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<\/i>, edited by Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine<\/p>\n“O rare Benn Johnson.” — Jonson’s epitaph in Westminster Abbey<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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<\/i> itself. Michael Schmidt refers to him as “the most versatile writer in the history of English poetry.” <\/p>\n
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:<\/p>\n
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. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The men placed in opposition merely because of their closeness in the timeline.<\/p>\n
Michael Schmidt writes:<\/p>\n
“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<\/i>, 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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:<\/p>\n
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. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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:<\/p>\n
To the memory of my beloved,
\nThe Author
\nMR. W I L L I A M S H A K E S P E A R E :
\nA N D
\nwhat he hath left us.<\/p>\nTo draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name,
\nAm I thus ample to thy Booke, and Fame;
\nWhile I confesse thy writings to be such,
\nAs neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much.
\n‘Tis true, and all men’s suffrage. But these wayes
\nWere not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
\nFor seeliest Ignorance on these may light,
\nWhich, when it sounds at best, but eccho’s right;
\nOr blinde Affection, which doth ne’re advance
\nThe truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
\nOr crafty Malice, might pretend this praise,
\nAnd thine to ruine, where it seem’d to raise.
\nThese are, as some infamous Baud, or Whore,
\nShould praise a Matron. What could hurt her more?
\nBut thou art proofe against them, and indeed
\nAbove th’ ill fortune of them, or the need.
\nI, therefore will begin. Soule of the Age !
\nThe applause ! delight ! the wonder of our Stage !
\nMy Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by
\nChaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye
\nA little further, to make thee a roome :
\nThou art a Moniment, without a tombe,
\nAnd art alive still, while thy Booke doth live,
\nAnd we have wits to read, and praise to give.
\nThat I not mixe thee so, my braine excuses ;
\nI meane with great, but disproportion’d Muses :
\nFor, if I thought my judgement were of yeeres,
\nI should commit thee surely with thy peeres,
\nAnd tell, how farre thou dist our Lily out-shine,
\nOr sporting Kid or Marlowes mighty line.
\nAnd though thou hadst small Latine, and lesse Greeke,
\nFrom thence to honour thee, I would not seeke
\nFor names; but call forth thund’ring \u00c6schilus,
\nEuripides, and Sophocles to us,
\nPaccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
\nTo life againe, to heare thy Buskin tread,
\nAnd shake a stage : Or, when thy sockes were on,
\nLeave thee alone, for the comparison
\nOf all, that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome
\nSent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
\nTriumph, my Britaine, thou hast one to showe,
\nTo whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
\nHe was not of an age, but for all time !
\nAnd all the Muses still were in their prime,
\nWhen like Apollo he came forth to warme
\nOur eares, or like a Mercury to charme !
\nNature her selfe was proud of his designes,
\nAnd joy’d to weare the dressing of his lines !
\nWhich were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
\nAs, since, she will vouchsafe no other Wit.
\nThe merry Greeke, tart Aristophanes,
\nNeat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
\nBut antiquated, and deserted lye
\nAs they were not of Natures family.
\nYet must I not give Nature all: Thy Art,
\nMy gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part;
\nFor though the Poets matter, Nature be,
\nHis Art doth give the fashion. And, that he,
\nWho casts to write a living line, must sweat,
\n(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
\nUpon the Muses anvile : turne the same,
\n(And himselfe with it) that he thinkes to frame;
\nOr for the lawrell, he may gaine a scorne,
\nFor a good Poet’s made, as well as borne.
\nAnd such wert thou. Looke how the fathers face
\nLives in his issue, even so, the race
\nOf Shakespeares minde, and manners brightly shines
\nIn his well toned, and true-filed lines :
\nIn each of which, he seemes to shake a Lance,
\nAs brandish’t at the eyes of Ignorance.
\nSweet swan of Avon! what a fight it were
\nTo see thee in our waters yet appeare,
\nAnd make those flights upon the bankes of Thames,
\nThat so did take Eliza, and our James !
\nBut stay, I see thee in the Hemisphere
\nAdvanc’d, and made a Constellation there !
\nShine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage,
\nOr influence, chide, or cheere the drooping Stage;
\nWhich, since thy flight fro’ hence, hath mourn’d like night,
\nAnd despaires day, but for thy Volumes light.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nWow. 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.<\/p>\n
Edmund Bolton wrote in 1722:<\/p>\n
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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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. <\/p>\n
On My First Son<\/b><\/p>\n
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
\nMy sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.
\nSeven years wert thou leant to me, and I thee pay,
\nExacted by thy fate, on the just day.
\nO. I could lose all father now. For why
\nWill man lament the state he should envy?
\nTo have so soon ‘scaped world’s, and flesh’s, rage,
\nAnd if no other misery, yet age?
\nRest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie
\nBen Jonson, his best piece of poetry.
\nFor whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,
\nAs what he loves may never like too much.<\/p>\n