Adolphus William Ward

“ It is difficult to imagine that (with the aid of judicious shortenings) either could altogether miss its effect on the stage; but, while Shakespeare causes us to forget, Jonson seems to wish us to remember, his authorities. The half is often greater than the whole; and Jonson, like all dramatists and, it might be said, all novelists in similar cases, has had to pay the penalty incurred by too obvious a desire to underline the learning of the author.
Perversity—or would-be originality—alone could declare Jonson's tragedy preferable to his comedy. ”

“ Such wit as Dryden has in view is the mere outward fashion or style of the day, the euphuism or "sheerwit" or chic which is the creed of the Fastidious Brisks and of their crafty purveyors at any given moment. ”

“ It is a very futile criticism to condemn Jonson's characters as a mere series of types of general ideas; on the other hand, it is a very sound criticism to object, as Barry Cornwall does, to the "multitude of characters who throw no light upon the story, and lend no interest to it, occupying space that had better have been bestowed upon the principal agents of the plot." ”

“ In the construction of plots, as in most other respects, Jonson's at once conscientious and vigorous mind led him in the direction of originality; he depended to a far less degree than the greater part of his contemporaries (Shakespeare with the rest) upon borrowed plots. But either his inventive character was occasionally at fault in this respect, or his devotion (so to speak) to his characters often diverted his attention from a brisk conduct of his plot. ”

“ Even if the revolution which he created in the latter branch of the drama had been mistaken in its principles or unsatisfactory in its results, it would be clear that the strength of his dramatic genius lay in the power of depicting a great variety of characters, and that in comedy alone he succeeded in finding a wide field for the exercise of this power. ”

“ Self-reliance is but too frequently coupled with self-consciousness, and for good and for evil self-confidence was no doubt the most prominent feature in the character of Ben Jonson. Hence the combativeness which involved him in so many quarrels in his earlier days, and which jarred so harshly upon the gentler nature of Drummond. ”

“ After reaching the highest form at Westminster, Jonson is stated, but on unsatisfactory evidence, to have proceeded to the university of Cambridge; but at the utmost he can only have made a transitory appearance in a scene of which as a painter of men and manners he nowhere reproduces a single feature. And doubtless he felt that neither his crop of learning and experience nor his wild oats were yet fully sown, when, goose quill or other implement in hand, he had to apply himself to the family business. ”

“ Those who consider that Shakespeare was beyond the criticism of his contemporaries—as he certainly very frequently is above that of posterity—may find blasphemy in the saying of Jonson that Shakespeare "wanted art." ”

“ Jonson's learning, creative power, and humorous ingenuity—combined, it should not be forgotten, with a genuine lyrical gift—all found abundant opportunities for displaying themselves in these productions. Though a growth of foreign origin, the mask was by him thoroughly domesticated in the high places of English literature. He lived long enough to see the species produce its poetic masterpiece in Comus, after which it soon faded away in times too fierce to allow of its further cultivation. ”

“ Every Man in his Humour, the original example of a species of English comedy which cannot be said to have become altogether extinct even with the Restoration, was first acted in 1598—probably in the earlier part of September—by the Lord Chamberlain's company, which was then still performing at the so-called Theatre, and in which Shakespeare was just on the eve of acquiring one or more shares. ”

“ A man of letters to the very core, he never quite understood that there is and ought to be a wide difference between the world of letters and the world of the theatre.
The richness and versatility of Jonson's genius will never be fully appreciated by those who fail to acquaint themselves with what is preserved to us of his "masks" and cognate entertainments. ”

“ He was at a subsequent date (1601) employed by Henslowe to write up The Spanish Tragedy, in pursuance of a fashion differing from that of later times, when old plays have more usually been written down to the taste of modern audiences. Jonson's additions, which were not the first changes made in the play, are usually supposed to be those printed with The Spanish Tragedy in the edition of 1602; Charles Lamb's doubts on the subject are an instance of that subjective kind of criticism in which it is unsafe to put absolute trust. ”

“ There may have been no very original or very profound discovery in the idea which he illustrated in Every Man in his Humour, and, as it were, technically elaborated in Every Man out of his Humour,—that in many men one quality is observable which so possesses them as to draw the whole of their individualities one way, and that this phenomenon "may be truly said to be a humour." ”

“ It is very remarkable how promptly his genius, which it is sheer prejudice to describe as wanting in flexibility and lightness, suited itself to the sudden demands of the new taste for masks and entertainments—new of course in degree rather than in kind—introduced with the new reign. The pageant which on the 7th of May 1603 bade the king welcome to a capital dissolved in joy was partly of Jonson's partly of Dekker's devising ”

“ He certainly was one of the actors in Jonson's comedy, and it is in the character of Old Knowell in this very play that, according to a bold but ingenious guess, Shakespeare is represented in the half-length portrait of him in the folio of 1623, beneath which were printed Jonson's lines concerning the picture. Every Man in his Humour was probably followed by The Case is Altered, which was certainly acted by 1599, and which contains a satirical attack upon the pageant poet Anthony Munday. ”

“ In this Ben Jonson was no doubt defective; for he was too accurate an observer of men and manners to be himself a man of fashion, literary or otherwise. But it would be an error to suppose him, as a comic dramatist, to have stood towards the world around him in the attitude of a philosopher, careless of mere transient externalisms. It is said that the scene of his Every Man in his Humour was originally laid near Florence ”

“ Learning their intention, or at least that of Dekker, to wreak literary vengeance upon him, he seems to have sought to anticipate its effect by covering them with contemptuous ridicule beforehand. The Poetaster (1601) , which he states to have been completed fifteen weeks after the plot of it was first conceived, did not, however, silence his adversaries; it rather gave them the opportunity of the last word, which Dekker took in producing his Satiromastix, or the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet (1602) . There was indeed an attempt at some more last words on Jonson's part ”

“ Good humour seems to have come back with good fortune. Joint employment had reconciled him with Dekker; and with Marston also he was again on good terms. When therefore, in 1604, the latter and Chapman (who, Jonson told Drummond, was loved of him, and whom he had probably honoured as "Virgil" in The Poetaster) produced the excellent comedy of Eastward Ho, it appears to have contained some contributions by Jonson ”

“ On November 7th, very soon after the discovery of the conspiracy, whose threads it became the immediate duty of the council to unravel, that body appears to have sent for Ben Jonson, at the advice no doubt of Salisbury, who (as has just been seen) knew of Jonson; indeed, the latter has been supposed to have given his support as a dramatist to the party headed by Robert Cecil before Queen Elizabeth's death. ”

“ They include the tragedy of Catiline (1611) , which achieved only a doubtful success, and the comedies of Volpone or The Fox (acted 1605) , Epiccene or The Silent Woman (1609) , the Alchemist (1610) , Bartholomew Fair (1614) , and The Devil is an Ass (1616) . During the same period he produced several masks, usually in connexion with Inigo Jones, with whom, however, he seems to have quarrelled already in this reign, though it is very doubtful whether the architect is really intended to be ridiculed in Bartholomew Fair under the character of Lanthorn Leatherhead. ”

“ In 1616 a modest pension of 100 marks a year was conferred upon him; and possibly this mark of royal favour may have encouraged him to the publication of the first volume of the folio collected edition of his works (1616) . ”