As to Jonson's passion for the cup that does more than cheer, neither he himself conceals it, nor is evidence to the same effect wanting on the part of his contemporaries. Drayton says that he was in the habit of 'wearing a loose coachman's coat, frequenting the Mermaid Tavern, where he drank seas of Canary; then reeling home to bed, and, after a profuse perspiration, arising to his dramatic studies.' [13]
At a certain time, Jonson accompanied a son of Sir Walter Raleigh as tutor during a voyage to France. The young hopeful pupil, 'being knavishly inclined,' and not less quick in the execution of practical jokes than in spying out human weaknesses, had no difficulty in understanding his tutor's bent, and succeeded in making Jonson 'dead drunk.' He then 'laid him on a carr, which he made to be drawen by pioners through the streets, at every corner showing his governour stretched out, and telling them, that was a more lively image of the Crucifix than any they had.' The mother of young Raleigh greatly relished this sport. It reminded her of similar tricks her husband had been addicted to in his boyish days, 'though the father abhorred it.'
With habits of the kind described, Jonson had a hard but fruitless struggle against oppressing poverty and downright misery during his whole life. When age was approaching, he addressed himself to his highborn patrons with petitions in well-set style. His needy condition was, however, little bettered, even when Charles I., in 1630, conferred upon him, seven years before his death, an annual pension of 100 pounds, with a terse of Spanish wine yearly out of his Majesty's store at Whitehall.
A letter of Sir Thomas Hawkins describes one of the last circumstances of Jonson's life. At 'a solemn supper given by the poet, when good company, excellent cheer, choice wine, and jovial welcome had opened his heart and loosened his tongue, he began to raise himself at the expense of others.'
Wine, joviality, good company, and bitter satire—these were the elements of Ben Jonson's happiness.
'O rare Ben Jonson!' Sir John Young, [14] who, walking through Westminster Abbey, saw the bare stone on the poet's grave, gave one of the workmen eighteenpence to cut the words in question, and posterity is still in doubt whether the word 'rare' was meant for the valuable qualities of the poet or for those of the boon-companion.
We will give a short abstract of Jonson's character from the notes of a contemporary whose guest he had been during fully a month in 1619. One might doubt the sincerity of this judgment if Sir William Drummond, his liberal host, had made it public for the purpose of harming Jonson. There was, however, no such intention, for it remained in manuscript for fully two hundred years.
Only then, a copy of this incisive characteristic came before the world at large. The Scottish nobleman and poet had written it down, together with many utterances of Jonson, after his guest who most freely and severely criticised his contemporaries had left. The perspicacity of Drummond, and the truthful rendering of his impressions, are fully confirmed by Jonson's manner of life and the contents of his literary productions. [15] Drummond concludes his notes thus:—
'He' (Jonson) 'is a great lover and praiser of himself; a contemner and scorner of others; given rather to loose a friend than a jest; jealous of every word and action of those about him (especially after drink, which is one of the elements in which he liveth): a dissembler of ill parts which reigne in him; a bragger of some good that he wanteth; thinking nothing well but what either himself or some of his friends and countrymen have said or done. He is passionately kind and angry; careless either to gain or keep; vindicative, but, if he be well answered, at himself. For any religion, as being versed in both; interpreteth best sayings and deeds often to the worst. Oppressed with fantasie, which has ever mastered his reason: a general disease in many poets.'
It will easily be understood that between two natures of so opposite a bent as that of the quarrelsome Jonson and 'gentle Shakspere,' friendship for any length of time could scarcely be possible. [16]
The creations of the dramatist obtain their real value by the poet's own character. He who breathes a soul into so many figures destined for action must himself be gifted with a greatness of soul that encompasses a world. In the dramatic art, such actions only charm which are evolved out of clearly defined passions; and such characters only awake interest which bear human features strongly marked. If, however, we cast a glance at the dramatic productions of Ben Jonson, we in vain look among the many figures that crowd his stage for one which could inspire us with sympathy. Time has pronounced its verdict against his creations: they are lying in the archive of mere curiosities. Even the inquirer feels ill at ease when going for them to their hiding-place. Jonson's characters do not speak with the ever unmistakeable and touching voice of human passions. In his comedies he produces the strangest whims, caprices, and crotchets, by which he probably points to definite persons. The clue to these often malignant dialectics is very difficult to find.
The action of his plays—if incidental quarrels, full of sneering allusions, are left aside—is generally of such diminutive proportions that one may well ask, after the perusal of some of his dramas, whether they contain any action at all. No doubt the satirist, too, has his legitimate place in the dramatic art; but he must know how to hit the weaknesses of human nature in certain striking types. Jonson, however, is far from being able to lay a claim to such dramaturgic merit. At 'haphazard he took certain individualities from the idly gossiping crowd that congregated in the central nave of St. Paul's Church, and put them on the stage. Whoever had been strutting about there to-day in his silken stockings, proudly displaying the nodding feathers in his hat, his rich waist-coat and mantle, and boasting a little too loud before some other gallant of his love adventures, ran great danger—like all those whose demeanour in St. Paul's gave rise to backbiting gossip—of being pourtrayed in the 'Rose,' in the 'Curtain,' or in the theatres of the 'little eyases,' in such a manner that people were able, in the streets, to point them out with their fingers.
Like so many other novelties, this kind of comedy, too, may for a while have found its admirers. Soon, however, this degradation of the Muse brought up such a storm that Jonson had to take refuge in another domain of the dramatic art (1601). He himself confesses:—
And since the Comic MuseHath proved so ominous to me, I will tryIf Tragedy have a more kind aspect. [17]
But he is nothing if not satirical. The persons that are to enliven his tragedies are not filled with the true breath of life. They are mere phantoms or puppets of schoolcraft, laboriously put together by a learning drawn from old folios. In his tragedies, 'Sejanus' and 'Cataline,' he seeks to describe Romans whose whole bearing was to be in pedantically close harmony with the time in which the dramatic action occurs. Only a citizen from a certain period of ancient Rome would be able to decide whether this difficult but thankless problem had been solved. These cold academic treatises—for such we must, practically, take them to be—were not relished by the public. There is no vestige of human passion in the bookish heroes thus put on the stage. For their sorrows the audience has no feeling of fear or anguish and no tear of compassion.
Jonson, indignant at the small estimate in which his arduously composed works were received, ill-humoured by their want of success, looked enviously upon Shakspere, who had not been academically schooled; who audaciously overthrew the customs of the antique drama; who made his own rules, or rather, who made himself a rule to others; who created metrics that were peculiarly his; who chose themes hitherto considered non-permissible, and unusual with Greeks and Romans; who flung the 'three unities' to the winds; and who, nevertheless, had an unheard-of success!
This favourite of the public, Jonson seems to have looked upon as the main obstacle barring the way to his own genius. Against this towering rival, Jonson directed a hail of satirical arrows. Only take, for instance, the prologue to 'Every Man in his Humour.' [18] There, Jonson, with the most arrogant conceit, tries to make short work of various dramas of Shakspere's—for instance, of his historical plays, in which he dared—
… with three rusty swords,And help of some few foot and half-foot words,Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars,And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.
