prospect of the gallows. In 1598 his name is mentioned as one of the
better-known writers of comedies, by Francis Meres, in his 'Palladis
Tamia.' His first successful comedy was, 'Every Man in his Humour.' Fama
says that the manuscript which the author had sent in to the Lord
Chamberlain's Company, was on the point of being rejected when Shakspere
requested to have the play given to him, read it, and caused its being
acted on the stage. This anecdote belongs, however, to the class of
traditional tales of that age, whose value for fixing facts is a most
doubtful one. It is more certain that Ben, at the age of twenty, took
a wife; which contributed very little to the lessening of his chronic
poverty with which he constantly had to struggle. It does not appear that
the union was a very happy one; for he relates that he once left his wife
for five years.
A diary written by an unknown barrister informs us, February 12, 1602:
'Ben Jonson, the poet, nowe lives upon one Townesend and scornes the
world.' [8] In the society of gallants and lords, the young poet felt
himself most at home. All kinds of mendicant epistles, sonnets,
dedications, petitions, and so forth, which he addressed to high
personages, and which have been preserved, convince us that Jonson
neglected nothing that could give an opportunity to the generosity
of liberal noblemen to prove themselves patrons of art in regard to
him. He boasts on the stage of being more in the enjoyment of the
favour of the great ones than any of his literary contemporaries. [9]
Modesty was certainly not a mitigating trait in the character of
hot-tempered Jonson, whose wrath was easily roused.
Convinced of the power of his own genius, he most eagerly wanted to see
the value of his work acknowledged. Not satisfied with the slow judgment
his contemporaries might come to, or the niggardly reward they might
confer; nor content with the prospects of a laurel wreath which grateful
Posterity lays on the marble heads of departed eminent men, this
pretentious disciple of the Muse importunately claimed his full recompense
during his own life. For the applause of the great mass, the dramatist,
after all, has to contend. Jonson strove hard for it; but in vain. A more
towering genius was the favourite of the age. Ben, however, laid the
flattering unction to his soul that he was above Shakspere, [10] even
as above all other contemporary authors; and he left nothing unattempted
to gain the favour of the great public. All his endeavours remained
fruitless. On every occasion he freely displays the rancour he felt at
his ill-success; for he certainly was not master of his temper. In poems,
epistles, and epigrams, as well as in his dramas, and in the dedications,
prologues, and epilogues attached thereto, he shows his anger against the
'so-called stage poets.' We shall prove that his fullest indignation is
mainly directed against one--the very greatest: need we name him?
Jonson, resolved upon making the most of his Muse in a remunerative
sense, well knew how to obtain the patronage of the highest persons
of the country; and his ambition seems to have found satisfaction when,
afterwards, a call was made upon him, on the part of the Court, to
compose 'Masques' for Twelfth-Night and similar extraordinary occasions.
He produced a theatrical piece in consonance with the barbaric taste
prevailing in Whitehall, which gave plenty to do to the machinists,
the decorators, and the play-dresser of the stage. With such a division
of labour in the domain of art, it is not easy, to-day, to decide to
whom the greater merit belongs, among those concerned, of having
afforded entertainment to the courtiers. Dramatic or poetical value
is wanting in those productions of Jonson.
From his poems, as well as from the 'Conversations with Drummond,'
we know that among the patronesses of Jonson there were Lucie Countess
of Bedford and Elizabeth Countess of Rutland--two ladies to whom
Florio dedicated a translation of Montaigne. Lady Rutland's marriage
was a most unhappy one. In the literary intercourse with prominent men
of her time she appears to have sought consolation and distraction.
Jonson's relations with this lady must have been rather friendly ones,
for 'Ben one day being at table with my Lady Rutland, her husband
coming in, accused her that she keept table to poets, of which she
wrott a letter to him (Jonson), which he answered. My lord intercepted
the letter, but never chalenged him.' [11]
From the same source which makes this statement we take the following
trait in Jonson's character, which is as little calculated as his
passionate quarrelsomeness to endear him to us. Sir Thomas Overbury
had become enamoured of unhappy Lady Rutland. Jonson was asked by this
nobleman, who at the same time was a poet, to read to the adored one
a lyrical effusion of his; evidently for the purpose of fomenting her
inclinations towards the friend who was languishing for her. Ben Jonson
relates that he fulfilled Overbury's wish 'with excellent grace,' at the
same time praising the author. Next morning he fell out with Overbury,
who would have him to make an unlawful proposal to Lady Rutland.
