Cynthia\'s Revels

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Sue Asscher asschers@dingoblue.net.au and Amy E Zelmer

EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS

POETRY AND
THE DRAMA

BEN JONSON'S PLAYS
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
PROF. FELIX E. SCHELLING
VOLUME ONE

THE PUBLISHERS OF EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND FREELY TO ALL
APPLICANTS A LIST OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED VOLUMES TO BE COMPRISED
UNDER THE FOLLOWING THIRTEEN HEADINGS:

TRAVEL * SCIENCE * FICTION
THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY
HISTORY * CLASSICAL
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
ESSAYS * ORATORY
POETRY & DRAMA
BIOGRAPHY
REFERENCE
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POETS ARE THE TRUMPETS WHICH SING TO BATTLE........POETS ARE THE
UNACKNOWLEDGED LEGISLATORS OF THE WORLD
- SHELLEY

THE COMPLETE PLAYS OF BEN JONSON
VOLUME ONE

FIRST ISSUE OF THIS EDITION . 1910
REPRINTED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1915

INTRODUCTION

THE greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary
dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism
who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course
of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong
personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least in his
age.

Ben Jonson came of the stock that was centuries after to give to the world
Thomas Carlyle; for Jonson's grandfather was of Annandale, over the Solway,
whence he migrated to England. Jonson's father lost his estate under Queen
Mary, "having been cast into prison and forfeited." He entered the church,
but died a month before his illustrious son was born, leaving his widow and
child in poverty. Jonson's birthplace was Westminster, and the time of his
birth early in 1573. He was thus nearly ten years Shakespeare's junior,
and less well off, if a trifle better born. 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. It is doubtful whether Jonson ever went to either university, though
Fuller says that he was "statutably admitted into St. John's College,
Cambridge." He tells us that he took no degree, but was later "Master of
Arts in both the universities, by their favour, not his study." When a
mere youth Jonson enlisted as a soldier trailing his pike in Flanders in
the protracted wars of William the Silent against the Spanish. Jonson was
a large and raw-boned lad; he became by his own account in time exceedingly
bulky. In chat with his friend William Drummond of Hawthornden, Jonson
told how "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;" and how
"since his coming to England, being appealed to the fields, he had killed
his adversary which had hurt him in the arm and whose sword was ten inches
longer than his." Jonson's reach may have made up for the lack of his
sword; certainly his prowess lost nothing in the telling. Obviously Jonson
was brave, combative, and not averse to talking of himself and his doings.

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.

How soon Jonson drifted into what we now call grandly "the theatrical
profession" we do not know. In 1593 Marlowe made his tragic exit from
life, and Greene, Shakespeare's other rival on the popular stage, had
preceded Marlowe in an equally miserable death the year before.
Shakespeare already had the running to himself. Jonson appears first in
the employment of Philip Henslowe, the exploiter of several troupes of
players, manager, and father-in-law of the famous actor, Edward Alleyn.
From entries in 'Henslowe's Diary', a species of theatrical account book
which has been handed down to us, we know that Jonson was connected with
the Admiral's men; for he borrowed £4 of Henslowe, July 28, 1597, paying
back 3s. 9d. on the same day on account of his "share" (in what is not
altogether clear); while later, on December 3, of the same year, Henslowe
advanced 20s. to him "upon a book which he showed the plot unto the company
which he promised to deliver unto the company at Christmas next." In the
next August Jonson was in collaboration with Chettle and Porter in a play
called "Hot Anger Soon Cold." All this points to an association with
Henslowe of some duration, as no mere tyro would be thus paid in advance
upon mere promise. From allusions in Dekker's play, "Satiromastix," it
appears that Jonson, like Shakespeare, began life as an actor, and that he
"ambled in a leather pitch by a play-wagon" taking at one time the part of
Hieronimo in Kyd's famous play, "The Spanish Tragedy." By the beginning of
1598, Jonson, though still in needy circumstances, had begun to receive
recognition. Francis Meres -- well known for his "Comparative Discourse of
our English Poets with the Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets," printed in
1598, and for his mention therein of a dozen plays of Shakespeare by title
-- accords to Ben Jonson a place as one of "our best in tragedy," a matter
of some surprise, as no known tragedy of Jonson from so early a date has
come down to us. That Jonson was at work on tragedy, however, is proved by
the entries in Henslowe of at least three tragedies, now lost, in which he
had a hand. These are "Page of Plymouth," "King Robert II. of Scotland,"
and "Richard Crookback." But all of these came later, on his return to
Henslowe, and range from August 1599 to June 1602.

