identical with the _Shore_ of Chettle (q.v.) and Day. The title _Like
Quits Like_, inserted into one entry for this play, is a forgery (Greg,
_Henslowe_, i. xliii).
(xi) _A Woman Killed With Kindness_.
Feb.–March 1603. _Vide supra._
Heywood’s hand or ‘finger’ has also been suggested in the _Appius and
Virginia_ printed as Webster’s (q.v.), in _Pericles_, and in _Fair Maid
of the Exchange_, _George a Greene_, _How a Man May Choose a Good Wife
from a Bad_, _Thomas Lord Cromwell_, and _Work for Cutlers_ (cf. ch.
xxiv).
GRIFFIN HIGGS (1589–1659).
A student at St. John’s, Oxford (1606), afterwards Fellow of Merton
(1611), Chaplain to Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia (1627), and Dean of
Lichfield (1638). The MS. of _The Christmas Prince_ (_1607_) was once
thought to be in his handwriting (cf. ch. xxiv, C).
THOMAS HUGHES (_c._ 1588).
A Cheshire man, who matriculated from Queens’ College, Cambridge, in
Nov. 1571 and became Fellow of the College on 8 Sept. 1576.
_The Misfortunes of Arthur. 28 Feb. 1588_
1587. Certain deuises and shewes presented to her Maiestie by the
Gentlemen of Grayes Inne at her Highnesse Court in Greenewich, the
twenty-eighth day of Februarie in the thirtieth yeare of her Maiesties
most happy Raigne. _Robert Robinson._ [‘An Introduction penned by
Nicholas Trotte Gentleman one of the society of Grayes Inne’; followed
by ‘The misfortunes of Arthur (Vther Pendragons Sonne) reduced into
Tragicall notes by Thomas Hughes one of the societie of Grayes Inne.
And here set downe as it past from vnder his handes and as it was
presented, excepting certaine wordes and lines, where some of the
Actors either helped their memories by brief omission: or fitted their
acting by some alteration. With a note at the ende, of such speaches
as were penned by others in lue of some of these hereafter following’;
Arguments, Dumb-Shows, and Choruses between the Acts; at end, two
substituted speeches ‘penned by William Fulbecke gentleman, one of the
societie of Grayes Inne’; followed by ‘Besides these speaches there was
also penned a Chorus for the first act, and an other for the second
act, by Maister Frauncis Flower, which were pronounced accordingly.
The dumbe showes were partly deuised by Maister Christopher Yeluerton,
Maister Frauncis Bacon, Maister Iohn Lancaster and others, partly by
the saide Maister Flower, who with Maister Penroodocke and the said
Maister Lancaster directed these proceedings at Court.’]
_Editions_ in Collier, _Five Old Plays_ (1833), and Dodsley^4 (1874,
iv), and by H. C. Grumbine (1900), J. S. Farmer (1911, _T. F. T._), and
J. W. Cunliffe (1912, _E. E. C. T._).
Of the seven collaborators, three--Bacon, Yelverton, and
Fulbecke--subsequently attained distinction. It is to be wished that
editors of more important plays had been as communicative as offended
dignity, or some other cause, made Thomas Hughes.
WILLIAM HUNNIS (?-1597).
[Nearly all that is known of Hunnis, except as regards his connexion
with the Blackfriars, and much that is conjectural has been gathered
and fully illustrated by Mrs. C. C. Stopes in _Athenaeum_ and
_Shakespeare-Jahrbuch_ papers, and finally in _William Hunnis and the
Revels of the Chapel Royal_ (1910, _Materialien_, xxix).]
The date of Hunnis’s birth is unknown, except as far as it can be
inferred from the reference to him as ‘in winter of thine age’ in 1578.
He is described on the title-page of his translation of _Certayne
Psalmes_ (1550) as ‘seruant’ to Sir William Herbert, who became
Earl of Pembroke. He is in the lists of the Gentlemen of the Chapel
about 1553, but he took part in plots against Mary and in 1556 was
sent to the Tower. He lost his post, but this was restored between
Elizabeth’s accession in 1558 and the opening of the extant _Cheque
Book_ of the Chapel in 1561, and on 15 Nov. 1566 he was appointed
Master of the Children in succession to Richard Edwardes (q.v.). For
the history of his Mastership, cf. ch. xii (Chapel). Early in 1559 he
married Margaret, widow of Nicholas Brigham, Teller of the Exchequer,
through whom he acquired a life-interest in the secularized Almonry at
Westminster. She died in June 1559, and about 1560 Hunnis married Agnes
Blancke, widow of a Grocer. He took out the freedom of the Grocers’
Company, and had a shop in Southwark. He was elected to the livery of
the Company in 1567, but disappears from its records before 1586. In
1569 he obtained a grant of arms, and is described as of Middlesex.
From 1576–85, however, he seems to have had a house at Great Ilford,
Barking, Essex. His only known child, Robin, was page to Walter Earl
of Essex in Ireland, and is said in _Leicester’s Commonwealth_ to have
tasted the poison with which Leicester killed Essex in 1576 and to have
lost his hair. But he became a Rider of the Stable under Leicester as
Master of the Horse during 1579–83, and received payments for posting
services in later years up to 1593. In 1562 William Hunnis became
Keeper of the Orchard and Gardens at Greenwich, and held this post
with his Mastership to his death. He supplied greenery and flowers
for the Banqueting Houses of 1569 and 1571 (cf. ch. i). In 1570 the
Queen recommended him to the City as Taker of Tolls and Dues on London
Bridge, and his claim was bought off for £40. In 1583 he called
attention to the poor remuneration of the Mastership, and in 1585 he
received grants of land at Great Ilford and elsewhere. He died on 6
June 1597.
Hunnis published several volumes of moral and religious verse, original
and translated: _Certayne Psalmes_ (1550); _A Godly new Dialogue of
Christ and a Sinner_ (S. R. 1564, if this is rightly identified with
the _Dialogue_ of Hunnis’s 1583 volume); _A Hive Full of Honey_ (1578,
S. R. 1 Dec. 1577, dedicated to Leicester); _A Handful of Honnisuckles_
(N.D., S. R. 11 Dec. 1578, a New Year’s gift to the Ladies of the Privy
Chamber); _Seven Sobbes of a Sorrowful Soule for Sinne_ (1583, S. R.
7 Nov. 1581, with the _Handful of Honnisuckles_, _The Widow’s Mite_,
and _A Comfortable Dialogue between Christ and a Sinner_, dedicated to
Lady Sussex); _Hunnies Recreations_ (1588, S. R. 4 Dec. 1587, dedicated
to Sir Thomas Heneage). Several poems by Hunnis are also with those of
Richard Edwardes and others in _The Paradyse of Daynty Deuises_ (1567);
one, the _Nosegay_, in Clement Robinson’s _A Handfull of Pleasant
Delites_ (1584); and it is usual to assign to him two bearing the
initials W. H., _Wodenfride’s Song in Praise of Amargana_ and _Another
of the Same_, in _England’s Helicon_ (1600).
The name of no play by Hunnis has been preserved, although he may
probably enough have written some of those produced by the Chapel boys
during his Mastership. That he was a dramatist is testified to by the
following lines contributed by Thomas Newton, one of the translators of
Seneca, to his _Hive Full of Honey_.
In prime of youth thy pleasant Penne depaincted Sonets sweete,
Delightfull to the greedy Eare, for youthfull Humour meete.
Therein appeared thy pregnant wit, and store of fyled Phraze
Enough t’ astoune the doltish Drone, and lumpish Lout amaze,
Thy Enterludes, thy gallant Layes, thy Rond’letts and thy Songes,
Thy Nosegay and thy Widowes’ Mite, with that thereto belonges....
... Descendinge then in riper years to stuffe of further reache,
Thy schooled Quill by deeper skill did graver matters teache,
And now to knit a perfect Knot; In winter of thine age
Such argument thou chosen hast for this thy Style full sage.
As far surmounts the Residue.
Newton’s account of his friend’s poetic evolution seems to assign his
‘enterludes’ to an early period of mainly secular verse; but if this
preceded his _Certayne Psalmes_ of 1550, which are surely of ‘graver
matters’, it must have gone back to Henry VIII’s reign, far away from
his Mastership. On the other hand, Hunnis was certainly contributing
secular verse and devices to the Kenilworth festivities (cf. s.v.
Gascoigne) only three years before Newton wrote. Mrs. Stopes suggests,
with some plausibility, that the Amargana songs of _England’s Helicon_
may come from an interlude. She also assigns to Hunnis, by conjecture,
_Godly Queen Hester_, in which stress is laid on Hester’s Chapel Royal,
and _Jacob and Esau_ (1568, S. R. 1557–8), which suggests gardens.
LEONARD HUTTEN (_c._ 1557–1632).
Possibly the author of the academic _Bellum Grammaticale_ (cf. App. K).
THOMAS INGELEND.
Lee (_D. N. B._) conjecturally identifies Ingelend with a man of the
same name who married a Northamptonshire heiress.
_The Disobedient Child, c. 1560_
_S. R._ 1569–70. ‘An enterlude for boyes to handle and to passe tyme
at christinmas.’ _Thomas Colwell_ (Arber, i. 398). [The method of
exhaustions points to this as the entry of the play.]
N.D. A pretie and Mery new Enterlude: called the Disobedient Child.
Compiled by Thomas Ingelend late Student in Cambridge. _Thomas Colwell._
_Editions_ by J. O. Halliwell (1848, _Percy Soc._ lxxv), in Dodsley^4
(1874, ii), and by J. S. Farmer (1908, _T. F. T._).--_Dissertation_: F.
Holthausen, _Studien zum älteren englischen Drama_ (1902, _E. S._ xxxi.
90).
J. Bolte, _Vahlen-Festschrift_, 594, regards this as a translation of
the _Iuvenis, Pater, Uxor_ of J. Ravisius Textor (_Dialogi_, ed. 1651,
71), which Holthausen reprints, but which is only a short piece in one
scene. Brandl, lxxiii, traces the influence of the _Studentes_ (1549)
of Christopherus Stymmelius (Bahlmann, _Lat. Dr._ 98). The closing
prayer is for Elizabeth.
JAMES I (1566–1625).
_An Epithalamion on the Marquis of Huntly’s Marriage.
21 July 1588_
R. S. Rait, _Lusus Regis_ (1901), 2, printed from _Bodleian MS._ 27843
verses by James I, which he dated _c._ 1581. The occasion and correct
date are supplied by another text, with a title, in A. F. Westcott,
_New Poems of James I_ (1911). The bridal pair were George Gordon,
6th Earl and afterwards 1st Marquis of Huntly, and Henrietta Stuart,
daughter of Esme, Duke of Lennox. The verses consist of a hymeneal
dialogue, with a preliminary invocation by the writer, and speeches by
Mercury, Nimphes, Agrestis, Skolar, Woman, The Vertuouse Man, Zani,
The Landvart Gentleman, The Soldat. The earlier lines seem intended to
accompany a tilting at the ring or some such contest, but at l. 74 is a
reference to the coming of ‘strangers in a maske’.
Westcott, lviii, says that James helped William Fowler in devising a
mimetic show for the banquet at the baptism of Prince Henry on 23 Aug.
1594.
JOHN JEFFERE (?-?).
Nothing is known of him, beyond his possible authorship of the
following play:
_The Bugbears. 1563 <_
[_MS._] _Lansdowne MS._ 807, f. 57. [The MS. contains the relics
of John Warburton’s collection, and on a slip once attached to the
fly-leaf is his famous list of burnt plays, which includes ‘Bugbear
C. Jo^n. Geffrey’ (Greg in _3 Library_, ii. 232). It appears to be
the work of at least five hands, of which one, acting as a corrector,
as well as a scribe, may be that of the author. The initials J. B.
against a line or two inserted at the end do not appear to be his, but,
as there was no single scribe, he may be writer of a final note to
the text, written in printing characters, ‘Soli deo honor et gloria
Johannus Jeffere scribebat hoc’. This note is followed by the songs and
their music, and at the top of the first is written ‘Giles peperel for
Iphiginia’. On the last page are the names ‘Thomas Ba ...’ and ‘Frances
Whitton’, which probably do not indicate authorship. A title-page may
be missing, and a later hand has written at the head of the text, ‘The
Buggbears’.]
_Editions_ by C. Grabau (1896–7, _Archiv_, xcviii. 301; xcix. 311) and
R. W. Bond (1911, _E. P. I._).--_Dissertation_: W. Dibelius (_Archiv_,
cxii. 204).
The play is an adaptation of A. F. Grazzini, _La Spiritata_ (1561), and
uses also material from J. Weier (_De Praestigiis Daemonum_) (1563) and
from the life of Michel de Nôtredame (Nostradamus), not necessarily
later than his death in 1566. Bond is inclined to date the play, partly
on metrical grounds, about 1564 or 1565. Grabau and Dibelius suggest a
date after 1585, apparently under the impression that the name Giles
in the superscription to the music may indicate the composition of
Nathaniel Giles, of the Chapel Royal, who took his Mus. Bac. in 1585.
But the name, whether of a composer, or of the actor of the part of
Iphigenia, is Giles Peperel. The performers were ‘boyes’, but the
temptation to identify the play with the _Effiginia_ shown by Paul’s at
Court on 28 Dec. 1571 is repressed by the description of _Effiginia_ in
the Revels account as a ‘tragedye’, whereas _The Bugbears_ is a comedy.
Moreover, Iphigenia is not a leading part, although one added by the
English adapter.
LAURENCE JOHNSON (_c._ 1577).
A possible author of _Misogonus_ (cf. ch. xxiv).
BENJAMIN JONSON (1572–1637).
Benjamin Johnson, or Jonson, as he took the fancy to spell his name,
was born, probably on 11 June 1572, at Westminster, after the death
of his father, a minister, of Scottish origin. He was withheld, or
withdrawn, from the University education justified by his scholastic
attainments at Westminster to follow his step-father’s occupation
of bricklaying, and when this proved intolerable, he served as a
soldier in the Netherlands. In a prologue to _The Sad Shepherd_, left
unfinished at his death in August 1637, he describes himself as ‘He
that has feasted you these forty years’, and by 1597 at latest his
connexion with the stage had begun. Aubrey tells us (ii. 12, 226) that
he ‘acted and wrote, but both ill, at the Green Curtaine, a kind of
nursery or obscure play-house, somewhere in the suburbes (I thinke
towards Shoreditch or Clarkenwell)’, and again that he ‘was never a
good actor, but an excellent instructor’. The earliest contemporary
records, however, show Jonson not at the Curtain, but on the Bankside.
On 28 July 1597 Henslowe (i. 200) recorded a personal loan to ‘Bengemen
Johnson player’ of £4 ‘to be payd yt agayne when so euer ether I or any
for me shall demande yt’, and on the very same day he opened on another
page of his diary (i. 47) an account headed ‘Received of Bengemenes
Johnsones share as ffoloweth 1597’ and entered in it the receipt of
a single sum of 3_s._ 9_d._, to which no addition was ever made. Did
these entries stand alone, one would infer, on the analogy of other
transactions of Henslowe’s and from the signatures of two Admiral’s
men as witnesses to the loan, that Jonson had purchased a share in
the Admiral’s company for £4, that he borrowed the means to do this
from Henslowe, and that Henslowe was to recoup himself by periodical
deductions from the takings of the company as they passed through his
hands. But there is no other evidence that Jonson ever had an interest
in the Admiral’s, and there are facts which, if one could believe that
Henslowe would regard the takings of any company but the Admiral’s as
security for a loan, would lead to the conclusion that Jonson’s ‘share’
was with Pembroke’s men at the Swan. The day of Henslowe’s entries,
28 July 1597, is the very day on which the theatres were suppressed
as a result of the performance of _The Isle of Dogs_ (cf. App. D, No.
cx), and it is hardly possible to doubt that Jonson was one of the
actors who had a hand with Nashe (q.v.) in that play. The Privy Council
registers record his release, with Shaw and Spencer of Pembroke’s
men, from the Marshalsea on 3 Oct. 1597 (Dasent, xxviii. 33; cf. App.
