Daily Book Excerpt: Poetry
Six Centuries of Great Poetry: A Stunning Collection of Classic British Poems from Chaucer to Yeats
“O rare Benn Johnson.” — Jonson’s epitaph in Westminster Abbey
Rare, indeed. He did everything. Plays, poems, satires, elegies, epigrams. His talent is wide and flexible, but not facile. Everything he writes feels inevitable. Everything is itself. Michael Schmidt refers to him as “the most versatile writer in the history of English poetry.”
A contemporary of Shakespeare, he suffers by comparison. When people have discussed him, throughout history, more often than not they do so in the context of Shakespeare. As giant as Ben Jonson was, he is not allowed to stand alone, because Shakespeare hovers right on the periphery. John Dryden, 17th century critic, wrote, “I admire Jonson, but I love Shakespeare.” One cannot exist without consciousness of the other. Alexander Pope put it succinctly in his preface to the works of Shakespeare in 1725:
It is ever the nature of parties to be in extremes; and nothing is so probable, as that because Ben Jonson had much the more learning, it was said on the other hand that Shakespeare had none at all; and because Shakespeare had much the most wit and fancy, it was retorted on the other, that Jonson wanted both. Because Shakespeare borrowed nothing, it was said that Ben Jonson borrowed everything.
The men placed in opposition merely because of their closeness in the timeline.
Michael Schmidt writes:
“In the plays the proximity of Shakespeare does Jonson most harm, though he writes plays so different from his frien’s that they seem distinct in kind and period. Part of that difference is Jonson’s poetic balance, deliberate artistry: he knows what he wants to say and has the means of saying it, no more or less. He reaches a conclusion and stops; no discovery leads him beyond his destination. He speaks for his age, while Shakespeare speaks for himself. Jonson’s art is normative, Shakespeare’s radical and exploratory. In Jonson there’s structure and gauged variegation, in Shakespeare movement and wamrth. Coleridge disliked the “rankness” of Jonson’s realism and found no “goodness of heart”. He condemned the “absurd rant and ventriloquism” in the tragedy Sejanus, staged by Shakespeare’s company at the Globe. At times Jonson’s words, unlike Shakespeare’s tend to separate out and stand single, rather than coalesce, as though he had attended to each individual word. His mind is busy near the surface.
Fascinating analysis, I think. Shakespeare and Jonson were both in the theatre, they knew each other, and were colleagues from time to time. There’s that great quote from Jonson about Shakespeare:
I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand.
There is controversy in Jonson’s life. He was imprisoned for a play it was thought he wrote, and spent some time ocked up. He converted to Roman Catholicism while in prison – although the conversion didn’t “take”. He killed someone (not sure why, it was a fellow actor) and was almost hanged. He traveled widely. The publication of his “first folio” was overseen by him and certainly was influential in the subsequent publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio, published seven years later. Jonson was involved in the publication of that as well, and, indeed, wrote an elegy for Shakespeare which appears in the Folio:
To the memory of my beloved,
The Author
MR. W I L L I A M S H A K E S P E A R E :
A N D
what he hath left us.To draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy Booke, and Fame;
While I confesse thy writings to be such,
As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much.
‘Tis true, and all men’s suffrage. But these wayes
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For seeliest Ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but eccho’s right;
Or blinde Affection, which doth ne’re advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty Malice, might pretend this praise,
And thine to ruine, where it seem’d to raise.
These are, as some infamous Baud, or Whore,
Should praise a Matron. What could hurt her more?
But thou art proofe against them, and indeed
Above th’ ill fortune of them, or the need.
I, therefore will begin. Soule of the Age !
The applause ! delight ! the wonder of our Stage !
My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye
A little further, to make thee a roome :
Thou art a Moniment, without a tombe,
And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mixe thee so, my braine excuses ;
I meane with great, but disproportion’d Muses :
For, if I thought my judgement were of yeeres,
I should commit thee surely with thy peeres,
And tell, how farre thou dist our Lily out-shine,
Or sporting Kid or Marlowes mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latine, and lesse Greeke,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seeke
For names; but call forth thund’ring Æschilus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life againe, to heare thy Buskin tread,
And shake a stage : Or, when thy sockes were on,
Leave thee alone, for the comparison
Of all, that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britaine, thou hast one to showe,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time !
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When like Apollo he came forth to warme
Our eares, or like a Mercury to charme !
Nature her selfe was proud of his designes,
And joy’d to weare the dressing of his lines !
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other Wit.
The merry Greeke, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated, and deserted lye
As they were not of Natures family.
Yet must I not give Nature all: Thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part;
For though the Poets matter, Nature be,
His Art doth give the fashion. And, that he,
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses anvile : turne the same,
(And himselfe with it) that he thinkes to frame;
Or for the lawrell, he may gaine a scorne,
For a good Poet’s made, as well as borne.
And such wert thou. Looke how the fathers face
Lives in his issue, even so, the race
Of Shakespeares minde, and manners brightly shines
In his well toned, and true-filed lines :
In each of which, he seemes to shake a Lance,
As brandish’t at the eyes of Ignorance.
Sweet swan of Avon! what a fight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appeare,
And make those flights upon the bankes of Thames,
That so did take Eliza, and our James !
But stay, I see thee in the Hemisphere
Advanc’d, and made a Constellation there !
Shine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage,
Or influence, chide, or cheere the drooping Stage;
Which, since thy flight fro’ hence, hath mourn’d like night,
And despaires day, but for thy Volumes light.
Wow. What is amazing about that, for me, is how personal it obviously is. It is a “letter” to his dead friend. You can feel their relationship, there are vestiges of envy there, openly admitted to – the whole thing is palpable with feeling. “and what he hath left us.” He was a prescient man. He knew the scope of Shakespeare’s work. He knew it would last.
Edmund Bolton wrote in 1722:
I never tasted English more to my liking, nor more smart, and put to the height of use in poetry, than in the vital, judicious, and most practicable language of Benjamin Jonson’s poems.
There is so much material to choose from, with Ben Jonson, but the following poem, written to his dead child, is heartbreaking, with two lines (the first one and the 10th) that are piercingly great.
On My First Son
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.
Seven years wert thou leant to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O. I could lose all father now. For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon ‘scaped world’s, and flesh’s, rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie
Ben Jonson, his best piece of poetry.
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.
“And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live.”
What I, what all writers, hope for.