CHAPTER VIII. THE CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE. I. WHEN he was second master at Westminster School, Camden was attracted to a studious, clever boy whose father had lost "all his estate under Queen Marie,” had "turn'd minister," and died in poverty. The mother, marrying again, was now the wife of a bricklayer. The pupil, born, it is believed, in 1573, traced his origin to the Johnstons of Annandale, an old family of the Scottish border. Destitute of resources, he tried, on leaving school, first his stepfather's craft-" mortar treader" his enemies called him later-then the military profession. He went to the wars in the Low Countries, returned to London about 1592, married "a wyfe who," said he, "was a shrew yet honest," and began, about 1595, a third kind of trade, that of player and author, especially author, under that name which he was not long in making famous of Ben Jonson. From 1597, he figures in Henslowe's register, and he is named by Meres, the year after, as being, with Marlowe, 'A question of armorial bearings happily elucidated by Mr. Symonds has placed this origin beyond doubt.-" Ben Jonson," in the series "English Worthies," 1888, pp. 1, ff. Autobiographical information, in "Conversations with Drummond," "Ben Jonson," ed. Herford and Simpson, Oxf. 1925, I, 128. 369 25 Shakespeare, and ten others, among "our best for tragedy." He writes for the Lord Admiral's players and quarrels with them, then for Shakespeare's troupe and quarrels with that, then for the diminutive actors at the Blackfriars, then for adults again. He has found his course, his character is definitively formed, with angles so sharp, ruts so deep, and gibbosities so protruding, that nothing will change it; such as he is now, such will he remain: in his plays, in his occasional poems, in his private notes found after his death, and which read like confessions, in his private talks, a mixture of avowals and challenges.' Tall, stalwart, of great, and even, towards the end, of enormous bulk, recalling, as he says himself, "the tun at Heidelberg," with "rockye face "2 and curly hair, peremptory in his speech, a great eater and considerable drinker, See, eg, "Ben Jonson's conversations with W. Drummond of Hawthornden, Jan., 1619," ed. Laing, Shak. Soc., 1842, better text in Herford and Simpson's "Ben Jonson," Oxf., 1925, ff.; "Timber or Discoveries, made upon men and matter: as they have flow'd out of his daily readings," posthumous 1641; modern ed. by Schelling, Boston, 1892; by Gollancz, “Temple Classics"; by Castelain, with a minute study of the sources, Paris, 1906 (cf. Spingarn, "The Sources of Ben Jonson's Discoveries," in Mod. Philol., April, 1905, and P. Simpson in Mod. Lang. Rev., April, 1907, not forgetting that, whether he translates or not, Jonson records there his opinions or those he agrees with), also the remarkable series of his "Epigrams" and occasional poems. The prefaces, prologues, and epilogues to his plays also contain much autobiographical matter, valuable as showing his temper and revealing his ideas. The long-felt want of a critical edition of his works is now supplied by Prof. Herford and Mr. P. Simpson (ut supra). His plays have been, in the meantime, separately edited by the Univ. of Yale ("Yale Studies in English," ed. A. S. Cook). A reprod. of the folio ed. of the "Workes," 1616, and several of the quartos has been given by W. Bang, Louvain, 1905, ff. The unsatisfactory edition of the complete "Works " by pugnacious Gifford, Lond., 1816, 9 vols., was long famous. Concerning the sources of the dramas, see, besides Herford and Simpson, Koeppel,“ Quellen-Studien zu den Dramen Ben Jonson's, John Marston's und Beaumont's und Fletcher's," Leipzig, 1895. Fullest biography, that of Castelain, "Ben Jonson, l'homme et l'œuvre," Paris, 1907. Cf. Bradley and Adams, “The Jonson allusion book," New Haven, 1922. "Underwoods," lxx (on their sources, see Briggs, Mod. Philol., xv. 85). At forty-six he speaks of his "mountaine belly." he makes himself feared, hated, loved, according to circumstances. He cuts through life a deep, very visible furrow, and goes forth, as occasion wills, followed by a motley crew of idolaters or barkers, the first raising altars for him and the others pillories, some of the crew passing more than once from one camp to the other. Sincere, he always says what he thinks; brave, he fears the consequences of neither his words, his writings, nor his deeds. If he changes his mind he veers round completely; he is not for half-measures nor extenuations. We have from himself this strange anecdote: born a Protestant, converted to Catholicism in 1598, reconverted to Protestantism ten years later, at his next communion, in his enthusiasm and "in token of true reconciliation, he drank out all the full cup of wyne," meant for the whole congregation. He is quick at challenges: in Flanders he challenges a Spaniard, and kills him; in London