D, No. cxii); while Dekker in _Satiromastix_ (l. 1513) makes Horace
admit that he had played Zulziman in Paris Garden, and Tucca upbraid
him because ‘when the Stagerites banisht thee into the Ile of Dogs,
thou turn’dst Bandog (villanous Guy) & ever since bitest’. The same
passage confirms Aubrey’s indication that Jonson was actor, and a bad
actor, as well as poet. ‘Thou putst vp a supplication’, says Tucca, ‘to
be a poor iorneyman player, and hadst beene still so, but that thou
couldst not set a good face vpon ’t: thou hast forgot how thou amblest
(in leather pilch) by a play-wagon, in the high way, and took’st mad
Ieronimoes part, to get seruice among the mimickes.’ Elsewhere (l. 633)
Tucca taunts him that ‘when thou ranst mad for the death of Horatio,
thou borrowedst a gowne of Roscius the stager, (that honest Nicodemus)
and sentst it home lowsie’. This imprisonment for the _Isle of Dogs_
is no doubt the ‘bondage’ for his ‘first error’ to which Jonson refers
in writing to Salisbury about _Eastward Ho!_ in 1605, and the ‘close
imprisonment, under Queen Elizabeth’, during which he told Drummond he
was beset by spies (Laing, 19). Released, Jonson borrowed 5_s._ more
from Henslowe (i. 200) on 5 Jan. 1598, and entered into a relationship
with him and the Admiral’s as a dramatist, which lasted intermittently
until 1602. It was broken, not only by plays for the King’s men,
whose employment of him, which may have been at the Curtain, was due,
according to Rowe, to the critical instinct of Shakespeare (H.-P.
ii. 74), and for the Chapel children when these were established at
Blackfriars in 1600, but also by a quarrel with Gabriel Spencer, whose
death at his hands during a duel with swords in Hoxton Fields on 22
Sept. 1598 was ‘harde & heavey’ news to Henslowe (_Henslowe Papers_,
48) and brought Jonson to trial for murder, from which he only escaped
by reading his neck-verse (Jeaffreson, _Middlesex County Records_,
i. xxxviii; iv. 350; cf. Laing, 19). Jonson’s pen was critical, and
to the years 1600–2 belongs the series of conflicts with other poets
and with the actors generically known as the _Poetomachia_ or Stage
Quarrel (cf. ch. xi). Meanwhile Jonson, perhaps encouraged by his
success in introducing a mask into _Cynthia’s Revels_ (1601), seems to
have conceived the ambition of becoming a Court poet. At first he was
not wholly successful, and the selection of Daniel to write the chief
Christmas mask of 1603–4 appears to have provoked an antagonism between
the two poets, which shows itself in Jonson’s qualified acknowledgement
to Lady Rutland of the favours done him by Lady Bedford (_Forest_, xii):
though she have a better verser got,
(Or poet, in the court-account) than I,
And who doth me, though I not him envy,
and long after in the remark to Drummond (Laing, 10) that ‘Daniel was
at jealousies with him’. But the mask was a form of art singularly
suited to Jonson’s genius. In the next year he came to his own, and
of ten masks at Court during 1605–12 not less than eight are his.
This employment secured him a considerable vogue as a writer of
entertainments and complimentary verses, and a standing with James
himself, with the Earl of Salisbury, and with other persons of honour,
which not only brought him pecuniary profit, but also enabled him to
withstand the political attacks made upon _Sejanus_, for which he was
haled before the Council, and upon _Eastward Ho!_, for which he was
once more imprisoned. During this period he continued to write plays,
with no undue frequency, both for the King’s men and for the Queen’s
Revels and their successors, the Lady Elizabeth’s. As a rule, he had
published his plays, other than those bought by Henslowe, soon after
they were produced, and in 1612 he seems to have formed the design of
collecting them, with his masks and occasional verses, into a volume
of Works. Probably the design was deferred, owing to his absence in
France as tutor to the son of Sir Walter Raleigh, from the autumn of
1612 (_M. P._ xi. 279) to some date in 1613 earlier than 29 June, when
he witnessed the burning of the Globe (_M. L. R._ iv. 83). For the
same reason he took no part in the masks for the Princess Elizabeth’s
wedding at Shrovetide. But he returned in time for that of the Earl of
Somerset at Christmas 1613, and wrote three more masks before his folio
_Works_ actually appeared in 1616. In the same year he received a royal
pension of 100 marks.
Jonson’s later life can only be briefly summarized. During a visit to
Scotland he paid a visit to William Drummond of Hawthornden in January
1619, and of his conversation his host took notes which preserve many
biographical details and many critical utterances upon the men, books,
and manners of his time. In 1621 (cf. ch. iii) he obtained a reversion
of the Mastership of the Revels, which he never lived to enjoy. His
masks continued until 1631, when an unfortunate quarrel with Inigo
Jones brought them to an end. His play-writing, dropped after 1616,
was resumed about 1625, and to this period belong his share in _The
Bloody Brother_ of the Beaumont and Fletcher series, _The Staple of
News_, _The New Inn_, _The Magnetic Lady_, and _The Tale of a Tub_.
In 1637, probably on 6 August, he died. He had told Drummond ‘that
the half of his comedies were not in print’, as well as that ‘of all
his playes he never gained two hundreth pounds’ (Laing, 27, 35), and
in 1631 he began the publication, by instalments, of a second volume
of his Works. This was completed after his death, with the aid of Sir
Kenelm Digby, in 1640 and 1641. But it did not include _The Case is
Altered_, the printing of which in 1609 probably lacked his authority,
or the Henslowe plays, of which his manuscripts, if he had any, may
have perished when his library was burnt in 1623.
_Collections_
_F_{1}_ (_1616_)
_S. R._ 1615, Jan. 20 (Tavernour). William Stansbye, ‘Certayne Masques
at the Court never yet printed written by Ben Johnson’ (Arber, iii.
562).
1616. The Workes of Beniamin Jonson. _W. Stansby, sold by Rich.
Meighen._ [Contains (_a_) commendatory verses, some reprinted from Qq,
signed ‘I. Selden I.C.’, ‘Ed. Heyward’, ‘Geor. Chapman’, ‘H. Holland’,
‘I. D.’, ‘E. Bolton’, and for three sets ‘Franc. Beaumont’; (_b_) nine
plays, being all printed in Q, except _The Case is Altered_; (_c_)
the five early entertainments; (_d_) the eleven early masks and two
barriers, with separate title-page ‘Masques at Court, London, 1616’;
(_e_) non-dramatic matter. For bibliographical details on both Ff.,
see B. Nicholson, _B. J.’s Folios and the Bibliographers_ (1870, _4 N.
Q._ v. 573); Greg, _Plays_, 55, and _Masques_, xiii, 11; G. A. Aitken,
_B. J.’s Works_ (_10 N. Q._ xi. 421); the introductions to the Yale
editions; and B. A. P. van Dam and C. Stoffel, _The Authority of the B.
J. Folio of 1616_ (1903, _Anglia_, xxvi. 377), whose conclusion that
Jonson did not supervise F_{1} is not generally accepted. It is to be
noted that, contrary to the usual seventeenth-century practice, some,
and possibly all, of the dates assigned to productions in F_{1} follow
the Circumcision and not the Annunciation style; cf. Thorndike, 17,
whose demonstration leaves it conceivable that Jonson only adopted the
change of style from a given date, say, 1 Jan. 1600, when it came into
force in Scotland.]
_F_{2}_ (_1631–41_)
1640. The Workes of Beniamin Jonson. _Richard Bishop, sold by Andrew
Crooke._ [Same contents as F_{1}.]
1640. The Workes of Benjamin Jonson. The second volume. Containing
these Playes, Viz. 1 Bartholomew Fayre. 2 The Staple of Newes. 3 The
Divell is an Asse. _For Richard Meighen._ [Contains (_a_) reissue of
folio sheets of three plays named with separate title-pages of 1631;
(_b_) _The Magnetic Lady_, _A Tale of a Tub_, _The Sad Shepherd_,
_Mortimer his Fall_; (_c_) later masks; (_d_) non-dramatic matter. The
editor is known to have been Sir Kenelm Digby.]
_S. R._ 1658, Sept. 17. ‘A booke called Ben Johnsons Workes ye 3^d
volume containing these peeces, viz^t. Ffifteene masques at court and
elsewhere. Horace his art of Poetry Englished. English Gramar. Timber
or Discoveries. Underwoods consisting of divers poems. The Magnetick
Lady. A Tale of a Tub. The sad shephard or a tale of Robin hood. The
Devill is an asse. Salvo iure cuiuscunque. _Thomas Walkley_ (Eyre,
ii. 196).
1658, Nov. 20. Transfer of ‘Ben Johnsons workes ye 3^d vol’ from
Walkley to Humphrey Moseley (Eyre, ii. 206). [Neither Walkley nor
Moseley ever published the _Works_.]
_F_{3}_ (_1692_)
1692. The Works of Ben Jonson, Which were formerly Printed in Two
Volumes, are now Reprinted in One. To which is added a Comedy, called
the New Inn. With Additions never before Published. _Thomas Hodgkin,
for H. Herringham_ [&c.].
The more important of the later collections are:
1756. P. Whalley, _The Works of B. J._ 7 vols. [Adds _The Case is
Altered_.]
1816, 1846. W. Gifford, _The Works of B. J._ 9 vols.
1828. J. Nichols, _The Progresses, Processions and Magnificent
Festivities of King James the First_. 4 vols. [Prints the masks.]
1871, &c. W. Gifford, edited by F. Cunningham, _The Works of B. J._ 3
vols.
1875. W. Gifford, edited by F. Cunningham, _The Works of B. J._ 9 vols.
1893–5. B. Nicholson, _The Best Plays of B. J._ 3 vols. (_Mermaid
Series_). [The nine plays of F_{1}.]
1905–8 (_in progress_). W. Bang, _B. J.’s Dramen in Neudruck
herausgegeben nach der Folio 1616_. (_Materialien_, vi.)
1906. H. C. Hart, _The Plays of B. J._ 2 vols. (_Methuen’s Standard
Library_). [_Case is Altered_, _E. M. I._, _E. M. O._, _Cynthia’s
Revels_, _Poetaster_.]
In the absence of a complete modern critical edition, such as is
promised by C. H. Herford and P. Simpson from the Clarendon Press,
reference must usually be made to the editions of single plays in the
_Yale Studies_ and _Belles Lettres Series_.
_Select Dissertations_: W. R. Chetwood, _Memoirs of the Life and
Writings of B. J._ (1756); O. Gilchrist, _An Examination of the
Charges of B. J.’s Enmity to Shakespeare_ (1808), _A Letter to W.
Gifford_ (1811); D. Laing, _Notes of B. J.’s Conversations with
Drummond of Hawthornden_ (1842, _Sh. Soc._); B. Nicholson, _The
Orthography of B. J.’s Name_ (1880, _Antiquary_, ii. 55); W. Wilke,
_Metrische Untersuchungen zu B. J._ (1884, _Halle diss._), _Anwendung
der Rhyme-test und Double-endings test auf. B. J.’s Dramen_ (1888,
_Anglia_, x. 512); J. A. Symonds, _B. J._ (1888, _English Worthies_);
A. C. Swinburne, _A Study of B. J._ (1889); P. Aronstein, _B. J.’s
Theorie des Lustspiels_ (1895, _Anglia_, xvii. 466), _Shakespeare and
B. J._ (1904, _E. S._ xxxiv. 193); _B. J._ (1906, _Literarhistorische
Forschungen_, xxxiv); E. Koeppel, _Quellen-Studien zu den Dramen B.
J.’s, John Marston’s, und Beaumont und Fletcher’s_ (1895, _Münchener
Beiträge_, xi), _B. J.’s Wirkung auf zeitgenössische Dramatiker_ (1906,
_Anglistische Forschungen_, xx); J. H. Penniman, _The War of the
Theatres_ (1897, _Pennsylvania Univ. Series_, iv. 3); E. Woodbridge,
_Studies in J.’s Comedy_ (1898, _Yale Studies_, v); R. A. Small, _The
Stage-Quarrel between B. J. and the so-called Poetasters_ (1899); B.
Dobell, _Newly Discovered Documents_ (1901, _Athenaeum_, i. 369, 403,
433, 465); J. Hofmiller, _Die ersten sechs Masken B. J.’s in ihrem
Verhältnis zur antiken Literatur_ (1901, _Freising progr._); H. C.
Hart, _B. J., Gabriel Harvey and Nash_, &c. (1903–4, _9 N. Q._ xi. 201,
281, 343, 501; xii. 161, 263, 342, 403, 482; _10 N. Q._ i. 381); G.
Sarrazin, _Nym und B. J._ (1904, _Jahrbuch_, xl. 212); M, Castelain,
_B. J., l’Homme et l’Œuvre_ (1907); _Shakespeare and B. J._ (1907,
_Revue Germanique_, iii. 21, 133); C. R. Baskervill, _English Elements
in J.’s Early Comedy_ (1911, _Texas Univ. Bulletin_, 178); W. D.
Briggs, _Studies in B. J._ (1913–14, _Anglia_, xxxvii. 463; xxxviii.
101), _On Certain Incidents in B. J.’s Life_ (1913, _M. P._ xi. 279),
_The Birth-date of B. J._ (1918, _M. L. N._ xxxiii. 137); G. Gregory
Smith, _Ben Jonson_ (1919, _English Men of Letters_); J. Q. Adams, _The
Bones of Ben Jonson_ (1919, _S. P._ xvi. 289). For fuller lists, see
Castelain, xxiii, and _C. H._ vi. 417.
PLAYS
_The Case is Altered. 1597 (?)-1609_
_S. R._ 1609, Jan. 26 (Segar, ‘deputy to Sir George Bucke’). ‘A booke
called The case is altered.’ _Henry Walley_, _Richard Bonion_ (Arber,
iii. 400).
1609, July 20. ‘Entred for their copie by direction of master Waterson
warden, a booke called the case is altered whiche was entred for H.
Walley and Richard Bonyon the 26 of January last.’ _Henry Walley_,
_Richard Bonyon_, _Bartholomew Sutton_ (Arber, iii. 416).
1609. [Three issues, with different t.ps.]
(_a_) Ben: Ionson, His Case is Alterd. As it hath beene sundry times
Acted by the Children of the Blacke-friers. _For Bartholomew Sutton._
[B.M. 644, b. 54.]
(_b_) A Pleasant Comedy, called: The Case is Alterd. As it hath beene
sundry times acted by the children of the Black-friers. Written by Ben.
Ionson. _For Bartholomew Sutton and William Barrenger._ [B.M. T. 492
(9); Bodl.; W. A. White.]
(_c_) A Pleasant Comedy, called: The Case is Alterd. As it hath
been sundry times acted by the children of the Black-friers. _For
Bartholomew Sutton and William Barrenger._ [Devonshire.]
_Edition_ by W. E. Selin (1917, _Yale Studies_, lvi).--_Dissertation_:
C. Crawford, _B. J.’s C. A.: its Date_ (1909, _10 N. Q._ xi. 41).
As Nashe, _Lenten Stuff_ (_Works_, iii. 220), which was entered in S.
R. on 11 Jan. 1599, refers to ‘the merry coblers cutte in that witty
play of _the Case is altered_’, and as I. i chaffs Anthony Munday as
‘in print already for the best plotter’, alluding to the description of
him in Francis Meres’s _Palladis Tamia_ (S. R. 7 Sept. 1598), the date
would seem at first sight to be closely fixed to the last few months of
1598. But I. i has almost certainly undergone interpolation. Antonio
Balladino, who appears in this scene alone, and whose dramatic function
is confused with that later (II. vii) assigned to Valentine, is only
introduced for the sake of a satirical portrait of Munday. He is
‘pageant poet to the City of Milan’, at any rate ‘when a worse cannot
be had’. He boasts that ‘I do use as much stale stuff, though I say it
myself, as any man does in that kind’, and again, ‘An they’ll give me
twenty pound a play, I’ll not raise my vein’. Some ‘will have every
day new tricks, and write you nothing but humours’; this pleases the
gentlemen, but he is for ‘the penny’. Crawford points out that there
are four quotations from the play in Bodenham’s _Belvedere_ (1600), of
which Munday was the compiler, and suggests that he would have left it
alone had the ridicule of himself then been a part of it. I should put
the scene later still. Antonio makes an offer of ‘one of the books’
of his last pageant, and as far as is known, although Munday may have
been arranging city pageants long before, the first which he printed
was that for 1605. Nor does the reference to plays of ‘tricks’ and
‘humours’ necessarily imply proximity to Jonson’s own early comedies,
for Day’s _Law Tricks_ and his _Humour out of Breath_, as well as
probably the anonymous _Every Woman in her Humour_, belong to 1604–8.
Moreover, the play was certainly on the stage about this time, since
the actors are called ‘Children of Blackfriars’, although of course
this would not be inconsistent with their having first produced it when
they bore some other name. The text is in an odd state. Up to the end
of Act III it has been arranged in scenes, on the principle usually
adopted by Jonson; after ‘Actus 3 [an error for 4] Scaene 1’ there is
no further division, and in Act V verse and prose are confused. As
Jonson was careful about the printing of his plays, as there is no
epistle, and as _C. A._ was left out of the Ff., there is some reason
to suppose that the publication in this state was not due to him. Is
it possible that Day, whom Jonson described to Drummond as a ‘rogue’
and a ‘base fellow’, was concerned in this transaction? It is obvious
that, if I. i is a later addition, the original production may have
been earlier than 1598. And the original company is unknown. The mere
fact that the Children of the Blackfriars revived it shortly before
1609 does not in the least prove that it was originally written for
the Children of the Chapel. If Chapman’s _All Fools_ is a Blackfriars
revival of an Admiral’s play, _C. A._ might even more easily be a
Blackfriars revival of a play written, say, for the extinct Pembroke’s.
With the assumption that _C. A._ was a Chapel play disappears the
assumption that the Chapel themselves began their renewed dramatic
activities at a date earlier than the end of 1600. Selin shows a fair
amount of stylistic correspondence with Jonson’s other work, but it is
quite possible that, as suggested by Herford (_R. E. C._ ii. 9), he had
a collaborator. If so, Chapman seems plausible.
