Ben Jonson

“ Pug, the hero of the adventure, is a pretty, petulant boy, more human by many degrees than the half fairy Puck of Shakespeare, which doubtless helped to suggest him, and the arch-fiend Satan is a bluff old politician, anxious to ward off the perils of London from his young simpleton of a son, who is equally eager to plunge into them. ”

“ Hee may perchance, in taile of a Sheriffes dinner, Skip with a rime o’ the table, from New-nothing, And take his Almaine-leape into a custard.
Thus not only does Jonson identify the Vice with the fool, but with the fool in his senility. The characteristic functions of the jester in the Shakespearian drama, with his abundant store of improvised jests, witty retorts, and irresistible impudence, have no part in this character. He is merely the mountebank who climbs upon a tavern stool, skips over the table, and leaps into corporation custards. ”

“ But we miss its point if we fail to see that Jonson’s arraignment of the society which permitted itself to be gulled is no less severe than that of the swindler who practised upon its credulity. Three institutions especially demand an explanation both for their own sake and for their bearing upon the plot. ”

“ Hell! why is shee so braue? It cannot be to please Duke Dottrel, sure, Nor the dull pictures, in her gallery, Nor her owne deare reflection, in her glasse; Yet that may be: I haue knowne many of ’hem, 15 Beginne their pleasure, but none end it, there: (That I consider, as I goe a long with it) They may, for want of better company, Or that they thinke the better, spend an houre; Two, three, or foure, discoursing with their shaddow: 20 But sure they haue a farther speculation. No woman drest with so much care, and study, Doth dresse her selfe in vaine. ”

“ His most elaborate reproductions of the everyday world are hardly ever without an infusion of equally elaborate caprice,—a leaven of recondite and fantastic legend and grotesque myth, redolent of old libraries and antique scholarship, furtively planted, as it were, in the heart of that everyday world of London life, and so subtly blending with it that the whole motley throng of merchants and apprentices, gulls and gallants, discover nothing unusual in it, and engage with the most perfectly matter of fact air in the business of working it out. ”

“ It is certain that of the two leading ideas of Jonson’s comedy, the sending of a devil to earth with the object of corrupting men is derived from the Rush legend. It is probable that the no less important motive of a baffled devil, happy to make his return to hell, is due either directly or indirectly to Machiavelli’s influence. This motive, as we have seen, was strengthened by a body of legend and by the treatment of the devil in the morality play. ”

“ He attributes the currency of the notion that this mode of exit was the regular one to the famous passage in Harsnet’s Declaration of Popish Impostures (p. 114, 1603) : ‘It was a pretty part in the old church-playes, when the nimble Vice would skip up nimbly like a jackanapes into the devil’s necke, and ride the devil a course, and belabour him with his wooden dagger, till he made him roare, whereat the people would laugh to see the devil so vice-haunted.’ The moralities and tragedies give no indication of hostility between Vice and devil. ”

“ Jonson’s Treatment of the Devil
In the present play the devil-type is represented by the arch-fiend Satan and his stupid subordinate, Pug. Of these two Satan received more of the formal conventional elements of the older drama, while Pug for the most part represents the later or clownish figure. As in the morality-play Satan’s chief function is the instruction of his emissary of evil. In no scene does he come into contact with human beings, and he is always jealously careful for the best interests of his state. ”

“ The old savage horror fades away before Jonson’s humanising touch, the infernal world loses all its privilege of peculiar terror and strength, and sinks to the footing of a mere rival state, whose merchandise can be kept out of the market and its citizens put in the Counter or carted to Tyburn. ”

“ And what a daughter of darknesse, he do’s make you, 100 Lock’d vp from all society, or object; Your eye not let to looke vpon a face, Vnder a Conjurers (or some mould for one, Hollow, and leane like his) but, by great meanes, As I now make; your owne too sensible sufferings, 105 Without the extraordinary aydes, Of spells, or spirits, may assure you, Lady. For my part, I protest ’gainst all such practice, I worke by no false arts, medicines, or charmes To be said forward and backward. ”

“ Nay, then, I taste a tricke in’t.
But precisely here Jonson blunders badly. In Boccaccio’s story the trick was a genuine one. Il Zima stands waiting for an answer. When no response is made he begins to suspect the husband’s secret admonition, and to thwart it hits upon the device of answering himself. But in Jonson there is no trick at all. Fitzdottrel does indeed require his wife to remain silent, but by no means secretly. His command is placed in the midst of a rambling discourse addressed alternately to his wife and to the young men. ”

“ Tissue gownes, Garters and roses, fourescore pound a paire, Embroydred stockings, cut-worke smocks, and shirts, More certaine marks of lechery, now, and pride, Then ere they were of true nobility! 130 But Pug, since you doe burne with such desire To doe the Common-wealth of Hell some seruice; I am content, assuming of a body, You goe to earth, and visit men, a day. But you must take a body ready made, Pug, 135 I can create you none: nor shall you forme Your selfe an aery one, but become subiect To all impression of the flesh, you take, So farre as humane frailty. ”

