' This is interesting as an
adumbration
of Rymer's
'poetic justice,' and as an expression of the purpose of Jonson's
satiric comedy.
'poetic justice,' and as an expression of the purpose of Jonson's
satiric comedy.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v06
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. So, too, has the scheme of the Canters'
college. But the details of the plan are not fused into a dramatic
whole. More than any play since Cynthia's Revels, this production
lacks the movement and verisimilitude indispensable in comedy.
The remaining comedies come near to deserving Dryden's
harsh criticism: ‘mere dotages. ' The New Inne was incontinently
damned at its first representation, and published two years later
(1631) by Jonson with an angry address to the reader. The
improbable plot, dependent on the disguises of Lord Frampul as
an inn-keeper, his wife as a vulgar Irish beggar and their second
daughter as a boy, deals, mainly, with the winning of the elder
daughter by Lord Lovel, thanks to two elaborate orations on love
and valour before a mock court of love. The play aims at taking
avantage of the current interest in platonism’ fostered at court
by the queen"; and both the platonic Lady Frampul and her
guitor are treated sympathetically. But the platonic addresses
are dull; and so, indeed, is the low comedy supplied by Fly, Bat
Burst, Sir Glorious Tipto and others. The failure of the play
called forth Jonson's ode 'Come, leave the loathëd stage'; but
one's sympathies incline to remain with the audience. Four years
later, The Magnetick Lady : Or Humors Reconcil'd attempted a
continuation and conclusion of the series of comedies of humours
begun thirty-five years before. A marriageable young niece of the
magnetic lady is constituted the centre attractive, to draw thither
a diversity of guests, all persons of different humours, to make up
his (the author's) perimeter. ' This plan is carried out in a half-
hearted way, though with the usual elaborate attention to details,
1 On this topic, see Fletcher, J. B. , 'Précieuses at the Court of Charles I,' in The
Journal of Comparative Literature, vol. I, p. 125.
## p. 26 (#44) ##############################################
26
Ben Jonson
and explanatory intermezzos. But, while the acts conform to the
laws of protasis, epitasis and catastasis! , there is no life or wit.
A Tale of a Tub was acted in the same year. Various references
to the queen make it likely that the play was first written about
1597; but the satire on Inigo Jones as In and In Medley must have
been incorporated in the 1633 revision. The separation of the
early crudities and the later dotages is now impossible. The
action, of the trickster-tricked variety, deals entirely with rustico,
and presents considerable ingenuity and possibility of fun. The
characters, however, are all beneath interest, and the whole treat-
ment reveals neither fresh nor worthy impulse.
Two additional plays, which, on some seventeenth century
authority, have been ascribed in part to Jonson, probably owe
little or nothing to his pen. The Widdow, published (1652) as by
Jonson, Fletcher and Middleton, was, probably, wholly by Middle-
ton? The Bloody Brother (entered in the Stationers' register,
1639, as by 'B. J. ', and printed in 1640 as by ‘B. J. F. ') is, un-
doubtedly, in part by Fletcher Jonson's share can hardly have
extended beyond the second scene of act iv.
Jonson's qualities as a dramatist, with regard to which there is
general critical agreement, have, perhaps, been sufficiently indicated.
His wide and penetrating observation of manners, whether of city
or of court, and his ingenious and systematic construction of plots,
are obvious merits. But the great excellence of both his tragedies
and his comedies is their delineation of character. This is conditioned
less than in other Elizabethan dramatists by the story, but more
by classical models and rules, as in his observance of the unities,
or his fidelity to historical authorities, or his copying of the Plautian
plan and types. It is also conditioned by his method of making each
person the illustration of one trait or humour, and by his disposition
to substitute description for drama, and satire for fact, and to
exaggerate his satire into farce. Thus, in Every Man in His
Humour, only Bobadill represents the complete transformation
of a type into an indiyidual; and, in Bartholomew Fayre, the
individualisation follows the broad lines of caricature. Again,
each person is set forth with such distinctness of detail that, while
it aids visualisation, it often distracts from the interest of situation.
Only in The Alchemist is there an entire absence of this impeding
1 Cf. act i, ad fin.
9 See post, chap. III.
: See chap. v, and cf. Fleay, F. G. , The English Drama, vol. I, pp. 203——5, and
Oliphant, E. F. , Eng. Studien, vol. xv, pp. 353-5. Concerning the anonymous Latin
comedy Querolus as the source of the scene (1v, 2) attributed to Jonson, seo Garnett, R. ,
Mod. Phil. vol. 11, p. 491.
