Ben Jonson

Some introductory notes to Ben Jonson

(From Margaret Drabble's Oxford Companion to English Literature):


Ben[jamin] Jonson (1572-1637). Dramatist, poet, scholar, and writer of court masques. He was of Border descent, but was born in or near London, the posthumous son of a clergyman. He was educated at Westminster School under Camden. During the early 1590s he worked as a bricklayer in his stepfather's employ, saw military service in Flanders, where he killed an enemy champion in single combat, and joined a strolling company of players for whom he acted the part of Hieronimo in The Spanish Tragedy, a play for which he wrote additional scenes in 1601-2. In 1597 he began to work for Henslowe's companies as a player and playwright, and was imprisoned for his share in The Isle of Dogs, a satire now lost 'containing very seditious and slandrous matter' (See Swan Theatre). In 1598 he killed a fellow actor in a duel, but escaped hanging by pleading benefit of clergy, being branded instead as a felon. He became a Roman Catholic during his imprisonment, but returned to Anglicanism 15 years later. His first important play, Every Man in His Humour, with Shakespeare in the cast, was performed by the Lord Chamberlain's Company at the Curtain in 1598, and Every Man Out of His Humour at the Globe in 1599. Cynthia's Revels (1600) and Poetaster (1600-1, attacking Dekker and Marston) were performed by the Children of the Queen's Chapel. His first extant tragedy, Sejanus, was given at the Globe by Shakespeare's company, 1603; his first court masque, The Masque of Blackness, written to accomodate Queen Anne's desire to appear a a Negress, was given on Twelfth Night, 1605. In that year he was imprisoned and in danger of having his nose and ears slit, for his share in Eastward Hoe, and gave evidence to the Privy Council concerning the Gunpowder Plot. Then followed the period of his major plays: Volpone, acted at both the Globe and the two universities, 1605-6, Epicene, or The Silent Woman, 1609-10; The Alchemist, 1610; and Bartholomew Fair (1614). In 1612-13 he was in France as tutor to Ralegh's son, and in 1618-19 journeyed on foot to Scotland, where he stayed with Drummond of Hawthornden, who recorded their conversation.

Though not formally appointed the first poet laureate, the essentials of the position were conferred on Jonson in 1616, when a pension was granted to him by James I. In the same year he published a folio edition of his Works, which raised the drama to a new level of literary respectability, received an honorary MA from the Oxford University, and about this date became lecturer in rhetoric at Gresham College in London. He was elected chronologer of London in 1628. After The Devil Is an Ass (1616), he abandoned the public stage for ten years, and his later plays, The Magnetic Lady (1631) and A Tale of a Tub (1633), show a relatively unsuccessful reliance on allegory and symbolism. Dryden called them his 'dotages'. From 1605 onwards Jonson was constantly producing masques for the court, with scenery by Inigo Jones. This form of entertainment reached its highest elaboration in Jonson's hands. He introduced into it the 'antimasque', an antithetical, usually disorderly, prelude to the main action which served to highlight by contrast the central theme of political and social harmony. There are examples of this in The Masque of Queens (1609), Love Restored (1612), Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court (1616), Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618, which gave Milton his idea for Comus), and Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion (1624). After Chloridia (1631), his collaboration with Jones ended in a famous quarrel, which Jonson treated in several vituperative poems, concerning the relative priority of verbal and thematic content and spectacle. His last masques were produced in 1633-4. His non-dramatic verse includes Epigrammes and The Forest, printed in the Folio of 1616: notable among his epigrams are two tender and moving epitaphs, Nos. xxii and xlv, 'On My First Daughter' (c. 1595) and 'On His First Sonne' (1603) ('Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy'). The Underwood and a translation of Horace's Ars Poetica were printed in 1640. His chief prose works are The English Grammar and Timber, or Discoveries, printed in 1640.

During the reign of James I Jonson's literary prestige and influence were unrivalled. He presided over a literary circle which met at the Mermaid Tavern, and later in the Apollo Room of the Devil and St Dunstan Tavern, where his leges conviviales or 'social rules' were inscribed over the mantlepiece. His friends included Shakespeare, whom he loved 'on this side idolatry', Donne, F. Bacon, George Chapman, Beaumont, Fletcher, Cotton, and Selden, and among the younger writers (who styled themselves the 'sons' or 'tribe of Ben' R. Brome, Carew, Cartwright, Sir K. Digby, Lord Falkland, Herrick, Nabbes, Randolph, and Suckling. His chief patrons were the Sidney family, the earl of Pembroke, the countess of Bedford, and the duke and duchess of Newcastle. Jonson suffered a stroke in 1628, after which he was perhaps permanently bedridden until his death in August 1637. He was buried in Westminster Abbey under a tombstone bearing the inscription 'O rare Ben Jonson', and celebrated in a collection of elegies entitled Jonsonus Virbius (1638). As a man Jonson was arrogant and quarrelsome, but fearless, warm-hearted, and intellectually honest. His reputation declined sharply from about 1700, as Shakespeare's, with whom he was inevitably compared, increased, but in this century it has revived, thanks partly to the comprehensive edition of C. H. Herford and P. and E. Simpson (11 vols, 1925-52), vols. i and ii of which contain the standard biography.

 

 

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More notes on Jonson in the court of James I (The Short Penguin History of English Literature)


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Ben Jonson: NIVEL AVANZADO

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