_C. A._ has nothing to do with the _Poetomachia_. Hart (_9 N. Q._ xi.
501, xii. 161, 263) finds in the vocabulary of Juniper a parody of the
affected phraseology of Gabriel Harvey, and in the critical attitude of
Valentine a foreshadowing of such autobiographical studies as that of
Asper in _E. M. O._ His suggestion that the cudgel-play between Onion
and Martino in II. vii represents the controversy between Nashe and
Martin Marprelate is perhaps less plausible. Nashe would be very likely
to think the chaff of Harvey ‘witty’.
_Every Man In his Humour. 1598_
_S. R._ [1600], Aug. 4. ‘Euery man in his humour, a booke ... to be
staied’ (Arber, iii. 37). [_As You Like It_, _Henry V_, and _Much
Ado about Nothing_ are included in the entry, which appears to be an
exceptional memorandum. The year 1600 is conjectured from the fact that
the entry follows another of May 1600.]
1600, Aug. 14 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called Euery man in his humour.’
_Burby and Walter Burre_ (Arber, iii. 169).
1609, Oct. 16. Transfer of Mrs. Burby’s share to Welby (Arber, iii.
421).
1601. Every Man In his Humor. As it hath beene sundry times publickly
acted by the right Honorable the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants.
Written by Ben. Iohnson. _For Walter Burre._
1616. Euery Man In His Humour. A Comœdie. Acted in the yeere 1598.
By the then Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. The Author B. I. _By
William Stansby._ [Part of F_{1}. Epistle to William Camden, signed
‘Ben. Ionson’, and Prologue. After text: ‘This Comoedie was first
Acted, in the yeere 1598. By the then L. Chamberlayne his Seruants.
The principall Comœdians were, Will. Shakespeare, Ric. Burbadge,
Aug. Philips, Ioh. Hemings, Hen. Condel, Tho. Pope, Will. Slye, Chr.
Beeston, Will. Kempe, Ioh. Duke. With the allowance of the Master of
Revells.’]
_Editions_ by W. Scott (1811, _M. B. D._ iii), H. B. Wheatley (1877),
W. M. Dixon (1901, _T. D._), H. Maas (1901, _Rostock diss._), W. A.
Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._), C. H. Herford (1913, _R. E. C._ ii), P.
Simpson (1919), H. H. Carter (1921, _Yale Studies_, lii), and facsimile
reprints of Q_{1} by C. Grabau (1902, _Jahrbuch_, xxxviii. 1), W.
Bang and W. W. Greg (1905, _Materialien_, x).--_Dissertations_: A.
Buff, _The Quarto Edition of B. J.’s E. M. I._ (1877, _E. S._ i. 181),
B. Nicholson, _On the Dates of the Two Versions of E. M. I._ (1882,
_Antiquary_, vi. 15, 106).
The date assigned by F_{1} is confirmed by an allusion (IV. iv. 15) to
the ‘fencing Burgullian’ or Burgundian, John Barrose, who challenged
all fencers in that year, and was hanged for murder on 10 July (Stowe,
_Annales_, 787). The production must have been shortly before 20 Sept,
when Toby Mathew wrote to Dudley Carleton (_S. P. D. Eliz._ cclxviii.
61; Simpson, ix) of an Almain who lost 300 crowns at ‘a new play
called, Euery mans humour’. Two short passages were taken from the
play in R. Allot’s _England’s Parnassus_ (1600, ed. Crawford, xxxii.
110, 112, 436) which is earlier than Q_{1}. The Q_{1} text (I. i. 184)
contains a hit at Anthony Munday in ‘that he liue in more penurie of
wit and inuention, then eyther the Hall-Beadle, or Poet Nuntius’.
This has disappeared from F_{1}, which in other respects represents a
complete revision of the Q_{1} text. Many passages have been improved
from a literary point of view; the scene has been transferred from
Italy to London and the names anglicized; the oaths have all been
expunged or softened. Fleay, i. 358, finding references to a ‘queen’ in
F_{1} for the ‘duke’ of Q_{1} and an apparent dating of St. Mark’s Day
on a Friday, assigned the revision to 1601, and conjectured that it was
done by Jonson for the Chapel, that the Chamberlain’s published the Q
in revenge, and that Jonson tried to stay it. Here he is followed by
Castelain. But Q_{1} is a good edition and there is no sign whatever
that it had not Jonson’s authority, and as the entry in S. R. covers
other Chamberlain’s plays, it is pretty clear that the company caused
the ‘staying’. St. Mark’s Day did not, as Fleay thought, fall on a
Friday in 1601, and if it had, the dating is unchanged from Q_{1} and
the references to a queen may, as Simpson suggests, be due to Jonson’s
conscientious desire to preserve consistency with the original date of
1598. Nor is the play likely to have passed to the Chapel, since the
King’s men played it before James on 2 Feb. 1605 (cf. App. B). This
revival would be the natural time for a revision, and in fact seems to
me on the whole the most likely date, in spite of two trifling bits
of evidence which would fit in rather better a year later. These are
references to the siege of Strigonium or Graan (1595) as ten years
since (III. i. 103), and to a present by the Turkey company to the
Grand Signior (I. ii. 78), which was perhaps the gift worth £5,000
sent about Christmas 1605 (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xv. 3; xvii. 35; xx.
27). No doubt also the revision of oaths in Jacobean plays is usually
taken as due to the _Act against Abuses of Players_ (1606), although
it is conceivable that the personal taste of James may have required
a similar revision of plays selected for Court performance at an
earlier date. Or this particular bit of revision, which was done for
other plays before F_{1}, may be of later date than the rest. Simpson
is in favour, largely on literary grounds, for a revision in 1612,
in preparation for F_{1}. The Prologue, which is not in Q, probably
belongs to the revision, or at any rate to a revival later than 1598,
since it criticizes not only ‘Yorke, and Lancasters long jarres’, but
also plays in which ‘Chorus wafts you ore the seas’, as in _Henry V_
(1599). These allusions would not come so well in 1612; on the other
hand, Simpson’s date would enable us to suppose that the play in which
the public ‘grac’d monsters’ was the _Tempest_ (cf. the similar jibe
in _Bartholomew Fair_). The character Matheo or Mathew represents a
young gull of literary tendencies, and is made to spout passages from,
or imitations of, Daniel’s verses. Perhaps this implies some indirect
criticism of Daniel, but it can hardly be regarded as a personal attack
upon him.
_Every Man Out of his Humour. 1599_
_S. R._ 1600, April 8 (Harsnett). ‘A Comicall Satyre of euery man out
of his humour.’ _William Holme_ (Arber, iii. 159).
1638, April 28. Transfer by Smethwicke to Bishop (Arber, iv. 417).
Q_{1}, 1600. The Comicall Satyre of Every Man Out Of His Humor. As
it was first composed by the Author B. I. Containing more than hath
been Publickely Spoken or Acted. With the seuerall Character of euery
Person. _For William Holme._ [Names and description of Characters;
Publisher’s note, ‘It was not neere his thoughts that hath publisht
this, either to traduce the Authour; or to make vulgar and cheape, any
the peculiar & sufficient deserts of the Actors; but rather (whereas
many Censures flutter’d about it) to giue all leaue, and leisure, to
iudge with Distinction’; Induction, by Asper, who becomes Macilente
and speaks Epilogue, Carlo Buffone who speaks in lieu of Prologue, and
Mitis and Cordatus, who remain on stage as Grex or typical spectators.]
Q_{2}, 1600. [_Peter Short_] _For William Holme_. [W. W. Greg (1920,
_4 Library_, i. 153) distinguished Q_{1}, of which he found a copy in
Brit. Mus. C. 34, i. 29, from Q_{2}, (Bodl. and Dyce).]
Q_{3}, 1600. _For Nicholas Linge._ [‘A careless and ignorant reprint’
(Greg) of Q_{1}.]
F_{1}, 1616. Euery Man Out Of His Humour. A Comicall Satyre. Acted
in the yeere 1599. By the then Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. The
Author B. I. _William Stansby for Iohn Smithwicke._ [Epistle to the
Inns of Court, signed ‘Ben. Ionson’. After text: ‘This Comicall Satyre
was first acted in the yeere 1599. By the then Lord Chamberlaine his
Seruants. The principall Comœdians were, Ric. Burbadge, Ioh. Hemings,
Aug. Philips, Hen. Condel, Wil. Sly, Tho. Pope. With the allowance of
the Master of Revels.’]
_Facsimile reprints_ of Q_{1} by W. W. Greg and F. P. Wilson (1920, _M.
S. R._) and of Q_{2, 3} by W. Bang and W. W. Greg (1907, _Materialien_,
xvi, xvii).--_Dissertations_: C. A. Herpich, _Shakespeare and B. J. Did
They Quarrel?_ (1902, _9 N. Q._ ix. 282); Van Dam and C. Stoffel, _The
Authority of the B. J. Folio of 1616_ (1903, _Anglia_, xxvi. 377); W.
Bang, _B. J. und Castiglione’s Cortegiano_ (1906, _E. S._ xxxvi. 330).
In the main the text of F_{1} follows that of Q_{1} with some slight
revision of wording and oaths. The arrangement of the epilogues is
somewhat different, but seems intended to represent the same original
stage history. In Q_{1} Macilente speaks an epilogue, ‘with Aspers
tongue (though not his shape)’, evidently used in the theatre as it
begs ‘The happier spirits in this faire-fild Globe’ to confirm applause
as their pleasures Pattent: which so sign’d,
Our leane and spent Endeuours shall renue
Their Beauties with the _Spring_ to smile on you.
Then comes a ‘Finis’ and on the next page, ‘It had another
_Catastrophe_ or Conclusion at the first Playing: which (διὰ τὸ
τὴν βασίλισσαν προσωποποιεῖσθαι) many seem’d not to relish it: and
therefore ’twas since alter’d: yet that a right-ei’d and solide
_Reader_ may perceiue it was not so great a part of the Heauen awry,
as they would make it; we request him but to looke downe vpon these
following Reasons.’ There follows an apology, from which it is clear
that originally Macilente was cured of his envious humour by the
appearance on the stage of the Queen; and this introduces a different
epilogue of the nature of an address to her. At the end of all comes
a short dialogue between Macilente, as Asper, and the _Grex_. There
is no mention of the Globe, but as the whole point of the objection
to this epilogue, which it is not suggested that Elizabeth herself
shared, lay in the miming of the Queen, one would take it, did the
Q_{1} stand alone, to have been, like its substitute, a theatre and
not a Court epilogue. In F_{1}, however, we get successively (_a_) a
shortened version of the later epilogue, (_b_) the dialogue with the
_Grex_, followed by ‘The End’, and (_c_) a version of the original
epilogue, altered so as to make it less of a direct address and headed
‘Which, in the presentation before Queen E. was thus varyed’. It seems
to me a little difficult to believe that the play was given at Court
before it had been ‘practised’ in public performances, and I conclude
that, having suppressed the address to a mimic Elizabeth at the Globe,
Jonson revived it in a slightly altered form when he took the play
to Court at Christmas. As to the date of production, Fleay, i. 361,
excels himself in the suggestion that ‘the mention of “spring” and the
allusion to the company’s new “patent” for the Globe in the epilogue’
fix it to _c._ April 1599. Even if this were the original epilogue,
it alludes to a coming and not a present spring, and might have been
written at any time in the winter, either before or after the New Year.
Obviously, too, there can be no allusion to an Elizabethan patent for
the Globe, which never existed. I do not agree with Small, 21, that
the Globe was not opened until early in 1600, nor do I think that any
inference can be drawn from the not very clear notes of dramatic time
in I. iii and III. ii. At first sight it seems natural to suppose that
the phrase ‘would I had one of Kempes shooes to throw after you’ (IV.
v) was written later than at any rate the planning of the famous morris
to Norwich, which lasted from 11 Feb. to 11 March 1600 and at the end
of which Kempe hung his shoes in Norwich Guildhall. Certainly it cannot
refer, as Fleay thinks, merely to Kempe’s leaving the Chamberlain’s
men. Conceivably it might be an interpolation of later date than the
original production. Creizenach, 303, however, points out that in 1599
Thomas Platter saw a comedy in which a servant took off his shoe and
threw it at his master, and suggests that this was a bit of common-form
stage clownery, in which case the Norwich dance would not be concerned.
The performance described by Platter was in September or October, and
apparently at the Curtain (cf. ch. xvi, introd.). Kempe may quite
well have been playing then at the Curtain with a fresh company after
the Chamberlain’s moved to the Globe. Perhaps the episode had already
found a place in Phillips’s _Jig of the Slippers_, printed in 1595
and now lost (cf. ch. xviii). If 1600 is the date of _E. M. O._, the
Court performance may have been that of 3 February, or perhaps more
probably may have fallen in the following winter, which would explain
the divergence between Q_{1} and F_{1} as to the epilogues. But it
must be remembered that the F_{1} date is 1599, and that most, if not
quite all, of the F_{1} dates follow Circumcision style, although
Jonson may not have adopted this style as early as 1600. On the whole,
I think that the balance of probability is distinctly in favour of
1599. If so, the production must have been fairly late in that year,
as there is a hit (III. i) at the _Histriomastix_ of the same autumn.
The play has been hunted through and through for personalities, most
of which are effectively refuted by Small. Most of the characters are
types rather than individuals, and social types rather than literary
or stage types. I do not think there are portraits of Daniel, Lyly,
Drayton, Donne, Chapman, Munday, Shakespeare, Burbadge, in the play or
its induction at all. Nor do I think there are portraits in the strict
sense of Marston and Dekker, although no doubt some parody of Marston’s
‘fustian’ vocabulary is put into the mouth of Clove (iii. 1), and, on
the other hand, the characters of Carlo Buffone and Fastidious Brisk
have analogies with the Anaides and Hedon of _Cynthia’s Revels_, and
these again with the Demetrius and Crispinus of _Poetaster_, who are
undoubtedly Dekker and Marston. But we know from Aubrey, ii. 184, that
Carlo was Charles Chester, a loose-tongued man about town, to whom
there are many contemporary references. To those collected by Small and
Hart (_10 N. Q._ i. 381) I may add Chamberlain, 7, Harington, _Ulysses
upon Ajax_ (1596), 58, and _Hatfield Papers_, iv. 210, 221; x. 287.
The practical joke of sealing up Carlo’s mouth with wax (V. iii) was,
according to Aubrey, played upon Chester by Raleigh, and there may be
traits of Raleigh in Puntarvolo, perhaps combined with others of Sir
John Harington, while Hart finds in the mouths both of Puntarvolo and
of Fastidious Brisk the vocabulary of Gabriel Harvey. The play was
revived at Court on 8 Jan. 1605.
_Cynthia’s Revels. 1600–1_
_S. R._ 1601, May 23 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called Narcissus the
fountaine of self-love.’ _Walter Burre_ (Arber, iii. 185).
1601. The Fountaine of Selfe-Loue. Or Cynthias Reuels. As it hath beene
sundry times priuately acted in the Black-Friers by the Children of
her Maiesties Chappell. Written by Ben: Iohnson. _For Walter Burre._
[Induction, Prologue, and Epilogue.]
1616. Cynthias Revels, Or The Fountayne of selfe-loue. A Comicall
Satyre. Acted in the yeere 1600. By the then Children of Queene
Elizabeth’s Chappel. The Author B. I. _William Stansby._ [Part of
F_{1}. Epistle to the Court, signed ‘Ben Ionson’, Induction, Prologue,
and Epilogue. After text: ‘This Comicall Satyre was first acted, in
the yeere 1600. By the then Children of Queene Elizabeths Chappell.
The principall Comœdians were, Nat. Field, Ioh. Underwood, Sal. Pavy,
Rob. Baxter, Tho. Day, Ioh. Frost. With the allowance of the Master of
Revells.’]
_Edition_ by A. C. Judson (1912, _Yale Studies_, xlv), and facsimile
reprint of Q by W. Bang and L. Krebs (1908, _Materialien_, xxii).
The difference between the Q and F_{1} texts amounts to more than mere
revision of wording and of oaths. _Criticus_ is renamed _Crites_, and
the latter half of the play is given in a longer form, parts of IV. i
and IV. iii, and the whole of V. i-iv appearing in F_{1} alone. I think
the explanation is to be found in a shortening of the original text
for representation, rather than in subsequent additions. Jonson’s date
for the play is 1600. This Small, 23, would translate as Feb. or March
1601, neglecting the difficulty due to the possibility that Jonson’s
date represents Circumcision style. He relies on V. xi, where Cynthia
says:
For so Actaeon, by presuming farre,
Did (to our griefe) incurre a fatall doome;
... But are we therefore judged too extreme?
Seemes it no crime, to enter sacred bowers,
And hallowed places, with impure aspect,
Most lewdly to pollute?
Rightly rejecting the suggestion of Fleay, i. 363, that this alludes to
Nashe and the _Isle of Dogs_, Small refers it to the disgrace of Essex,
and therefore dates the play after his execution on 25 Feb. 1601.