## p. 27 (#45) ##############################################
His Place in Literature
27
garrulity. Akin to this defect are Jonson's over-use of the long
monologue after the fashion of classical models, the heaviness and
coarseness which his realism often gives to his vocabulary and his
thoroughness, which refuses to let go person, speech, or situation
until it is absolutely exhausted. Yet, in spite of all these limita-
tions, Jonson's comic characterisation remains among the greatest
achievements of the English drama, because of its clearness and
certainty, its richness of humour and its dramatic veracity. A. W.
Ward is justified in giving him pre-eminence in the highest species
of comedy, that 'in which everything else is subordinated to the
dramatic unfolding of character. '
What most discourages the reader of Jonson is the absence
of charm. Jonson was certainly not incapable of depicting noble
passions or of writing winsome verse; but in his plays he resolutely
refused to attempt either. This refusal, in marked contrast with
the practice of his fellow Elizabethans, is precisely the negative
side of his most positive characteristics. He did not write of
passions, but of follies--not of fairyland, but of London; he often
deliberately preferred prose to poetry, and he always restrained
poetry to his subject. If poetry must, at times, have freedom, it
must, at times, have restraint ; if, at times, it may soar on fancy's
wing or evoke glorious or appalling habitants for our reflection,
at other times it may well cling to the actualities of daily existence.
Comedy, of all forms of literature, has its duties in the street or
tavern as well as in Arden or on the sea-coast of Bohemia. Jonson
found neither charm nor heroism in London streets, though
both were unquestionably there. He found neither the truth
and passion that lay at the heart of puritanism, nor the joy and
fancy that stirred the light-hearted moods of Fletcher, Shirley, or
Herrick. But he mirrored what he saw of men and manners with
an untiring fidelity, heightened and coloured his picture with a
hearty and virile humour and interpreted it by a sound and
cesorious morality. Imaginative idealism, characteristic of the
Elizabethan age and its literature, had another and a greater master;
but interest in the depiction and criticism of the actual life of the
day-an interest essential to vitality in the literature of any age,
and manifest in the golden days of the Armada as well as in
degenerate Jacobean times—had its chief exponent in Jonson.
His influence, commanding in his own day, has continued down
to the present. His comedies were imitated so soon as they
appeared ; witness Everie Woman in her Humor (1609, acted
by 1600). Beaumont and Fletcher studied in his school, as The
## p. 28 (#46) ##############################################
28
Ben Jonson
Woman Hater, written by the former! , testifies; and Marston,
Middleton and Chapman profited from his example. Oflater drama-
tists, Field, Randolph, Cartwright, Nabbes and May-to name
no others-employed Jonson's methods and wrote plays in his
manner. The comedy of humours became, in fact, an established
model, which few later writers altogether disregarded. All realistic
comedy owned its influence, and reminiscences of its most effective
scenes and types of character found their way into every kind vi
drama. There were other leaders in realistic comedy, Middleton
in particular, who may be said to have set an example of a less
satirical, less moral, but hardly less Plautian, representation of
London manners. But Jonson continued through his life time the
chief advocate and exemplar of serious realism.
After the Restoration, Jonson's reputation, for a time, increased.
Dryden's praise was echoed by Dennis and others, especially by
those who were most eager to see neo-classical rules and models
prevail in the theatres. Both his tragedies and his comedies were
held in high esteem. The former were revived, but did not long
hold the stage. The latter found a warm welcome on the stage
and maintained themselves there during the long period when
Shakespeare's romantic comedies failed to please. Bartholomeu
Fayre disappeared (1731), even before As You Like It returned to
the stage (1740), and, of Volpone, The Silent Woman and The
Alchemist' not one has outlasted the eighteenth century on the
public boards. The last three were revived by Garrick, who also
brought out a revision of Every Man in his Humour. That play
continued on the stage well into the nineteenth century.