In 'The Poetaster,' which in 1601 was acted by the children of the Queen's Chapel, Jonson made an attack upon three poets. We hope to be able to prove that the one most bitterly abused, and who is bidden to swallow the 'pill,' is no other than Shakspere, whilst the two remaining ones are John Marston and Thomas Dekker. From the 'Apologetical Dialogue' which Jonson wrote after 'The Poetaster' had already passed over the stage, we see that this satire had excited the greatest indignation and sensation in the dramatic world. It was a new manner of falling out with a colleague before the public. The conceited presumption of the author, who in the play itself assumes the part of Horace, seriously proclaiming himself as the poet of poets, as the worthiest of the worthy, is not less enormous and repulsive than the way in which he proceeds against his rivals.
Quite innocently, Jonson asks in that dialogue (which was spoken on the stage after 'The Poetaster' had given rise to a general squabble), how it came about that such a hubbub was made of that play, seeing that it was free from insults, only containing 'some salt' but 'neither tooth, nor gall,' whilst his antagonists, after all, had been the cause of whatever remarks he himself had made:—
… But sure I am, three yearsThey did provoke me with their petulant styles,On every stage. And I at last, unwilling,But weary, I confess, of so much trouble,Thought I would try if shame could win upon 'em.
In some comedies of Shakspere, which appeared between the years 1598 and 1601, there are characters markedly stamped with Jonsonian peculiarities. We may be convinced that 'gentle Shakspere' had received many a provocation [19] before he took notice of the obscure dramatist who was younger by ten years than himself, and publicly gave him a strong lesson. 'All's Well that Ends Well' contains a figure, Parolles, whose peculiarities are too closely akin to those of Ben Jonson to be regarded as a mere fortuitous accident; especially when we find that Jonson, in 'The Poetaster,' again tries to ridicule this hit by a characteristic expression. [20]
Parolles is a follower of Count Rousillon. His position is not further defined than that he follows Bertram; he is a cross between a gentleman and a servant. We hear the old Lord Lafeu reproaching him in act ii. sc. 3:—
'Why dost thou garter up thy arms o' this fashion? dost make hose of thy sleeves? Do other servants do so?'
Again he calls him—'a vagabond, no true traveller: you are more saucy with lords and honourable personages than the heraldry of your birth and virtue gives you commission.' [21]
Parolles boasts of being born under the sign of Mars, and up to every heroic deed; and it is certainly an allusion to Jonson's bravado of having in the Low Countries, in the face of both camps, killed an enemy and takenopima spoliafrom him, that Shakspere lets this character make the attempt to retake, single-handed, from the enemy, a drum that had been lost in the battle. Of course, Parolles finally comes out a coward and a traitor. Parolles also mentions that he understands 'Low Dutch.'
In the character of Malvolio ('Twelfth Night; or What You Will,' 1600-1601), the quarrelsome Ben has long ago been suspected, who, puffed up with braggart pride, contemptuously looks down upon his colleagues, and impudently exerts himself to gain access to high social circles; thus assuming, like Parolles, a position that does not properly belong to him. Even as Lord Lafeu takes Parolles a peg lower, so Sir Toby (act. ii. sc. 3) reminds the haughty Malvolio that he is nothing more than a steward. The religion of Malvolio also is several times discussed. Merry Maria relates that he is a 'Puritan or anything constantly but a time-pleaser.' Nor is the priest wanting who is to drive out the hyperbolical fiend from the captive Malvolio: an unmistakeable allusion to Ben Jonson's conversion in prison. The Fool who represents the Priest, puts a question referring to Pythagoras to Malvolio who is groaning 'in darkness' and yearning for freedom. He receives an evasive answer from the prisoner. In 'Volpone,' as we shall see, Jonson answers it very fully. [22]
Altogether, there are allusions in 'The Poetaster,' and in 'Volpone,' to 'All's Well that Ends Well,' and to 'What You Will,' which we shall have to touch upon in speaking of those plays.
The scene of 'The Poetaster' is laid at the court of Augustus Caesar. Jonson therein describes himself under the character of Horace. The whole drift of the play is, to take the many enemies of the latter to task for their calumnies and libels against him. Rome is the place of action, and the persons of the drama bear classic names. There are, besides Augustus and Horace, Mecaenas (sic), Virgil, Propertius, Trebatius, Ovid, Demetrius Fannius,Rufus Laberius Crispinus, and so forth. The characters whom they are to represent are mostly authors of the dramatic world around Ben Jonson. They are depicted with traits so easily recognisable that—as Dekker says in his 'Satiromastix'—of five hundred people four hundred could 'all point with their fingers in one instant at one and the same man.'
More especially against two disciples of the Muse is Jonson's 'gally ink' directed. Let us give a few instances of the lampoons and calumnious squibs by which Horace pretends having been insulted on the part of envious colleagues who, he maintains, look askance at him because 'he keeps more worthy gallants' company' than they can get into. In act iv. sc. I, Demetrius tells Tucca:—
'Alas, Sir, Horace! he is a mere sponge; nothing but humours and observation; he goes up and down, sucking from every society, and when he comes home, squeezes himself dry again.'
Tucca adds:—'He will sooner lose his best friend than his least jest.'
Crispinus is found guilty of having composed a libel against Horace, of which the following may serve as a specimen:—
Ramp up my genius, be not retrograde;But boldly nominate a spade a spade.What, shall thy lubrical and glibbery museLive, as she were defunct, like punk in stews?Alas! that were no modern consequence,To have cothurnal buskins frighted hence.No, teach thy Incubus to poetize;And throw abroad thy spurious snotteries….O poets all and some! for now we listOf strenuous vengeance to clutch the fist.
Such was the language the contemporaries of Shakspere used. Are we to wonder, then, if here and there we find in his works an offensive expression?
The two persons who are specially taken to task, and most harshly treated, are Demetrius Fannius, 'play-dresser and plagiarius,' and RUFUS LABERIUS CRISPINUS, 'poetaster and plagiarius.' In 'Satiromastix,' Demetrius clearly comes out as Dekker. Crispinus is the chief character of the play:—'the poetaster.' Against him the satire is mainly directed, and for his sake it seems to have been written, for the title runs thus: 'The Poetaster, or His Arraignment.' From all the characteristic qualities of Crispinus we draw the conclusion that this figure represented SHAKSPERE.
From the above-mentioned passage in 'The Return from Parnassus' it would seem as if a 'pill' had been administered in the play to several poets. That is, however, not so. Then, as now, the plural form was a favourite one with writers afraid to attack openly. Horace administers a pill only to one poet—to Crispinus. And as Kemp says that Shakspere, thereupon, gave a 'purge,' the conclusion is obvious that he who took revenge by administering the purge, must have been the one to whom the pill had been given. 'Volpone,' a play directed against the 'purge'—that is, 'Hamlet'—will convince us that the chief controversy lay between Jonson and Shakspere, and not between Jonson and Dekker.
The following points will, we think, make it still clearer that we are warranted in believing that the figure of Crispinus was intended by Jonson for Shakspere.
When, in presence of Augustus, as well as of the high jurors Maecenas, Tibullus, and Virgil, the two poetasters have been heard; when Horace has forgiven Demetrius, [23] and Crispinus, under the sharp effects of the pill, has thrown up, amidst great pain, [24] the disgraceful words which he had used against Horace, he is dismissed by the latter with the admonition to observe, in future, a strict and wholesome diet; to take each morning something of Cato's principles; then taste a piece of Terence and suck his phrase; to shun Plautus and Ennius as meats too harsh for his weak stomach, and to read the best Greeks, 'but not without a tutor.'