Returning to the autumn of 1598, an event now happened to sever for a time
Jonson's relations with Henslowe. In a letter to Alleyn, dated September
26 of that year, Henslowe writes: "I have lost one of my company that
hurteth me greatly; that is Gabriel [Spencer], for he is slain in Hogsden
fields by the hands of Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer." The last word is
perhaps Henslowe's thrust at Jonson in his displeasure rather than a
designation of his actual continuance at his trade up to this time. It is
fair to Jonson to remark however, that his adversary appears to have been a
notorious fire-eater who had shortly before killed one Feeke in a similar
squabble. Duelling was a frequent occurrence of the time among gentlemen
and the nobility; it was an imprudent breach of the peace on the part of a
player. This duel is the one which Jonson described years after to
Drummond, and for it Jonson was duly arraigned at Old Bailey, tried, and
convicted. He was sent to prison and such goods and chattels as he had
"were forfeited." It is a thought to give one pause that, but for the
ancient law permitting convicted felons to plead, as it was called, the
benefit of clergy, Jonson might have been hanged for this deed. The
circumstance that the poet could read and write saved him; and he received
only a brand of the letter "T," for Tyburn, on his left thumb. While in
jail Jonson became a Roman Catholic; but he returned to the faith of the
Church of England a dozen years later.

On his release, in disgrace with Henslowe and his former associates, Jonson
offered his services as a playwright to Henslowe's rivals, the Lord
Chamberlain's company, in which Shakespeare was a prominent shareholder. A
tradition of long standing, though not susceptible of proof in a court of
law, narrates that Jonson had submitted the manuscript of "Every Man in His
Humour" to the Chamberlain's men and had received from the company a
refusal; that Shakespeare called him back, read the play himself, and at
once accepted it. Whether this story is true or not, certain it is that
"Every Man in His Humour" was accepted by Shakespeare's company and acted
for the first time in 1598, with Shakespeare taking a part. The evidence
of this is contained in the list of actors prefixed to the comedy in the
folio of Jonson's works, 1616. But it is a mistake to infer, because
Shakespeare's name stands first in the list of actors and the elder
Kno'well first in the 'dramatis personae', that Shakespeare took that
particular part. The order of a list of Elizabethan players was generally
that of their importance or priority as shareholders in the company and
seldom if ever corresponded to the list of characters.

"Every Man in His Humour" was an immediate success, and with it Jonson's
reputation as one of the leading dramatists of his time was established
once and for all. This could have been by no means Jonson's earliest
comedy, and we have just learned that he was already reputed one of "our
best in tragedy." Indeed, one of Jonson's extant comedies, "The Case is
Altered," but one never claimed by him or published as his, must certainly
have preceded "Every Man in His Humour" on the stage. The former play may
be described as a comedy modelled on the Latin plays of Plautus. (It
combines, in fact, situations derived from the "Captivi" and the
"Aulularia" of that dramatist). But the pretty story of the beggar-maiden,
Rachel, and her suitors, Jonson found, not among the classics, but in the
ideals of romantic love which Shakespeare had already popularised on the
stage. Jonson never again produced so fresh and lovable a feminine
personage as Rachel, although in other respects "The Case is Altered" is
not a conspicuous play, and, save for the satirising of Antony Munday in
the person of Antonio Balladino and Gabriel Harvey as well, is perhaps the
least characteristic of the comedies of Jonson.

"Every Man in His Humour," probably first acted late in the summer of 1598
and at the Curtain, is commonly regarded as an epoch-making play; and this
view is not unjustified. As to plot, it tells little more than how an
intercepted letter enabled a father to follow his supposedly studious son
to London, and there observe his life with the gallants of the time. The
real quality of this comedy is in its personages and in the theory upon
which they are conceived. Ben Jonson had theories about poetry and the
drama, and he was neither chary in talking of them nor in experimenting
with them in his plays. This makes Jonson, like Dryden in his time, and
Wordsworth much later, an author to reckon with; particularly when we
remember that many of Jonson's notions came for a time definitely to
prevail and to modify the whole trend of English poetry. First of all
Jonson was a classicist, that is, he believed in restraint and precedent in
art in opposition to the prevalent ungoverned and irresponsible Renaissance
spirit. 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." 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."

But continuing, Jonson is careful to add:
"But that a rook by wearing a pied feather,
The cable hat-band, or the three-piled ruff,
A yard of shoe-tie, or the Switzers knot
On his French garters, should affect a humour!
O, it is more than most ridiculous."