But how, we may ask, was it possible that Jonson's noble friend could at
all think of trying to use him as a go-between in this shameful manner?
Are we not reminded here of the position of thirsty Toby Belch towards
the simple Aguecheek, if not even of honest [12] Iago in his dealings
with the liberal Rodrigo? Neither in Olivia's uncle, nor in Othello's
Ancient is it reckoned a merit to have omitted doing pimp service to
friends. Their policy of taking advantage of amorous inclinations,
although they did not even try to promote them by the reading of
poetical productions, remains not the less contemptible.
As to Jonson's passion for the cup that does more than cheer, neither
he himself conceals it, nor is evidence to the same effect wanting
on the part of his contemporaries. Drayton says that he was in the
habit of 'wearing a loose coachman's coat, frequenting the Mermaid
Tavern, where he drank seas of Canary; then reeling home to bed, and,
after a profuse perspiration, arising to his dramatic studies.' [13]
At a certain time, Jonson accompanied a son of Sir Walter Raleigh as
tutor during a voyage to France. The young hopeful pupil, 'being
knavishly inclined,' and not less quick in the execution of practical
jokes than in spying out human weaknesses, had no difficulty in
understanding his tutor's bent, and succeeded in making Jonson 'dead
drunk.' He then 'laid him on a carr, which he made to be drawen by
pioners through the streets, at every corner showing his governour
stretched out, and telling them, that was a more lively image of
the Crucifix than any they had.' The mother of young Raleigh greatly
relished this sport. It reminded her of similar tricks her husband had
been addicted to in his boyish days, 'though the father abhorred it.'
With habits of the kind described, Jonson had a hard but fruitless
struggle against oppressing poverty and downright misery during his
whole life. When age was approaching, he addressed himself to his
highborn patrons with petitions in well-set style. His needy condition
was, however, little bettered, even when Charles I., in 1630, conferred
upon him, seven years before his death, an annual pension of 100
pounds, with a terse of Spanish wine yearly out of his Majesty's
store at Whitehall.
A letter of Sir Thomas Hawkins describes one of the last circumstances
of Jonson's life. At 'a solemn supper given by the poet, when good
company, excellent cheer, choice wine, and jovial welcome had opened
his heart and loosened his tongue, he began to raise himself at the
expense of others.'
Wine, joviality, good company, and bitter satire--these were the elements
of Ben Jonson's happiness.
'O rare Ben Jonson!' Sir John Young, [14] who, walking through
Westminster Abbey, saw the bare stone on the poet's grave, gave
one of the workmen eighteenpence to cut the words in question, and
posterity is still in doubt whether the word 'rare' was meant for
the valuable qualities of the poet or for those of the boon-companion.
We will give a short abstract of Jonson's character from the notes of a
contemporary whose guest he had been during fully a month in 1619. One
might doubt the sincerity of this judgment if Sir William Drummond, his
liberal host, had made it public for the purpose of harming Jonson.
There was, however, no such intention, for it remained in manuscript
for fully two hundred years.
Only then, a copy of this incisive characteristic came before the world
at large. The Scottish nobleman and poet had written it down, together
with many utterances of Jonson, after his guest who most freely and
severely criticised his contemporaries had left. The perspicacity
of Drummond, and the truthful rendering of his impressions, are fully
confirmed by Jonson's manner of life and the contents of his literary
productions. [15] Drummond concludes his notes thus:--
'He' (Jonson) 'is a great lover and praiser of himself; a contemner and
scorner of others; given rather to loose a friend than a jest; jealous
of every word and action of those about him (especially after drink,
which is one of the elements in which he liveth): a dissembler of ill
parts which reigne in him; a bragger of some good that he wanteth;
thinking nothing well but what either himself or some of his friends
and countrymen have said or done. He is passionately kind and angry;
careless either to gain or keep; vindicative, but, if he be well
answered, at himself. For any religion, as being versed in both;
interpreteth best sayings and deeds often to the worst. Oppressed
with fantasie, which has ever mastered his reason: a general disease
in many poets.'