This fits in with Shakspere's 'small Latin and less Greek'—a circumstance of which Jonson himself, in his poem in memory of Shakspere (1623), thought he should remind the coming generations.
It is, no doubt, a little revenge for the 'dark chamber' in which Malvolio [25] is imprisoned, that, after Horace has concluded his speech in which the study of Latin and Greek is recommended to Crispinus as something very necessary for him, Virgil should add the further advice:—
And for a week or two see him locked upIn some dark place, removed from company;He will talk idly else after his physic.
The full name given by Jonson to Crispinus is—RUFUS LABERIUS CRISPINUS. John Marston already, in 1598, designates Shakspere with the nickname 'Rufus.' Everyone can convince himself of this by first reading Shakspere's 'Venus and Adonis,' and immediately afterwards John Marston's 'Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image.' [26] We do not know whether it has struck anyone as yet that this poem of Marston is a most evident satire, written even in the same metre as Shakspere's first, and at that time most popular, poem. [27] In his sixth satire of 'The Scourge of Villanie,' Marston explains why he had composed his 'Pigmalion's Image:'—
Yet deem'st that in sad seriousnesse I write such nasty stuff as in Pigmalion? Such maggot-tainted, lewd corruption! … Hence, thou misjudging censor: know I wrot Those idle rimes to note the odious spot and blemish that deformes the lineaments of modern poesies habiliments.
At the end of his satire ('Pigmalion's Image'), Marston self-complacently tacks on a concluding piece: 'The Author in Praise of his Precedent Poem.' Whom else does he address there than him whose poetical manner he wished to mock—namely, Shakspere's—when he begins with these words:—
Now, Rufus! by old Glebron's fearfull mace,Hath not my Muse deserv'd a worthy place? …Is not my pen compleate? Are not my linesRight in the swaggering humour of these times?
The name of 'Rufus' has two peculiarities which may have induced Marston to confer it upon Shakspere. First of all, like the English king of that name, Shakspere's pre-name was William. Secondly, the best-preserved portrait of Shakspere shows him with hair verging upon a reddish hue.
But not only the colour of the hair, but also its thinness (according to all pictures and busts we have of Shakspere, he was bald-headed), seems to have been satirised by Jonson in his 'Poetaster.' In act ii. sc. 1, Chloe asks Crispinus, who, excited by her love and her beauty, pretends becoming a poet, whether, as a poet, he would also change his hair? To which Crispinus replies, 'Why, a man may be a poet, and yet not change his hair.'
Now Dekker, in his 'Satiromastix, in which all personal insults are to be avenged [28](for which reason the chief personages of 'The Poetaster' are introduced under the same name), makes Horace give forth a long song in praise of 'heades thicke of hair,' whilst Crispinus gives another in honour of 'balde heads;' from which we conclude that Chloe's remark on Crispinus' hair has reference to a bald pate, but the name of 'Rufus' to the colour of whatever hair there is.
'Rufus Laberius Crispinus' might truly be thus rendered: 'The red-haired SHAK-erius, with the crisp-head, who cribs like St. Crispin.' The word Rufus, as already explained, reminds us both of Shakspere's red hair and his pre-name 'William.' Laberius (fromlabare, to shake; hence Shak-erius, a similar nickname as Greene's SHAKE-scene) is clearly an indication of the poet's family name. The Roman custom of placing the name of thegens, or family, in the middle of a person's name, leaves no doubt as to Jonson's intention. Laberius was a dramatic poet, even as Shakspere. Laberius was an actor (Suet. c.i. 39). So was Shakspere. Laberius played in his own dramas. Shakspere did the same. Laberius' name corresponds etymologically, as regards meaning, to the root-syllable in Shakspere's name. Could Jonson, who was so well versed in classics, have made his satirical allusion plainer or more poignant? In Crispinus, both Shakspere's curly hair and the offence of application, plagiarism, or literary theft, with which he is charged by his antagonist, are manifestly marked; St. Crispin being noted among the saints for his filching habits. He made shoes for the poor from materials stolen from the rich.
Crispinus approaches Horace quite as a 'Johannes Factotum,' as Greene had designated Shakspere in 1592. Jonson makes him assert that he, too, is a scholar, a writer conversant with every kind of poetry, and a Stoic. He also declares that he is studying architecture, and that, if he builds a house, [29] it must be similar to one before which they are standing.
In Dekker's 'Satiromastix,' Crispinus is described as being of a most gentle nature. This is in harmony with the well-known quality generally attributed to Shakspere. In the beginning of 'Satiromastix,' Crispinus approaches Horace for the object of peace and reconciliation. The latter excuses himself, in words similar to those of the 'Apologetical Dialogue,' that even if he should 'dip his pen in distilde Roses,' or strove to drain out of his ink all gall, [30] yet his enemies would look at his writings 'with sharpe and searching eyes.' Nay—
When my lines are measur'd out as straightAs even parallels, 'tis strange that still,Still some imagine they are drawne awry.The error is not mine, but in their eye;That cannot take proportions.
Crispinus. Horrace, Horrace!To stand within the shot of galling tongues,Proves not your gilt, for could we write on paper,Made of these turning leaves of heaven, the cloudes,Or speak with Angels tongues: yet wise men know,That some would shake the head, tho' saints should sing,Some snakes must hisse, because they're borne with stings.
Horace. 'T is true.
Crispinus. Doe we not see fooles laugh at heaven? and mocke The Makers workmanship?
Crispinus goes on telling Horace that none are safe from such calumnies; but that, if his 'dastard wit' will 'strike at men in corners,' if he will 'in riddles folde the vices' of his best friends, then he must expect also that they will 'take off all gilding from their pilles,' and offer him 'the bitter coare' (core). [31] With great emphasis, Crispinus admonishes Horace not to swear that he did not intend whipping the private vices of his friends while his 'lashing jestes make all men bleed.' Crispinus concludes his mild, conciliatory speech with the words:—
We come like your phisitions (physicians) to purgeYour sicke and daungerous minde of her disease.
A peace is then concluded, which Horace (Jonson) again breaks, for which he receives his punishment towards the end of 'Satiromastix.' Dekker, who brings in the chief personages of 'The Poetaster' under the same name, makes, in this counter-piece, two parts of the figure of Rufus Laberius Crispinus—namely, that of William Rufus, the king, at whose court he lays the scene (Jonson's drama has the court of Augustus), and that of Crispinus, the poet. The part of the king is a very unimportant one; and it may be assumed that Dekker intended the king and the poet to be looked upon as the same person. The object of the play-dresser Demetrius (Dekker) was, no doubt, to do homage in this way to his chief Crispinus—that is, Shakspere. When the accused Horace is to be judged, the King says to Crispinus:—
Not under us, but next us take thy seate;Artes nourished by Kings make Kings more great.
Crispinus declares Horace guilty of having 'rebelled against the sacred laws of divine Poesie,' not out of love of virtue, but—
Thy pride and scorn made her turne saterist.