“ In The Devil is an Ass the most purely comic motive of the play is furnished by a reversal of the usual relation subsisting between these two groups. Here the devil, who was wont to be looked upon as arch-intriguer, is constantly ‘fooled off and beaten’, and thus takes his position as the comic butt. Pug, in a sense, represents a satirical trend. Through him Jonson satirizes the outgrown supernaturalism which still clung to the skirts [xlii] of Jacobean realism, and at the same time paints in lively colors the vice of a society against which hell itself is powerless to contend. ”

“ In them the devil is with few exceptions a serious figure. Occasionally, however, even at this early date, comedy and satire find place. The most prominent example is the figure of Titivillus in the Towneley cycle.
In the early moralities the devil is still of primary importance, and is always serious. But as the Vice became a more and more prominent figure, the devil became less and less so, and in the later drama his part is always subordinate. The play of Nature (c. 1500) is the first morality without a devil. ”

“ As Hollstein points out, each comes with a firm resolve to do his best, each finds at once that his opponents are too strong for him, each through his own docility and stupidity meets repulse after repulse, ending in ruin, and each is glad to return to hell. This, of course, involves the very essence of Jonson’s drama, and on its resemblance to the novella must be based any theory that Jonson was familiar with the latter. ”

“ While Bacon and Raleigh were inclining to a belief in witchcraft, and Sir Thomas Browne was offering his support to persecution, the cause of reason was intrusted to such champions as Reginald Scot, the author of the famous Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584, a work which fearlessly exposes the prevailing follies and crimes. It is on this side that Jonson places himself. That he should make a categorical statement as to his belief or disbelief in witchcraft is not to be expected. ”

“ In the later drama the figure of the projector appears several times, but it lacks the timeliness of Jonson’s satire, and the conception must have been largely derived from literary sources. Jonson’s influence is often apparent. In Brome’s Court Beggar the patentee is Mendicant, a country gentleman who has left his rustic life and sold his property, in order to raise his state by court-suits. The projects which he presents at court are the invention of three projectors. Like Merecraft, they promise to make Mendicant a lord, and succeed only in reducing him to poverty. ”

“ It is evident, even upon a cursory reading, that Jonson has not confined himself to the conception of the Vice obtainable from a familiarity with the interludes alone, as shown in Heywood’s farces or the comedy of Jack Juggler. The character of Iniquity, though fully identified with the buffoon of the later plays, is nevertheless closely connected in the author’s mind with the intriguer of the old moralities. This is clear above all from the use of the name Iniquity, from his association [xxxviii] with the devil, and from Pug’s desire to use him as a means of corrupting his playfellows. ”

“ It is only, however, in a general way, where the devil stands for a principle, that Pug may be considered as in any degree satirical. In the particular incident he is always a purely comic figure, and furnishes the mirth which results from a sense of the incongruity between anticipation and accomplishment.
Fitzdottrel, on the other hand, is mainly satirical. Through him Jonson passes censure upon the city gallant, the attendant at the theatre, the victim of the prevalent superstitions, and even the pretended demoniac. ”

“ Of a Hounsditch man, sir, one of the devil’s near kinsmen, a broker.’
The pawnbrokers were cordially hated in Jonson’s time. Their quarter was Houndsditch. Stow says: ‘there are crept in among them [the inhabitants of Houndsditch] a base kinde of vermine, wel-deserving to bee ranked and numbred with them, whom our old Prophet and Countryman, Gyldas, called Ætatis atramentum, the black discredit of the Age, and of place where they are suffered to live.... These men, or rather monsters in the shape of men, professe to live by lending, and yet will lend nothing but upon pawnes;’ etc. ”

“ The notion of a ‘stupid devil’ is not very common in English, but occasionally appears. In the Virgilius legend the fiend is cheated of his reward by stupidly putting himself into the physical power of the wizard. ”

“ Belphegor is described as ‘patient, mild, and pitiful’; and during his sojourn on earth he shows little aptitude for mischief, but becomes merely a butt and object of abuse. Belphegor’s request for a companion, unlike that of Pug, is granted. He chooses his servant Akercock, who takes the form of Robin Goodfellow. Robin expresses many of the sentiments to be found in the mouth of Pug. With the latter’s monologue (Text, 5. 2) compare Robin’s exclamation:
Zounds, I had rather be in hell than here. ”

“ Cushman believes therefore that Harsnet refers either to some lost morality or to ‘Punch and Judy.’ It is significant, however, that in ‘Punch and Judy,’ which gives indications of being a debased descendant of the morality, the devil enters with the evident intention of carrying the hero off to hell. ”

“ In the allegorical treatment the abstraction is the starting-point, and the human element the means of interpretation. Either type of drama, by a shifting of emphasis, may readily pass over into the other. The failure of Cynthia’s Revels, in spite of the poet’s arrogant boast at its close, had an important effect upon his development, and the plays of Jonson’s middle period, from Sejanus to The Devil is an Ass, show more restraint in the handling of character, as well as far greater care in construction. ”