he challenges Gabriel Spencer the player, and kills him; he challenges luck and Fate; two of his collaborators having, under James I., slipped into a play disparaging allusions to the Scots, he goes to prison with the guilty ones, as a volunteer, for example's sake, though he had had nothing to do with the objectionable passage; one of the two prisoners was Marston, erewhile his violent enemy. The list of his quarrels would be a long one: quarrels with the players for whom he wrote, with Marston and Dekker, whom he caricatured on the stage, and who repaid him in the same coin, a regular " Poetomachia,” as Dekker called it; endless quarrels with Inigo Jones, with "Poetaster or The Arraignment," by Jonson, performed at the Blackfriars, 1601, by the children of the Queen's Chapel (a “company of horrible blacke Friars," said Dekker), as the author had quarrelled with Shakespeare's troupe ; pr. 1602; mod. ed. by H. S. Mallory, "Yale Studies," New York, 1905; violent attacks on Marston (Crispinus), "poetaster and plagiary," whose pretentious style is mercilessly ridiculed, and Demetrius (Dekker), "a dresser of plays about the town," both represented as having turned against Horace (Jonson), whom he had been composing court masques and entertainments; quarrels with the public, the spectators, readers, and critics; challenges to each and all, in prefaces, "inductions," prologues, where he never tired of saying the good he thought of himself and the contempt he felt for the ignorant, the dunces, all those with a literary ideal different from his or with none at all. Lastly, he expressed in most lively fashion his disdain for opinion: "I do not write for the crowd to admire me," which does not mean that, in his heart, he did not care for the crowd's admiration, far from it; but admiration must come to him spontaneously, and if it did not, he would try to extort if by dint of threats, not of compliments. Much better never be seen, never be read, than win a public by flatteries. "Thou," says he to his bookseller, Thou that mak'st gain thy end, and wisely well, not because they could discover any fault in such a model of all perfections, but because it was a means for them to advertise themselves: "it will get us a huge deal of money" (iii. 1). The play, supposed to take place in Roman times, is certainly not a good one; but, as usual, the observation of English contemporary manners gives value to a number of scenes and portraits. Dekker answered vigorously in his "Satiro-Mastix. Or The untrussing of the Humorous Poet. As it hath bin presented publikely by the Lord Chamberlaine his servants," i.e., Shakespeare's troupe, at the Globe, "and privately by the children of Paules," performed autumn of 1601, pr. 1602. Dekker puts on the stage the same personages that Jonson did, but shows them under different colours: instead of all perfections Horace is, of course, all vices, and is satirised physically and morally, he and his " ovenmouth," his face "like a rotten russet apple, when 'tis bruiz'd," and his "strong garlicke comedies." I ... Neque me ut miretur turba, laboro, Contentus paucis lectoribus. Lines adapted from Horace as an epigr. for his "Alchemist," 1612, and for his "Workes," 1616. "Poetaster" and "Satiromastix," ed. Penniman, 1913. Use mine so too; I give thee leave: but crave, Nor have my title-leaf on posts or walls, But if an occasion occurs to express publicly his own sentiment on his own writings, he extols his merits in the same high-sounding voice which he had just been using to ridicule "that common spawn of ignorance, our fry of writers," his rivals: By 'tis good, and if you lik't, you may." While he caricatures Marston under the features of Crispinus, he represents himself under those of Horace, or again of Crites, Arete's lover, "a creature of a most perfect and divine temper." 3 He is exacting and surly; he grumbles and threatens ; he is always sure that he is right and that, when defending his own ideas, he is performing an exalted duty and paying tribute to Reason. He is especially struck with his contemporaries' faults, vices, and oddities. His eye magnifies warts and deepens wrinkles; he sees mankind uglier than it is, and he represents it as he sees it. A crude light, accentuating every shadow, plays on the faces of his characters in the numerous comedies in which, from 1597, he studied the foibles of the day-either in imaginary people, as in "Every Man in his Humour," "Every Man out of his Humour," "The Devil is an Ass," "The Staple of News," or in real ones which the audience could easily recognise, as in "Cynthia's Revels" and "The Poetaster." 4 Epigr. iii. Epil. of "Cynthia's Revels"; Prol. of "Poetaster." 3 "Cynthia's Revels," ii. 1. 4 "Every Man in his Humor," acted 1598, pr. 1601; ed. Simpson, Oxford, 1919; Carter, "Yale Studies," 1921, giving the two very different texts of 1601 and 1616 (cf. the anonymous imitation, "Every Woman in her |