Benjamin Jonson was an English playwright, poet, actor, and literary critic.
Background
Ben Jonson was born, probably in Westminster, London, England in the beginning of the year 1573. By the poet's account his grandfather had been a gentleman who "came from" Carlisle, and originally, the grandson thought, from Annandale.
Ben Jonson further related that he was born a month after the death of his father, who, after suffering in estate and person under Queen Mary, had in the end "turned minister. " Two years after the birth of her son the widow married again. Jonson's stepfather was a master bricklayer, living in Hartshorn Lane, near Charing Cross.
Education
His stepfather provided his stepson with the foundations of a good education. After attending a private school in St Martin's Lane, the boy was sent to Westminster School at the expense, it is said, of William Camden. After reaching the highest form at Westminster, Jonson is stated, but on unsatisfactory evidence, to have proceeded to Cambridge-according to Fuller, to St John's College.
Career
Jonson had enough of the trade, which was no doubt his father's bricklaying.
He spent some time in that country soldiering, much to his own subsequent satisfaction when the days of self-conscious retrospect arrived, but to no further purpose beyond that of seeing something of the world.
By the middle of 1597 he was at least a regular member of the acting profession, with a fixed engagement in the lord admiral's company, then performing under Henslowe's management at the Rose. Perhaps he had previously acted at the Curtain (a former house of the lord admiral's men), and "taken mad Jeronimo's part" on a play-wagon in the highway. This latter appearance, if it ever took place, would, as was pointed out by Gifford, probably have been in Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy.
He was at a subsequent date (1601) employed by Henslowe to write up The Spanish Tragedy, and this fact may have given rise to Wood's story of his performance as a stroller. Jonson's additions, which were not the first changes made in the, play, are usually supposed to be those printed with The Spanish Tragedy in the edition of 1602.
In 1597 Jonson undertook to write a play for the lord admiral's men; and in the following year he was mentioned by Meres in his Palladis Tamia as one of "the best for tragedy, " without any reference to a connexion on his part with the other branch of the drama. Ben Jonson in the same year 1598 produced one of the most famous of English comedies, Every Man in his Humour, which was first acted - probably in the earlier part of September - by the lord chamberlain's company at the Curtain. Every Man in his Humour was published in 1601. It was followed in the same year by The Case is Altered, acted by the children of the queen's revels, which contains a satirical attack upon the pageant poet, Anthony Munday.
Before the year 1598 was out, however, Jonson found himself in prison and in danger of the gallows. In a duel, fought on the 22nd of September in Hogsden Fields, he had killed an actor of Henslowe's company named Gabriel Spenser. The quarrel with Henslowe consequent on this event may account for the production of Every Man in his Humour by the rival company. He pleaded guilty to the charge brought against him, as the rolls of Middlesex sessions show; but, after a short imprisonment, he was released by benefit of clergy, forfeiting his "goods and chattels, " and being branded on his left thumb.
The affair does not seem to have affected his reputation; in 1599 he is found back again at work for Henslowe, receiving together with Dekker, Chettle and "another gentleman, " earnest money for a tragedy (undiscovered) called Robert II, King of Scots.
In the same year he brought out through the lord chamberlain's company the elaborate comedy of Every Man out of his Humour - a play subsequently presented before Queen Elizabeth.
Cynthia's Revels was produced by the Children of the Chapel Royal at Blackfriars Theatre in 1600. It satirised both John Marston, who Jonson believed had accused him of lustfulness in Histriomastix, and Thomas Dekker. Jonson attacked the two poets again in Poetaster (1601). Dekker responded with Satiromastix, subtitled "the untrussing of the humorous poet". This "War of the Theatres" appears to have ended with reconciliation on all sides. Jonson collaborated with Dekker on a pageant welcoming James I to England in 1603 although Drummond reports that Jonson called Dekker a rogue. Marston dedicated The Malcontent to Jonson and the two collaborated with Chapman on Eastward Ho, a 1605 play whose anti-Scottish sentiment briefly landed both Jonson and Chapman in jail.
At the beginning of the reign of James I, King of England, in 1603 Jonson joined other poets and playwrights in welcoming the new king.
