1.1SH MTI.KAT 



29) 



vere 36, being, in fact, governed by uT U Aa^/J<iu^<u, I pnulHf Hi 



unely, Owl ery on* u aoopUd uiuUr UM CHrutia* 4JspeMati 



w/to ftan lioil and work* rujlitt UIMIMM. Tow knoie tic itory o/ UU /ct tJUt 



I -natiKly, (H txijjti*m a*4 anointing o/ C'Krut. lly thi means 



i*rttt difficulties la the English version (I) M a 



t know the teaching ; (>) i>'<\^ and A^m wo 



line thing. /. > U properly a raciUl o( faots, and 



1 1*0 our interpretation takes it. 



... It was from thence that hU fame first >prad. Cf. 

 IT. 14. 



ur.. F know th* twytct of MM pn^a nanwJy, JMIU KOI* God 

 anointed him. 



ia<iTt..n^i. mr, tu2xlud. Bo that he U their &ni<r-r*,, or tyrant. 

 The aame expression ! used of bodily disease (Luke till. 10), and of 

 .1 bondage (2 Tim. ii. 26). 



u httttt contrasts with l/nit oltan, you know a* ma((n o/hutory. 

 irhiU v art untiUMM of tX /act*. 



LKSSONS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. X III 



THK ELIZABETHAN PERIOD: THE DRAMATISTS. 

 BEN JONSON. 



NEXT to Shakespeare in point of time among the greater Eliza- 

 bethan dramatists, and next to him, perhaps, also in genius, 

 fitanda Jonson, always called by himself and his contemporaries, 

 : 1 as by posterity, by the abbreviated title, Ben Jonson. 

 Ho was born in London in 1573. His family had a generation 

 earlier been in prosperous circumstances, but ho was born to 

 great poverty. He was the posthumous son of a clergyman ; but 

 his mother married for her second husband a bricklayer, and 

 Jonson in early youth was obliged to follow the employment of 

 his stepfather. Ho afterwards served for some time as a soldier 

 in the Low Countries. But while still young, like many another 

 young man of his day, whose tastes and aspirations ware above 

 his fortune, ho turned actor. From acting he advance:!, as others 

 did, to dramatic writing ; and down to the time of his death, in 

 1637, his diligence as a play- writer was unceasing. Singularly 

 unfavourable as the circumstances of his early life were for learn- 

 ing, Jonson' s love of knowledge triumphed over them. His 

 reading wan wide and accurate, his acquaintance with classical 

 authors veiy minute. He was beyond doubt one of the most 

 learned men of a learned age. 



Jonson bad written several plays, some perhaps of those still 

 in existenoe being among the number, but they had all proved 

 failures ; ivhen in about 159G the comedy of " Every Man in his 

 Humour " was brought out at the Globe Theatre, and its success 

 was so great as at once to establish its author's position in the 

 very front rank of the dramatists. It is said, though the story 

 rests upon no direct evidence, that Jonson owed the production 

 of tliis play at the Globe to the good offices of Shakespeare, 

 whose fame with the public and influence in the Globe Theatre 

 were then at their height. It is very likely that this story may 

 be true, and that either the incident may have been the be- 

 ginning of the life-long friendship between the two dramatists, 

 or that Shakespeare's conduct was prompted by a friendship 

 already subsisting. Those, however, who have made very much 

 of this circumstance, and so sought to exaggerate Jonson's obli- 

 gations to Shakespeare, have omitted to observe that it was no 

 extraordinary effort of friendship on Shakespeare's part to bring 

 out at a theatre, in which he was very largely interested, a play 

 of such surpassing merits as " Every Man in his Humour." The 

 reputation thus established Jonson continually increased. Nor 

 was it only as a dramatist that he was distinguished. In 1C19 

 he became poet laureate, a post to which his poetical merits 

 fully entitled him. And amongst those brilliant circles of wits 

 and men of letters which became so famous in the Elizabethan 

 period, Jonson's position was supremo. 



Jonson's whole career shows us that the leading features of 

 his character were strength of will, indomitable energy, and 

 proud self-reliance ; and these high qualities were accompanied 

 l>7 a certain roughness and an outspoken freedom both in praise 

 and blame. He certainly did not want the genuine kindness 

 which secures friends, but was deficient in the geniality and tact 

 which avoids or conciliates enemies ; and he was constantly at 

 war with some of his brother dramatists and poets. The Tery 

 varied incidents of his career, and particularly the fact of his 

 having at one time changed his creed and become a Roman 

 Catholic, and afterwards re-joined the national Church, gave 



afc-rial f.,r : 4 tU--k foMol * fcl 



and ill health, Mid what to * Vt,ng and 

 ire, seb as his, must have been not UM painful 



ple*|y of material for aetaek. 