“ According to the theory of Cushman, the name Vice stands in the beginning for a moral and abstract idea, that of the principle of evil in the world, and must have originated in the moralities; and since it is applied to a comic personage in the interludes, this borrowing must have taken place after the period of degeneration had already begun. ”

“ The treatment does not differ essentially from that of Middleton and Shakespeare.
In The Sad Shepherd the purpose is still different. We have none of the wild unearthliness of the masque. Maudlin is a witch of a decidedly vulgar type, but there is no satirical intent. Jonson, for the purpose of his play, accepts for the moment the prevailing attitude toward witchcraft, and the satisfaction in Maudlin’s discomfiture doubtless assumed an acquiescence in the popular belief. ”

“ In the beginning, therefore, he has little of Pug’s thirst for adventure, but his object is at bottom the same, ‘to goe and dwell among these [xxix] religious men for to maintaine them the longer in their ungracious living’. Like Pug, whose request for a Vice is denied him, he goes unaccompanied, and presents himself at the priory in the guise of a young man seeking service: ‘Sir, I am a poore young man, and am out of service, and faine would have a maister’. [32]
Most of the remaining incidents of the Rush story could not be used in Jonson’s play. ”

“ we are persons of quality, I assure you, and women of fashion, and come to see and to be seen.’ Silent Woman, Wks. ”

“ Fitzdottrel.
In construction the play suffers from overabundance of material. Instead of a single main line of action, which is given clear precedence, there is rather a succession of elaborated episodes, carefully connected and motivated, but not properly subordinated. The plot is coherent and intricate rather than unified. This is further aggravated by the fact that the chief objects of satire are imperfectly understood by readers of the present day.
Jonson observes unity of time, Pug coming to earth in the morning and returning at midnight. ”

“ Moreover the motive of the devil as an animal for riding is not infrequent. In the Castle of Perseverance the devil carries away the hero, Humanum Genus. The motive appears also in Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and Lodge and Greene’s Looking Glass for London and England, and especially in Histriomastix, where the Vice rides a roaring devil (Eckhardt, pp. 86 f.) . We have also another bit of evidence from Jonson himself. In The Staple of News Mirth relates her reminiscences of the old comedy. ”

“ For the old Vice with his wooden dagger to snap at everybody he met, or Iniquity, appareled ‘like Hokos Pokos, in a juggler’s jerkin’, he substitutes ‘vices male and female’, ‘attired like men and women of the time’. This of course is only a more philosophical and abstract statement of the idea which he expresses in The Devil is an Ass (1. 1. 120 f.) of a world where the vices are not distinguishable by any outward sign from the virtues:
They weare the same clothes, eate the same meate, Sleep i’ the self-same beds, ride i’ those coaches. ”

“ Both novella and play depart from the same idea, the visit of a devil to earth to lead a human life. Both devils are bound by certain definite conditions. Belfagor must choose a wife, and live with her ten years; Pug must return at midnight. Belfagor, like Pug, must be subject to ‘ogni infortunio nel quale gli uomini scorrono’.
In certain important respects Machiavelli’s story differs essentially from Jonson’s. Both Dekker and Machiavelli place the opening scene in the classical Hades instead of in the Christian hell. ”

“ In an intermediate position are Merecraft and Everill. They succeed in swindling Fitzdottrel and Lady Tailbush, but are in turn played upon by the chief intriguer, Wittipol, with his friend Manly. Jonson’s moral purpose is here plainly visible, especially in contrast to Plautus, with whom the youthful intriguer is also the stock figure. The motive of the young man’s trickery in the Latin comedy is usually unworthy and selfish. ”

“ Merecraft is merely the projector who devises clever projects for more powerful patrons. Mompesson’s project bears [lxxiii] no resemblance to those suggested by Merecraft, and he could hardly have attracted any popular dislike at the time when The Devil is an Ass was presented, since, as we have seen, his patent was not even sealed until the following year. Finally, Jonson would hardly have attacked a man who stood so high at court as did Mompesson in 1616. ”

“ Of these Jonson advances a plea of justification: ‘Where have I been particular? where personal? except to a mimic, cheater, bawd or buffoon, creatures, for their insolencies, worthy to be taxed? yet to which of these so pointingly, as he might not either ingenuously have confest, or wisely dissembled his disease?’ [91]
In only one play do we know that the principal characters represent real people. But between Poetaster and The Devil is an Ass [lxvi] there is a vast difference of treatment. ”

“ The author of Grim uses the Belfagor legend for the groundwork of his plot, but handles his material freely. In many respects the play is a close parallel to The Devil is an Ass. The same respect for the vices of earth is felt as in Dekker’s and Jonson’s plays. Belphegor sets out to
... make experiment If hell be not on earth as well as here.
The circumstances of the sending bear a strong resemblance to the instructions given to Pug: [xxxiii]
Thou shalt be subject unto human chance, So far as common wit cannot relieve thee. ”

“ In The Devil is an Ass Jonson may be studied, first, as a student; secondly, as an observer. Separated by only two years from the preceding play, Bartholomew Fair, and by nine from the following, The Staple of News, the present play marks the close of an epoch in the poet’s life, the period of his vigorous maturity. ”