Jonson's influence, moreover, has been felt in the novel as well
as in the drama. His plays have been constantly read and have
always encouraged a study of the absurdities of character and the
incongruities of manners. Fielding and Smollett were conscious of
their incentive, and Dickens, who knew them well and himself acted
Bobadill, must, to no inconsiderable extent, have been indebted to
their suggestion. Not only are there specific resemblances, as be-
tween Zeal-of-the-land Busy and Stiggins, but Dickens's comic inven-
tion and characterisation are often strikingly Jonsonian in method
and effect. Whether Jonson's comedies are ever again revived
on the stage or not, they are likely to continue long to encourage
in fiction a frank and searching presentation of foible and folly.
1 See below, chap. v.
: A droll, The Empiric (1676), and a farce, The Tobacconist (1771) were based on
The Alchemisi. A satirical tragedy, The Favourite, based on Sejunus, appeared in 1770.
## p. 29 (#47) ##############################################
CHAPTER II
CHAPMAN, MARSTON, DEKKER
AMBITIONS are naturally fired in an age of unusual achievement
in any field of human activity, and men of every variety of genius
or talent, however unfitted to command success in it, are drawn
to the glittering arena. Many men were dramatists in 1600 whose
gifts were not conspicuously dramatic, and whose instincts in another
epoch would hardly have driven them to the service of the stage. Of
these, George Chapman was an example. He was a poet; but his
muse did not point him towards the theatre, and, had she designed
him for drama, she would have delayed his birth. For, in 1600, when
Jonson was about twenty-seven and Dekker thirty, Chapman was
already forty years old. He was twenty-eight when Marlowe's
Tamburlaine was produced, and thus did not in early youth, nor
until his mind had already taken its mould, come under the dra-
matic influences or inspiration which formed Shakespeare and the
greater playwrights. Nor is it even certain that he was greatly
interested in drama till within five years of the close of the
century. He did not serve a youthful apprenticeship to the
theatrical art, and he never learnt to think in any character but
his own.
We gather from one of his early poems (Euthymiae Raptus)
that Chapman was born in or near Hitchin in Hertfordshire, and,
from the title-page of his Homer, that his birth year was 1559.
It is frequently said that he studied at both universities, but there
is no certain evidence that he was at either. Wood asserts that
he spent some time at Oxford, in 1574 or thereabouts, 'where he
was most excellent in the Latin and Greek tongues, but not in logic
or philosophy,' and that he left without taking a degree. Of his
personal affairs for the next twenty years, we know nothing. It
is not improbable that he travelled, and a passage in one of his
poems suggests that, like Jonson, he may have served in the
Netherlands.
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. So, too, has the scheme of the Canters'
college. But the details of the plan are not fused into a dramatic
whole. More than any play since Cynthia's Revels, this production
lacks the movement and verisimilitude indispensable in comedy.
The remaining comedies come near to deserving Dryden's
harsh criticism: ‘mere dotages. ' The New Inne was incontinently
damned at its first representation, and published two years later
(1631) by Jonson with an angry address to the reader. The
improbable plot, dependent on the disguises of Lord Frampul as
an inn-keeper, his wife as a vulgar Irish beggar and their second
daughter as a boy, deals, mainly, with the winning of the elder
daughter by Lord Lovel, thanks to two elaborate orations on love
and valour before a mock court of love. The play aims at taking
avantage of the current interest in platonism’ fostered at court
by the queen"; and both the platonic Lady Frampul and her
guitor are treated sympathetically. But the platonic addresses
are dull; and so, indeed, is the low comedy supplied by Fly, Bat
Burst, Sir Glorious Tipto and others. The failure of the play
called forth Jonson's ode 'Come, leave the loathëd stage'; but
one's sympathies incline to remain with the audience. Four years
later, The Magnetick Lady : Or Humors Reconcil'd attempted a
continuation and conclusion of the series of comedies of humours
begun thirty-five years before. A marriageable young niece of the
magnetic lady is constituted the centre attractive, to draw thither
a diversity of guests, all persons of different humours, to make up
his (the author's) perimeter. ' This plan is carried out in a half-
hearted way, though with the usual elaborate attention to details,
1 On this topic, see Fletcher, J. B. , 'Précieuses at the Court of Charles I,' in The
Journal of Comparative Literature, vol. I, p. 125.
## p. 26 (#44) ##############################################
26
Ben Jonson
and explanatory intermezzos. But, while the acts conform to the
laws of protasis, epitasis and catastasis! , there is no life or wit.