Jonson's comedy of humours, in a word, conceived of stage personages on the
basis of a ruling trait or passion (a notable simplification of actual life
be it observed in passing); and, placing these typified traits in
juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck the spark of comedy.
Downright, as his name indicates, is "a plain squire"; Bobadill's humour is
that of the braggart who is incidentally, and with delightfully comic
effect, a coward; 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. He says as to
the laws of the old comedy (meaning by "laws," such matters as the unities
of time and place and the use of chorus): "I see not then, but we should
enjoy the same licence, or free power to illustrate and heighten our
invention as they [the ancients] did; and not be tied to those strict and
regular forms which the niceness of a few, who are nothing but form, would
thrust upon us." "Every Man in His Humour" is written in prose, a novel
practice which Jonson had of his predecessor in comedy, John Lyly. 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. To mention only Shakespeare's Falstaff and his rout,
Bardolph, Pistol, Dame Quickly, and the rest, whether in "Henry IV." or in
"The Merry Wives of Windsor," all are conceived in the spirit of humours.
So are the captains, Welsh, Scotch, and Irish of "Henry V.," and Malvolio
especially later; though Shakespeare never employed the method of humours
for an important personage. It was not Jonson's fault that many of his
successors did precisely the thing that he had reprobated, that is, degrade
"the humour: into an oddity of speech, an eccentricity of manner, of dress,
or cut of beard. There was an anonymous play called "Every Woman in Her
Humour." Chapman wrote "A Humourous Day's Mirth," Day, "Humour Out of
Breath," Fletcher later, "The Humourous Lieutenant," and Jonson, besides
"Every Man Out of His Humour," returned to the title in closing the cycle
of his comedies in "The Magnetic Lady or Humours Reconciled."

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. This play as a
fabric of plot is a very slight affair; but as a satirical picture of the
manners of the time, proceeding by means of vivid caricature, couched in
witty and brilliant dialogue and sustained by that righteous indignation
which must lie at the heart of all true satire -- as a realisation, in
short, of the classical ideal of comedy -- there had been nothing like
Jonson's comedy since the days of Aristophanes. "Every Man in His Humour,"
like the two plays that follow it, contains two kinds of attack, the
critical or generally satiric, levelled at abuses and corruptions in the
abstract; and the personal, in which specific application is made of all
this in the lampooning of poets and others, Jonson's contemporaries. 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 arrogant attitude mentioned above and
his uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no
wonder that Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal
quarrels with his fellow-authors. The circumstances of the origin of this
'poetomachia' are far from clear, and those who have written on the topic,
except of late, have not helped to make them clearer. The origin of the
"war" has been referred to satirical references, apparently to Jonson,
contained in "The Scourge of Villainy," a satire in regular form after the
manner of the ancients by John Marston, a fellow playwright, subsequent
friend and collaborator of Jonson's. On the other hand, epigrams of Jonson
have been discovered (49, 68, and 100) variously charging "playwright"
(reasonably identified with Marston) with scurrility, cowardice, and
plagiarism; though the dates of the epigrams cannot be ascertained with
certainty. Jonson's own statement of the matter to Drummond runs: "He had
many quarrels with Marston, beat him, and took his pistol from him, wrote
his 'Poetaster' on him; the beginning[s] of them were that Marston
represented him on the stage."*

[footnote] *The best account of this whole subject is to be found in the
edition of 'Poetaster' and 'Satiromastrix' by J. H. Penniman in 'Belles
Lettres Series' shortly to appear. See also his earlier work, 'The War of
the Theatres', 1892, and the excellent contributions to the subject by H.
C. Hart in 'Notes and Queries', and in his edition of Jonson, 1906.

Here at least we are on certain ground; and the principals of the quarrel
are known. "Histriomastix," a play revised by Marston in 1598, has been
regarded as the one in which Jonson was thus "represented on the stage";
although the personage in question, Chrisogonus, a poet, satirist, and
translator, poor but proud, and contemptuous of the common herd, seems
rather a complimentary portrait of Jonson than a caricature. As to the
personages actually ridiculed in "Every Man Out of His Humour," Carlo
Buffone was formerly thought certainly to be Marston, as he was described
as "a public scurrilous, and profane jester," and elsewhere as the grand
scourge or second untruss [that is, satirist], of the time" (Joseph Hall
being by his own boast the first, and Marston's work being entitled "The
Scourge of Villainy"). Apparently we must now prefer for Carlo a notorious
character named Charles Chester, of whom gossipy and inaccurate Aubrey
relates that he was "a bold impertinent fellow...a perpetual talker and
made a noise like a drum in a room. So one time at a tavern Sir Walter
Raleigh beats him and seals up his mouth (that is his upper and nether
beard) with hard wax. From him Ben Jonson takes his Carlo Buffone ['i.e.',
jester] in 'Every Man in His Humour' ['sic']." Is it conceivable that
after all Jonson was ridiculing Marston, and that the point of the satire
consisted in an intentional confusion of "the grand scourge or second
untruss" with "the scurrilous and profane" Chester?