But surely the presumption which Jonson has in mind is not Essex’s
rebellion, but his invasion of Elizabeth’s apartment on his return from
Ireland in 1599, and the ‘fatall doome’ is merely his loss of offices
in June 1600. I do not believe that a Court dramatist would have dared
to refer to Essex at all after 25 Feb. 1601. I feel little doubt that
the play was the subject of the Chapel presentation on 6 Jan. 1601, and
the description of this by the Treasurer of the Chamber as including
a ‘show’, which puzzled Small, is explained by the presence of a
full-blown Court mask in V. vii-x. The original production will have
been in the winter of 1600, soon after Evans set up the Chapel plays.
As to personalities, Small rightly rejects the identifications of Hedon
with Daniel, Anaides with Marston, and Asotus with Lodge. Amorphus
repeats the type of Puntarvolo from _E. M. O._ and like Puntarvolo
may show traces of the Harveian vocabulary. As _Satiromastix_, I. ii.
191, applies to Crispinus and Demetrius the descriptions (III. iii)
of Hedon as ‘a light voluptuous reveller’ and Anaides as ‘a strange
arrogating puff’, it seems clear that Marston and Dekker, rightly or
wrongly, fitted on these caps. Similarly, there is a clear attempt in
_Satiromastix_, I. ii. 376, ‘You must be call’d Asper, and Criticus,
and Horace’, to charge Jonson with lauding himself as Criticus. But
the description of the ‘creature of a most perfect and diuine temper’
in II. iii surely goes beyond even Jonson’s capacity of self-praise. I
wonder whether he can have meant Donne, whom he seems from a remark to
Drummond (Laing, 6) to have introduced as Criticus in an introductory
dialogue to the _Ars Poetica_.
Of the three children who appear in the induction, both Q and F_{1}
name one as Jack. He might be either Underwood or Frost. Q alone
(l. 214) names another, who played Anaides, as Sall, i.e. Salathiel
Pavy. An interesting light is thrown on the beginnings of the Chapel
enterprise by the criticism (_Ind._ 188), ‘They say, the _Vmbrae_, or
Ghosts of some three or foure Playes, departed a dozen yeares since,
haue been seene walking on your Stage here.’
_The Poetaster. 1601_
_S. R._ 1601, Dec. 21 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called Poetaster or his
arrainement.’ _Matthew Lownes_ (Arber, iii. 198).
1602. Poetaster or The Arraignment: As it hath beene sundry times
priuately acted in the Blacke-Friers, by the Children of her Maiesties
Chappell. Composed by Ben. Iohnson. _For M. L._ [Prologue; after text,
Note to Reader: ‘Here (Reader) in place of the Epilogue, was meant to
thee an Apology from the Author, with his reasons for the publishing of
this booke: but (since he is no lesse restrain’d, then thou depriv’d of
it by Authoritie) hee praies thee to think charitably of what thou hast
read, till thou maist heare him speake what hee hath written.’]
1616. Poëtaster, Or His Arraignement. A Comicall Satyre, Acted, in the
yeere 1601. By the then Children of Queene Elizabeths Chappel. The
Author B. I. _W. Stansby for M. Lownes._ [Part of F_{1}. Epistle to
Richard Martin, by ‘Ben. Ionson’; Prologue. After text, Note to Reader,
with ‘an apologeticall Dialogue: which was only once spoken vpon the
stage, and all the answere I euer gaue, to sundry impotent libells then
cast out (and some yet remayning) against me, and this Play’. After the
dialogue: ‘This comicall Satyre was first acted, in the yeere 1601.
By the then Children of Queene Elizabeths Chappell. The principall
Comœdians were, Nat. Field, Ioh. Vnderwood, Sal. Pavy, Will. Ostler,
Tho. Day, Tho. Marton. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]
_Editions_ by H. S. Mallory (1905, _Yale Studies_, xxvii), J. H.
Penniman (1913, _B. L._).
The play is admittedly an attack upon the poetaster represented as
Crispinus, and his identity is clear from Jonson’s own statement
to Drummond (Laing, 20) that ‘he had many quarrells with Marston,
beat him, and took his pistol from him, wrote his Poetaster on him’.
Marston’s vocabulary is elaborately ridiculed in V. iii. Nor is there
any reason to doubt that Demetrius Fannius, ‘a dresser of plaies about
the towne, here’, who has been ‘hir’d to abuse Horace, and bring him
in, in a play’ (III. iv. 367), is Dekker, who certainly associated
himself with Marston as a victim of Jonson’s arraignment, and wrote
_Satiromastix_ (q.v.) in reply. At the same time these characters
continue the types of Hedon and Anaides from _Cynthia’s Revels_,
although these were not literary men. Horace is Jonson himself, as the
rival portrait of Horace in _Satiromastix_ shows, while Dekker tells
us that Tucca is ‘honest Capten Hannam’, doubtless the Jack Hannam
traceable as a Captain under Drake in 1585; cf. the reference to him
in a letter of that year printed by F. P. Wilson in _M. L. R._ xv. 81.
Fleay, i. 367, has a long list of identifications of minor personages,
Ovid with Donne, Tibullus with Daniel, and so forth, all of which may
safely be laid aside, and in particular I do not think that the fine
eulogies of Virgil (V. i) are meant for Chapman, or for Shakespeare,
applicable as some of them are to him, or for any one but Virgil. On
the matter of identifications there is little to add to the admirable
treatment of Small, 25. But in addition to the personal attacks,
the play clearly contains a more generalized criticism of actors,
the challenge of which seems to have been specially taken up by the
Chamberlain’s men (cf. ch. xi), while there is evidence that Tucca
and, I suppose, Lupus were taken amiss by the soldiers and the lawyers
respectively. The latter at least were powerful, and in the epistle
to Martin Jonson speaks of the play as one ‘for whose innocence,
as for the Authors, you were once a noble and timely undertaker, to
the greatest Iustice of this Kingdome’, and on behalf of posterity
acknowledges a debt for ‘the reading of that ... which so much
ignorance, and malice of the times, then conspir’d to haue supprest’.
Evidently Jonson had not made matters better by his Apologetical
Dialogue, the printing of which with the play was restrained. In this
he denies that he
tax’d
The Law, and Lawyers; Captaines; and the Players
By their particular names;
but admits his intention to try and shame the
Fellowes of practis’d and most laxative tongues,
of whom he says, that during
three yeeres,
They did provoke me with their petulant stiles
On every stage.
Now he has done with it, will not answer the ‘libells’, or the
‘untrussers’ (i. e. _Satiromastix_), and is turning to tragedy.
Jonson gives the date of production as 1601. The play followed
_Cynthia’s Revels_, criticisms on the epilogue of which inspired its
‘armed Prologue’, who sets a foot on Envy. Envy has been waiting
fifteen weeks since the plot was an ‘embrion’, and this is chaffed in
_Satiromastix_, I. ii. 447, ‘What, will he bee fifteene weekes about
this cockatrice’s egge too?’ Later (V. ii. 218) Horace is told, ‘You
and your itchy poetry breake out like Christmas, but once a yeare’.
This stung Jonson, who replied in the Apologetical Dialogue,
_Polyposus._ They say you are slow,
And scarse bring forth a play a yeere.
_Author._ ’Tis true.
I would they could not say that I did that.
The year’s interval must not be pressed too closely. On the other
hand, I do not know why Small, 25, assumes that the fifteen weeks
spent on the _Poetaster_ began directly after _Cynthia’s Revels_ was
produced, whatever that date may be. It must have come very near that
of _Satiromastix_, for Horace knows that Demetrius has been hired to
write a play on him. On the other hand, _Satiromastix_ cannot possibly
have been actually written until the contents of _Poetaster_ were known
to Dekker. The S. R. entry of _Satiromastix_ is 11 Nov. 1601, and the
two dates of production may reasonably be placed in the late spring or
early autumn of the same year. The Note to the Reader in Q shows that
the Dialogue had been restrained before _Poetaster_ itself appeared in
1602. Probably it was spoken in December between the two S. R. entries.
Hart (_9 N. Q._ xi. 202) assuming that the contemplated tragedy was
_Sejanus_ (q.v.) put it in 1603, but this is too late.
_Sejanus. 1603_
_S. R._ 1604, Nov. 2 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called the tragedie of
Seianus written by Beniamin Johnson.’ _Edward Blunt_ (Arber, iii. 273).
1605, Aug. 6. Transfer from Blount to Thomas Thorpe (Arber, iii. 297).
1610, Oct. 3. Transfer from Thorpe to Walter Burre (Arber, iii. 445).
1605. Seianus his fall. Written by Ben: Ionson. _G. Eld for Thomas
Thorpe._ [Epistle to Readers, signed ‘Ben. Jonson’; Commendatory
Verses, signed ‘Georgius Chapmannus’, ‘Hugh Holland’, ‘Cygnus’, ‘Th.
R.’, ‘Johannes Marstonius’, ‘William Strachey’, ‘ΦΙΛΟΣ’, ‘Ev. B.’;
Argument.]
1616. Seianus his Fall. A Tragœdie. Acted, in the yeere 1603. By the
K. Maiesties Servants. The Author B. I. _William Stansby._ [Part of
F_{1}. Epistle to Esmé, Lord Aubigny, signed ‘Ben. Ionson’. After
text: ‘This Tragœdie was first acted, in the yeere 1603. By the Kings
Maiesties Servants. The principall Tragœdians were, Ric. Burbadge,
Will. Shake-Speare, Aug. Philips, Ioh. Hemings, Will. Sly, Hen. Condel,
Ioh. Lowin, Alex. Cooke. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]
_Editions_ by W. D. Briggs (1911, _B. L._) and W. A. Neilson (1911,
_C. E. D._).--_Dissertations_: B. Nicholson, _Shakespeare not the
Part-Author of B. J.’s S._ (1874, _Acad._ ii. 536); W. A. Henderson,
_Shakespeare and S._ (1894, _8 N. Q._ v. 502).
As the theatres were probably closed from Elizabeth’s death to March
1604, the production may have been at Court in the autumn or winter
of 1603, although, if _Sejanus_ is the something ‘high, and aloofe’
contemplated at the end of the Apologetical Dialogue to _Poetaster_
(q.v.), it must have been in Jonson’s mind since 1601. The epistle to
Aubigny admits the ‘violence’ which the play received in public, and
‘Ev. B.’s’ verses indicate that this ‘beastly rage’ was at the Globe.
Marston’s verses were presumably written before his renewed quarrel
with Jonson over _Eastward Ho!_ (q.v.), and there appears to be an
unkindly reference to _Sejanus_ in the epistle to his _Sophonisba_
(1606). But either _Eastward Ho!_ or something else caused publication
to be delayed for nearly a year after the S. R. entry, since Chapman’s
verses contain a compliment to the Earl of Suffolk,
Who when our Hearde came not to drink, but trouble
The Muses waters, did a Wall importune,
(Midst of assaults) about their sacred River,
which seems to refer to his share in freeing Jonson and Chapman from
prison about Sept. or Oct. 1605. Chapman also has compliments to the
Earls of Northampton and Northumberland. It must therefore be to a
later date that Jonson referred, when he told Drummond (Laing, 22) that
‘Northampton was his mortall enimie for beating, on a St. George’s
day, one of his attenders; He was called before the Councell for his
Sejanus, and accused both of poperie and treason by him’. Fleay, i.
372, suggests that the reference at the end of the Q version of the
Argument to treason against princes, ‘for guard of whose piety and
vertue, the _Angels_ are in continuall watch, and _God_ himselfe
miraculously working’, implies publication after the discovery of the
Plot. On the other hand, one would have expected Chapman’s reference
to Northumberland, if not already printed, to be suppressed, in view
of the almost immediate suspicion of a connexion with the Plot that
fell upon him. Castelain, 907, considers, and rightly rejects, another
suggestion by Fleay that _Sejanus_ and not _Eastward Ho!_ was the cause
of the imprisonment of Jonson and Chapman in 1605. Fleay supposed that
Chapman was the collaborator of whom Jonson wrote in the Q epistle, ‘I
would informe you, that this Booke, in all numbers, is not the same
with that which was acted on the publike Stage, wherein a second pen
had good share; in place of which I have rather chosen, to put weaker
(and no doubt lesse pleasing) of mine own, then to defraud so happy
a _Genius_ of his right, by my lothed usurpation’. Shakespeare also
has been guessed at. If Jonson’s language was seriously meant, there
were not, of course, many contemporaries of whom he would have so
spoken. Probably the problem is insoluble, as the subject-matter of
it has disappeared. It is difficult to believe that the collaborator
was Samuel Sheppard, who in his _The Times Displayed in Six Sestyads_
(1646) claims to have ‘dictated to’ Ben Jonson ‘when as Sejanus’ fall
he writ’. Perhaps he means ‘been amanuensis to’.
_Eastward Ho!_ (_1605_)
_With_ Chapman (q.v.) _and_ Marston.
_Volpone_ or _The Fox. 1606_
[_MS._] J. S. Farmer (_Introd._ to _Believe As You List_ in _T. F. T._)
states that a holograph MS. is extant. He may have heard of a modern
text by L. H. Holt, used by J. D. Rea. If so, App. N is in error.
_S. R._ 1610, Oct. 3. Transfer from Thomas Thorpe to Walter Burre of
‘2 bookes the one called, Seianus his fall, the other, Vulpone or the
ffoxe’ (Arber, iii. 445).
1607. Ben: Ionson his Volpone Or The Foxe. _For Thomas Thorpe._
[Dedicatory epistle by ‘Ben. Ionson’ to the two Universities, dated
‘From my House in the Black Friars, the 11^{th} day of February, 1607’;
Commendatory Verses, signed ‘I. D[onne]’, ‘E. Bolton’, ‘F[rancis]
B[eaumont]’, ‘T. R.’, ‘D. D.’, ‘I. C.’, ‘G. C.’, ‘E. S.’, ‘I. F.’;
Argument; Prologue and Epilogue.]
1616. Volpone, or The Foxe. A Comœdie. Acted in the yeere 1605. By
the K. Maiesties Servants. The Author B. I. _William Stansby._ [Part
of F_{1}. After text: ‘This Comoedie was first acted, in the yeere
1605. By the Kings Maiesties Servants. The principall Comœdians were,
Ric. Burbadge, Ioh. Hemings, Hen. Condel, Ioh. Lowin, Will. Sly, Alex.
Cooke. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]
_Editions_ by W. Scott (1811, _M. B. D._ iii) in _O. E. D._ (1830,
i) and by H. B. Wilkins (1906), W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._), J.
D. Rea (1919, _Yale Studies_).--_Dissertations_: F. Holthausen, _Die
Quelle von B. J.’s V._ (1889, _Anglia_, xii. 519); J. Q. Adams, _The
Sources of B. J.’s V._ (1904, _M. P._ ii. 289); L. H. Holt, _Notes on
J.’s V._ (1905, _M. L. N._ xx. 63).
Jonson dates the production 1605, and the uncertainty as to the style
he used leaves it possible that this may cover the earlier part of
1606. Fleay, i. 373, attempts to get nearer with the help of the news
from London brought to Venice by Peregrine in II. i. Some of this does
not help us much. The baboons had probably been in London as early as
1603 at least (cf. s.v. _Sir Giles Goosecap_). The Tower lioness had a
whelp on 5 Aug. 1604, another on 26 Feb. 1605, and two more on 27 July
1605 (Stowe, ed. 1615, 844, 857, 870). The ‘another whelp’ of _Volpone_
would suggest Feb.–July 1605. On the other hand, the whale at Woolwich
is recorded by Stowe, 880, a few days after the porpoise at West Ham
(not ‘above the bridge’ as in _Volpone_) on 19 Jan. 1606. Holt argues
from this that, as Peregrine left England seven weeks before, the play
must have been produced in March 1606, but this identification of
actual and dramatic time can hardly be taken for granted. There are
also allusions to meteors at Berwick and a new star, both in 1604, and
to the building of a raven in a royal ship and the death of Stone the
fool, which have not been dated and might help. Gawdy, 146, writes on
18 June 1604 that ‘Stone was knighted last weeke, I meane not Stone the
foole, but Stone of Cheapsyde’. Stone the fool was whipped about March,
1605 (Winwood, ii. 52). The suggested allusion to _Volpone_ in Day’s
_Isle of Gulls_ (q.v.) of Feb. 1606 is rather dubious. The ambiguity of
style must also leave us uncertain whether Q and its dedication belong
to 1607 or 1608, and therefore whether ‘their love and acceptance
shewn to his poeme in the presentation’ by the Universities was in
1606 or 1607. This epistle contains a justification of Jonson’s comic
method. He has had to undergo the ‘imputation of sharpnesse’, but has
never provoked a ‘nation, societie, or generall order, or state’, or
any ‘publique person’. Nor has he been ‘particular’ or ‘personall’,
except to ‘a mimick, cheater, bawd, or buffon, creatures (for their
insolencies) worthy to be tax’d’. But that he has not wholly forgotten
the _Poetomachia_ is clear from a reference to the ‘petulant stiles’ of
other poets, while in the prologue he recalls the old criticism that he
was a year about each play, and asserts that he wrote _Volpone_ in five
weeks. The commendatory verses suggest that the play was successful.
Fleay’s theory that it is referred to in the epilogue to the anonymous
_Mucedorus_ (q.v.), as having given offence, will not bear analysis.
