Ben Jonson

“ The sons of prince Germanicus: it shews
A gallant clearness in him, a straight mind,
That envies not, in them, their father’s name.
ARRUNTIUS.
His name was, while he lived, above all envy;
And, being dead, without it. O, that man!
If there were seeds of the old virtue left,
They lived in him.
SILIUS.
He had the fruits, Arruntius,
More than the seeds: Sabinus, and myself
Had means to know him within; and can report him.
We were his followers, he would call us friends;
He was a man most like to virtue; in all,
And every action, nearer to the gods,
Than men, in nature ”

“ Thou art not safe, Sejanus, if thou prove it.
Canst thou believe, that Livia, first the wife
To Caius Cæsar, then my Drusus, now
Will be contented to grow old with thee,
Born but a private gentleman of Rome,
And raise thee with her loss, if not her shame?
Or say that I should wish it, canst thou think
The senate, or the people (who have seen
Her brother, father, and our ancestors,
In highest place of empire) will endure it!
The state thou hold’st already, is in talk;
Men murmur at thy greatness; and the noble! ”

“ Cæsar!
TIBERIUS.
To leave our journey off, were sin
’Gainst our decreed delights; and would appear
Doubt; or, what less becomes a prince, low fear.
Yet doubt hath law, and fears have their excuse.
Where princes’ states plead necessary use;
As ours doth now: more in Sejanus’ pride,
Than all fell Agrippina’s hates beside.
Those are the dreadful enemies we raise
With favours, and make dangerous with praise;
The injured by us may have will alike,
But ’tis the favourite hath the power to strike;
And fury ever boils more high and strong,
Heat with ambition, than revenge of wrong. ”

“ And I.
Men grow not in the state, but as they are planted
Warm in his favours.
COTTA.
Noble Sejanus!
HATERIUS.
Honour’d Sejanus!
LATIARIS.
Worthy and great Sejanus!
ARRUNTIUS.
Gods! how the sponges open and take in,
And shut again! look, look! is not he blest
That gets a seat in eye-reach of him? more,
That comes in ear, or tongue-reach? O but most,
Can claw his subtle elbow, or with a buz
Fly-blow his ears?
PRÆTOR.
Proclaim the senate’s peace,
And give last summons by the edict.
PRÆCONES.
Silence!
In name of Cæsar, and the senate, silence! ”

“ The comedy is so admirably written and contrived, the personages stand out with such lifelike distinctness in their several kinds, and the whole is animated with such verve and resourcefulness that “The Alchemist” is a new marvel every time it is read. Lastly of this group comes the tremendous comedy, “Bartholomew Fair,” less clear cut, less definite, and less structurally worthy of praise than its three predecessors, but full of the keenest and cleverest of satire and inventive to a degree beyond any English comedy save some other of Jonson’s own. ”

“ Is there not something more than to be Cæsar?
Must we rest there? it irks t’ have come so far,
To be so near a stay. Caligula,
Would thou stood’st stiff, and many in our way!
Winds lose their strength, when they do empty fly,
Unmet of woods or buildings; great fires die,
That want their matter to withstand them: so,
It is our grief, and will be our loss, to know
Our power shall want opposites; unless
The gods, by mixing in the cause, would bless
Our fortune with their conquest. That were worth
Sejanus’ strife; durst fates but bring it forth.
Enter Terentius. ”

“ LATIARIS.
Worthy of all, and more
Than bounty can bestow.
TRIO.
This dignity
Will make him worthy.
POMPONIUS.
Above Cæsar.
SANQUINIUS.
Tut,
Cæsar is but the rector of an isle,
He of the empire.
TRIO.
Now he will have power
More to reward than ever.
COTTA.
Let us look
We be not slack in giving him our voices.
LATIARIS.
Not I.
SANQUINIUS.
Nor I.
COTTA.
The readier we seem
To propagate his honours, will more bind
His thoughts to ours.
HATERIUS.
I think right with your lordship;
It is the way to have us hold our places.
SANQUINIUS.
Ay, and get more. ”