The Satyr (1603) was produced on one of these occasions, Queen Anne's sojourn at Althorpe, the seat of Sir Robert Spencer, afterwards Lord Althorpe, who seems to have previously bestowed some patronage upon him. The Penates followed on May-day 1604 at the house of Sir William Cornwallis at Highgate, and the queen herself with her ladies played his Masque of Blackness at Whitehall in 1605. He was soon occasionally employed by the court itself-already in 1606 in conjunction with Inigo Jones, as responsible for the "painting and carpentry" - and thus speedily showed himself master in a species of composition for which, more than any other English poet before Milton, he secured an enduring place in the national poetic literature. Personally, no doubt, he derived considerable material benefit from the new fashion - more especially if his statement to Drummond was anything like correct, that out of his plays (which may be presumed to mean his original plays) he had never gained a couple of hundred pounds.
Good humour seems to have come back with good fortune. Joint employment in The King's Entertainment (1604) had reconciled him with Dekker; and with Marston also, who in 1604 dedicated to him his Malcontent, he was again on pleasant terms.
When, therefore, in 1604 Marston and Chapman (who, Jonson told Drummond, was loved of him, and whom he had probably honoured as "Virgil" in The Poetaster, and who has, though on doubtful grounds, been supposed to have collaborated in the original Sejanus) produced the excellent comedy of Eastward Ho, it appears to have contained some contributions by Jonson. At all events, when the authors were arrested on account of one or more passages in the play which were deemed insulting to the Scots, he "voluntarily imprisoned himself" with them. They were soon released, and a banquet at his expense, attended by Camden and Selden, terminated the incident.
Strange to say, in 1605 Jonson and Chapman, though the former, as he averred, had so "attempered" his style as to have "given no cause to any good man of grief, " were again in prison on account of "a play"; but they appear to have been once more speedily set free, in consequence of a very manly and dignified letter addressed by Jonson to the Earl of Salisbury. The play in question, in which both Chapman and Jonson took part, was Sir Gyles Goosecappe, and that the last imprisonment of the two poets was shortly after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot.
His powers as a dramatist were at their height during the earlier half of the reign of James I. ; and by the year 1616 he had produced nearly all the plays which are worthy of his genius. They include the tragedy of Catiline (acted and printed 1611), which achieved only a doubtful success, and the comedies of Volpone, or the Fox (acted 1605 and printed in 1607 with a dedication " from my house in the Blackfriars "), Epicoene, or the Silent Woman (1609; entered in the Stationers' Register 1610), The Alchemist (1610), Bartholomew Fair (1614) and The Devil is an Ass (1616).
During the same period he produced several masques, usually in connexion with Inigo Jones, with whom, however, he seems to have quarrelled already in this reign, though it is very doubtful whether the architect is really intended to be ridiculed in Bartholomew Fair under the character of Lanthorn Leatherhead. Among the most attractive of his masques may be mentioned the Masque of Blackness (1606), the Masque of Beauty (1608), and the Masque of Queens (1609), described by Swinburne as "the most splendid of all masques " and as "one of the typically splendid monuments or trophies of English literature. "
In 1616 a modest pension of 100 marks a year was conferred upon him; and possibly this sign of royal favour may have encouraged him to the publication of the first volume of the folio collected edition of his works (1616), though there are indications that he had contemplated its production, an exceptional task for a playwright of his times to take in hand, as early as 1612.
He had other patrons more bountiful than the Crown, and for a brief space of time (in 1613) had travelled to France as governor (without apparently much moral authority) to the eldest son of Sir Walter Raleigh, then a state prisoner in the Tower, for whose society Jonson may have gained a liking at the Mermaid Tavern in Cheapside, but for whose personal character he, like so many of his contemporaries, seems to have had but small esteem.
By the year 1616 Jonson seems to have made up his mind to cease writing for the stage, where neither his success nor his profits had equalled his merits and expectations. He continued to produce masques and entertainments when called upon; but he was attracted by many other literary pursuits, and had already accomplished enough to furnish plentiful materials for retrospective discourse over pipe or cup.
It was in the year 1618 that, like Dr Samuel Johnson a century and a half afterwards, Ben resolved to have a real holiday for once, and about midsummer started for his ancestral country, Scotland. He spent more than a year and a half in the hospitable Lowlands, being solemnly elected a burgess of Edinburgh, and on another occasion entertained at a public banquet there. But the best-remembered hospitality which he enjoyed was that of the learned Scottish poet, William Drummond of Hawthornden, to which we owe the so-called Conversations. A poetical account of this journey, "with all the adventures, " was burnt with Jonson's library.