It will easily be understood that between two natures of so opposite a
bent as that of the quarrelsome Jonson and 'gentle Shakspere,'
friendship for any length of time could scarcely be possible. [16]
The creations of the dramatist obtain their real value by the poet's
own character. He who breathes a soul into so many figures destined
for action must himself be gifted with a greatness of soul that
encompasses a world. In the dramatic art, such actions only charm which
are evolved out of clearly defined passions; and such characters only
awake interest which bear human features strongly marked. If, however,
we cast a glance at the dramatic productions of Ben Jonson, we in vain
look among the many figures that crowd his stage for one which could
inspire us with sympathy. Time has pronounced its verdict against his
creations: they are lying in the archive of mere curiosities. Even the
inquirer feels ill at ease when going for them to their hiding-place.
Jonson's characters do not speak with the ever unmistakeable and
touching voice of human passions. In his comedies he produces the
strangest whims, caprices, and crotchets, by which he probably points
to definite persons. The clue to these often malignant dialectics
is very difficult to find.
The action of his plays--if incidental quarrels, full of sneering
allusions, are left aside--is generally of such diminutive proportions
that one may well ask, after the perusal of some of his dramas, whether
they contain any action at all. No doubt the satirist, too, has his
legitimate place in the dramatic art; but he must know how to hit the
weaknesses of human nature in certain striking types. Jonson, however,
is far from being able to lay a claim to such dramaturgic merit. At
'haphazard he took certain individualities from the idly gossiping crowd
that congregated in the central nave of St. Paul's Church, and put them
on the stage. Whoever had been strutting about there to-day in his
silken stockings, proudly displaying the nodding feathers in his hat,
his rich waist-coat and mantle, and boasting a little too loud before
some other gallant of his love adventures, ran great danger--like all
those whose demeanour in St. Paul's gave rise to backbiting gossip--of
being pourtrayed in the 'Rose,' in the 'Curtain,' or in the theatres
of the 'little eyases,' in such a manner that people were able, in
the streets, to point them out with their fingers.
Like so many other novelties, this kind of comedy, too, may for a while
have found its admirers. Soon, however, this degradation of the Muse
brought up such a storm that Jonson had to take refuge in another
domain of the dramatic art (1601). He himself confesses:--
And since the Comic Muse
Hath proved so ominous to me, I will try
If Tragedy have a more kind aspect. [17]
But he is nothing if not satirical. The persons that are to enliven his
tragedies are not filled with the true breath of life. They are mere
phantoms or puppets of schoolcraft, laboriously put together by a
learning drawn from old folios. In his tragedies, 'Sejanus' and
'Cataline,' he seeks to describe Romans whose whole bearing was to be
in pedantically close harmony with the time in which the dramatic
action occurs. Only a citizen from a certain period of ancient Rome
would be able to decide whether this difficult but thankless problem
had been solved. These cold academic treatises--for such we must,
practically, take them to be--were not relished by the public. There
is no vestige of human passion in the bookish heroes thus put on the
stage. For their sorrows the audience has no feeling of fear or anguish
and no tear of compassion.
Jonson, indignant at the small estimate in which his arduously composed
works were received, ill-humoured by their want of success, looked
enviously upon Shakspere, who had not been academically schooled; who
audaciously overthrew the customs of the antique drama; who made his
own rules, or rather, who made himself a rule to others; who created
metrics that were peculiarly his; who chose themes hitherto considered
non-permissible, and unusual with Greeks and Romans; who flung the
'three unities' to the winds; and who, nevertheless, had an unheard-of
success!
This favourite of the public, Jonson seems to have looked upon as the
main obstacle barring the way to his own genius. Against this towering
rival, Jonson directed a hail of satirical arrows. Only take, for
instance, the prologue to 'Every Man in his Humour.' [18] There, Jonson,
with the most arrogant conceit, tries to make short work of various
dramas of Shakspere's--for instance, of his historical plays, in which
he dared--
... with three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot and half-foot words,
Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars,
And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.