L _ **s*im^4 if 



I ;. | . . ' r '. , 



reliant nature, such 

 either of these, the 



', 



Two of Jonaon's play* are tragedies, 

 line." I'hey are founded upon, aod follow witi 



; a. .?,.. Ifasj 



of failinf intsllactaal powers. 



the authentic and contemporary account* of the lives and < 

 of tho two men whose names they bear. The subject in each ease 

 was one likely to attract the taate of Ben Joneoa. Tb* con- 

 spiracy of Catiline and the fall of Sejanns aOord ample oppor 

 for the display of striking dramatic ajfeatiom They 

 gave peculiar scope for Jonson'e great power of noble and loft) 

 eloquence. They enabled him to UM hia store* of dasaioal learn- 

 and tho skill with which be baa worked into his plays 

 every expression, every hint almost, of the Latin Matoriajss and 

 poets, and the oompletenee* in every detail of the pictare of 

 Roman manners and easterns, are extraordinary. Yet Jonson's 



tragedies an read, we think, by few people with 

 They are stiff and lifeless, and the characters are unreal. We 

 are interested in the story, the speeches, everything except the 

 men and women themselves. Catiline and Refanu themselves 

 are both characters purely repulsive. Their fate and their fall 

 excite our wonder, and perhaps a feeling of horror, never our 

 sympathy or pity. Nor is this want of human interest in the 

 principal story balanced by any strong pathos in any of the sb- 

 sidiary incidents in the play. When Shakespeare made the 

 leading character in his play the base and odious tyrant Join, 

 ho supplied the miming element of tenderness and pity by in- 

 troducing the pathetic story of Prince Arthur. In " Sejanus " 

 the ono really pathetic incident of the whole play, the murder of 

 the innocent children of Sejanus, and the grief of their broken- 

 hearted mother, forms no part of the action of the pla> 

 simply related as a fact in an eloquent but not very appropriate 

 speech, within a few lines of the end of the play. 



Of far higher merit than these two tragedies are the comedies 

 of Jonson. Those arc strongly contrast .-d in many respects with 

 the comedies of Shakespeare and most of his contemporaries. 

 Jonson's plots are always most carefully and skilfully elabo- 

 rated, and they are, we believe, always of his own invention. 

 He is never content to follow the usual course of his brother 

 dramatists, and take the story of some Italian novel or earlier 

 play, following the narrative of tho original with only such altera- 

 tion aa is absolutely necessary for stage effect. And from thi* 

 cause Jonson's comedies are peculiarly effective as plays, and 

 carry on the interest of tho reader to a remarkable degree. Hi 

 stylo is always clear, manly, and vigorous ; it is never vulgar or 

 commonplace, seldom deficient In eaae and simplicity, though. 

 as compared with Shakespeare and many others among the 

 dramatists, it has an air of deliberation about it. It is like a 

 noble building erected by art, rather than a tree of spontaneous 

 growth. His extensive learning furnished him with an inerhaai- 

 tiblo store of words, phrases, and longer pasaagee from the 

 ancient writers, which ho uses in general with admirable judg- 

 ment. But now and then his learning baa betrayed him into 

 a fault. Thus when Knowel, the prudent and matter-of-fact 

 merchant in " Every Man in bis Humour," pours out an eloquent 

 diatribe, borrowed from Juvenal, on the wickedness of the agr. 

 and especially on the vices of parents grown the omiupton 

 instead of the protectors of their children, every one must be 

 struck with tho incongruity between this and the whole tana of 

 society depicted in the play, and must feel that howerer tme 

 of Rome in the days of Domitian, it U not true of England 

 in the days of Elizabeth. The morality of Jonson's plays is 

 always pure. He is often coarse in expression ; nothing can 

 be much grosser than some of the language and some of the 

 scenes in bis beet comedies the " Alchemist," for instance. 

 But this ia merely the coarseness of his times, when men did 

 not hesitate to speak openly of things now left in silence. ^He 

 never confuses the boundaries of right and wrong, and therefore 

 is never really immoral. 



One characteristic of Jonson's comedies must strike ever] 

 reader, that though they are comic and humorous always, yt 

 they are, above all, satirical. Except when they are broadly 

 farcical, they are keen satires upon vice, upon hypocrisy, sen 

 suality, avarice. And this, though, perhaps, owing partly to the 

 somewhat severe oast of Jonson's mind, in still more, n doubt, 

 connected with the dnfect in hi lramat : o r^ios to *' 