A Tale of a Tub was acted in the same year. Various references
to the queen make it likely that the play was first written about
1597; but the satire on Inigo Jones as In and In Medley must have
been incorporated in the 1633 revision. The separation of the
early crudities and the later dotages is now impossible. The
action, of the trickster-tricked variety, deals entirely with rustico,
and presents considerable ingenuity and possibility of fun. The
characters, however, are all beneath interest, and the whole treat-
ment reveals neither fresh nor worthy impulse.
Two additional plays, which, on some seventeenth century
authority, have been ascribed in part to Jonson, probably owe
little or nothing to his pen. The Widdow, published (1652) as by
Jonson, Fletcher and Middleton, was, probably, wholly by Middle-
ton? The Bloody Brother (entered in the Stationers' register,
1639, as by 'B. J. ', and printed in 1640 as by ‘B. J. F. ') is, un-
doubtedly, in part by Fletcher Jonson's share can hardly have
extended beyond the second scene of act iv.
Jonson's qualities as a dramatist, with regard to which there is
general critical agreement, have, perhaps, been sufficiently indicated.
His wide and penetrating observation of manners, whether of city
or of court, and his ingenious and systematic construction of plots,
are obvious merits. But the great excellence of both his tragedies
and his comedies is their delineation of character. This is conditioned
less than in other Elizabethan dramatists by the story, but more
by classical models and rules, as in his observance of the unities,
or his fidelity to historical authorities, or his copying of the Plautian
plan and types. It is also conditioned by his method of making each
person the illustration of one trait or humour, and by his disposition
to substitute description for drama, and satire for fact, and to
exaggerate his satire into farce. Thus, in Every Man in His
Humour, only Bobadill represents the complete transformation
of a type into an indiyidual; and, in Bartholomew Fayre, the
individualisation follows the broad lines of caricature. Again,
each person is set forth with such distinctness of detail that, while
it aids visualisation, it often distracts from the interest of situation.
Only in The Alchemist is there an entire absence of this impeding
1 Cf. act i, ad fin.
9 See post, chap. III.
: See chap. v, and cf. Fleay, F. G. , The English Drama, vol. I, pp. 203——5, and
Oliphant, E. F. , Eng. Studien, vol. xv, pp. 353-5. Concerning the anonymous Latin
comedy Querolus as the source of the scene (1v, 2) attributed to Jonson, seo Garnett, R. ,
Mod. Phil. vol. 11, p. 491.
## p. 27 (#45) ##############################################
His Place in Literature
27
garrulity. Akin to this defect are Jonson's over-use of the long
monologue after the fashion of classical models, the heaviness and
coarseness which his realism often gives to his vocabulary and his
thoroughness, which refuses to let go person, speech, or situation
until it is absolutely exhausted. Yet, in spite of all these limita-
tions, Jonson's comic characterisation remains among the greatest
achievements of the English drama, because of its clearness and
certainty, its richness of humour and its dramatic veracity. A. W.
Ward is justified in giving him pre-eminence in the highest species
of comedy, that 'in which everything else is subordinated to the
dramatic unfolding of character. '
What most discourages the reader of Jonson is the absence
of charm. Jonson was certainly not incapable of depicting noble
passions or of writing winsome verse; but in his plays he resolutely
refused to attempt either. This refusal, in marked contrast with
the practice of his fellow Elizabethans, is precisely the negative
side of his most positive characteristics. He did not write of
passions, but of follies--not of fairyland, but of London; he often
deliberately preferred prose to poetry, and he always restrained
poetry to his subject. If poetry must, at times, have freedom, it
must, at times, have restraint ; if, at times, it may soar on fancy's
wing or evoke glorious or appalling habitants for our reflection,
at other times it may well cling to the actualities of daily existence.
Comedy, of all forms of literature, has its duties in the street or
tavern as well as in Arden or on the sea-coast of Bohemia. Jonson
found neither charm nor heroism in London streets, though
both were unquestionably there. He found neither the truth
and passion that lay at the heart of puritanism, nor the joy and
fancy that stirred the light-hearted moods of Fletcher, Shirley, or
Herrick. But he mirrored what he saw of men and manners with
an untiring fidelity, heightened and coloured his picture with a
hearty and virile humour and interpreted it by a sound and
cesorious morality. Imaginative idealism, characteristic of the
Elizabethan age and its literature, had another and a greater master;
but interest in the depiction and criticism of the actual life of the
day-an interest essential to vitality in the literature of any age,
and manifest in the golden days of the Armada as well as in
degenerate Jacobean times—had its chief exponent in Jonson.