“ ARRUNTIUS.
A serving boy!
I knew him, at Caius’ trencher, when for hire
He prostituted his abused body
To that great gormond, fat Apicius;
And was the noted pathic of the time.
SABINUS.
And, now, the second face of the whole world!
The partner of the empire, hath his image
Rear’d equal with Tiberius, born in ensigns;
Commands, disposes every dignity,
Centurions, tribunes, heads of provinces,
Praetors and consuls; all that heretofore
Rome’s general suffrage gave, is now his sale.
The gain, or rather spoil of all the earth,
One, and his house, receives. ”

“ Come with my wish! What news from Agrippina’s?
POSTHUMUS.
Faith, none. They all lock up themselves a’ late,
Or talk in character; I have not seen
A company so changed. Except they had
Intelligence by augury of our practice.—
SEJANUS.
When were you there?
POSTHUMUS.
Last night.
SEJANUS.
And what guests found you?
POSTHUMUS.
Sabinus, Silius, the old list, Arruntius, Furmus, and Gallus.
SEJANUS.
Would not these talk?
POSTHUMUS.
Little:
And yet we offer’d choice of argument. Satrius was with me.
SEJANUS.
Well: ’tis guilt enough
Their often meeting. ”

“ With offering at thy praise, for more we cannot,
Since there’s no voice can take it.
No man here Receive our speeches as hyperboles:
For we are far from flattering our friend,
Let envy know, as from the need to flatter.
Nor let them ask the causes of our praise:
Princes have still their grounds rear’d with themselves,
Above the poor low flats of common men;
And who will search the reasons of their acts,
Must stand on equal bases. Lead, away:
Our loves unto the senate.
[Exeunt Tiberius, Sejanus, Natta, Haterius, Latiaris, Officers, etc.]
ARRUNTIUS.
Cæsar! ”

“ SEJANUS.
Trust that to me: let Cæsar, by his power
But cause a formal meeting of the senate,
I will have matter and accusers ready.
TIBERIUS.
But how? let us consult.
SEJANUS.
We shall misspend
The time of action. Counsels are unfit
In business, where all rest is more pernicious
Than rashness can be. Acts of this close kind
Thrive more by execution than advice. ”

“ Brainworm’s humour is the finding out of things to the end of fooling everybody: of course he is fooled in the end himself. But it was not Jonson’s theories alone that made the success of “Every Man in His Humour.” The play is admirably written and each character is vividly conceived, and with a firm touch based on observation of the men of the London of the day. Jonson was neither in this, his first great comedy (nor in any other play that he wrote) , a supine classicist, urging that English drama return to a slavish adherence to classical conditions. ”

“ The ghosts of those that fell for that, would grieve
Their bodies lived not, now, again to serve.
Men are deceived, who think there can be thrall
Beneath a virtuous prince: Wish’d liberty
Ne’er lovelier looks, than under such a crown. ”

“ Even the word “humour” seems to have been employed in the Jonsonian sense by Chapman before Jonson’s use of it. Indeed, the comedy of humours itself is only a heightened variety of the comedy of manners which represents life, viewed at a satirical angle, and is the oldest and most persistent species of comedy in the language. None the less, Jonson’s comedy merited its immediate success and marked out a definite course in which comedy long continued to run. ”

“ But since it hath been our easeful happiness to enjoy both the aids and industry of so vigilant a senate, we profess to have been the more indulgent to our pleasures, not as being careless of our office, but rather secure of the necessity. Neither do these common rumours of many, and infamous libels published against our retirement, at all afflict us; being born more out of men’s ignorance than their malice: and will, neglected, find their own grave quickly, whereas, too sensibly acknowledged, it would make their obloquy ours. ”