In 'The Poetaster,' which in 1601 was acted by the children of the Queen's
Chapel, Jonson made an attack upon three poets. We hope to be able to
prove that the one most bitterly abused, and who is bidden to swallow
the 'pill,' is no other than Shakspere, whilst the two remaining ones
are John Marston and Thomas Dekker. From the 'Apologetical Dialogue'
which Jonson wrote after 'The Poetaster' had already passed over the
stage, we see that this satire had excited the greatest indignation
and sensation in the dramatic world. It was a new manner of falling
out with a colleague before the public. The conceited presumption
of the author, who in the play itself assumes the part of Horace,
seriously proclaiming himself as the poet of poets, as the worthiest
of the worthy, is not less enormous and repulsive than the way in
which he proceeds against his rivals.
Quite innocently, Jonson asks in that dialogue (which was spoken on the
stage after 'The Poetaster' had given rise to a general squabble), how
it came about that such a hubbub was made of that play, seeing that it
was free from insults, only containing 'some salt' but 'neither tooth,
nor gall,' whilst his antagonists, after all, had been the cause of
whatever remarks he himself had made:--
... But sure I am, three years
They did provoke me with their petulant styles,
On every stage. And I at last, unwilling,
But weary, I confess, of so much trouble,
Thought I would try if shame could win upon 'em.
In some comedies of Shakspere, which appeared between the years 1598
and 1601, there are characters markedly stamped with Jonsonian
peculiarities. We may be convinced that 'gentle Shakspere' had
received many a provocation [19] before he took notice of the obscure
dramatist who was younger by ten years than himself, and publicly
gave him a strong lesson. 'All's Well that Ends Well' contains a
figure, Parolles, whose peculiarities are too closely akin to those
of Ben Jonson to be regarded as a mere fortuitous accident; especially
when we find that Jonson, in 'The Poetaster,' again tries to ridicule
this hit by a characteristic expression. [20]
Parolles is a follower of Count Rousillon. His position is not further
defined than that he follows Bertram; he is a cross between a gentleman
and a servant. We hear the old Lord Lafeu reproaching him in act ii.
sc. 3:--
'Why dost thou garter up thy arms o' this fashion? dost make hose of thy
sleeves? Do other servants do so?'
Again he calls him--'a vagabond, no true traveller: you are more saucy
with lords and honourable personages than the heraldry of your birth and
virtue gives you commission.' [21]
Parolles boasts of being born under the sign of Mars, and up to every
heroic deed; and it is certainly an allusion to Jonson's bravado of
having in the Low Countries, in the face of both camps, killed an enemy
and taken _opima spolia_ from him, that Shakspere lets this
character make the attempt to retake, single-handed, from the enemy, a
drum that had been lost in the battle. Of course, Parolles finally comes
out a coward and a traitor. Parolles also mentions that he understands
'Low Dutch.'
In the character of Malvolio ('Twelfth Night; or What You Will,'
1600-1601), the quarrelsome Ben has long ago been suspected, who,
puffed up with braggart pride, contemptuously looks down upon his
colleagues, and impudently exerts himself to gain access to high social
circles; thus assuming, like Parolles, a position that does not properly
belong to him. Even as Lord Lafeu takes Parolles a peg lower, so Sir
Toby (act. ii. sc. 3) reminds the haughty Malvolio that he is nothing
more than a steward. The religion of Malvolio also is several times
discussed. Merry Maria relates that he is a 'Puritan or anything
constantly but a time-pleaser.' Nor is the priest wanting who is to
drive out the hyperbolical fiend from the captive Malvolio: an
unmistakeable allusion to Ben Jonson's conversion in prison. The Fool
who represents the Priest, puts a question referring to Pythagoras to
Malvolio who is groaning 'in darkness' and yearning for freedom. He
receives an evasive answer from the prisoner. In 'Volpone,' as we
shall see, Jonson answers it very fully. [22]
Altogether, there are allusions in 'The Poetaster,' and in 'Volpone,'
to 'All's Well that Ends Well,' and to 'What You Will,' which we shall
have to touch upon in speaking of those plays.
The scene of 'The Poetaster' is laid at the court of Augustus Caesar.