His influence, commanding in his own day, has continued down
to the present. His comedies were imitated so soon as they
appeared ; witness Everie Woman in her Humor (1609, acted
by 1600). Beaumont and Fletcher studied in his school, as The
## p. 28 (#46) ##############################################
28
Ben Jonson
Woman Hater, written by the former! , testifies; and Marston,
Middleton and Chapman profited from his example. Oflater drama-
tists, Field, Randolph, Cartwright, Nabbes and May-to name
no others-employed Jonson's methods and wrote plays in his
manner. The comedy of humours became, in fact, an established
model, which few later writers altogether disregarded. All realistic
comedy owned its influence, and reminiscences of its most effective
scenes and types of character found their way into every kind vi
drama. There were other leaders in realistic comedy, Middleton
in particular, who may be said to have set an example of a less
satirical, less moral, but hardly less Plautian, representation of
London manners. But Jonson continued through his life time the
chief advocate and exemplar of serious realism.
After the Restoration, Jonson's reputation, for a time, increased.
Dryden's praise was echoed by Dennis and others, especially by
those who were most eager to see neo-classical rules and models
prevail in the theatres. Both his tragedies and his comedies were
held in high esteem. The former were revived, but did not long
hold the stage. The latter found a warm welcome on the stage
and maintained themselves there during the long period when
Shakespeare's romantic comedies failed to please. Bartholomeu
Fayre disappeared (1731), even before As You Like It returned to
the stage (1740), and, of Volpone, The Silent Woman and The
Alchemist' not one has outlasted the eighteenth century on the
public boards. The last three were revived by Garrick, who also
brought out a revision of Every Man in his Humour. That play
continued on the stage well into the nineteenth century.
Jonson's influence, moreover, has been felt in the novel as well
as in the drama. His plays have been constantly read and have
always encouraged a study of the absurdities of character and the
incongruities of manners. Fielding and Smollett were conscious of
their incentive, and Dickens, who knew them well and himself acted
Bobadill, must, to no inconsiderable extent, have been indebted to
their suggestion. Not only are there specific resemblances, as be-
tween Zeal-of-the-land Busy and Stiggins, but Dickens's comic inven-
tion and characterisation are often strikingly Jonsonian in method
and effect. Whether Jonson's comedies are ever again revived
on the stage or not, they are likely to continue long to encourage
in fiction a frank and searching presentation of foible and folly.
1 See below, chap. v.
: A droll, The Empiric (1676), and a farce, The Tobacconist (1771) were based on
The Alchemisi. A satirical tragedy, The Favourite, based on Sejunus, appeared in 1770.
## p. 29 (#47) ##############################################
CHAPTER II
CHAPMAN, MARSTON, DEKKER
AMBITIONS are naturally fired in an age of unusual achievement
in any field of human activity, and men of every variety of genius
or talent, however unfitted to command success in it, are drawn
to the glittering arena. Many men were dramatists in 1600 whose
gifts were not conspicuously dramatic, and whose instincts in another
epoch would hardly have driven them to the service of the stage. Of
these, George Chapman was an example. He was a poet; but his
muse did not point him towards the theatre, and, had she designed
him for drama, she would have delayed his birth. For, in 1600, when
Jonson was about twenty-seven and Dekker thirty, Chapman was
already forty years old. He was twenty-eight when Marlowe's
Tamburlaine was produced, and thus did not in early youth, nor
until his mind had already taken its mould, come under the dra-
matic influences or inspiration which formed Shakespeare and the
greater playwrights. Nor is it even certain that he was greatly
interested in drama till within five years of the close of the
century. He did not serve a youthful apprenticeship to the
theatrical art, and he never learnt to think in any character but
his own.
We gather from one of his early poems (Euthymiae Raptus)
that Chapman was born in or near Hitchin in Hertfordshire, and,
from the title-page of his Homer, that his birth year was 1559.
It is frequently said that he studied at both universities, but there
is no certain evidence that he was at either. Wood asserts that
he spent some time at Oxford, in 1574 or thereabouts, 'where he
was most excellent in the Latin and Greek tongues, but not in logic
or philosophy,' and that he left without taking a degree. Of his
personal affairs for the next twenty years, we know nothing. It
is not improbable that he travelled, and a passage in one of his
poems suggests that, like Jonson, he may have served in the
Netherlands.