The passage in III. iv about English borrowings from Guarini and
Montaigne is too general in its application to be construed as a
specific attack on Daniel. But the gossip of Aubrey, ii. 246, on Thomas
Sutton, the founder of the Charterhouse, relates that ‘’Twas from him
that B. Johnson took his hint of the fox, and by Seigneur Volpone is
meant Sutton’.
_Epicoene. 1609_
_S. R._ 1610, Sept. 20 (Buck). ‘A booke called, Epicoene or the silent
woman by Ben Johnson.’ _John Browne and John Busby_ (Arber, iii. 444).
1612, Sept. 28. Transfer from Browne to Walter Burre (Arber, iii. 498).
1609, 1612. Prints of both dates are cited, but neither is now
traceable. The former, in view of the S. R. date, can hardly have
existed; the latter appears to have been seen by Gifford, and for it
the commendatory verses by Beaumont, found at the beginning of F_{1},
were probably written.
1616. Epicoene, Or The silent Woman. A Comœdie. Acted in the yeere
1609. By the Children of her Maiesties Revells. The Author B. I.
_W. Stansby._ [Part of F_{1}. Epistle to Sir Francis Stuart, signed
‘Ben. Ionson’; Two Prologues, the second ‘Occasion’d by some persons
impertinent exception’; after text: ‘This Comœdie was first acted,
in the yeere 1609. By the Children of her Maiesties Revells. The
principall Comœdians were, Nat. Field, Will. Barksted, Gil. Carie,
Will. Pen, Hug. Attawel, Ric. Allin, Ioh. Smith, Ioh. Blaney. With the
allowance of the Master of Revells.’]
1620. _William Stansby, sold by John Browne._
_Editions_ in _O. E. D._ (1830, iii) and by A. Henry (1906, _Yale
Studies_, xxxi) and C. M. Gayley (1913, _R. E. C._ ii).
The first prologue speaks of the play as fit for ‘your men, and
daughters of _white-Friars’_, and at Whitefriars the play was probably
produced by the Revels children, either at the end of 1609, or, if
Jonson’s chronology permits, early in 1610. Jonson told Drummond
(Laing, 41) that, ‘When his play of a Silent Woman was first acted,
ther was found verses after on the stage against him, concluding that
that play was well named the Silent Woman, ther was never one man to
say _Plaudite_ to it’. Fleay, i. 374, suggests an equation between Sir
John Daw and Sir John Harington. In I. i. 86 Clerimont says of Lady
Haughty, the President of the Collegiates, ‘A poxe of her autumnall
face, her peec’d beautie’. I hope that this was not, as suggested by
H. J. C. Grierson, _Poems of Donne_, ii. 63, a hit at Lady Danvers, on
whom Donne wrote (Elegy ix):
No _Spring_, nor _Summer_ Beauty hath such grace,
As I have seen in one _Autumnall_ face.
In any case, I do not suppose that these are the passages which led to
the ‘exception’ necessitating the second prologue. This ends with the
lines:
If any, yet, will (with particular slight
Of application) wrest what he doth write;
And that he meant or him, or her, will say:
They make a libell, which he made a play.
Jonson evidently refers to the same matter in the Epistle, where
he says: ‘There is not a line, or syllable in it changed from the
simplicity of the first copy. And, when you shall consider, through the
certaine hatred of some, how much a mans innocency may bee indanger’d
by an vn-certaine accusation; you will, I doubt not, so beginne to
hate the iniquitie of such natures, as I shall loue the contumely done
me, whose end was so honorable, as to be wip’d off by your sentence.’
I think the explanation is to be found in a dispatch of the Venetian
ambassador on 8 Feb. 1610 (_V. P._ xi. 427), who reports that Lady
Arabella Stuart ‘complains that in a certain comedy the playwright
introduced an allusion to her person and the part played by the Prince
of Moldavia. The play was suppressed.’ The reference may be to V. i. 17
of the play:
_La Foole._ He [_Daw_] has his boxe of instruments ...
to draw maps of euery place, and person, where he comes.
_Clerimont._ How, maps of persons!
_La Foole._ Yes, sir, of Nomentack, when he was here, and
of the Prince of _Moldauia_, and of his mistris, mistris
_Epicoene_.
_Clerimont._ Away! he has not found out her latitude, I
hope.
The Prince of Moldavia visited London in 1607 and is said to have been
a suitor for Arabella, but if Jonson’s text is really not ‘changed
from the simplicity of the first copy’, it is clear that Arabella
misunderstood it, since Epicoene was Daw’s mistress.
_The Alchemist. 1610_
_S. R._ 1610, Oct. 3 (Buck). ‘A Comoedy called The Alchymist made by
Ben: Johnson.’ _Walter Burre_ (Arber, iii. 445).
1612. The Alchemist. Written by Ben Ionson. _Thomas Snodham for Walter
Burre, sold by John Stepneth._ [Epistles to Lady Wroth, signed ‘Ben.
Jonson’ and to the Reader; Commendatory Verses, signed ‘George Lucy’;
Argument and Prologue.]
1616. The Alchemist. A Comœdie. Acted in the yeere 1610. By the Kings
Maiesties Seruants. The author B. I. _W. Stansby._ [Part of F_{1}.
After text: ‘This Comoedie was first acted, in the yeere 1610. By the
Kings Maiesties Servants. The principall Comœdians were, Ric. Burbadge,
Ioh. Hemings, Ioh. Lowin, Will. Ostler, Hen. Condel, Ioh. Vnderwood,
Alex. Cooke, Nic. Tooley, Rob. Armin, Will. Eglestone. With the
allowance of the Master of Revells.’]
_Editions_ by W. Scott (1811, _M. B. D._ iii), C. M. Hathaway (1903,
_Yale Studies_, xvii), H. C. Hart (1903, _King’s Library_), F. E.
Schelling (1903, _B. L._), W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._), G. A.
Smithson (1913, _R. E. C._).
Jonson’s date is confirmed by the references in II. vi. 31 and IV. iv.
29 to the age of Dame Pliant, who is 19 and was born in 1591. In view
of the S. R. entry, one would take the production to have fallen in
the earlier half of the year, before the plague reached forty deaths,
which it did from 12 July to 29 Nov. The action is set in plague-time,
but obviously the experience of 1609 and early years might suggest
this. Fleay, i. 375, and others following him argue that the action
of the play is confined to one day, that this is fixed by V. v. 102
to ‘the second day of the fourth week in the eighth month’, and that
this must be 24 October. They are not deterred by the discrepancy
of this with III. ii. 129, which gives only a fifteen-days interval
before ‘the second day, of the third weeke, in the ninth month’, i. e.
on their principles 17 November. And they get over the S.R. entry by
assuming that Jonson planned to stage the play on 24 October and then,
finding early in October that the plague continued, decided to publish
it at once. This seems to me extraordinarily thin, in the absence of
clearer knowledge as to the system of chronology employed by Ananias
of Amsterdam. Aubrey, i. 213, says that John Dee ‘used to distill
egge-shells, and ’twas from hence that Ben Johnson had his hint of the
alkimist, whom he meant’. The play was given by the King’s men at Court
during 1612–13.
_Catiline his Conspiracy. 1611_
1611. Catiline his Conspiracy. Written by Ben: Ionson. _For Walter
Burre._ [Epistles to William Earl of Pembroke, and to the Reader, both
signed ‘Ben. Jonson’; Commendatory Verses, signed ‘Franc: Beaumont’,
‘John Fletcher’, ‘Nat. Field’.]
1616. Catiline his Conspiracy. A Tragoedie. Acted in the yeere 1611. By
the Kings Maiesties Seruants. The Author B. I. _William Stansby._ [Part
of F_{1}. After text: ‘This Tragœdie was first Acted, in the yeere
1611. By the Kings Maiesties Servants. The principall Tragœdians were,
Ric. Burbadge, Ioh. Hemings, Alex. Cooke, Hen. Condel, Ioh. Lowin, Ioh.
Underwood, Wil. Ostler, Nic. Tooly, Ric. Robinson, Wil. Eglestone.’]
1635.... ‘now Acted by his Maiesties Servants’.... _N. Okes for I. S._
_Edition_ by L. H. Harris (1916, _Yale Studies_,
liii).--_Dissertation_: A. Vogt, _B. J.’s Tragödie C. und ihre Quellen_
(1905, _Halle diss._).
_Bartholomew Fair. 1614_
1631. Bartholomew Fayre: A Comedie, Acted in the Yeare, 1614. By the
Lady Elizabeths Seruants. And then dedicated to King Iames of most
Blessed Memorie; By the Author, Beniamin Iohnson. _I. B. for Robert
Allot._ [Part of F_{2}. Prologue to the King; Induction; Epilogue.
Jonson wrote (n.d.) to the Earl of Newcastle (_Harl. MS._ 4955, quoted
in Gifford’s memoir and by Brinsley Nicholson in _4 N. Q._ v. 574): ‘It
is the lewd printer’s fault that I can send ... no more of my book. I
sent you one piece before, The Fair, ... and now I send you this other
morsel, The fine gentleman that walks the town, The Fiend; but before
he will perfect the rest I fear he will come himself to be a part under
the title of The Absolute Knave, which he hath played with me.’]
_Edition_ by C. S. Alden (1904, _Yale Studies_, xxv).--_Dissertation_:
C. R. Baskervill, _Some Parallels to B. F._ (1908, _M. P._ vi. 109).
No dedication to James, other than the prologue and epilogue, appears
to be preserved, but Aubrey, ii. 14, says that ‘King James made
him write against the Puritans, who began to be troublesome in his
time’. The play was given at Court on 1 Nov. 1614 (App. B), and a
mock indenture between the author and the spectators at the Hope, on
31 Oct. 1614, is recited in the Induction and presumably fixes the
date of production. One must not therefore assume that a ballad of
_Rome for Company in Bartholomew Faire_, registered on 22 Oct. 1614
(Arber, iii. 554), was aimed at Jonson. Greg, _Henslowe Papers_, 78,
follows Malone and Fleay, i. 80, in inferring from a mention of a
forthcoming ‘Johnsons play’ in a letter of 13 Nov. 1613 from Daborne
to Henslowe that the production may have been intended for 1613, but
I think that Daborne refers to the revival of _Eastward Ho!_ The
Induction describes the locality of the Hope as ‘being as durty as
_Smithfield_, and as stinking euery whit’, and possibly glances at
the _Winter’s Tale_ and _Tempest_ in disclaiming the introduction of
‘a _Seruant-monster_’ and ‘a nest of _Antiques_’, since the author
is ‘loth to make Nature afraid in his _Playes_, like those that
beget _Tales_, _Tempests_, and such like _Drolleries_’. There is
no actor-list, but in V. iii ‘Your best _Actor_. Your _Field_?’ is
referred to on a level with ‘your _Burbage_’. Similarly the puppet
Leander is said to shake his head ‘like an hostler’ and it is declared
that ‘one _Taylor_, would goe neere to beat all this company, with
a hand bound behinde him’. Field and Taylor were both of the Lady
Elizabeth’s men in 1614, while the allusion to Ostler of the King’s men
is apparently satirical. The suggestion of Ordish, 225, that Taylor
is the water poet, who had recently appeared on the Hope stage, is
less probable. The ‘word out of the play, _Palemon_’ (IV. iii) is set
against another, _Argalus_ ‘out of the _Arcadia_’, and might therefore,
as Fleay, i. 377, thinks, refer to Daniel’s _Queen’s Arcadia_ (1605),
but the Palamon of _T. N. K._ was probably quite recent. I see no
reason to accept Fleay’s identification of Littlewit with Daniel; that
of Lanthorn Leatherhead with Inigo Jones is more plausible. Gifford
suggested that the burlesque puppet-play of Damon and Pythias in
V. iv may have been retrieved by Jonson from earlier work, perhaps
for the real puppet-stage, since ‘Old Cole’ is a character, and in
_Satiromastix_ Horace is called ‘puppet-teacher’ (1980) and in another
passage (607) ‘olde Coale’, and told that Crispinus and Demetrius ‘shal
be thy Damons and thou their Pithyasse’.
_The Devil Is An Ass 1616_
1631. The Diuell is an Asse: A Comedie Acted in the yeare, 1616. By
His Maiesties Seruants. The Author Ben: Ionson. _I. B. for Robert
Allot._ [Part of F_{2}. Prologue and Epilogue. The play is referred to
in Jonson’s letter to the Earl of Newcastle, quoted under _Bartholomew
Fair_.]
1641. _Imprinted at London._
_Edition_ by W. S. Johnson (1905, _Yale Studies_,
xxix).--_Dissertation_: E. Holstein, _Verhältnis von B. J.’s D. A. und
John Wilson’s Belphegor zu Machiavelli’s Novelle vom Belfagor_ (1901).
In the play itself are introduced references to a performance of _The
Devil_ as a new play, to its playbill, to the Blackfriars as the house,
and to Dick Robinson as a player of female parts (I. iv. 43; vi. 31;
II. viii. 64; III. v. 38). Probably the production was towards the end
rather than the beginning of 1616.
_Lost Plays_
I do not feel able to accept the view, expounded by Fleay, i. 370, 386,
and adopted by some later writers, that _A Tale of a Tub_, licensed
by Herbert on 7 May 1633, was only a revision of one of Jonson’s
Elizabethan plays. It appears to rest almost wholly upon references
to a ‘queen’. These are purely dramatic, and part of an attempt to
give the action an old-fashioned setting. The queen intended is not
Elizabeth, but Mary. There are also references to ‘last King Harry’s
time’ (I. ii), ‘King Edward, our late liege and sovereign lord’ (I. v).
A character says, ‘He was King Harry’s doctor and my god-phere’ (IV.
i). The priest is ‘Canon’ or ‘Sir’ Hugh, and has a ‘Latin tongue’ (III.
vii). ‘Old John Heywood’ is alive (V. ii).
In 1619 Jonson told Drummond (Laing, 27) ‘That the half of his Comedies
were not in print’. The unprinted ones of course included _Bartholomew
Fair_ and _The Devil is an Ass_. He went on to describe ‘a pastorall
intitled The May Lord’, in which he figured himself as Alkin. As it
had a ‘first storie’, it may not have been dramatic. But Alkin appears
in _The Sad Shepherd_, a fragment of a dramatic pastoral, printed in
F_{2} with a prologue in which Jonson describes himself as ‘He that
hath feasted you these forty yeares’, and which therefore cannot have
been written long before his death in 1637. This is edited by W. W.
Greg (1905, _Materialien_, xi) with an elaborate discussion in which
he arrives at the sound conclusions that the theory of its substantial
identity with _The May Lord_ must be rejected, and that there is no
definite evidence to oppose to the apparent indication of its date in
the prologue.
It is doubtful whether any of Jonson’s early work for Pembroke’s and
the Admiral’s, except perhaps _The Case is Altered_, ever found its way
into print. The record of all the following plays, except the first, is
in Henslowe’s diary (cf. Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 288).
(_a_) _The Isle of Dogs._
See s.v. Nashe.
(_b_) On 3 Dec. 1597 he received £1 ‘vpon a boocke w^{ch} he showed the
plotte vnto the company w^{ch} he promysed to dd vnto the company at
crysmas’. It is just possible that this was _Dido and Aeneas_, produced
by the Admiral’s on 8 Jan. 1598. But no further payment to Jonson is
recorded, and it is more likely that _Dido and Aeneas_ was taken over
from Pembroke’s repertory; and it may be that Jonson had not carried
out his contract before the fray with Spencer in Sept. 1598, and that
this is the ‘Bengemens plotte’ on which Chapman was writing a tragedy
on the following 23 Oct. The theory that it is the _Fall of Mortimer_,
still little more than a plot when Jonson died, may safely be rejected
(Henslowe, ii. 188, 199, 224).
(_c_) _Hot Anger Soon Cold._
Written with Chettle and Porter in Aug. 1598 (Henslowe, ii. 196).
(_d_) _Page of Plymouth._
Written with Dekker in Aug. and Sept. 1599 (Henslowe, ii. 205).
(_e_) _Robert the Second, King of Scots._
A tragedy, written with Chettle, Dekker, ‘& other Jentellman’ (probably
Marston) in Sept. 1599 (Henslowe, ii. 205).
(_f_) Additions to _Jeronimo_.
See s.v. Kyd, _Spanish Tragedy_.
(_g_) _Richard Crookback._
For this Jonson received a sum ‘in earnest’ on 22 June 1602, but it is
not certain that it was ever finished (Henslowe, ii, 222).
_Doubtful Plays_
Jonson’s hand has been sought in _The Captain_ of the Beaumont (q.v.)
and Fletcher series, and the anonymous _Puritan_ (cf. ch. xxiv).
MASKS
_Mask of Blackness. 6 Jan. 1605_
[_MS._] _Brit. Mus. Royal MS._ 17 B. xxxi. [‘The Twelvth Nights
Reuells.’ Not holograph, but signed ‘Hos ego versiculos feci. Ben.
Jonson.’ A shorter text than that of the printed descriptions, in
present tense, as for a programme.]
_S. R._ 1608, April 21 (Buck). ‘The Characters of Twoo Royall Maskes.
Invented by Ben. Johnson.’ _Thomas Thorpe_ (Arber, iii. 375).