Horace, on account of his crimes against the sacred laws of divine poesy, is not 'lawrefyed,' but 'nettlefyed:' not crowned with laurels, but with a wreath of nettles, and afterwards, in Sancho Panza manner, tossed in a blanket. He then is told:—'You shall not sit in a Gallery when your Comedies and Enterludes have entred their Actions, and there make vile faces at everie lyne, to make Gentlemen have an eye to you, and to make Players afraide to take your part.' Furthermore, he 'must forsweare to venter on the stage when your Play is ended, and to exchange courtezies and complements with Gallants in the Lordes roomes, to make all the house rise up in Armes, and to cry that's Horace, that's he, that's he, that's he, that pennes and purges Humours and diseases.' He must promise 'not to brag in Bookebinders shops that your Vize-royes or Tributorie Kings have done homage to you, or paide Quarterage.' And—'when your Playes are misse-likt at Court, you shall not Crye Mew like a Pusse-Cat, and say you are glad you write out of the Courtiers Elements.' [32]
In his Preface to 'Satiromastix' ('To the World '), Dekker says that in this play he did 'only whip his(Horace's)fortunes and condition of life, where the more nobleREPREHENSIONhad bin of hisMINDES DEFORMITIE.' [33]
This nobler reprehension, as we have sufficiently shown, was undertaken by Shakspere in his 'Hamlet.' [34] Dekker, in his Epilogue to 'Satiromastix' (he there speaks of the 'Heretical Libertine Horace'), asks the public for its applause; for Horace would thereby be induced to write a counter-play: which, if they hissed his own 'Satiromastix,' would not be the case. By applauding, they would thus, in fact, get more sport; for we 'will untrusse him agen, and agen, and agen.'
Shakspere may have been tired of this fruitless pastime, of those pitiful squabbles, as appears also from the reproach he makes in 'Hamlet'to his people. By the 'more nobleREPREHENSION' which he administered to Jonson and his party, he became absorbed in the profounder problems concerning mankind. The time of the lighter comedies is now past for him. There follow now his grandest master-works. Henceforth the poet stands in a relation created by himself to his God and to the world.
We proceed to an examination of 'Volpone,' of that play which Jonson sent as a counter-thrust after 'Hamlet,' and from which, as regards our Hamlet-Montaigne theory, we hope to convince our readers in the clearest manner possible.
1: Arber'sEnglish Scholars Library, 1879, shows that this highly interesting drama was for the first time given at Cambridge in 1602. If so, the manuscript has unquestionably received additions during the four years before its appearance in print. The fact is, we find in the play certain evident allusions which could not possibly have been added before the years 1603-4; for instance, references to the translators of Montaigne—John Florio, and the friends who aided him;—references which must have been made after theEssaiswere published.
In act i. sc. 2, Judicio speaks of the English 'Flores Poetarum, against whom can-quaffing hucksters shoot their pellets.' These 'FloresPoetarum' areFlorioand his fellow-workers, among whom Ben Jonson is also to be reckoned; and we shall see farther on that the latter abuses these offensive hucksters as 'vernaculous orators,' because they make Montaigne the target of their sneers. Again, in act iv. sc. 2, Furor Poeticus, Ingenioso, and Phantasma indulge in expressions which can only apply to the Dedications and the Sonnets of Florio's translation. Phantasma, for instance, addresses an Ode of Horace to himself:—
'Maecenas, atavis edite regibus,O et praesidium et dulce decus meumDii faciant votis vela secunda tuis.'
The latter line ought to run:—
Sunt, quos curriculo pulverem Olympicum,
and if we take into consideration that Juror says in the samescene:—
And when thy swelling vents amain,Then Pisces be thy sporting chamberlain,
it is not asserting too much that these are manifest hits at Florio, who, to please his Maecenas, tries with Dr. Diodati, his 'guide-fish' to capture the 'whale' in the 'rocke rough ocean.'
Florio's way of translating the Latin classic writers into indifferent English rhymes is also repeatedly ridiculed. The latter (Florio, p. 574.) once gives a passage from Plautus (The Captives, Prologue, v. 22) correctly enough: 'The Gods, perdye (pardieu), doe reckon and racket us men as their tennis balls.' Furor Poeticus, in one of his fits of fine frenzy, accuses Phoebus:—
The heavens' promoter that doth peep and preyInto the acts of mortal tennis balls.
This he says after having, in the same highly comic speech, travestied Florio's Dedication of the third book, in which that gallant compares himself to 'Mercury between the radiant orbs of Venus and the Moon'—that is, the two ladies to whom he dedicates the book in question, and before whom he alleges he 'leads a dance.' A further sneer is directed by Furor Poeticus against the lazy manner with which Florio's Muse rises from her nest.
Additional allusions to dramatic publications from the years 1603-4 will be found on pp. 201, 202. Another proof that the play (The Return from Parnassus) cannot be of a uniform cast, is this: In act i. sc. 2 a list of the poets is given, that are to be criticised. The list is kept up in proper succession as far as 'John Davis.' Then there are variations, and names not contained in that list. These additions mostly refer to dramatic authors, whilst the previous names, as far as 'John Davis,' only refer to lyric poets.
We believe the intention of the first writer ofThe Return from Parnassuswas only to criticise lyric poets. Moreover, Monius says in the Prologue:—'What is presented here, is an old musty show, that has lain this twelvemonth in the bottom of a coal-house amongst brooms and old shoes.' Our opinion is thatThe Return from Parnassus, after having been acted before a learned public at Cambridge, came into the hands of players who applied the manner in which lyric poets had been criticised in it, to dramatic writers. The authors of the additions must have been friends of Shakspere; for, as we shall find, the enemies of the latter are also theirs.
2: Act iv. sc. 3.
3: InThe Poetaster, of which we shall speak farther on.
4: According to certain indications inSatiromastix, he had an 'ambling' walk, or dancing kind of step. (Seenote28.)
5: Collier'sMemoirs of Alleyn, pp. 50 and 51.
6:Conversations with Drummond.
7:Satiromastix, 1602.
8: Collier'sDrama, i. 334.
9:Poetaster.
10: Compare his Dedication inVolpone, of which we shall have more to say.
11:Drummond's Conversations.
12: Of all styles, Jonson liked best to be named 'Honest;' and he 'hath ane hundred letters so naming him.'—Conversations with Drummond.
13:Life of Dryden, p. 265.
14: By Aubrey called 'Jack Young.'
15: As if the whole world had made it a point to conspire against Jonson, Gifford laboriously exerts himself to defend him against the numberless attacks of all the previous commentators, critics, and biographers. The endeavour of Gifford to whitewash him seems to me as fruitless a beginning as that of the little innocent represented in a picture as trying to change, with sponge and soap, the African colour of her nurse's face.
16: Jonson'sEulogy of Shaksperewas composed seven years after the death of the latter. Having most probably been requested by Heminge and Condell not to withhold his tribute from the departed, to whom both his contemporaries as well as posterity had done homage, Jonson may readily have seized the occasion to do amends for the wrong he had inflicted upon the great poet during his lifetime. A later opinion of Jonson in regard to Shakspere (Timber; or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter, 1630-37) is of a more moderate tone, and on some points in contradiction to the words of praise contained in the published poem.
