INTRODUCTION.

I. SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF BEN JONSON.

(Compiled chiefly from his Conversations with Drummond, Symond's Life, and Ward's English Dramatic Literature.)

BEN JONSON was born in the year 1573. He came of a border family of Anandale, and was the posthumous son of a minister who had "losed all his estate under Queen Marie, having been cast into prison and forfeited." (Conversations with Drummond.) His widow marrying again, Jonson was "brought up poorly," but "put to school" at Westminster, and there befriended by the learned antiquary Camden. Fuller states that from Westminster Jonson went to [St. John's College] Cambridge. If so, he remained but a short time; for he afterwards told Drummond that "he was Master of Arts in both Universities by their favor, not his study." The trade of his step-father, that of a bricklayer, proving distasteful, Jonson enlisted as a soldier, and relates that, "in his service in the Low Countries,” he had, "in the face of both the camps, killed an enemy and taken opima spolia from him." It seems likely that Jonson was again in England in 1592, and married while yet under age. He told Drummond that "his wife was a shrew, yet honest." He had several children by her, none of whom survived him.

The beginning of Jonson's career as a dramatist cannot be fixed with certainty; but the advances of money made to him by Philip Henslow, the manager and stage-broker, in 1597, prove that he was a recognized playwright by that

time, doing 'prentice-work, according to the custom of his age, in the reconstruction and adaptation of earlier plays. The pleasing tradition that Jonson owed his introduction to a dramatic career to the good offices of Shakespeare is not susceptible of proof; although his first dramatic success, Every Man in his Humor, was acted in 1598 by the Lord Chamberlain's Servants, Shakespeare's company, and Shakespeare was himself an actor in it. The notion that Jonson and Shakespeare lived in a state of rivalry and enmity is based upon no evidence worthy of a moment's consideration. (See the notes, especially 23 9 and 23 28.)

In this year Jonson had the misfortune to kill a fellowactor, in a duel, for which he was tried at Old Bailey, convicted on his own confession, and, pleading his clergy, escaped capital punishment with a brand upon the thumb of his left hand and forfeit of goods and chattels. While in prison he became converted to the Roman Church, and remained of that faith for twelve years. The duel severed his connection with Henslow and drew him into writing for Shakespeare's rival company.

In 1599 Queen Elizabeth witnessed Jonson's next play, Every Man out of his Humor, the first of the series of dramatic satires, which were soon to involve their author in internecine warfare with his fellow-craftsmen. During the next three years Jonson was a leading combatant in what is known as "The War of the Theatres," Cynthia's Revels giving the affront, the Poetaster, Marston and Dekker's Satiromastix, and many other plays continuing the battle. Notwithstanding Jonson's "aggressive and egotistic personality," and the gall and venom of both parties, it may be doubted if the terrors of these literary frays were such as the historians of literature would have us believe. At all events the collaboration of Dekker and Jonson in the pageants attending the accession of James, and the fervent dedication of Marston's Malcontent to Jonson in 1604, preclude the possibility of

our believing these enmities to have been either very deep or very lasting.

Sejanus, Jonson's first tragedy, was produced at the Globe Theatre in 1603, Shakespeare again taking a part; but it was not well received. In consequence Jonson turned his attention to a different species of the drama, and, the festivities attending the progress of the new king offering a splendid field for his talents, began with the The Satyre in 1603, that series of stately Masques and Entertainments which alone would be sufficient to render his name remarkable in the history of our literature. He soon gained the royal favor, and with it the patronage of many noble houses; and for years the most notable courtly entertainments and civic feasts were enriched with "the poetry and learning of Master Ben Jonson and the invention and architecture of Master Inigo Jones."

In 1605 Chapman and Marston were imprisoned for certain passages of the comedy, Eastward Ho! which an irritable courtier conceived to be derogatory to the Scotch; and Jonson, who had a hand in the play but not in the offensive passages, "voluntarily imprisoned himself" with them. But both Chapman and Jonson had influence at Court and the playwrights were soon at liberty. Jonson continued for years to furnish entertainments for the Court, and appears to have accompanied many of the royal progresses. In 1616 the Laureateship, with a pension of one hundred marks a year, was conferred upon him; this with his fees and retainers from several noble patrons, and the small earnings of his plays, formed the bulk of his income. Two years later the king granted him the reversion of the office of Master of the Revels, but Jonson did not live to enjoy its perquisites. It is even said that at one time Jonson narrowly escaped the honor of knighthood, which King James was wont to lavish with indiscriminate hand.

Volpone was produced in 1605; The Silent Woman, in

1609, and The Alchemist followed in the succeeding year. These masterly comedies met with unqualified success, as did Bartholomew Fair in 1614. A less degree of popular approbation awaited his second tragedy, Catiline, which was produced in 1611. This group of plays represents Jonson at the height of his dramatic power.

From 1616 to 1625 Jonson produced nothing for the stage, although still not infrequently engaged in the composition of courtly entertainments. During this period

of prosperity he was enabled to continue the prosecution of those studies which have made him memorable as one of the greatest scholars of a scholarly age, and to collect his rich and varied library, afterwards unhappily destroyed by fire. He told Drummond that "the Earl of Pembroke sent him £20 every first day of the new year to buy new books." With another patron, Lord d'Aubigny, he lived for a period of five years. Jonson accompanied the eldest son of Sir Walter Raleigh to Paris as his tutor in 1613, and told Drummond that he had written certain parts of Sir Walter's History of the World for him (see notes 30 34). Later, in 1618, Jonson set out on foot for Scotland, and spent some time with the Scotch poet, William Drummond, at Hawthornden, the latter's country-seat. In the words of Professor Ward: "His [Jonson's] moral like his physical nature was cast in a generously ample mould; he spoke his mind freely in praise and blame; uttered his opinion of men and books in round terms; and probably never gave a second thought to his sayings after they had flowed as copiously as the canary which had removed the last barrier of self-restraint. Talk such as this will not always bear analysis; and when Drummond, after Ben Jonson's departure, summarized his impressions of his guest in a note of his own - not of course intended for the public eyeit does not follow that he was in a fit mood for the purpose."

Courtly patronage failed Jonson towards the close of the

reign of James, and in 1625 he had recourse once more to the stage. While the sweeping assertion of Dryden that these later plays are "Jonson's dotages" is unfair, their inferiority to the work of his better days is as marked as it is deplorable. But there were many compensations yet left to the veteran of letters. None of the great English literary dictators enjoyed a rule more absolute than that of Ben Jonson, whether in the earlier days of the Mermaid, where, in the words of Herrick :

We such clusters had

As made us nobly wild, not mad;

And yet each verse of thine

Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine;

or in the later times of the Apollo room of the Devil Tavern. Nor was this homage confined to "the billowy realms of Bohemia." To use the words of Professor Ward once more "Contemporary literature of every description from Clarendon to Milton, and from Milton to Herrick abounds with testimonies together proving his position to have been unrivalled among the men of letters of his times; and on his death a crowd of poets hastened to pay their tributes of acknowledgment to one who seems to have been loved more than he was feared, and to have left behind him a gap which it was felt must remain unfilled."

Unhappily, poverty, disease, and increasing years were now aggravated by renewed petty squabbles, especially with Inigo Jones, who used his influence at Court unworthily to prevent the employment of his unhappy rival. In 1628, on the death of Thomas Middleton, Jonson obtained the post of Chronologer to the City of London, and in the ensuing year King Charles renewed his father's patronage of the old laureate with a gift of £100, and an increase of Jonson's standing salary. Now much of his time bedridden, the old poet became dependent on the liberality of noble patrons,