N.D. The Characters of Two royall Masques. The one of Blacknesse, The
other of Beautie. personated By the most magnificent of Queenes Anne
Queene of Great Britaine, &c. With her honorable Ladyes, 1605. and
1608. at Whitehall: and Inuented by Ben: Ionson. _For Thomas Thorp._
1616. The Queenes Masques. The first, Of Blacknesse: Personated at the
Court, at White-Hall, on the Twelu’th night, 1605. [Part of F_{1}.]
_Edition_ in J. P. Collier, _Five Court Masques_ (1848, _Sh. Soc._ from
MS.).
The maskers, in azure and silver, were twelve nymphs, ‘negroes and
the daughters of Niger’; the torchbearers, in sea-green, Oceaniae;
the presenters Oceanus, Niger, and Aethiopia the Moon; the musicians
Tritons, Sea-maids, and Echoes.
The locality was the old Elizabethan banqueting-house at Whitehall
(Carleton; Office of Works). The curtain represented a ‘landtschap’ of
woods with hunting scenes, ‘which falling’, according to the Quarto,
‘an artificial sea was seen to shoot forth’. The MS. describes the
landscape as ‘drawne uppon a downe right cloth, strayned for the scene,
... which openinge in manner of a curtine’, the sea shoots forth. On
the sea were the maskers in a concave shell, and the torchbearers borne
by sea-monsters.
The maskers, on landing, presented their fans. They gave ‘their own
single dance’, and then made ‘choice of their men’ for ‘several
measures and corantoes’. A final dance took them back to their shell.
This was a Queen’s mask, danced by the Queen, the Countesses of
Bedford, Derby, and Suffolk, the Ladies Rich, Bevill, Howard of
Effingham, Wroth, and Walsingham, Lady Elizabeth Howard, Anne Lady
Herbert, and Susan Lady Herbert. The ‘bodily part’ was the ‘design and
act’ of Inigo Jones.
Sir Thomas Edmondes told Lord Shrewsbury on 5 Dec. that the mask was to
cost the Exchequer £3,000 (Lodge, iii. 114). The same sum was stated by
Chamberlain to Winwood on 18 Dec. to have been ‘delivered a month ago’
(Winwood, ii. 41). Molin (_V. P._ x. 201) reported the amount on 19
Dec. as 25,000 crowns. On 12 Dec. John Packer wrote to Winwood of the
preparations, and after naming some of the maskers added, ‘The Lady of
Northumberland is excused by sickness, Lady Hartford by the measles.
Lady of Nottingham hath the polypus in her nostril, which some fear
must be cut off. The Lady Hatton would feign have had a part, but some
unknown reason kept her out’ (Winwood, ii. 39). The performance was
described by Carleton to Winwood, as following the creation of Prince
Charles as Duke of York on 6 Jan. (Winwood, ii. 44): ‘At night we had
the Queen’s maske in the Banquetting-House, or rather her pagent. There
was a great engine at the lower end of the room, which had motion,
and in it were the images of sea-horses with other terrible fishes,
which were ridden by Moors: The indecorum was, that there was all
fish and no water. At the further end was a great shell in form of a
skallop, wherein were four seats; on the lowest sat the Queen with my
Lady Bedford; on the rest were placed the Ladies Suffolk, Darby, Rich,
Effingham, Ann Herbert, Susan Herbert, Elizabeth Howard, Walsingham,
and Bevil. Their apparell was rich, but too light and curtizan-like for
such great ones. Instead of vizzards, their faces, and arms up to the
elbows, were painted black, which was disguise sufficient, for they
were hard to be known; but it became them nothing so well as their
red and white, and you cannot imagine a more ugly sight, then a troop
of lean-cheek’d Moors. The Spanish and Venetian ambassadors were both
present, and sate by the King in state, at which Monsieur Beaumont
quarrells so extreamly, that he saith the whole court is Spanish. But
by his favour, he should fall out with none but himself, for they were
all indifferently invited to come as private men, to a private sport;
which he refusing, the Spanish ambassador willingly accepted, and
being there, seeing no cause to the contrary, he put off Don Taxis,
and took upon him El Señor Embaxadour, wherein he outstript our little
Monsieur. He was ... taken out to dance, and footed it like a lusty old
gallant with his country woman. He took out the Queen, and forgot not
to kiss her hand, though there was danger it would have left a mark on
his lips. The night’s work was concluded with a banquet in the great
Chamber, which was so furiously assaulted, that down went table and
tressels before one bit was touched.’ Carleton gives some additional
information in another account, which he sent to Chamberlain on 7 Jan.
(_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xii. 6, quoted by Sullivan, 28), as that the ‘black
faces and hands, which were painted and bare up to the elbowes, was a
very lothsome sight’, and he was ‘sory that strangers should see owr
court so strangely disguised’; that ‘the confusion in getting in was
so great, that some Ladies lie by it and complain of the fury of the
white stafes’; that ‘in the passages through the galleries they were
shutt up in several heapes betwixt dores and there stayed till all was
ended’; and that there were losses ‘of chaynes, jewels, purces and such
like loose ware’. References in letters to one Benson and by the Earl
of Errol to Cecil (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xii. 16; xix. 25) add nothing
material. Carleton’s account of the triumph of the Spanish ambassador
is confirmed by reports of the Venetian (_V. P._ x. 212) and French
(_B. M. King’s MS._ cxxvii, ff. 117, 127^v, 177^v; cf. Sullivan, 196–8)
ambassadors. Beaumont had pleaded illness in order to avoid attending a
mask on 27 Dec. 1604 in private, and the Court chose to assume that he
was still ill on 6 Jan. This gave De Taxis and Molin an opening to get
their private invitations converted into public ones. Beaumont lost his
temper and accused Sir Lewis Lewknor and other officials of intriguing
against him, but he had to accept his defeat.
The Accounts of the Master of the Revels (Cunningham, 204) record
‘The Queens Ma^{tis} Maske of Moures with Aleven Laydies of honnour’
as given on 6 Jan. Reyher, 358, 520, notes references to the mask in
accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber and of the Office of Works,
and quotes from the latter items for ‘framinge and settinge vpp of a
great stage in the banquettinge house xl foote square and iiij^{or}
foote in heighte with wheeles to goe on ... framinge and settinge vpp
an other stage’.
Many of the notices of the Queen’s mask also refer to another mask
which was performed ‘among the noblemen and gentlemen’ (Lodge, iii.
114) on 27 Dec. 1604, at the wedding of Sir Philip Herbert and Lady
Susan Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford. The bride was herself a
dancer in the Queen’s mask. The wedding mask, the subject of which
was Juno and Hymenaeus, is unfortunately lost. The Revels Accounts
(Cunningham, 204) tell us that it was ‘presented by the Earl of
Pembroke, the Lord Willowbie and 6 Knightes more of the Court’, and
Stowe’s _Chronicle_, 856, briefly records ‘braue Masks of the most
noble ladies’. Carleton gave Winwood details of the wedding, and said
(Winwood, ii. 43): ‘At night there was a mask in the Hall, which for
conceit and fashion was suitable to the occasion. The actors were the
Earle of Pembrook, the Lord Willoby, Sir Samuel [James?] Hays, Sir
Thomas Germain, Sir Robert Cary, Sir John Lee, Sir Richard Preston,
and Sir Thomas Bager. There was no smal loss that night of chaines and
jewells, and many great ladies were made shorter by the skirts, and
were well enough served that they could keep cut no better.’ Carleton
wrote to Chamberlain (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xii. 6, quoted by Sullivan,
25): ‘Theyre conceit was a representacion of Junoes temple at the lower
end of the great hall, which was vawted and within it the maskers
seated with staves of lights about them, and it was no ill shew.
They were brought in by the fower seasons of the yeare and Hymeneus:
which for songs and speaches was as goode as a play. Theyre apparel
was rather costly then cumly; but theyr dancing full of life and
variety; onely S^r Tho: Germain had lead in his heales and sometimes
forgott what he was doing.’ There was a diplomatic contretemps on this
occasion. At the wedding dinner the Venetian ambassador Molin was
given precedence of the Queen’s brother, the Duke of Holstein, to the
annoyance of the latter. But after dinner Molin was led to a closet and
forgotten there until supper was already begun. Meanwhile the Duke took
his place. There was a personal apology from the King, and at the mask
Molin was given a stool in the royal box to the right of the King, and
the Duke one to the left of the Queen. He preferred to stand for three
hours rather than make use of it (Winwood, ii. 43; Sullivan, 25; _V.
P._ x. 206).
Carleton wrote to Winwood (ii. 44), ‘They say the Duke of Holst will
come upon us with an after reckoning, and that we shall see him on
Candlemas night in a mask, as he hath shewed himself a lusty reveller
all this Christmas’. But if this mask ever took place, nothing is known
of it.
_Hymenaei. 5 Jan. 1606_
1606. Hymenaei: or The Solemnities of Masque, and Barriers,
Magnificently performed on the eleventh, and twelfth Nights,
from Christmas; At Court: To the auspicious celebrating of the
Marriage-vnion, betweene Robert, Earle of Essex, and the Lady Frances,
second Daughter to the most noble Earle of Suffolke. By Ben: Ionson.
_Valentine Sims for Thomas Thorp._
1616. Hymenaei, or The solemnities of Masque and Barriers at a
Marriage. [Part of F_{1}.]
This was a double mask of eight men and eight women. The men, in
carnation cloth of silver, with variously coloured mantles and watchet
cloth of silver bases, were Humours and Affections; the women, in white
cloth of silver, with carnation and blue undergarments, the Powers of
Juno; the presenters Hymen, with a bride, bridegroom, and bridal train,
Reason, and Order; the musicians the Hours.
The locality was probably the Elizabethan banqueting-house, which seems
to have been repaired in 1604 (Reyher, 340). ‘The scene being drawn’
discovered first an altar for Hymen and ‘a microcosm or globe’, which
turned and disclosed the men maskers in a ‘mine’ or ‘grot’. On either
side of the globe stood great statues of Hercules and Atlas. They bore
up the ‘upper part of the scene’, representing clouds, which opened to
disclose the upper regions, whence the women descended on _nimbi_.
Each set of maskers had a dance at entry. They then danced together a
measure with strains ‘all notably different, some of them formed into
letters very signifying to the name of the bridegroom’. This done,
they ‘dissolved’ and took forth others for measures, galliards, and
corantoes. After these ‘intermixed dances’ came ‘their last dances’,
and they departed in a bridal procession with an epithalamion.
The mask was in honour of the wedding of the Earl of Essex and Frances
Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, and was probably given by
their friends. The only Household expenses appear to have been for
the making ready of the room (Reyher, 520), but Lady Rutland’s share
seems to have cost the Earl over £100 (_Hist. MSS. Rutland Accounts_,
iv. 457). The dancers were the Countesses of Montgomery, Bedford, and
Rutland, the Ladies Knollys, Berkeley, Dorothy Hastings, and Blanch
Somerset, and Mrs. A. Sackville, with the Earls of Montgomery and
Arundel, Lords Willoughby and Howard de Walden, Sir James Hay, Sir
Thomas Howard, Sir Thomas Somerset, and Sir John Ashley. The ‘design
and act’ and the device of the costumes were by Inigo Jones, the songs
by Alphonso Ferrabosco, and the dances by Thomas Giles.
On the next day followed a Barriers, in which, after a dialogue by
Jonson between Truth and Opinion, sixteen knights fought on the side of
either disputant (cf. vol. i, p. 146).
The following account was sent by John Pory to Sir Robert Cotton on 7
Jan. (_B.M. Cotton MS. Julius_ C. iii. 301, printed in Goodman, ii.
124; Collier, i. 350; Birch, i. 42; Sullivan, 199):
‘I haue seen both the mask on Sunday and the barriers on Mundy
night. The Bridegroom carried himself as grauely and gracefully
as if he were of his fathers age. He had greater guiftes giuen
him then my lord Montgomery had, his plate being valued at
3000£ and his jewels, mony and other guiftes at 1600£ more.
But to returne to the maske; both Inigo, Ben, and the actors
men and women did their partes with great commendation. The
conceite or soule of the mask was Hymen bringing in a bride
and Juno pronuba’s priest a bridegroom, proclaiming those two
should be sacrificed to nuptial vnion, and here the poet made
an apostrophe to the vnion of the kingdoms. But before the
sacrifice could be performed, Ben Jonson turned the globe of
the earth standing behind the altar, and within the concaue
sate the 8 men maskers representing the 4 humours and the fower
affections which leapt forth to disturb the sacrifice to vnion;
but amidst their fury Reason that sate aboue them all, crowned
with burning tapers, came down and silenced them. These eight
together with Reason their moderatresse mounted aboue their
heades, sate somewhat like the ladies in the scallop shell the
last year. Aboue the globe of erth houered a middle region of
cloudes in the center wherof stood a grand consort of musicians,
and vpon the cantons or hornes sate the ladies 4 at one corner,
and 4 at another, who descended vpon the stage, not after the
stale downright perpendicular fashion, like a bucket into a
well; but came gently sloping down. These eight, after the
sacrifice was ended, represented the 8 nuptial powers of Juno
pronuba who came downe to confirme the vnion. The men were clad
in crimzon and the weomen in white. They had euery one a white
plume of the richest herons fethers, and were so rich in jewels
vpon their heades as was most glorious. I think they hired and
borrowed all the principal jewels and ropes of perle both in
court and citty. The Spanish ambassador seemed but poore to
the meanest of them. They danced all variety of dances, both
seuerally and promiscue; and then the women took in men as
namely the Prince (who danced with as great perfection and as
setled a maiesty as could be deuised) the Spanish ambassador,
the Archdukes, Ambassador, the Duke, etc., and the men gleaned
out the Queen, the bride, and the greatest of the ladies. The
second night the barriers were as well performed by fifteen
against fifteen; the Duke of Lennox being chieftain on the one
side, and my Lord of Sussex on the other.’
_Mask of Beauty. 10 Jan. 1608_
_S. R._ 1608, 21 April. [See _Mask of Blackness_.]
N.D. [See _Mask of Blackness_.]
1616. The Second Masque. Which was of Beautie; Was presented in the
same Court, at White-Hall, on the Sunday night after the Twelfth Night.
1608. [Part of F_{1}.] The maskers, in orange-tawny and silver and
green and silver, were the twelve Daughters of Niger of the Mask of
Blackness, now laved white, with four more; the torchbearers Cupids;
the presenters January, Boreas, Vulturnus, Thamesis; the musicians
Echoes and Shades of old Poets.
The locality was the new banqueting-house at Whitehall. January was
throned in midst of the house. The curtain, representing Night,
was drawn to discover the maskers on a Throne of Beauty, borne by a
floating isle.
The maskers gave two dances, which were repeated at the King’s request,
and then danced ‘with the lords’. They danced galliards and corantoes.
They then gave a third dance, and a fourth, which took them into their
throne again.
This was a Queen’s mask, danced by the Queen, Arabella Stuart, the
Countesses of Arundel, Derby, Bedford, and Montgomery, and the Ladies
Elizabeth Guildford, Katherine Petre, Anne Winter, Windsor, Anne
Clifford, Mary Neville, Elizabeth Hatton, Elizabeth Gerard, Chichester,
and Walsingham. The torchbearers were ‘chosen out of the best and
ingenious youth of the Kingdom’. The scene was ‘put in act’ by the
King’s master carpenter. Thomas Giles made the dances and played
Thamesis.
The mask was announced by 9 Dec. (_V. P._ xi. 74). On 10 Dec. La
Boderie (ii. 490) reported that it would cost 6,000 or 7,000 crowns,
and that nearly all the ladies invited by the Queen to take part in
it were Catholics. Anne’s preparations were in swing before 17 Dec.
(_V. P._ xi. 76). On 22 Dec. La Boderie reported (iii. 6) that he had
underestimated the cost, which would not be less than 30,000 crowns,
and was causing much annoyance to the Privy Council. On 31 Dec. Donne
(_Letters_, i. 182) intended to deliver a letter ‘when the rage of the
mask is past’. Lord Arundel notes his wife’s practising early in Jan.
(Lodge, App. 124). The original date was 6 Jan. ‘The Mask goes forward
for Twelfth-day’, wrote Chamberlain to Carleton on 5 Jan. (_S. P. D.
Jac. I_, xxxi. 2; Birch, i. 69), ‘though I doubt the new room will be
scant ready’. But on 8 Jan. (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xxxi. 4; Birch, i. 71)
he wrote again:
‘We had great hopes of having you here this day, and then I
would not have given my part of the mask for any of their
places that shall be present, for I suppose you and your lady
would find easily passage, being so befriended; for the show is
put off till Sunday, by reason that all things are not ready.
Whatsoever the device may be, and what success they may have in
their dancing, yet you would have been sure to have seen great
riches in jewels, when one lady, and that under a baroness, is
said to be furnished far better then a hundred thousand pounds.
And the Lady Arabella goes beyond her; and the queen must not
come behind.’