17:Poetaster, Apol. Dialogue.
18: This Prologue is not contained in the first edition (1598), but only in the second (1616). It may, therefore, have been written in the meantime. It is supposed that it was so in 1606. (SeeShakspere's Century of Praise, 1879, pp. 118, 119.)
19: Only a few of the earliest productions of Jonson have come down to us. Some of them are:Every Man in His Humour(1598);Every Man out of His Humour(1599); andCynthia's Revels(1600), all of them full of personal allusions. Many of these are meant against Shakspere. We cannot, however, enter more fully upon that, as we have to confine ourselves to the chief controversy out of whichHamletarose. Neither on Jonson's nor on Shakspere's part did the controversy cease after the appearance ofHamlet. It was still carried on through several dramas, which, however, we leave untouched, as not belonging to our theme.
20: Seenote25.
21: InSatiromastixthis reproach is made to Ben Jonson:—'Horace did not screw and wriggle himselfe into great Mens famyliarity, impudentlie as thou doost.'
22: Gifford, in his nervous anxiety to parry every reproach against his much-admired, and, in his eyes, blameless Jonson whose quarrelsomeness had from so many parts been properly charged, and particularly desirous of shielding him against the accusation of having taken up an attitude hostile to Shakspere, declares, in contradiction to the opinion of all previous commentators, thatCrispinusis to represent John Marston. Since then, Gifford's assertion has been taken for granted, without deeper inquiry. The authority of this fond editor of Jonson has, however, proved an untrustworthy one in many things, especially in matters relating to Shakspere. Thanks to the exertions of more recent inquirers, not a a few things are now seen in a better perspective than Gifford was able to offer. We admit the difficulty of reconstructing facts from productions likeThe Poetaster, which had been dictated by the overwrought feelings of the moment. But in a satire which bred so much 'tumult,' which 'could so deeply offend,' and 'stir so many hornets' (four hundred persons out of five hundred being able to point with their fingers, in one instant, at one and the same man), the characters must have been very broadly drawn for general recognition. By such broad traits we must still be guided in our judgment to-day. All the characteristic qualities of Crispinus, which we shall explain farther on, prove that Gifford's idea about Crispinus being John Marston is not tenable.
This latter poet was very well versed in Greek and Latin, and had a complete classic education. The admonition of Horace to perfect himself in both languages, is therefore not applicable to him. Furthermore, Marston, at the time The Poetaster was composed (this may have been towards the end of the year 1600, or the beginning of 1601), had scarcely yet written anything for the stage. Only hisMetamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image and Certaine Satyres(1598), and hisScourge of Villanie(1599) had been published. His first tragedy came out in print in 1602; it may just have been in course of becoming known on the stage. We have no means of ascertaining whether it had already been acted whenThe Poetasterappeared. This much is however certain, that when this latter satire obtained publicity, Marston's relations to the drama and the stage must yet have been of the most insignificant kind; for Philip Henslowe, in his Diary (pp. 156, 157), expressly speaks of him, even in 1599, as a 'new' poet to whom he had lent, through an intermediary, the sum of forty shillings 'in earneste of a Boocke,' the title of which is not mentioned. Is it, then, conceivable that such a dramatist who in 1601 certainly was yet very insignificant, should have been made the subject, in 1601, in Jonson'sPoetaster, of the following very characteristic remark—assuming Crispinus to have been intended for Marston?
Tucca says, in regard to the former, to a poor player (act iii. sc. i):—'If he pen for thee once, thou shalt not need to travel with thy pumps full of gravel any more, after a blind jade and a hamper, and stalk upon boards and barrel-heads to an old cracked trumpet.'
Does this not quite fit Shakspere's popularity and dramatic success?
Jonson, it is true, tells Drummond that he had written hisPoetasteragainst Marston. (According to his declaration in the 'Apologetical Dialogue,' there is nothing personal in the wholePoetaster!'I can profess I never writt that piece more innocent or empty of offence.') However, we form our judgment in this matter from the clear, well-marked, and indubitably characteristic traits of the play, as well as from the results of modern criticism, which are fully in harmony with those traits. Everything points to the figure of Ovid being a mask for Marston. Jonson perhaps chose the name of Ovid for him because he, too, had writtenMetamorphoses. Besides the before-mentionedMetamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image, it is not improbable that Marston is the author of the manuscript preserved in the British Museum:—The New Metamorphosis; or, A Feaste or Fancie of Poeticall Legendes. The first parte divided into twelve books. Written by I. M., gent., 1600. Ovid—Marston—in thePoetaster, is described as the younger son of a gentleman of considerable position. He is dependent on a stipend allowed to him by his father. After having absolved his studies, he is to become an advocate, but secretly he devotes his time to poetry. The father warns him that poverty will be his lot if he does not renounce poetry. Ovid senior makes the following reproach to his son (which probably has reference to Marston's first tragedy,Antonio and Mellida):—'I hear of a tragedy of yours coming forth for the common players there, calledMedea. By my household gods, if I come to the acting of it, I'll add one tragic part more than is yet expected to it…. What? shall I have my son a stager now? an enghle for players?… Publius, I will set thee on the funeral pile first!'
All this harmonises with the few facts we know of Marston's career, who is said to have been the son of a counsellor of the Middle Temple, who was at Corpus Christi College at Oxford, and who was made abaccalaureusthere on February 23, 1592. In comparison with Crispinus and Demetrius, Ovid is but mildly chaffed; and this, again, is in accord with the relations which soon after arose, in a very friendly manner, between Jonson and Marston. It is scarcely to be thought that, if Marston had been derided as Crispinus, he would already have composed, as early as 1603, his eulogistic poem on Jonson'sSejanus, and dedicated to him in 1604, in such hearty words, his ownMalcontent.
From some pointed words in the libel composed by Crispinus against Horace, Gifford concludes that the former must be Marston, because we meet with these pointed words in some satires and dramas of Marston. We, on our part, go, in these controversial plays, by the main and most prominent characteristics; and these show that Crispinus is Shakspere, and Ovid Marston.
The latter even once says (Scourge of Villanie, sat. vi.) that many a one, in reading hisPigmalion, has compared him to Ovid. In order to make out Crispinus to be guilty before Augustus, strong language is required. For this purpose, Jonson may have used the way and manners of Marston, and applied some of his newly coined graphic words. But this proves nothing for the identity of characters. The libel also contains a pointed word of Shakspere—'retrograde'—an expression little employed by the latter, and which is hurled as a reproach against Parolles, the figure which in all likelihood is to represent Jonson; Helena (act i. sc. 2) says to him, that he was born under Mars, 'when he was retrograde.'
The remark inThe Return from Parnassusthat few of the University can pen plays well, smelling too much of that writer Ovid and that writerMetamorphosis, has, in our opinion, also reference to John Marston whose first dramatic attempts—although he, like Jonson, may be called a 'University man'—do not admit of any comparison with those of Shakspere.
23: Demetrius repentingly admits that it was from envy he had ill-treated Horace, because 'he kept better company for the most part than I, better men loved him than loved me; and his writings thrived better than mine, and were better liked and graced.'