We have digressed into detail in this particular case to exemplify the
difficulties of criticism in its attempts to identify the allusions in
these forgotten quarrels. We are on sounder ground of fact in recording
other manifestations of Jonson's enmity. In "The Case is Altered" there is
clear ridicule in the character Antonio Balladino of Anthony Munday,
pageant-poet of the city, translator of romances and playwright as well.
In "Every Man in His Humour" there is certainly a caricature of Samuel
Daniel, accepted poet of the court, sonneteer, and companion of men of
fashion. These men held recognised positions to which Jonson felt his
talents better entitled him; they were hence to him his natural enemies.
It seems almost certain that he pursued both in the personages of his
satire through "Every Man Out of His Humour," and "Cynthia's Revels,"
Daniel under the characters Fastidious Brisk and Hedon, Munday as
Puntarvolo and Amorphus; but in these last we venture on quagmire once
more. Jonson's literary rivalry of Daniel is traceable again and again, in
the entertainments that welcomed King James on his way to London, in the
masques at court, and in the pastoral drama. As to Jonson's personal
ambitions with respect to these two men, it is notable that he became, not
pageant-poet, but chronologer to the City of London; and that, on the
accession of the new king, he came soon to triumph over Daniel as the
accepted entertainer of royalty.

"Cynthia's Revels," the second "comical satire," was acted in 1600, and, as
a play, is even more lengthy, elaborate, and impossible than "Every Man Out
of His 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. Another of these
precocious little actors was Salathiel Pavy, who died before he was
thirteen, already famed for taking the parts of old men. Him Jonson
immortalised in one of the sweetest of his epitaphs. An interesting
sidelight is this on the character of this redoubtable and rugged satirist,
that he should thus have befriended and tenderly remembered these little
theatrical waifs, some of whom (as we know) had been literally kidnapped to
be pressed into the service of the theatre and whipped to the conning of
their difficult parts. 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.

The third and last of the "comical satires" is "Poetaster," acted, once
more, by the Children of the Chapel in 1601, and Jonson's only avowed
contribution to the fray. According to the author's own account, this play
was written in fifteen weeks on a report that his enemies had entrusted to
Dekker the preparation of "Satiromastix, the Untrussing of the Humorous
Poet," a dramatic attack upon himself. In this attempt to forestall his
enemies Jonson succeeded, and "Poetaster" was an immediate and deserved
success. While hardly more closely knit in structure than its earlier
companion pieces, "Poetaster" is planned to lead up to the ludicrous final
scene in which, after a device borrowed from the "Lexiphanes" of Lucian,
the offending poetaster, Marston-Crispinus, is made to throw up the
difficult words with which he had overburdened his stomach as well as
overlarded his vocabulary. In the end Crispinus with his fellow,
Dekker-Demetrius, is bound over to keep the peace and never thenceforward
"malign, traduce, or detract the person or writings of Quintus Horatius
Flaccus [Jonson] or any other eminent man transcending you in merit." One
of the most diverting personages in Jonson's comedy is Captain Tucca. "His
peculiarity" has been well described by Ward as "a buoyant blackguardism
which recovers itself instantaneously from the most complete exposure, and
a picturesqueness of speech like that of a walking dictionary of slang."

It was this character, Captain Tucca, that Dekker hit upon in his reply,
"Satiromastix," and he amplified him, turning his abusive vocabulary back
upon Jonson and adding "An immodesty to his dialogue that did not enter
into Jonson's conception." It has been held, altogether plausibly, that
when Dekker was engaged professionally, so to speak, to write a dramatic
reply to Jonson, he was at work on a species of chronicle history, dealing
with the story of Walter Terill in the reign of William Rufus. This he
hurriedly adapted to include the satirical characters suggested by
"Poetaster," and fashioned to convey the satire of his reply. The
absurdity of placing Horace in the court of a Norman king is the result.
But Dekker's play is not without its palpable hits at the arrogance, the
literary pride, and self-righteousness of Jonson-Horace, whose "ningle" or
pal, the absurd Asinius Bubo, has recently been shown to figure forth, in
all likelihood, Jonson's friend, the poet Drayton. Slight and hastily
adapted as is "Satiromastix," especially in a comparison with the better
wrought and more significant satire of "Poetaster," the town awarded the
palm to Dekker, not to Jonson; and Jonson gave over in consequence his
practice of "comical satire." Though Jonson was cited to appear before the
Lord Chief Justice to answer certain charges to the effect that he had
attacked lawyers and soldiers in "Poetaster," nothing came of this
complaint. It may be suspected that much of this furious clatter and
give-and-take was pure playing to the gallery. The town was agog with the
strife, and on no less an authority than Shakespeare ("Hamlet," ii. 2), we
learn that the children's company (acting the plays of Jonson) did "so
berattle the common stages...that many, wearing rapiers, are afraid of
goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither."

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