The delay was really due to ambassadorial complications, which are
reported by Giustinian (_V. P._ xi. 83, 86) and very fully by La
Boderie (iii. 1–75; cf. Sullivan, 35, 201). The original intention was
to invite the Spanish and Venetian, but not the French and Flemish
ambassadors. This, according to Giustinian, offended La Boderie,
because Venice was ‘the nobler company’. But the real sting lay in
the invitation to Spain. This was represented to La Boderie about 23
Dec. as the personal act of Anne, in the face of a remonstrance by
James on the ground of the preference already shown to Spain in 1605.
La Boderie replied that he had already been slighted at the King of
Denmark’s visit, that the mask was a public occasion, and that Henri
would certainly hold James responsible. A few days later he was told
that James was greatly annoyed at his wife’s levity, and would ask
him and the Venetian ambassador to dinner; but La Boderie refused to
accept this as a compliment equivalent to seeing the Queen dance,
and supping with the King before 10,000 persons. He urged that both
ambassadors or neither should be invited, and hinted that, if Anne was
so openly Spanish in her tendencies, Henri might feel obliged to leave
the mission in charge of a secretary. An offer was made to invite La
Boderie’s wife, but this he naturally refused. The Council tried in
vain to make Anne hear reason, but finally let the mask proceed, and
countered Henri diplomatically by calling his attention to the money
debts due from France to England. Meanwhile Giustinian had pressed for
his own invitation in place of the Flemish ambassador, and obtained it.
The Spanish and Venetian ambassadors were therefore present. La Boderie
reported that much attention was paid to Giustinian, and little to the
Spanish ambassador, and also that James was so angry with Anne that he
left for a hunting trip the next day without seeing her. Giustinian
admired the mask, which was, James told him (_V. P._ xi. 86), ‘to
consecrate the birth of the Great Hall, which his predecessors had
left him built merely in wood, but which he had converted into stone’.
Probably this is the mask described in a letter of Lady Pembroke to
Lord Shrewsbury calendared without date among letters of 1607–8 in
Lodge, iii, App. 121. On 28 Jan. the Spanish ambassador invited the
fifteen ladies who had danced to dinner (Lodge, iii. 223; La Boderie,
iii. 81). On 29 Jan. Lord Lisle wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury
regretting that he could not send him the verses, because Ben Jonson
was busy writing more for the Haddington wedding (Lodge, App. 102).
A warrant for expenses was signed 11 Dec. (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xxviii).
A payment was made to Bethell (Reyher, 520).
_Lord Haddington’s Mask_ [_The Hue and Cry after Cupid_].
_9 Feb. 1608_
N.D. The Description of the Masque. With the Nuptiall Songs.
Celebrating the happy Marriage of Iohn, Lord Ramsey, Viscount
Hadington, with the Lady Elizabeth Ratcliffe, Daughter to the right
Honor: Robert, Earle of Sussex. At Court On the Shroue-Tuesday at
night. 1608. Deuised by Ben: Ionson. [_No imprint._]
1616. [Part of F_{1}.] The maskers were the twelve Signs of the Zodiac
in carnation and silver; the antimaskers Cupid and twelve Joci and
Risus, who danced ‘with their antic faces’; the presenters Venus, the
Graces and Cupid, Hymen, Vulcan and the Cyclopes; the musicians Priests
of Hymen, while the Cyclopes beat time with their sledges.
Pilasters hung with amorous trophies supported gigantic figures of
Triumph and Victory ‘in place of the arch, and holding a gyrlond of
myrtle for the key’. The scene was a steep red cliff (Radcliffe), over
which clouds broke for the issue of the chariot of Venus. After the
antimasque, the cliff parted, to discover the maskers in a turning
sphere of silver. The maskers gave four dances, interspersed with
verses of an epithalamion. The mask was given by the maskers, seven
Scottish and five English lords and gentlemen, the Duke of Lennox,
the Earls of Arundel, Pembroke, and Montgomery, Lords D’Aubigny, De
Walden, Hay, and Sanquhar, the Master of Mar, Sir Robert Rich, Sir John
Kennedy, and Mr. Erskine. (Quarto and Lodge, iii. 223.) The ‘device and
act of the scene’ were supplied by Inigo Jones, the tunes by Alphonso
Ferrabosco, and two dances each by Hierome Herne and Thomas Giles, who
also beat time as Cyclopes.
Rowland White told Lord Shrewsbury on 26 Jan. that the mask was ‘now
the only thing thought upon at court’, and would cost the maskers about
£300 a man (Lodge, iii. 223). Jonson was busy with the verses on 29
Jan. (Lodge, App. 102).
Sussex and Haddington intended to ask the French ambassador both
to the wedding dinner and to the mask and banquet, but the Lord
Chamberlain, having Spanish sympathies, would not consent. In the end
he was asked by James himself to the mask and banquet, at which Prince
Henry would preside. He accepted, and suggested that Henri should
present Haddington with a ring, but this was not done. He thought the
mask ‘assez maigre’, but Anne was very gracious, and James regretted
that etiquette did not allow him to sit at the banquet in person. La
Boderie’s wife and daughter, who danced with the Duke of York, were
also present. Unfortunately he did not receive in time an instruction
from Paris to keep away if the Flemish ambassador was asked, and did
not protest against this invitation on his own responsibility, partly
out of annoyance with the Venetian for attending the Queen’s mask
without him, and partly for fear of losing his own invitation. The
Fleming had had far less consideration than himself (La Boderie, iii.
75–144). So both the French and the Flemish ambassador were present,
with two princes of Saxony (_V. P._ xi. 97).
English criticisms were more kindly than La Boderie’s. Sir Henry
Saville described it to Sir Richard Beaumont on the same night as a
‘singular brave mask’, at which he had been until three in the morning
(_Beaumont Papers_, 17), and Chamberlain wrote to Carleton on 11 Feb.
(_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xxxi. 26; Birch, i. 72): ‘I can send you no perfect
relation of the marriage nor mask on Tuesday, only they say all,
but especially the motions, were well performed; as Venus, with her
chariot drawn by swans, coming in a cloud to seek her son; who with his
companions, Lusus, Risus, and Janus [? Jocus], and four or five more
wags, were dancing a matachina, and acted it very antiquely, before the
twelve signs, who were the master maskers, descended from the zodiac,
and played their parts more gravely, being very gracefully attired.’
_Mask of Queens. 2 Feb. 1609_
[_MSS._] (a) _B.M. Harl. MS._ 6947, f. 143 (printed Reyher, 506).
[Apparently a short descriptive analysis or programme, without the
words of the dialogue and songs.]
(b) _B.M. Royal MS._ 18 A. xlv. [Holograph. Epistle to Prince Henry.]
_S. R._ 1609, Feb. 22 (Segar). ‘A booke called, The maske of Queenes
Celebrated, done by Beniamin Johnson.’ _Richard Bonion and Henry
Walley_ (Arber, iii. 402).
1609. The Masque of Queenes Celebrated From the House of Fame: By the
most absolute in all State, And Titles. Anne, Queene of Great Britaine,
&c. With her Honourable Ladies. At White-Hall, Febr. 2. 1609. Written
by Ben: Ionson. _N. Okes for R. Bonian and H. Wally._ [Epistle to
Prince Henry.]
1616. [Part of F_{1}.]
_Edition_ in J. P. Collier, _Five Court Masques_ (1848, _Sh. Soc._ from
_Royal MS._).
Jonson prefaces that ‘because Her Majesty (best knowing that a
principal part of life in these spectacles lay in their variety) had
commanded me to think on some dance, or shew, that might precede
hers, and have the place of a foil, or false masque: I was careful
to decline, not only from others, but mine own steps in that kind,
since the last year, I had an antimasque of boys; and therefore now
devised that twelve women, in the habit of hags or witches, sustaining
the persons of Ignorance, Suspicion, Credulity, &c., the opposites to
good Fame, should fill that part, not as a masque, but as a spectacle
of strangeness’ [it is called a ‘maske’ in the programme] ‘producing
multiplicity of gesture, and not unaptly sorting with the current and
whole fall of the device’.
The maskers, in various habits, eight designs for which are in _Sh.
England_, ii. 311, were Bel-Anna and eleven other Queens, who were
attended by torchbearers; the antimaskers eleven Hags and their dame
Ate; the presenters Perseus or Heroic Virtue and Fame.
The locality was the new banqueting-house at Whitehall (_T. of C.
Acct._, quoted by Sullivan, 54). The scene at first represented a
Hell, whence the antimask issued. In the middle of a ‘magical dance’
it vanished at a blast of music, ‘and the whole face of the scene
altered’, becoming the House of Fame, a ‘_machina versatilis_’, which
showed first Perseus and the maskers and then Fame. Descending, the
maskers made their entry in three chariots, to which the Hags were
bound. They danced their first and second dances; then ‘took out the
men, and danced the measures’ for nearly an hour. After an interval for
a song, came their third dance, ‘graphically disposed into letters,
and honouring the name of the most sweet and ingenious Prince, Charles
Duke of York’. Galliards and corantoes followed, and after their ‘last
dance’ they returned in their chariots to the House of Fame.
This was a Queen’s mask, danced by the Queen, the Countesses of
Arundel, Derby, Huntingdon, Bedford, Essex, and Montgomery, the
Viscountess Cranborne, and the Ladies Elizabeth Guildford, Anne Winter,
Windsor, and Anne Clifford. Inigo Jones was responsible for the attire
of the Hags, and ‘the invention and architecture of the whole scene and
machine’; Alphonso Ferrabosco for the airs of the songs; Thomas Giles
for the third dance, and Hierome Herne for the dance of Hags. John
Allen, ‘her Majesty’s servant’, sang a ditty between the measures and
the third dance.
As early as 14 Nov. Donne wrote to Sir Henry Goodyere (_Letters_, i.
199), ‘The King ... hath left with the Queen a commandment to meditate
upon a masque for Christmas, so that they grow serious about that
already’. The performance was originally intended for 6 Jan. (_V. P._
xi. 219), but on 10 Jan. Chamberlain wrote to Carleton (Birch, i.
87), ‘The mask at court is put off till Candlemas, as it is thought
the Spaniard may be gone, for the French ambassador hath been so long
and so much neglected, that it is doubted more would not be well
endured’. The intrigues which determined this delay are described in
the diplomatic correspondence of the French and Venetian ambassadors
(La Boderie, iv. 104, 123, 136, 145, 175, 228; _V. P._ xi. 212, 219,
222, 231, 234; cf. Sullivan, 47, 212). Hints of a _rapprochement_
between France and Spain had made James anxious to conciliate Henri IV.
Even Anne had learnt discretion, and desired that La Boderie should
be present at the mask. He was advised by Salisbury to ask for an
invitation, which he did, through his wife and Lady Bedford. He had
instructions from Henri to retire from Court and leave a secretary
in charge if his master’s dignity was compromised. Unfortunately
the Spanish ambassador leiger was reinforced by an ambassador
extraordinary, Don Fernandez de Girone, and took advantage of this
to press on his side for an invitation. Etiquette gave a precedence
to ambassadors extraordinary, and all that could be done was to wait
until Don Fernandez was gone. This was not until 1 Feb. La Boderie was
at the mask, and treated with much courtesy. He excused himself from
dancing, but the Duke of York took out his daughter, and he supped
with the King and the princes. He found the mask ‘fort riche, et s’il
m’est loisible de le dire, plus superbe qu’ingenieux’. He also thought
that of the ‘intermédes’ there were ‘trop et d’assez tristes’. The
Spanish influence, however, was sufficiently strong, when exercised on
behalf of Flanders, to disappoint the Venetian ambassador of a promised
invitation, and La Boderie was the only diplomatic representative
present. Anne asked Correr to come privately, but this he would not do,
and she said she should trouble herself no more about masks.
It was at first intended to limit the cost of the mask to £1,000, but
on 27 Nov. Sir Thomas Lake wrote to Salisbury that the King would
allow a ‘reasonable encrease’ upon this, and had agreed that certain
lords should sign and allow bills for the charges (_S. P. D. Jac. I_,
xxxvii. 96, printed and misdated 1607 in Sullivan, 201). This duty
was apparently assigned to Lord Suffolk as Lord Chamberlain and Lord
Worcester as Master of the Horse, in whose names a warrant was issued
on 1 Dec. (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xxxviii. 1). The financial documents
cited by Reyher, 520, suggest that the actual payments passed through
the hands of Inigo Jones and Henry Reynolds. Reyher, 72, reckons the
total cost at near £5,000. This seems very high. A contemporary writer,
W. Ffarrington (_Chetham Soc._ xxxix. 151), gives the estimate of ‘them
that had a hand in the business as “at the leaste two thousand pounde”’.
_Oberon, the Faery Prince. 1 Jan. 1611_
1616. Oberon the Faery Prince. A Masque of Prince Henries. _W. Stansby,
sold by Richard Meighen._ [Part of F_{1}.]
The maskers were Oberon and his Knights, accompanied by the Faies,
‘some bearing lights’; the antimaskers Satyrs; the presenters Sylvans;
some of the musicians Satyrs and Faies.
This was ‘a very stately maske ... in the beautifull roome at
Whitehall, which roome is generally called the Banquetting-house; and
the King new builded it about foure yeeres past’ (Stowe, _Annales_,
910). ‘The first face of the scene’ was a cliff, from which the
antimask issued. The scene opened to discover the front of a palace,
and this again, after ‘an antick dance’ ended by the crowing of the
cock, to disclose ‘the nation of Faies’, with the maskers on ‘sieges’
and Oberon in a chariot drawn by two white bears. ‘The lesser Faies’
danced; then came a first and second ‘masque-dance’, then ‘measures,
corantos, galliards, etc.’, and finally a ‘last dance into the work’.
This was a Prince’s mask, and clearly Henry was Oberon, but the names
of the other maskers are not preserved.
Henry’s preparation for a mask is mentioned on 15 Nov. by Correr, who
reports that he would have liked it to be on horseback, if James had
consented (_V. P._ xii. 79), on 3 Dec. by Thomas Screven (_Rutland
MSS._ iv. 211), ‘The Prince is com to St. James and prepareth for a
mask’, and on 15 Dec. by John More (Winwood, iii. 239), ‘Yet doth the
Prince make but one mask’.
The diplomatic tendency at this time was to detach France from growing
relations from Spain, and it was intended that both the masks of the
winter 1610–11 should serve to entertain the Marshal de Laverdin,
expected as ambassador extraordinary from Paris for the signature of a
treaty. But the Regent Marie de Médicis was not anxious to emphasize
the occasion, and the Marshal did not arrive in time for the Prince’s
mask, which took place on 1 Jan. ‘It looked’, says Correr, ‘as though
he did not understand the honour done him by the King and the Prince.’
The Spanish and Venetian ambassadors were therefore invited, and were
present. The Dutch ambassador was invited, but professed illness, to
avoid complications with the Spaniard. Correr found the mask ‘very
beautiful throughout, very decorative, but most remarkable for the
grace of the Prince’s every movement’ (_Rutland MSS._ i. 426; _V. P._
xii. 101, 106; cf. Sullivan, 61).
None of the above notices in fact identify Henry’s mask of 1 Jan. 1611
with the undated _Oberon_, but proof is forthcoming from an Exchequer
payment of May 1611 for ‘the late Princes barriers and masks’ (text in
Reyher, 511) which specifies ‘the Satires and faeries’. The amount was
£247 9_s._, and the items include payments to composers, musicians, and
players. We learn that [Robert] Johnson and [Thomas] Giles provided
the dances, and Alphonse [Ferrabosco] singers and lutenists, that the
violins were Thomas Lupo the elder, Alexander Chisan, and Rowland
Rubidge, and that ‘xiij^n Holt boyes’ were employed, presumably as
fays. There is a sum of £15 for ‘players imployed in the maske’ and
£15 more for ‘players imployed in the barriers’, about which barriers
no more is known. This account, subscribed by Sir Thomas Chaloner, by
no means exhausts the expense of the mask. Other financial documents
(Devon, 131, 134, 136; cf. Reyher, 521) show payments of £40 each to
Jonson and Inigo Jones, and £20 each to Ferrabosco, Jerome Herne, and
Confess. These were from the Exchequer. An additional £16 to Inigo
Jones ‘devyser for the saide maske’ fell upon Henry’s privy purse,
together with heavy bills to mercers and other tradesmen, amounting
to £1,076 6_s._ 10_d._ (Cunningham, viii, from _Audit Office Declared
Accts._). Correr had reported on 22 Nov. that neither of the masks of
this winter was to ‘be so costly as last year’s, which to say sooth
was excessively costly’ (_V. P._ xii. 86). The anticipation can hardly
have been fulfilled. I suppose that ‘last year’s’ means the _Tethys’
Festival_ of June 1610, as no mask during the winter of 1609–10 is
traceable.
_Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly. 3 Feb. 1611_
1616. A Masque of her Maiesties. Love freed from Ignorance and Folly.
_W. Stansby, sold by Richard Meighen._ [Part of F_{1}.]
The maskers were eleven Daughters of the Morn, led by the Queen of the
Orient; the antimaskers twelve Follies or She-Fools; the presenters
Cupid and Ignorance, a Sphinx; the musicians twelve Priests of the
Muses, who also danced a measure, and three Graces, with others.
The locality was probably the banqueting-hall. The scene is not
described. There were two ‘masque-dances’, with ‘measures and revels’
between them. This was a Queen’s mask, but the names of the maskers are
not preserved.