24: The little word 'clutcht' for a long time 'sticks strangely' in Crispinus' throat; it is only thrown up with the greatest difficulty. InHamlet(act v. sc. i, in the second verse of the grave-digger's song) we hear, 'Hath claw'd me in hisclutch. In the original song, which is here travestied, the words are, 'Hath claw'd me with his crouch'.
25: The following allusion inThe Poetaster(act iv. sc. 3) also hasreference toTwelfth Night:—'I have read in a book that to playthe fool wisely is high wisdom.' For Viola (act iii. sc. i) says:—
This fellow 's wise enough to play the fool;And, to do that well, craves a kind of wit…As full of labour as a wise man's art.
There are several indications inThe Poetasterpointing to Shakspere'sJulius Caesarwhich had appeared in the same year (1601). Not only does Horace say to Trebatius that 'great Caesar's wars cannot be fought with words,' but he also corrects Shakspere, who makes Antony (act iii. sc. 2) speak of Caesar's gardens on this side of the Tiber, by putting into the mouth of Horace (act iii. sc. i) the words:—' On the far side of all Tyber yonder.' In this scene, where the two Pyrgi are examined, there are some more allusions toJulius Caesar. Even the boy, whose instrument Brutus takes away when he is asleep, is not wanting. InThe Poetasterit is a drum, instead of a lyre (the drum inAll's Well that Ends Well). And are the following words of the same scene no satire upon act i. sc. 3 ofJulius Caesar, where Casca and Cicero meet amidst thunder and lightning?
2Pyrgi. Where art thou, boy? where is Calipolis?Fight earthquakes in the entrails of the earth,And eastern whirlwinds in the hellish shades;Some foul contagion of the infected heavensBlast all the trees, and in their cursed topsThe dismal night-raven and tragic owlBreed and become forerunners of my fall!
Casca dwells especially on the 'bird of night.'
26: The y, in Pygmalion, seems to us not without cause to be changedby Marston into an i.
27: The number of metaphors used by Shakspere in 'Venus and Adonis,'which Marston travesties, is strikingly large.
28: A few instances may here be given of the coarseness with which Dekker pays back Jonson for his personal allusions. InThe Poetaster, Crispinus is told that his 'satin-sleeve begins to fret at the rug that is underneath it.' InSatiromastix, Tucca cries out against Horace (Jonson):—'Thou never yet fel'st into the hands of sattin.' And again:—'Thou borrowedst a gowne of Roscius the stager, and sentest it home lousie.' Crispinus, inThe Poetaster, is derided on account of his short legs. InSatiromastix, Horace is laughed at for his 'ambling' walk; wherefore he had so badly played mad Jeronimo's part. Jonson is reproached with all his sins: that he had killed a player; that he had not thought it necessary to keep his word to those whom he held to behereticsandinfidels, and so forth. His face, which, as above mentioned, had scorbutic marks, is stated to be 'like a rotten russet apple when it is bruiz'd'; or, like the cover of a warming-pan, 'full of oylet-holes.' He is called an 'uglie Pope Bonifacius;' also a 'bricklayer;' and he is asked why, instead of building chimneys and laying down bricks, he makes 'nothing but railes'—'filthy rotten railes'—upon which alone his Muse leans. ('Railes' has a double meaning here: rails for fencing in a house; and gibes.) He is told that his feet stamp as if he had mortar under them—an allusion to his metrics, as well as to his ambling walk.
29: Shakspere was already then the proprietor of a house—New Place, in Stratford. In this scene Horace also asks Crispinus:—'You have much of the mother in you, sir? Your father is dead?' John Shakspere, the father, died in the year whenThe Poetasterwas first performed—in September, 1601.
30:Twelfth Night, act iii. sc. 2.Sir Toby:—'Let there be gall in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen.'
31: Here Crispinus threatens Horace with the 'purge' (a word that may be used as a noun or a verb), which, inThe Return from Parnassus, is mentioned as having been administered by Shakspere to Jonson. It is highly probable that the reconciliation between Crispinus and Horace, which is described in the beginning ofSatiromastix, had taken place between Shakspere and Ben Jonson, and that, during this period of peace, the performance ofSejanusoccurred, in which Shakspere actively co-operated. After that, traces of hostility only are to be discovered between the two poets.
Even when Horace, in the 'Satiromastix,' has again broken the peace,the gentle Crispinus says to him:—
Were thy warpt soule put in a new molde,I'd weare thee as a jewell set in golde.
32: TheSatiromastixwas performed in 1602, probably in the beginning of the year, as the Epilogue speaks of cold weather, and Dekker scarcely would have waited a year with his answer toThe Poetaster. Queen Elizabeth died in 1603. Another decennium had to pass (Shakspere had long since withdrawn to his Stratford) before the taste of Whitehall had been so much lowered that Jonson could become a favourite of the courtly element.
33: In such type it is printed in the original.
34: InSatiromastix, Captain Tucca once bawls out against Horace, 'My name's Hamlet Revenge!' as if it had become known already then in the dramatic world that Shakspere was preparing his reply toThe Poetaster. In the latter play (act iii. sc. I) which was probably added afterThe Poetasterhad already been acted, and Jonson had heard that Dekker was writing hisSatiromastix), Jonson makes a player from the other side of the Tiber say:—'We have hired him to abuse Horace, and bring him in, in a play, with all his gallants, as Tibullus, Mecaenas, Cornelius Gallus, and the rest….O, it will get us a huge deal of money, Captain, and we have need on't; for this winter has made us all poorer than so many starved snakes. Nobody comes at us, not a gentleman, nor a—'
In the same scene Tucca utters curses, before that player, against the theatres on the other side of the Tiber. The actor he addresses belongs to one of them. Tucca mentions two theatres by name—'your Globes, and your Triumphs.' He says to the actor:—'Commend me to seven shares and a half.' Shakespere and his colleagues had certain fixed shares in the 'Globe;' and the words of the actor, as regards the poor winter they had, confirm that which Shakspere gives to understand inHamlet, that 'there was, for a while, no money bid for argument, unless the poet and the player went to cuffs in the question.'
'VOLPONE,' by Ben Jonson.
'EASTWARD HOE,' by Chapman, Ben Jonson, and Marston.
'THE MALCONTENT,' by John Marston.
Ben Jonson's 'Volpone' was first acted in 1605; and on February 11, 1607, it appeared in print. [1] It is preceded by a Dedication, in which the author dedicates 'both it and himself' to 'the most noble and most equal sisters, the two famous Universities,' in grateful acknowledgment 'for their love and acceptance shown to this Poem in the presentation.'
In this Dedication the most passionate language is used against all contemporary poets—especially against those who now, he says, practise 'in dramatic, as they term it: stage-poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation,' and 'all licence of offence to God and man.' Their petulancy, he continues, 'hath not only rapt me to present indignation, but made me studious heretofore;' for by them 'the filth of the time is uttered, and with such impropriety of phrase, such plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, so racked metaphors, with brothelry able to violate the ear of a pagan, and blasphemy to turn the blood of a Christian to water.'