“ Drusus passes over the stage, attended by Haterius, etc.
SABINUS.
Stand by! lord Drusus.
HATERIUS.
The emperor’s son! give place.
SILIUS.
I like the prince well.
ARRUNTIUS.
A riotous youth;
There’s little hope of him.
SABINUS.
That fault his age
Will, as it grows, correct. Methinks he bears
Himself each day more nobly than other;
And wins no less on men’s affections,
Than doth his father lose. Believe me,
I love him; And chiefly for opposing to Sejanus. ”

“ Have writ, not one hath mention’d without honour.
Great Titus Livius, great for eloquence,
And faith amongst us, in his history,
With so great praises Pompey did extol,
As oft Augustus call’d him a Pompeian:
Yet this not hurt their friendship. In his book
He often names Scipio, Afranius,
Yea, the same Cassius, and this Brutus too,
As worthiest men; not thieves and parricides,
Which notes upon their fames are now imposed. ”

“ LEPIDUS.
How Fortune plies her sports, when she begins
To practise them! pursues, continues, adds,
Confounds with varying her impassion’d moods!
ARRUNTIUS.
Dost thou hope, Fortune, to redeem thy crimes,
To make amend for thy ill-placed favours,
With these strange punishments? Forbear, you things
That stand upon the pinnacles of state,
To boast your slippery height; when you do fall,
You pash yourselves in pieces, ne’er to rise;
And he that lends you pity, is not wise.
TERENTIUS.
Let this example move the insolent man,
Not to grow proud and careless of the gods. ”

“ The method of personal attack by actual caricature of a person on the stage is almost as old as the drama. Aristophanes so lampooned Euripides in “The Acharnians” and Socrates in “The Clouds,” to mention no other examples; and in English drama this kind of thing is alluded to again and again. What Jonson really did, was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. ”

“ With the performance of “Every Man Out of His Humour” in 1599, by Shakespeare’s company once more at the Globe, we turn a new page in Jonson’s career. Despite his many real virtues, if there is one feature more than any other that distinguishes Jonson, it is his arrogance; and to this may be added his self-righteousness, especially under criticism or satire. “Every Man Out of His Humour” is the first of three “comical satires” which Jonson contributed to what Dekker called the ‘poetomachia’ or war of the theatres as recent critics have named it. ”

“ Jonson was a scholar and a classical antiquarian. He reprobated this slipshod amateurishness, and wrote his “Sejanus” like a scholar, reading Tacitus, Suetonius, and other authorities, to be certain of his facts, his setting, and his atmosphere, and somewhat pedantically noting his authorities in the margin when he came to print. “Sejanus” is a tragedy of genuine dramatic power in which is told with discriminating taste the story of the haughty favourite of Tiberius with his tragical overthrow. ”

“ Jonson represented, none the less to the life, certain sharpers of the metropolis, revelling in their shrewdness and rascality and in the variety of the stupidity and wickedness of their victims. We may object to the fact that the only person in the play possessed of a scruple of honesty is discomfited, and that the greatest scoundrel of all is approved in the end and rewarded. ”

“ In 1592, Jonson returned from abroad penniless. Soon after he married, almost as early and quite as imprudently as Shakespeare. He told Drummond curtly that “his wife was a shrew, yet honest”; for some years he lived apart from her in the household of Lord Albany. Yet two touching epitaphs among Jonson’s ‘Epigrams’, “On my first daughter,” and “On my first son,” attest the warmth of the poet’s family affections. The daughter died in infancy, the son of the plague; another son grew up to manhood little credit to his father whom he survived. We know nothing beyond this of Jonson’s domestic life. ”

“ Jonson believed that there was a professional way of doing things which might be reached by a study of the best examples, and he found these examples for the most part among the ancients. To confine our attention to the drama, Jonson objected to the amateurishness and haphazard nature of many contemporary plays, and set himself to do something different; and the first and most striking thing that he evolved was his conception and practice of the comedy of humours.
As Jonson has been much misrepresented in this matter, let us quote his own words as to “humour.” ”

