plays that followed in the successive years 1599, 1600, 1601Every Man out of his Humour," "Cynthia's Revels," and "The Poetaster "-were exuberant in wit, and satirized the affectations of the day in the city, at Court, and among writers who used their skill upon low themes, and ran a broken pace for common hire when they should seek rather the high raptures of a happy muse Borne on the wings of her immortal thought. He would have all solemn triflers understand How far beneath the dignity of man and laboured to advance the time when these vain joys, in which their wills consume To God's high figures, which they have in power. Out of this sense of life Ben Jonson speaks with all his joviality. At his merriest he spurns low thought, and in his cups he seeks true poets and true scholars for his comrades. This worthiness of aim made him in after years of age and infirmity the Master around whom the best poets of the younger generation gathered with trust and affection, each happy if their chief once called him Son, and by so doing sealed him of the tribe of Ben. Misunderstood in these his younger days by fellow poets, who saw personality where the whole aim was to lift the public sense of what true literature means, Ben Jonson found himself put on the stage in a piece called "Satiromastix" by his friends Dekker and Marston. They paid him back in what they took to be his own coin, and set one of his own characters, Captain Tucca, to bully him; but in the characters through which they themselves spoke they clearly expressed their own friendship and admiration for him, which asked only that he should put away what they regarded as his fault. Says one of them: Where one true And wholly virtuous spirit for thy best part In every good man's love which thy worth earns Thy friends with bays to crown thy poesie. "Faustus!" he interrupts; and his friend adds, "This makes us angry, but not envious. No, were thy warpt soul put in a new mould, I'd wear thee as a jewel set in gold. This was but a wrestle among friends. Marston almost im mediately afterwards was dedicating to Ben Jonson his best play, and in another play they were joint writers with the scholarly George Chapman. True men can differ vigorously and be friends. Ben Jonson turned for a while from his misapprehended comedies, or, rather, from his dramatic satires; for the three pieces that followed "Every Man in his Humour" were rich in detail, but, as plays, weak in construction. He produced a tragedy, "Sejanus," in 1603, and then, in the first years of the reign of James I., gathered his strength and produced the three comedies given in this volume: "Volpone" in 1605, "The Silent Woman" in 1609, and "The Alchemist" in 1610. His other tragedy, "Catiline," followed in 1611. The ingenuity of sudden and frequent turns in the plot of "The Alchemist" is hardly less marked in "The Fox," and the three comedies contain a little crowd of distinct characters, with vigour of wit and worthy thought in every line that helps to give them being. Is there a book in the world that breathes nobler scorn of the worship of Mammon than Ben Jonson's play of “Volpone"? It opens with Volpone prostrate in soul before the idol figured in a heap of gold and silver plate, and then shows how, in low minds, all ties of love and honour snap when they restrain the grasp at gold. Corbaccio, tottering upon the verge of his own grave, casts off a worthy son, and the most jealous husband is ready to give his wife to shame, for lust of gold. A spirit like this was in the club at the Mermaid-founded, it is said, by Sir Walter Raleigh-in which Shakespeare and Beaumont and Fletcher were among Ben Jonson's companions. Beaumont, in lines to Ben Jonson, recalled what things we have seen Done at the Mermaid! Heard words that have been So nimble and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whom they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life. Ben Jonson worked on under James I., but became weary of the audiences who sought plays of animal love, and so helped to quicken the departure of the earnest men whose presence had given strength to the best efforts of the players. The theatre declined in worth. Ben Jonson left it, and wrote Masques for the Court, but fell out with Inigo Jones, who provided the machinery for his Masques, lost favour at Court, and had a stroke of palsy added to his troubles just before Charles I. became King. Compelled to write again for the playgoers whom he openly despised, he gave them an opportunity for retort after their own kind, and wrote the indignant ode, “Come, Leave the Loathed Stage," which will be found at page 313 of this volume. The grace of his last years is in the fragment of "The Sad Shepherd." He died in August 1637. The University of Oxford had, in 1519, paid honour to his learning by conferring on him the degree of Master of Arts. Like Milton, Ben Jonson had a mind so highly cultivated that turns of thought or expression give evidence of his scholarship in every page he writes. Horace especially, Martial, Juvenal, Terence, Plautus, Lucian, Apollonius peep out from many a line of sound English. Even St. Chrysostom's N kakov κακῶν κάκιστον underlies the comic exclamation in the close of "The Silent Woman:" "This is worst of all worst worsts !" The spark of scholarship so flashed into the native humour of the poet is anything but pedantry. It is a finer light in light, wit within wit. But it did, in his own time, greatly exercise the minds of feeble critics, who, if they ventured to strike at a phrase of Ben Jonson's, trembled as they did so, lest perchance they might hit Horace unawares. December 1884 H. M. THE ALCHEMIST. TO THE READER. If thou beest more, thou art an understander, and then I trust thee. If thou art one that takest up, and but a pretender, beware of what hands thou receivest thy commodity; for thou wert never more fair in the way to be cozened than in this age, in poetry, especially in plays: wherein now the concupiscence of dances and of antics so reigneth, as to run away from Nature and be afraid of her is the only point of Art that tickles the spectators. But how out of purpose and place do I name Art? When the professors are grown so obstinate contemners of it, and presumers on their own naturals, as they are deriders of all diligence that way, and, by simple mocking at the terms, when they understand not the things, think to get off wittily with their ignorance. Nay, they are esteemed the more learned and sufficient for this, by the many, through their excellent vice of judgment. For they commend writers as they do fencers and wrestlers; who, if they come in robustuously, and put for it with a great deal of violence, are received for the braver fellows: when many times their own rudeness is the cause of their disgrace, and a little touch of their adversary gives all that boisterous force the foil. I deny not but that these men, who always seek to do more than enough, may sometime happen on something that is good and great; but very seldom and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest of their ill. It sticks out, perhaps, and is more eminent, because all is sordid and vile about it; as lights are more discerned in a thick darkness than a faint shadow. I speak not this out of a hope to do good to any man against his will; for I know, if it were put to the question of theirs and mine, the worse would find more suffrages: because the most favour common errors. But I give thee this warning, that there is a great difference between those that, to gain the opinion of copy, utter all they can, however unfitly; and those that use election and a mean. For it is only the disease of the unskilful to think rude things greater than polished, or scattered more numerous than composed. ARGUMENT. THE sickness hot, a master quit, for fear, A cheater and his punk; who now brought low, PROLOGUE. FORTUNE, that favours fools, these two short hours To the author justice, to ourselves but grace. No clime breeds better matter, for your bore, Shark, squire, impostor, many persons more, Whose manners, now called humours, feed the stage; The vices that she breeds, above their cure. If there be any that will sit so nigh Unto the stream, to look what it doth run, They shall find things they'd think or wish were done; They are so natural follies, but so shown As even the doers may see, and yet not own. ACT I. SCENE. I. A Room in LOVEWIT'S House. Enter FACE, in a captain's uniform, with his sword drawn, and SUBTLE with a vial, quarrelling, and followed by DOL COMMON. Face. Believe 't, I will. Sub. Thy worst. I spit at thee. Dol. Have you your wits? Why, gentlemen, for love |