Jonson expresses his purpose of standing off from them (the stage-poets) 'by all his actions.' Solemnly he utters this vow:—'I shall raise the despised head of poetry again, and, stripping her out of those rotten and base rags wherewith the times have adulterated her form, restore her to her primitive habit, feature, and majesty, and render her worthy to be embraced and kist of all the great and master-spirits of our world.' This object of his—he adds—'may most appear in this my latest work ('Volpone'), which you, most learned Arbitresses, have seen, judged, and, to my crown, approved; wherein I have laboured for their instruction and amendment, to reduce, not only the ancient forms, but manners of the scene, the easiness, the propriety, the innocence, and last, the doctrine, which is the principal end of poesie, to inform men in the best reason of living.'
All contemporary dramatists are most pitilessly condemned by Ben Jonson, and the cause of his present indignation is clearly stated: 'A name so full of authority, antiquity, and all great mark, is, through their insolence, become the lowest scorn of the age;' moreover, 'my(Jonson's)fame, and the reputation of divers honest and learned, are the question—that is to say, have been injured.
As in 'Volpone,' wherein Jonson, as he states, 'laboured for their (the contemporary poets') instruction and amendment,' we shall find most numerous allusions to Shakspere and 'Hamlet,' we feel justified in asserting that Jonson's whole fury is, in his 'present indignation,' roused against this particular author and against this special drama. Therein, as we have shown, a name of authority, antiquity, and all great mark—Montaigne—has been tampered with, and, through this satire, divers honest and learned (John Florio and his coadjutors in the translation—all friends of Jonson) have been injured, as well as the latter's own fame. In 'Hamlet,' Shakspere brought his own ideal of friendship in the figure of Horatio on the stage, in contrast to the Horace of 'The Poetaster.' Jonson was not the man to be edified by the beautiful examples and the nobler words of his gentle adversary, Shakspere, or to alter his sentiments in accordance with them. He rather welcomed every opportunity for a quarrel. That was the element in which he lived; for thus he got the materials and the spicy condiments for his dramas. Now in 'Hamlet' there were motives enough for lighting up a fire of hatred against Shakspere, and to entertain the public therewith.
Jonson, always ready for battle, willingly takes up the pen in their defence. In doing so, the favour of a nobleman and of some high-born ladies could be earned, at whose wish and request Montaigne had been Englished. Besides, every occasion was relished for opposing Shakspere, who had attacked Montaigne whose religious creed was the same as that of Jonson.
The British Museum possesses a copy of 'Volpone,' on which Jonson has, with his own hand, written the words:—'To his loving father and loving freind, Mr. John Florio, the ayde of his Muses: Ben Jonson seals this testemony of freindship and love.' Not the gift of this little book, however, but its contents—namely, the attack which Jonson made, both for the sake of his friend and for himself, against the great antagonist (Shakspere)—must be held to be the token or 'testemony of freindship and love.'
In the very beginning of the Dedication, Jonson says that every author ought to be heedful of his fame:—'Never, most equal sisters, had any man a wit so presently excellent as that it could raise itself, but there must come both matter, occasion, commenders, and favourers to it. If this be true, and that the fortune of all writers doth daily prove it, it behoves the careful to provide well towards these accidents; and, having acquired them, to preserve that part of reputation most tenderly, wherein the benefit of a friend is also defended.' He then asserts that this is an age in which poetry, and the professors of it, are so ill-spoken of on all sides because, in their petulancy, they have yet to learn that one cannot be a good poet without first being a good man.
In the following passage, curiously enough, a certain person is extolled as the model of a good man, against whom the stage dramatists, who themselves, according to Jonson, are not good men ('nothing remaining with them of the dignity of the poet'), have, as he thinks, grievously sinned:—'He that is said to be able to inform young men to all good disciplines, inflame grown men to all great virtues, keep old men in their best and supreme state, or, as they decline to childhood, recover them to their first strength;[2]that comes forth the interpreter and arbiter of nature, a teacher of things divine no less than human,[3]a master in manners; and can alone, or with a few, effect the business of mankind:[4]this, I take him, is no subject for pride and ance to exercise their railing rhetoric upon.'
In this description we again see Montaigne, against whom 'railing rhetoric' has been used.
Ben Jonson proudly points to himself as having never done such mischief: 'For my particular, I can, and from a most clear conscience, affirm that I have ever trembled to think toward the least profaneness.' Though—he says—he cannot wholly escape 'from some the imputation of sharpness,' he does not feel guilty of having offered insult to anyone, 'except to a mimic, cheater, bawd, or buffoon.' But—'I would ask of these supercilious politics,what nation, society, or general orderof state I have provoked? … What public person?_ Whether I have not, in all these, preserved their dignity, as mine own person, safe? … Where have I been particular? where personal?'
Who does not see in the following words a reproach launched against Shakspere, that he has taken his materials from other writers? Who does not feel that the warning addressed to 'wise and noble persons' has reference to the highly placed protectors of the great rival whose favour Ben Jonson, in spite of his Latin and Greek, was not able to obtain? He says:—
'Application' (that is, plagiarism) 'is now grown a trade with many; and there are that profess to have a key for the decyphering of everything: but let wise and noble persons take heed how they be too credulous, or give leave to these invading interpreters to be over-familiar with their fames, who cunningly, and often, utter their own virulent malice under other men's simplest meanings.'
Jonson then approves of those 'severe and wise patriots' who, in order to provide against 'the hurts these licentious spirits may do in a State,' rather desire to see plays full of 'fools and devils,' and 'those antique relics of barbarism' (he means 'Masques,' which he wrote with great virtuosoship) acted on the stage, than 'behold the wounds of private men, of princes and nations.'
And now we come to the passage, partly already quoted, which more than anything else shows that the 'purge' which 'our fellow Shakspere gave him'—'Hamlet'—must have greatly damaged, in the eyes of the public, both the reputation of Jonson and of his friends. He confesses it in these remarkable words:—
'I cannot but be serious in a cause of this nature, wherein my fame, and the reputation of divers honest and learned are the question; when a name so full of authority, antiquity, and all great mark, is, through their insolence, become the lowest scorn of the age; and those men subject to the petulancy of every vernaculous orator, that were wont to be the care of kings and happiest monarchs.' [5]
Is there a character, we may ask, not only in Shakspere's dramas, but in any play of that period, to which the description given by Jonson could apply?—of course, Hamlet always excepted, who is but a mask for Montaigne. And who else but Montaigne is designated by the expressions: 'a name so full of authority, antiquity, and all great mark;' 'the care of kings and happiest monarchs?'
That the 'railing rhetoric' in which such a character was derided, could not be contained in a satirical poem, but had reference to a drama, is proved, as already explained, by the fact of Jonson's wrath being directed against the stage-poets. He says expressly, that henceforth, by all his actions, he will 'stand off from them.' To the most learned authorities, the two Universities, he announces that, by his own regular art, he intends giving these wayward disciples of Dramatic Poesy proper instruction and amendment. Had his object not been to strike the most popular of the stage-poets—Shakspere—he would have been bound to make an exception for that name of which everyone must have thought first when stage-poets were subjected to reproof. We repeat: Jonson only intended measuring himself against him who was the greatest of his time. This was fully in accordance with his disputatious inclination. [6]
The person once 'wont to be the care of kings and happiest monarchs' [7] must have been a foreigner, for we do not know of any favourite 'full of authority and antiquity' who enjoyed such high privilege from English kings. However, if a dramatist had been bold enough to put such a favourite on the stage, he would have met with the most severe punishment long before Jonson had pointed out his reprehensible audacity. By the 'happiest monarchs,' Henry III. and Henry IV. of France are meant. The latter, at that time, yet stood in the zenith of his good fortune. Again, the expression: 'of every vernaculous orator,' points to the circumstance of the mockery being directed against a foreigner; and the same may be said of Jonson's question, addressed to supercilious politicians, as to what nation, society, or general order of State he had provoked? Clearly, another nation, a society of different modes of thought than the English one, and foreign institutions, are here indicated.
