Ben Jonson and his Comedies

Jonson was buried on the north side of the nave in Westminster Abbey, and the inscription, "O Rare Ben Jonson", was cut in the slab over his grave. In the beginning of the 18th century a portrait bust was put up to his memory in the Poets' Corner by Harley, earl of Oxford. Of Honthorst's portrait of Jonson at Knole Park there is a copy in the National Portrait Gallery; another was engraved by W. Marshall for the 1640 edition of his Poems.

Conclusion

Ben Jonson and his role in English literature

Known primarily as a writer of comedies such as Every Man in His Humor (1598) and Every Man out of His Humor (1599) in the reign of Elizabeth, Ben Jonson's (1572-1637) most interesting plays were performed during the reign (called the Jacobean period) of her successor, King James I. Volpone (1606) and The Alchemist (1610) stand today as Jonson's most often produced plays. Both are broad comedies: Volpone plays on the foxiness of a dying man who is anxious to see which of his heirs is worthy, and The Alchemist is a satire on the wiliness of con men who pretend to know how to transmute base metal into gold. All of these plays were highly regarded in Jacobean times. In addition to his comedies, Jonson's tragedies Sejanus (1603) and Catiline (1611) earned him the description of "best in tragedy" from a contemporary who maintained a diary devoted to his experiences in the theater. Burt, Richard. Licensed by Authority: Ben Jonson and the Discourses of Censorship. New York: Cornell University Press, 1993

Jonson led an exciting life. Born after his father died, he was placed in the Westminster School at the expense of its master, William Camden, author of the famous survey Britannia. There Jonson learned Latin and Greek, but he himself said that instead of attending a university, he practiced his trade. Because Jonson's stepfather was a bricklayer, it has been assumed that Jonson learned that trade. He eventually grew tired of bricklaying and managed to get a job as an actor. In 1598, while a member of Philip Henslowe's theater, he killed a fellow actor in a brawl. He claimed self-defense and was granted "benefit of clergy," which was accorded those who could read and translate a Latin passage, but as punishment he carried a brand on his thumb from Tyburn, the place of execution and punishment, for the rest of his life.

For Jonson the stage was a way of making a living. He aspired to be a pure poet and was accorded great honor in his lifetime by other poets. But he could not, even with the patronage of important noblemen, eke out a sufficient living writing only poetry. Jonson was imprisoned in Elizabeth's reign for writing an offensive play, the Isle of Dogs (1597), and in the early years of King James's reign, which began on March 24, 1603, play writing continued to be dangerous. Toward the end of 1606, Jonson teamed with George Chapman and William Marston to write Eastward Ho!, a comedy that ridiculed the Scots (James I was a Scot). Jonson and Chapman were imprisoned, but Jonson eventually contacted enough important people to secure his release, probably in October, claiming that the few offensive lines had been written by Marston, who had fled London to avoid prison. Then in November the great Gunpowder Plot--remembered today with bonfires on November 5, Guy Fawkes Day--cast a dangerous shadow over him. Led by the Catholic conspirator Guy Fawkes, the Gunpowder Plot was a plan to kill the king, his advisers, and all members of the hierarchy of the Church and Parliament. Guy Fawkes's use of the pseudonym John Johnson, together with Jonson's conversion to Catholicism, may have resulted in the playwright's becoming a suspect. Luckily, he was well-known in James's court and was able to demonstrate his loyalty and innocence. Johnson, A.W. Ben Jonson: Poetry and Architecture (Oxford English Monographs). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.

Jonson won considerable acclaim as a writer in the court of James I and Queen Anne. He composed entertainments and masques designed to be associated with important state occasions. The masque was a dramatic form that enjoyed great popularity for close to a century and a half. It was restricted to the entertainment and participation of royalty and courtiers. As its name implies, characters were sometimes masked to represent abstract ideas such as Blackness or Beauty or mythic characters such as Albion, an allegory for England itself.

In the group of playwrights immediately surrounding Shakespeare, Jonson, Ben, Cain Tom (Editor). Poetaster (Revels Plays). New York: Manchester University Press, 1996. who with him were perhaps accustomed to gather in the Mermaid Tavern, were Ben Jonson, Webster, Ford, Beaumont and Fletcher, Chapman, Marston, and Dekker. Among these Jonson was easily the first, both in the quality of his genius and the amount of his work. He was a man of enormous learning, poet laureate, a soldier in Flanders, an actor, and hack writer for Henslowe. He appeared first as a playwright in the late years of the sixteenth century, at the moment when Shakespeare and the romantic comedies were at the height of their popularity. To some extent he was obliged to conform to the prevailing taste; but his natural inclination was toward the classic and regular style rather than toward the romantic; and his "humour" was satirical rather than sentimental.

Jonson's plays fall roughly into three groups: the realistic comedies, the tragedies, and the masques. As a contribution to drama the realistic comedies are most important. Even in his 'prentice work, the two plays The Case is Altered and The Tale of a Tub, it is evident that he was influenced more by classic models than by contemporary fashion. The Case Is Altered is based upon two plays of Plautus and the old familiar theme of the abduction of infants. The action is completed in one place and covers but a single day. Jonson's importance, however, is not owing to this return to the classical form, but to his keenness in portraying contemporaneous types. He took from the Plautine plays some of the most successful stock characters such as Miles Gloriosus (whom he named Captain Bobadil), the spendthrift son, the jealous husband, and so transformed them that they stand forth revived and recreated, as true comic figures belonging to Elizabethan London. McCanles, Michael. Jonsonian Discriminations: The Humanist Poet

The play Every Man in His Humour (1598) inaugurated the school of realistic comedy, unlike anything which had hitherto appeared on the English stage. It deals not with the passions, but with the follies, the "humours" of mankind. The scene is laid in London, and different sorts of city characters are pictured to the life. The play was the sensation of the hour, and was enacted before the queen by the company to which Shakespeare belonged, and in which he at one time acted.

Jonson was brilliant, but apparently neither genial nor lovable -- indeed he had the reputation of being pompous and arrogant. Though manly and honorable, he seems to have been lacking in sympathy. As a dramatist, he was resourceful in the creation of character and in the invention of comic situations. While for the most part he confined himself to laughing at the more obvious, surface absurdities of society, yet his wit was so keen and his humor so robust as to make a lasting impression upon English drama. He influenced nearly all the writers of the seventeenth century, and his peculiar type of play has persisted on the English speaking stage to the present time.

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