epitaphs, elegies and “odes,” including both the tributes to
Shakespeare and several to royal and other patrons and friends,
besides the Execration upon Vulcan, and the characteristic ode
addressed by the poet to himself. To these pieces in verse should
be added the Discoveries—Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men
and Matters, avowedly a commonplace book of aphorisms noted
by the poet in his daily readings—thoughts adopted and adapted
in more tranquil and perhaps more sober moods than those which
gave rise to the outpourings of the Conversations at Hawthornden.
As to the critical value of these Conversations it is far from being
only negative; he knew how to admire as well as how to disdain.
For these thoughts, though abounding with biographical as well
as general interest, Jonson was almost entirely indebted to
ancient writers, or (as has been shown by Professor Spingarn and
by Percy Simpson) indebted to the humanists of the Renaissance
(see Modern Language Review, ii. 3, April 1907).
The extant dramatic works of Ben Jonson fall into three or, if his fragmentary pastoral drama be considered to stand by itself, into four distinct divisions. The tragedies are only two in number—Sejanus his Fall and Catiline his Conspiracy.[1] Of these the earlier, as is worth noting, was produced at Shakespeare’s theatre, in all probability before the first of Shakespeare’s Roman dramas, and still contains a considerable admixture of rhyme in the dialogue. Though perhaps less carefully elaborated in diction than its successor, Sejanus is at least equally impressive as a highly wrought dramatic treatment of a complex historic theme. The character of Tiberius adds an element of curious psychological interest on which speculation has never quite exhausted itself and which, in Jonson’s day at least, was wanting to the figures of Catiline and his associates. But in both plays the action is powerfully conducted, and the care bestowed by the dramatist upon the great variety of characters introduced cannot, as in some of his comedies, be said to distract the interest of the reader. Both these tragedies are noble works, though the relative popularity of the subject (for conspiracies are in the long run more interesting than camarillas) has perhaps secured the preference to Catiline. Yet this play and its predecessor were alike too manifestly intended by their author to court the goodwill of what he calls the “extraordinary” reader. 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 added, 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. Even if the revolution which he created in the comic 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. 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.” The idea of the master quality or tendency was, as has been well observed, a very considerable one for dramatist or novelist. Nor did Jonson (happily) attempt to work out this idea with any excessive scientific consistency as a comic dramatist. But, by refusing to apply the term “humour” (q.v.) to a mere peculiarity or affectation of manners, and restricting its use to actual or implied differences or distinctions of character, he broadened the whole basis of English comedy after his fashion, as Molière at a later date, keeping in closer touch with the common experience of human life, with a lighter hand broadened the basis of French and of modern Western comedy at large. It does not of course follow that Jonson’s disciples, the Bromes and the Cartwrights, always adequately reproduced the master’s conception of “humorous” comedy. Jonson’s wide and various reading helped him to diversify the application of his theory, while perhaps at times it led him into too remote illustrations of it. Still, Captain Bobadil and Captain Tucca, Macilente and Fungoso, Volpone and Mosca, and a goodly number of other characters impress themselves permanently upon the memory of those whose attention they have as a matter of course commanded. 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, with Barry Cornwall, 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 to his characters often diverted his attention from a brisk conduct of his plot. Barry Cornwall has directed attention to the essential likeness in the plot of two of Jonson’s best comedies, Volpone and The Alchemist; and another critic, W. Bodham Donne, has dwelt on the difficulty which, in The Poetaster and elsewhere, Ben Jonson seems to experience in sustaining the promise of his actions. The Poetaster is, however, a play sui generis, in which the real business can hardly be said to begin till the last act.
Dryden, when criticizing Ben Jonson’s comedies, thought fit, while allowing the old master humour and incontestable “pleasantness,” to deny him wit and those ornaments thereof which Quintilian reckons up under the terms urbana, salsa, faceta and so forth. 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 Fastidious Brisks and of their astute purveyors at any given moment. In this Ben Jonson was no doubt defective; but it would be an error to suppose him, as a comic dramatist, to have maintained towards the world around him 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; and his Volpone, which is perhaps the darkest social picture ever drawn by him, plays at Venice. Neither locality was ill-chosen, but the real atmosphere of his comedies is that of the native surroundings amidst which they were produced; and Ben Jonson’s times live for us in his men and women, his country gulls and town gulls, his alchemists and exorcists, his “skeldring” captains and whining Puritans, and the whole ragamuffin rout of his Bartholomew Fair, the comedy par excellence of Elizabethan low life. After he had described the pastimes, fashionable and unfashionable, of his age, its feeble superstitions and its flaunting naughtinesses, its vapouring affectations and its lying effronteries, with an odour as of “divine tabacco” pervading the whole, little might seem to be left to describe for his “sons” and successors. Enough, however, remained; only that his followers speedily again threw manners and “humours” into an undistinguishable medley.
The gift which both in his art and in his life Jonson lacked was that of exercising the influence or creating the effects which he wished to exercise or create without the appearance of consciousness. Concealment never crept over his efforts, and he scorned insinuation. Instead of this, influenced no doubt by the example of the free relations between author and public permitted by Attic comedy, he resorted again and again, from Every Man out of his Humour to The Magnetic Lady, to inductions and commentatory intermezzos and appendices, which, though occasionally effective by the excellence of their execution, are
- ↑ Of The Fall of Mortimer Jonson left only a few lines behind him; but, as he also left the argument of the play, factious ingenuity contrived to furbish up the relic into a libel against Queen Caroline and Sir Robert Walpole in 1731, and to revive the contrivance by way of an insult to the princess dowager of Wales and Lord Bute in 1762.