John More wrote on 15 Dec. (Winwood, iii. 239), ‘Yet doth the Prince
make but one mask, and the Queen but two, which doth cost her majesty
but £600.’ Perhaps the writer was mistaken. Anne had not given more
than one mask in any winter, nor is there any trace of a second in that
of 1610–11. Correr, on 22 Nov., anticipates one only, not to be so
costly as last year’s. It was to precede the Prince’s. It was, however,
put off to Twelfth Night, and then again to Candlemas, ‘either because
the stage machinery is not in order, or because their Majesties thought
it well to let the Marshal depart first’. This was Marshal de Laverdin,
whose departure from France as ambassador extraordinary was delayed
(cf. _Mask of Oberon_). He was present at the mask when it actually
took place on 3 Feb., the day after Candlemas. Apparently the Venetian
ambassador was also invited. (_V. P._ xii. 86, 101, 106, 110, 115.)
Several financial documents bearing on the mask exist (_S. P. D.
Jac. I_, lvii, Nov.; Devon, 135; Reyher, 509, 521), and show that
the contemplated £600 was in fact exceeded. An account signed by the
Earls of Suffolk and Worcester, to whom the oversight of the charges
was doubtless assigned as Household officers, shows that in addition
to £600 14_s._ 3_d._ spent in defraying the bills of Inigo Jones and
others and in rewards, there was a further expenditure of £118 7_s._
by the Wardrobe, and even then no items are included for the dresses
of the main maskers, which were probably paid for by the wearers. The
rewards include £2 each to five boys who played the Graces, Sphinx, and
Cupid, and £1 each to the twelve Fools. This enables us to identify
Jonson’s undated mask with that of 1611. Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones had
£40 each; Alphonso [Ferrabosco] £20 for the songs; [Robert] Johnson
and Thomas Lupo £5 each for setting the songs to lutes and setting the
dances to violins, and Confess and Bochan £50 and £20 for teaching the
dances.
_Love Restored. 6 Jan. 1612_
1616. Love Restored, In a Masque at Court, by Gentlemen the Kings
Seruants. _W. Stansby, sold by Richard Meighen._ [Part of F_{1}.]
The maskers were the ten Ornaments of Court--Honour, Courtesy, Valour,
Urbanity, Confidence, Alacrity, Promptness, Industry, Hability,
Reality; the presenters Masquerado, Plutus, Robin Goodfellow, and
Cupid, who entered in a chariot attended by the maskers. There were
three dances. Jonson’s description is exceptionally meagre.
The dialogue finds its humour in the details of mask-presentation
themselves. Masquerado, in his vizard, apologizes for the absence of
musicians and the hoarseness of ‘the rogue play-boy, that acts Cupid’.
Plutus criticizes the expense and the corruption of manners involved in
masks. Robin Goodfellow narrates his difficulties in obtaining access.
He has tried in vain to get through the Woodyard on to the Terrace, but
the Guard pushed him off a ladder into the Verge. The Carpenters’ way
also failed him. He has offered, or thought of offering, himself as an
‘enginer’ belonging to the ‘motions’, but they were ‘ceased’; as an
old tire-woman; as a musician; as a feather-maker of Blackfriars; as a
‘bombard man’, carrying ‘bouge’ to country ladies who had fasted for
the fine sight since seven in the morning; as a citizen’s wife, exposed
to the liberties of the ‘black-guard’; as a wireman or a chandler; and
finally in his own shape as ‘part of the Device’.
There are several financial documents relating to a mask at Christmas
1611, for which funds were issued to one Meredith Morgan (_S. P. D.
Jac. I_, lxvii, Dec.; lxviii, Jan.; Reyher, 521). The Revels Account
(Cunningham, 211) records a ‘princes Mask performed by Gentelmen of his
High [ ]’ on 6 Jan. 1612. According to Chamberlain, the Queen was at
Greenwich ‘practising for a new mask’ on 20 Nov., but this was put off
in December as ‘unseasonable’ so soon after the death of the Queen of
Spain (Birch, i. 148, 152). Jonson does not date _Love Restored_, but
Dr. Brotanek has successfully assigned it to 1611–12 on the ground of
its reference to ‘the Christmas cut-purse’, of whom Chamberlain wrote
to Carleton on 31 Dec. 1611 that ‘a cut-purse, taken in the Chapel
Royal, will be executed’ (Brotanek, 347; cf. _S. P. D. Jac. I_, lxvii.
117, and _Bartholomew Fair_ (1614), III. v. 132). This was one John
Selman, executed on 7 Jan. 1612 for picking the pocket of Leonard
Barry, servant to Lord Harington, on Christmas Day (Rye, 269). I may
add that Robin Goodfellow, when pretending to be concerned with the
motions, was asked if he were ‘the fighting bear of last year’, and
that the chariot of Oberon on 1 Jan. 1611 was drawn by white bears.
There is, of course, nothing inconsistent in a Prince’s mask being
performed by King’s servants, and the ‘High[ness]’ of the Revels
Account may mean James, just as well as Henry. Simpson (_E. M._ 1.
xxxiv) puts _Love Restored_ in 1613–14, as connected with the tilt (cf.
p. 393), but there is no room for it (cf. p. 246).
_The Irish Mask. 29 Dec. 1613_
1616. The Irish Masque at Court, by Gentlemen the Kings Servants. _W.
Stansby, sold by Richard Meighen._ [Part of F_{1}.]
The maskers were twelve Irish Gentlemen, first in mantles, then
without; the antimaskers their twelve Footmen; the presenters a Citizen
and a Gentleman; one of the musicians an Irish bard. The Footmen dance
‘to the bag-pipe and other rude music’, after which the Gentlemen
‘dance forth’ twice.
The antimaskers say that their lords have come to the bridal of ‘ty
man Robyne’ to the daughter of ‘Toumaish o’ Shuffolke’, who has
knocked them on the pate with his ‘phoyt stick’, as they came by.
There are also compliments to ‘King Yamish’, ‘my Mistresh tere’, ‘my
little Maishter’, and ‘te vfrow, ty daughter, tat is in Tuchland’. It
is therefore easy to supply the date which Jonson omits, as the mask
clearly belongs to the series presented in honour of the wedding of
Robert Earl of Somerset with the Earl of Suffolk’s daughter during
the Christmas of 1613–14. The list in Stowe, _Annales_, 928 (cf.
s.v. Campion), includes one on 29 Dec. by ‘the Prince’s Gentlemen,
which pleased the King so well that hee caused them to performe it
againe uppon the Monday following’. This was 3 Jan.; the 10 Jan. in
Nichols, ii. 718, is a misreading of the evidence in Chamberlain’s
letters, which identify the mask as Jonson’s by a notice of the Irish
element. On 30 Dec. Chamberlain wrote to Alice Carleton (Birch, i.
285), ‘yesternight there was a medley mask of five English and five
Scots, which are called the high dancers, amongst whom Sergeant Boyd,
one Abercrombie, and Auchternouty, that was at Padua and Venice, are
esteemed the most principal and lofty, but how it succeeded I know
not’. Later in the letter he added, probably in reference to this and
not Campion’s mask, ‘Sir William Bowyer hath lost his eldest son, Sir
Henry. He was a fine dancer, and should have been of the masque, but
overheating himself with practising, he fell into the smallpox and
died.’ On 5 Jan. he wrote to Dudley Carleton (Birch, i. 287), ‘The----
maskers were so well liked at court the last week that they were
appointed to perform again on Monday: yet their device, which was a
mimical imitation of the Irish, was not pleasing to many, who think it
no time, as the case stands, to exasperate that nation, by making it
ridiculous’. On the finance cf. s.v. Campion.
_Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists. 6 Jan. 1615_
1616. Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court by Gentlemen the
Kings Seruants. _W. Stansby, sold by Richard Meighen._ [Part of F_{1}.]
The maskers were twelve Sons of Nature; the first antimaskers
Alchemists, the second Imperfect Creatures, in helms of limbecs; the
presenters Vulcan, Cyclops, Mercury, Nature, and Prometheus, with a
chorus of musicians.
The locality was doubtless Whitehall. The scene first discovered was
a laboratory. After the antimasks it changed to a bower, whence the
maskers descended for ‘the first dance’, ‘the main dance’, and, after
dancing with the ladies, ‘their last dance’. Donne (_Letters_, ii. 65)
wrote to Sir Henry Goodyere on 13 Dec. [1614], ‘They are preparing
for a masque of gentlemen, in which M^r. Villiers is and M^r. Karre
whom I told you before my Lord Chamberlain had brought into the
bedchamber’. On 18 Dec. [1614] (ii. 66) he adds, ‘M^r. Villiers ...
is here, practising for the masque’. The year-dates can be supplied
by comparison with Chamberlain’s letters to Carleton. On 1 Dec. 1614
(_S. P. D. Jac. I_, lxxviii. 65) Chamberlain wrote, ‘And yet for all
this penurious world we speake of a maske this Christmas toward which
the King gives 1500£ the principall motiue wherof is thought to be the
gracing of younge Villers and to bring him on the stage’. It should
be borne in mind that there was at this time an intrigue amongst the
Court party opposed to Somerset and the Howards, including Donne’s
patroness Lady Bedford, to put forward George Villiers, afterwards Duke
of Buckingham, as a rival to the Earl of Somerset in the good graces of
James I. On 5 Jan. Chamberlain wrote again (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, lxxx. 1;
Birch, i. 290, but there misdated), ‘Tomorrow night there is a mask at
court, but the common voice and preparations promise so little, that
it breeds no great expectation’; and on 12 Jan. (_S. P. D._ lxxx. 4;
Birch, i. 356), ‘The only matter I can advertise ... is the success
of the mask on Twelfth Night, which was so well liked and applauded,
that the King had it represented again the Sunday night after [8
Jan.] in the very same manner, though neither in device nor show was
there anything extraordinary, but only excellent dancing; the choice
being made of the best, both English and Scots’. He then describes an
ambassadorial incident, which is also detailed in a report by Foscarini
(_V. P._ xiii. 317) and by Finett, 19 (cf. Sullivan, 95). The Spanish
ambassador refused to appear in public with the Dutch ambassador,
although it was shown that his predecessor had already done so, and in
the end both withdrew. The Venetian ambassador and Tuscan agent were
alone present. An invitation to the French ambassador does not appear
to have been in question.
Financial documents (Reyher, 523; _S. P. D._ lxxx, Mar.) show that one
Walter James received Exchequer funds for the mask.
I am not quite sure that Brotanek, 351, is right in identifying
_Mercury Vindicated_ with the mask of January 1615 and _The Golden
Age Restored_ with that of January 1616, but the evidence is so
inconclusive that it is not worth while to disturb his chronology.
_Mercury Vindicated_ is not dated in the Folio, but it is printed next
before _The Golden Age Restored_, which is dated ‘1615’. Now it is true
that the order of the Folio, as Brotanek points out, appears to be
chronological; but it is also true that, at any rate for the masks, the
year-dates, by a practice characteristic of Jonson, follow Circumcision
and not Annunciation style. One or other principle seems to have been
disregarded at the end of the Folio, and who shall say which? Brotanek
attempts to support his arrangement by tracing topical allusions (_a_)
in _Mercury Vindicated_ to Court ‘brabbles’ of 1614–15, (_b_) in _The
Golden Age Restored_ to the Somerset _esclandre_. But there are always
‘brabbles’ in courts, and I can find no references to Somerset at all.
Nor is it in the least likely that there would be any. _Per contra_, I
may note that Chamberlain’s description of the ‘device’ in 1615 as not
‘extraordinary’ applies better to _The Golden Age Restored_ than to
_Mercury Vindicated_.
_The Golden Age Restored. 1 Jan. 1616_
1616. The Golden Age Restor’d. In a Maske at Court, 1615. by the Lords,
and Gentlemen, the Kings Seruants. _W. Stansby, sold by Richard
Meighen._ [Part of F_{1}.]
The maskers were Sons of Phoebus, Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, Spenser, and
presumably others; the antimaskers twelve Evils; the presenters Pallas,
Astraea, the Iron Age, and the Golden Age, with a chorus of musicians.
The locality was doubtless Whitehall. Pallas descended, and the Evils
came from a cave, danced to ‘two drums, trumpets, and a confusion of
martial music’, and were turned to statues. The scene changed, and
later the scene of light was discovered. After ‘the first dance’ and
‘the main dance’, the maskers danced with the ladies, and then danced
‘the galliards and corantos’.
Finett, 31 (cf. Sullivan, 237), tells us that ‘The King being desirous
that the French, Venetian, and Savoyard ambassadors should all be
invited to a maske at court prepared for New-years night, an exception
comming from the French, was a cause of deferring their invitation
till Twelfe night, when the Maske was to be re-acted, ... [They] were
received at eight of the clock, the houre assigned (no supper being
prepared for them, as at other times, to avoid the trouble incident)
and were conducted to the privy gallery by the Lord Chamberlaine and
the Lord Danvers appointed (an honour more than had been formerly
done to Ambassadors Ordinary) to accompany them, the Master of the
Ceremonies being also present. They were all there placed at the maske
on the Kings right hand (not right out, but byas forward) first and
next to the King the French, next him the Venetian, and next him the
Savoyard. At his Majesties left hand sate the Queen, and next her the
Prince. The maske being ended, they followed his Majesty to a banquet
in the presence, and returned by the way they entered: the followers
of the French were placed in a seate reserved for them above over
the Kings right hand; the others in one on the left. The Spanish
ambassadors son, and the agent of the Arch-Duke (who invited himselfe)
were bestowed on the forme where the Lords sit, next beneath the
Barons, English, Scotish, and Irish as the sonns of the Ambassador of
Venice, and of Savoy had been placed the maske night before, but were
this night placed with their countreymen in the gallery mentioned.’
Financial documents (Reyher, 523; _S. P. D._ lxxxix. 104) show
Exchequer payments for the mask to Edmund Sadler and perhaps Meredith
Morgan.
On the identification of the mask of 1 and 6 Jan. 1616 with _The Golden
Age Restored_, s.v. _Mercury Vindicated_.
ENTERTAINMENTS
_Althorp Entertainment_ [_The Satyr_]. _1603_
_S. R._ 1604, March 19. [See _Coronation Entertainment_.]
1604. A particular Entertainment of the Queene and Prince their
Highnesse to Althrope, at the Right Honourable the Lord Spencers,
on Saterday being the 25. of Iune 1603. as they come first into the
Kingdome; being written by the same Author [B. Jon:], and not before
published. _V.S. for Edward Blount._ [Appended to the _Coronation
Entertainment_.]
_Editions_ in _Works_ and by Nichols, _James_ (1828), i. 176.
The host, Sir Robert Spencer, of Althorp, Northants, was created Lord
Spencer of Wormleighton on 21 July 1603. On arrival (25 June) the Queen
and Prince were met in the park by a Satyr, Queen Mab, and a bevy of
Fairies, who after a dialogue and song, introduced Spencer’s son John,
as a huntsman, to Henry; and a hunt followed. On Monday afternoon (27
June) came Nobody with a speech to introduce ‘a morris of the clowns
thereabout’, but this and a parting speech by a youth could not be
heard for the throng.
_Coronation Entertainment. 1604_
_S. R._ 1604, March 19 (Pasfield). ‘A Parte of the Kinges Maiesties ...
Entertainement ... done by Beniamin Johnson.’ _Edward Blunt_ (Arber,
iii. 254).
1604. B. Jon: his part of King James his Royall and Magnificent
Entertainement through his Honorable Cittie of London, Thurseday
the 15. of March, 1603. So much as was presented in the first and
last of their Triumphall Arch’s. With his speach made to the last
Presentation, in the Strand, erected by the inhabitants of the Dutchy,
and Westminster. Also, a briefe Panegyre of his Maiesties first and
well auspicated entrance to his high Court of Parliament, on Monday,
the 19. of the same Moneth. With other Additions. _V.S. for Edward
Blount._ [This also includes the _Althorp Entertainment_.]
_Editions_ in _Works_ of Jonson, and by Nichols, _James_
(1828), i. 377.
For other descriptions of the triumph and Jonson’s speeches cf. ch.
xxiv, C.
_Highgate Entertainment_ [_The Penates_]. _1604_
1616. [Head-title] A Priuate Entertainment of the King and Queene,
on May Day in the Morning, At Sir William Cornwalleis his house, at
Highgate. 1604. [Part of F_{1}.]
_Editions_ in _Works_ and by Nichols, _James_ (1828), i. 431.
The host was Sir William Cornwallis, son of Sir Thomas, of Brome Hall,
Suffolk. On arrival, in the morning (1 May), the King and Queen were
received by the Penates, and led through the house into the garden,
for speeches by Mercury and Maia, and a song by Aurora, Zephyrus, and
Flora. In the afternoon was a dialogue in the garden by Mercury and
Pan, who served wine from a fountain.
_Entertainment of King of Denmark. 1606_
1616. [Head-title] The entertainment of the two Kings of Great
Brittaine and Denmarke at Theobalds, Iuly 24, 1606. [Part of F_{1}.]
_Editions_ in _Works_ and by Nichols, _James_, ii. 70.