Jonson therein describes himself under the character of Horace. The
whole drift of the play is, to take the many enemies of the latter
to task for their calumnies and libels against him. Rome is the place
of action, and the persons of the drama bear classic names. There are,
besides Augustus and Horace, Mecaenas (_sic_), Virgil, Propertius,
Trebatius, Ovid, Demetrius Fannius, _Rufus Laberius Crispinus_, and
so forth. The characters whom they are to represent are mostly
authors of the dramatic world around Ben Jonson. They are depicted
with traits so easily recognisable that--as Dekker says in his
'Satiromastix'--of five hundred people four hundred could 'all point
with their fingers in one instant at one and the same man.'
More especially against two disciples of the Muse is Jonson's 'gally
ink' directed. Let us give a few instances of the lampoons and
calumnious squibs by which Horace pretends having been insulted on
the part of envious colleagues who, he maintains, look askance at
him because 'he keeps more worthy gallants' company' than they can get
into. In act iv. sc. I, Demetrius tells Tucca:--
'Alas, Sir, Horace! he is a mere sponge; nothing but humours and
observation; he goes up and down, sucking from every society, and
when he comes home, squeezes himself dry again.'
Tucca adds:--'He will sooner lose his best friend than his least jest.'
Crispinus is found guilty of having composed a libel against Horace,
of which the following may serve as a specimen:--
Ramp up my genius, be not retrograde;
But boldly nominate a spade a spade.
What, shall thy lubrical and glibbery muse
Live, as she were defunct, like punk in stews?
Alas! that were no modern consequence,
To have cothurnal buskins frighted hence.
No, teach thy Incubus to poetize;
And throw abroad thy spurious snotteries....
O poets all and some! for now we list
Of strenuous vengeance to clutch the fist.
Such was the language the contemporaries of Shakspere used. Are we to
wonder, then, if here and there we find in his works an offensive
expression?
The two persons who are specially taken to task, and most harshly
treated, are Demetrius Fannius, 'play-dresser and plagiarius,' and
RUFUS LABERIUS CRISPINUS, '_poetaster and plagiarius_.' In 'Satiromastix,'
Demetrius clearly comes out as Dekker. Crispinus is the chief character
of the play:--'the poetaster.' Against him the satire is mainly directed,
and for his sake it seems to have been written, for the title runs
thus: 'The Poetaster, or His Arraignment.' From all the characteristic
qualities of Crispinus we draw the conclusion that this figure
represented SHAKSPERE.
From the above-mentioned passage in 'The Return from Parnassus' it would
seem as if a '_pill_' had been administered in the play to several poets.
That is, however, not so. Then, as now, the plural form was a favourite
one with writers afraid to attack openly. Horace administers a pill
only to one poet--to Crispinus. And as Kemp says that Shakspere,
thereupon, gave a '_purge_,' the conclusion is obvious that he who took
revenge by administering the purge, must have been the one to whom
the pill had been given. 'Volpone,' a play directed against the
'purge'--that is, 'Hamlet'--will convince us that the chief controversy
lay between Jonson and Shakspere, and not between Jonson and Dekker.
The following points will, we think, make it still clearer that we are
warranted in believing that the figure of Crispinus was intended by
Jonson for Shakspere.
When, in presence of Augustus, as well as of the high jurors Maecenas,
Tibullus, and Virgil, the two poetasters have been heard; when Horace
has forgiven Demetrius, [23] and Crispinus, under the sharp effects of
the pill, has thrown up, amidst great pain, [24] the disgraceful
words which he had used against Horace, he is dismissed by the latter
with the admonition to observe, in future, a strict and wholesome diet;
to take each morning something of Cato's principles; then taste a
piece of Terence and suck his phrase; to shun Plautus and Ennius as
meats too harsh for his weak stomach, and to read the best Greeks,
'but not without a tutor.'
This fits in with Shakspere's 'small Latin and less Greek'--a
circumstance of which Jonson himself, in his poem in memory of
Shakspere (1623), thought he should remind the coming generations.
It is, no doubt, a little revenge for the 'dark chamber' in which
Malvolio [25] is imprisoned, that, after Horace has concluded his
speech in which the study of Latin and Greek is recommended to
Crispinus as something very necessary for him, Virgil should add the
further advice:--
And for a week or two see him locked up
In some dark place, removed from company;
He will talk idly else after his physic.