“ Here personal satire seems to have absorbed everything, and while much of the caricature is admirable, especially in the detail of witty and trenchantly satirical dialogue, the central idea of a fountain of self-love is not very well carried out, and the persons revert at times to abstractions, the action to allegory. It adds to our wonder that this difficult drama should have been acted by the Children of Queen Elizabeth’s Chapel, among them Nathaniel Field with whom Jonson read Horace and Martial, and whom he taught later how to make plays. ”

“ To the caricature of Daniel and Munday in “Cynthia’s Revels” must be added Anaides (impudence) , here assuredly Marston, and Asotus (the prodigal) , interpreted as Lodge or, more perilously, Raleigh. Crites, like Asper-Macilente in “Every Man Out of His Humour,” is Jonson’s self-complaisant portrait of himself, the just, wholly admirable, and judicious scholar, holding his head high above the pack of the yelping curs of envy and detraction, but careless of their puny attacks on his perfections with only too mindful a neglect. ”

“ Thus the idea of an office for the gathering, proper dressing, and promulgation of news (wild flight of the fancy in its time) was an excellent subject for satire on the existing absurdities among the newsmongers; although as much can hardly be said for “The Magnetic Lady,” who, in her bounty, draws to her personages of differing humours to reconcile them in the end according to the alternative title, or “Humours Reconciled.” ”

“ Beautiful in form, deft and graceful in expression, with not a word too much or one that bears not its part in the total effect, there is yet about the lyrics of Jonson a certain stiffness and formality, a suspicion that they were not quite spontaneous and unbidden, but that they were carved, so to speak, with disproportionate labour by a potent man of letters whose habitual thought is on greater things. ”

“ In lasting darkness, and despair of day.
No ill should force the subject undertake
Against the sovereign, more than hell should make
The gods do wrong. A good man should and must
Sit rather down with loss, than rise unjust.
Though, when the Romans first did yield themselves
To one man’s power, they did not mean their lives,
Their fortunes and their liberties, should be
His absolute spoil, as purchased by the sword.
LATIARIS.
Why we are worse, if to be slaves, and bond
To Cæsar’s slave be such, the proud Sejanus! ”

“ A humour, according to Jonson, was a bias of disposition, a warp, so to speak, in character by which
“Some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way.” ”

“ There was no man in England of his rank so well known and universally beloved as Ben Jonson. The list of his friends, of those to whom he had written verses, and those who had written verses to him, includes the name of every man of prominence in the England of King James. And the tone of many of these productions discloses an affectionate familiarity that speaks for the amiable personality and sound worth of the laureate. In 1619, growing unwieldy through inactivity, Jonson hit upon the heroic remedy of a journey afoot to Scotland. ”

“ There are no such epitaphs as Ben Jonson’s, witness the charming ones on his own children, on Salathiel Pavy, the child-actor, and many more; and this even though the rigid law of mine and thine must now restore to William Browne of Tavistock the famous lines beginning: “Underneath this sable hearse.” Jonson is unsurpassed, too, in the difficult poetry of compliment, seldom falling into fulsome praise and disproportionate similtude, yet showing again and again a generous appreciation of worth in others, a discriminating taste and a generous personal regard. ”

“ The lyric and especially the occasional poetry of Jonson has a peculiar merit. His theory demanded design and the perfection of literary finish. He was furthest from the rhapsodist and the careless singer of an idle day; and he believed that Apollo could only be worthily served in singing robes and laurel crowned. And yet many of Jonson’s lyrics will live as long as the language. Who does not know “Queen and huntress, chaste and fair.” ”

“ But Jonson did not profit even by this slight advantage. His mother married beneath her, a wright or bricklayer, and Jonson was for a time apprenticed to the trade. As a youth he attracted the attention of the famous antiquary, William Camden, then usher at Westminster School, and there the poet laid the solid foundations of his classical learning. Jonson always held Camden in veneration, acknowledging that to him he owed,
“All that I am in arts, all that I know:”
and dedicating his first dramatic success, “Every Man in His Humour,” to him. ”