet if the puppets please any body, they shall be intreated to come in.
* The concupiscence of jigs and dances,' to which he also alludes in
the address 'To the Reader' prefixed to The Alchemist, seems to refur
to the introduction of dances and other elements from court masques
into comedy, as in A Winter's Tale, The Tempest and other con-
temporary plays. Jonson, always a precisian, preferred to keep his
masques and comedies separate. It seems clear that he intended to
make Bartholomeu Fayre an example of pure realism. Perhaps for
this reason he wrote it, like Epicoene, wholly in prose, remarkable
for its clearness and flexibility, admirably suited to the different
speakers and imitative of the manners of the time. Characters and
incidents, also, are freer from imitation of Plautus or Aristophanes
than are those of any other of his comedies, though the usual
scheme of gulls and knaves is preserved and amplified. Further
removed from classical models than his other comedies, neverthe-
less, it is Aristophanic in the breadth and liveliness of its mirth and
in its unhesitating realism. Original in its scheme and subject,
dariug in its invention, it marks the highest development of the
comedy of humours as a national type. The kind of comedy wbich
it presents has continued in prose fiction, in Fielding, Smollett and
Dickens ; but, since the Elizabethan period, our theatre has never
permitted such robust fun and so unvarnished a presentation of
the absurdities of human nature.
The Divell is an Asse betrays a flagging invention, as was to
be expected after the prodigal expenditure of the four preceding
comedies. The machinery of the devils is not very happy. Pug, a
lesser devil, is despatched by Satan to do some mischief; but his -
stupidity renders his expedition unsuccessful, and, indeed, leaves it
without effect on the action of the play. Jonson, apparently, planned
to enlarge his collection of gulls by proving the devil one ; but the
result of this humorous conception is merely to add another stupid
and uninteresting person to the dramatis personae. The other
characters are more or less repetitions of those in earlier plays,
though the chief gull, Fitzdottrel, who aims to become 'Duke of
Brownlands' through taking part in a project for draining the
waste lands of the kingdom, gives rise to plenty of humour. The
satire is lively, especially that on the exorcism of supposed evil
spirits, and that on projectors and projects-among which is one
for ‘serving the whole state with toothpicks. ' Mrs Fitzdottrel is
## p. 25 (#43) ##############################################
Later Comedies
25
drawn with more sympathy than is common in the case of Jonson's
female characters, and all the characters are, as usual, carefully
differentiated. But the comic entanglements are cumbersome, and
the play moves heavily.
Nine years intervened before the appearance of Jonson's next
comedy, The Staple of Newes. Though his prologue is as boastful
as ever, yet, in the induction and the intercalary scenes, there are
nications that he felt the uncertainty of his powers and was driven
back to the stage by want. He went to Aristophanes for a model,
composing an allegorical satire based on Plutus, from which and
from The Wasps he borrowed certain passages. The main allegory
of Pecunia, Pennyboy, Mortgage and the rest, is tiresome; but
the secondary plot, dealing with the Staple-of-News office, has
excellent satire and fun.