We now come to some hints contained in 'Volpone,' which partly consist of an endeavour to expose Shakspere on account of plagiarisms committed against other writers, partly of references to irreligious tendencies, against which Jonson warns, and which he strives to ridicule.
Under the existing strict laws which forbade religious questions being discussed on the stage, the latter references had to be made in parable manner, but still not too covertly, so that they might be understood by a certain audience—namely, the members of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. [8]
Already, in the Prologue of his 'Volpone,' Jonson says of himself that—
In all his poems still hath been this measure,To mix profit with your pleasure.
He also despises certain deceptive tricks of composition:—
Nor hales he in a gull old ends reciting,To stop gaps in his loose writing;With such a deal of monstrous and forced action,As might make Bethlem a faction:Nor made he his play for jests stolen from each table,But makes jests to fit his fable….The laws of time, place, persons he observeth,From no needful rule he swerveth.
In the observance of the technical rules of the classic drama—this much Jonson could certainly prove to the world—he was superior to Shakspere. The severe words: 'monstrous and forced action,' can only refer to a drama written not long before; for, in 'Volpone,' Jonson wishes to give to the stage-poets of his time his own ideal of a drama. 'Bethlem' (Bedlam) indicates madness round which all kinds of lunatics might gather as factionaries or adherents of the kind of drama which Jonson wishes to stigmatise.
Do we go too far in thinking that 'Hamlet' is the play which is made the target of allusions in this very Prologue?
However, we proceed at once to the Interlude which follows after the first scene of the first act of 'Volpone.' In it, Shakspere himself is practically put on the stage, by being asked:
how of late thou hast suffered translation,And shifted thy coat in these days of reformation.
This Interlude is in no connection with the course of the dramatic action.
Mosca, a parasite, brings in, for the entertainment of his master (Volpone), three merry Jack Andrews. One of them, Androgyno, must be held to be SHAKSPERE.
Here we have to note that Francis Meres, a scholar of great repute, and M.A. of both Universities, wrote in 1598 a book, entitled 'Palladis Tamia,' which in English he calls 'Wit's Treasury.' It contains, so far as the sixteenth century is concerned, the most valuable statements as regards Shakspere: nay, the only trustworthy ones dating from that century. In that work, Meres classifies and criticises the poets of his time and country by comparing each of them with some Greek or Roman poet, kindred to the corresponding English one in the line of production chosen and in quality. Ben Jonson is only mentioned once, at a very modest place; his name stands last, after Chapman and Dekker.
Meres confers upon Shakspere most enthusiastic but just praise:—
'As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras: so the sweete, wittie soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare; witness his 'Venus and Adonis;' his 'Lucrece;' his sugred 'Sonnets' among his private friends…. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy amongst the Latines: so Shakspere among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage.'
He then mentions twelve of his plays, [9] and thus concludes his eulogy:—
'As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speake with Plautus tongue, if they would speak Latin: so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine filed phrases if they would speake English.'
The envious Jonson who pledges himself, in the Dedication to the two Universities, to give back to Poesy its former majesty, may have considered it necessary, before all, to deride, before a learned audience, the enthusiastic praise conferred by Francis Meres upon Shakspere, as well as Shakspere himself on account of the free religious tendencies he had expressed in 'Hamlet' This is done, as we said, in the Interlude prepared by Mosca for the entertainment of his master. Volpone boasts of the clever manner with which he gains riches:—
I use no trade, no venture;I wound no earth with ploughshares, fat no beastsTo feed the shambles; have no mills for iron,Oil, corn, or men, to grind them into powder:… expose no shipsTo threatenings of the furrow-faced sea;I turn no monies in the public bank,Nor usure private.
Mosca, in order to flatter his master, continues the speech of the latter in the same strain:—
… No, sir, nor devourSoft prodigals. You shall have some will swallowA melting heir as glibly as your DutchWill pills of butter, and ne'er purge for it; [10]Tear forth the fathers of poor familiesOut of their beds, and coffin them aliveIn some kind clasping prison, where their bonesMay be forthcoming, when the flesh is rotten:But your sweet nature doth abhor these courses;You lothe the widow's or the orphan's tearsShould wash your pavements, or their piteous criesRing in the roofs, and beat the air for vengeance.
We have here an allusion to Hamlet, [11] where he asks the Ghost why the sepulchre has opened its 'ponderous and marble jaws' to cast him up again; also to the Queen and whilom widow; and, furthermore, to the orphans, Ophelia and Laertes, and to the tears shed by the latter at his sister's death. The cry of vengeance refers to the similar utterances of the Ghost, of Hamlet, and of Laertes, who all seek revenge.
Mosca, with a view of preparing for his master a pleasure more suitable to his taste than that which a play like 'Hamlet,' we suppose, could afford him, brings in the three gamesters:—Nano, a dwarf; Castrone, a eunuch; and Androgyne, a hermaphrodite. [12] The latter is meant to represent Shakspere; for he is introduced by Nano as a soul coming from Apollo, which migrated through Euphorbus and Pythagoras (Meres uses these two names in his eulogy of the soul of Shakspere). [13] After having recounted several other stages in the migration of Androgyne's soul (we shall mention them further on), the latter has to give an answer why he has 'shifted his coat in these days of reformation,' and why his 'dogmatical silence' has left him. He replies that an obstreperous 'Sir Lawyer' had induced him to do so. From this it may be concluded that Bacon had some influence on Shakspere's 'Hamlet.' Are not, in poetical manner, the same principles advocated in 'Hamlet,' which Bacon promoted in science? [14]
After the Hermaphrodite has admitted that he has become 'a good dull mule,' [15] he avows that he is now a very strange beast, an ass, an actor,a hermaphrodite, and a fool; and that he more especially relishes this latter condition of his, for in all other forms, as Jonson makes him confess, he has 'proved most distressed.' [16]
Let us now quote from this Interlude some highly-spiced satirical passages.
Nano, the dwarf, coming in with Androgyno and Castrone, asks for room for the new gamesters or players, and says to the public:—
They do bring you neither play, nor university show;And therefore do intreat you that whatsoever they rehearse,May not fare a whit the worse, for the false pace of the verse. [17]If you wonder at this, you will wonder more ere we pass,For know, here [18] is inclosed the soul of Pythagoras, [19]That juggler divine, as hereafter shall follow;Which soul, fast and loose, sir, came first from Apollo.
It is explained how that soul afterwards transmigrated into 'the goldy-locked Euphorbus who was killed, in good fashion, at the siege of old Troy, by the cuckold of Sparta;' how it then passed into Hermotimus, 'where no sooner it was missing, but with one Pyrrhus of Delos [20] it learned to go a-fishing;' [21] how thence it did enter the Sophist of Greece, Pythagoras. After having been changed into whom,