After his return to England Jonson appears to have resumed his former course of life. Among his noble patrons and patronesses were the countess of Rutland (Sidney's daughter) and her cousin Lady Wroth; and in 1619 his visits to the country seats of the nobility were varied by a sojourn at Oxford with Richard Corbet, the poet, at Christ Church, on which occasion he took up the master's degree granted to him by the university; whether he actually proceeded to the same degree granted to him at Cambridge seems unknown.
The extremely spirited Gipsies Metamorphosed (1621) was thrice presented before the king, who was so pleased with it as to grant to the poet the reversion of the office of master of the revels, besides proposing to confer upon him the honour of knighthood. This honour Jonson (hardly in deference to the memory of Sir Petronel Flash) declined; but there was-no reason why he should not gratefully accept the increase of his pension in the same year (1621) to £200-a temporary increase only, inasmuch as it still stood at 100 marks when afterwards augmented by Charles I. The close of King James I 's reign found the foremost of its poets in anything but a prosperous condition.
Disease had weakened the poet's strength, and the burning of his library, as his Execration upon Vulcan sufficiently shows, must have been no mere transitory trouble to a poor poet and scholar. Moreover he cannot but have felt, from the time of the accession of Charles I early in 1625 onwards, that the royal patronage would no longer be due in part to anything like intellectual sympathy. He thus thought it best to recur to the surer way of writing for the stage, and in 1623 produced, with no faint heart, but with a very clear anticipation of the comments which would be made upon the reappearance of the "huge, overgrown play-maker, " The Staple of News, a comedy excellent in some respects, but little calculated to become popular. It was not printed till 1631.
Jonson, whose habit of body was not more conducive than were his ways of life to a healthy old age, had a paralytic stroke in 1626, and a second in 1628. In the latter year, on the death of Middleton, the appointment of city chronologer, with a salary of 100 nobles a year, was bestowed upon him. He appears to have considered the duties of this office as purely ornamental; but in 1631 his salary was suspended until he should have presented some fruits of his labours in his place.
After being in 1628 arrested by mistake on the utterly false charge of having written certain verses in approval of the assassination of Buckingham, he was soon allowed to return to Westminster, where it would appear from a letter of his "son and contiguous neighbour, " James Howell, he was living in 1629, and about this time narrowly escaped another conflagration. In the same year (1629) he once more essayed the stage with the comedy of The New Inn, which was actually, and on its own merits not unjustly, damned on the first performance. It was printed in 1631. King Charles immediately sent the unlucky author a gift of £100, and in response to a further appeal increased his standing salary to the same sum, with the addition of an annual tierce of canary -the poet-laureate's customary royal gift, though this designation of an office, of which Jonson discharged some of what became the ordinary functions, is not mentioned in the warrant dated the 26th of March 1630. In 1634, by the king's desire, Jonson's salary as chronologer to the city was again paid.
To his later years belong the comedies, The Magnetic Lady (1632) and The Tale of a Tub (1633), both printed in 1640, and some masques, none of which met with great success. The patronage of liberal-minded men, such as the earl, afterwards duke, of Newcastle - by whom he must have been commissioned to write his last two masques Love's Welcome at Welbeck (1633) and Love's Welcome at Bolsover (1634).
When, nearly two years after he had lost his surviving son, death came upon the sick old man on the 6th of August 1637, he left behind him an unfinished work of great beauty, the pastoral drama of The Sad Shepherd (printed in 1641).
Personality
Self-reliance is but too frequently coupled with self-consciousness, and for good and for evil self-confidence was no doubt the most prominent feature in the character of Ben Jonson. Hence the combativeness which involved him in so many quarrels in his earlier days, and which jarred so harshly upon the less militant and in some respects more pedantic nature of Drummond. But his quarrels do not appear to have entered deeply into his soul, or indeed usually to have lasted long. He was too exuberant in his vituperations to be bitter, and too outspoken to be malicious. He loved of all things to be called "honest, " and there is every reason to suppose that he deserved the epithet.