T. S. Eliot on Ben Jonson

T. S. Eliot Views on Ben Jonson

Exaggerations of type. 

Largely on the evidence of the two Humour plays, it is sometimes assumed that Jonson is occupied with types; typical exaggerations, or exaggerations of type. The Humour definition, the expressed intention of Jonson, may be satisfactory for these two plays. Every Man in His Humour is the first mature work of Jonson, and the student of Jonson must study it. But it is not the play in which Jonson found his genius.

The artistic result of "Volpone". 

The Humour, even at the beginning, is not a type, as in Marston's satire, but a simplified and somewhat distorted individual with a typical mania. In the later work, the Humour definition quite fails to account for the total effect produced. The characters of Shakespeare are such as might exist in different circumstances than those in which Shakespeare sets them. Volpone's life, on the other hand, is bounded by the scene in which it is played; in fact, the life is the life of the scene and is derivatively the life of Volpone; the life of the character is inseparable from the life of the drama. This is not dependence upon a background, or upon a sub-stratum of fact. The emotional effect is single and simple. Whereas in Shakespeare the effect is due to the way in which the characters act upon one another, in Jonson it is given by the way in which the characters fit in with each other. The artistic result of Volpone is not due to any effect that Volpone, Mosca, Corvino, Corbaccio, Voltore have upon each other, but simply to their combination into a whole. And these figures are not personifications of pas- sions; separately, they have not even that reality; they are constituents. It is a similar indication of Jonson's method that you can hardly pick out a line of Jonson's and say confidently that it is great poetry, but there are many ex- tended passages to which that honour cannot be denied.

The wrong approach to Jonson.

 

Jonson is the legitimate heir of Marlowe. The man who wrote, in Volpone:

for thy love,
In varying figures, I would have contended 

With the blue Proteus, or the horned flood..........
and
See a carbuncle
May put out both the eyes of our Saint Mark; 

A diamond would have brought Lollia Paulina, 

When she came in like star-light, hid with jewels........

is related to Marlowe as a poet: and if Marlowe is a poet, Jonson is also. And, if Jonson's comedy is a comedy of humours, than Marlowe's tragedy, a large part of it, is a tragedy of humours. But Jonson has too exclusiveely been considered the typical representative of a point of view toward a comedy. He has suffered from his great reputation as a critic and theorist, from the effects of his intelligence. We have been taught to think of him as the man, the dictator, as the literary politician impressing his views upon a generation; we are offended by the constant reminder of his scholarship. We forget the comedy in the humours, and the serious artist in the scholar.

The plot not the key to the success of "Volpone". 

If we examine the first hundred lines or more of Volpone, the verse appears to be in the manner of Marlowe, more deliberate, more mature, but without Mailowe's inspira- tion. It looks like mere rhetoric, certainly not "deeds and language such as men do use". It appears to us, in fact, forced and flagitious bombast. That it is not rhetoric, or at least not vicious rhetoric, we do not know until we are able to review the whole play. For the consistent maintenance of this manner conveys in the end an effect not of verbosity, but of bold, even shocking and terrifying, directness. We have difficulty in saying exactly what produces this simple and single effect. It is not in any ordinary was due to management of intrigue. Jonson employs immense dramatic constructive skill: it is not so much skill in plot as skill in doing without a plot. He never manipulates as complicated a plot as that of The Merchant of Venice; he has in his best plays nothing like the intrigue of Restoration comedy. In Bartholomew Fair, it is hardly a plot at all; the marvel of the play is the bewildering rapid chaotic action of the fair; it is the fair itself, not anything that happens in the fair. In Volpone or The Alchemist. or The Silent Woman, the plat is enough to keep the players in motion; it is rather an action than a plot. The plot does not hold the play together, what holds the play together is a unity of inspiration that radiates into plot and personages alike.

The power that animates "Volpone". 

A writer of power and intelli- gence. Jonson tried to announce, as a formula and programme of reform, what he close to do himself; and he not unnaturally laid down in abstract theory what is in reality a personal point of view. And it is in the end of no value to discuss Jonson's theory and practice unless we recognize and seize this point of view, which is what makes his plays worth reading. Jonson behaved as the great creative mind that he was: he created his own world, a world from which his followers, as well as the dramatists who were trying to do something wholly different, are excluded. It has been said that Jonson's characters lack the third dimension, and have no life out of the theatrical

[*flagitious-atrocious; outrageous.] existence in which they appear. The objection implies that the characters are purely the work of intellect, or the result of superficial observation of a world which is faded or mildewed. It implies that the characters are lifeless. But if we dig beneath Jonson's theory, beneath his observation, we discover a kind of power animating Volpone, Busy, Fitzdottrel, the literary ladies of The Silent Woman, even Bobadill**- a power which comes from below the intel- lect, and for which no theory of humours will account. And it is the same kind of power which animates Trimalchio, and Panurge, and some but not all of the comic characters of Dickens.

The theory of humours does not explain the characters in "Volpone". 

It is not merely Humours: for neither Volpone nor Mosca is a humour. No theory of humours could account for Jonson's best plays or the best charac- ters in them. We want to know at what point the comedy of humours passes into a work of art.

Jonson as a creative writer. 

The creation of a work of art, or the cre- ation of a character in a drama, consists in the process of transfusion of the personality or the life of the author into the character. This is a very different matter from the orthodox creation in one's own image. The ways in which the passions and desires of the creator may be satisfied in the work of art are complex and devious. In a painter they may take the form of a preference for certain colours, tones, or lightings. In a writer the original impulse may be even more strangely transmuted. It is possible to say that Falstaff or a score of Shakespeare's characters have a "third dimension" that Jonson's have not. This does not mean that Shakespeare's characters spring from the feelings or the imagination, and that Jonson's characters spring from the intellect or invention. Jonson's characters have equally an emotional source, but Shakespeare's represent a more complex tissue of feelings and desires, as well as a more supple, a more susceptible temperament. The source of the difference is not the difference between feeling and thought, or superior in- sight and superior perception on the part of Shakespeare but 'Shakespeare' susceptibility to a greater range of emotion, and emotion deeper and more obscure. But Shakespeare's characters are no more "alive" than are the characters of Jonson.

Jonson did not aim at the third dimension. 

The world in which Shakespeare's characters live is a large one. Jonson's type of personality found its relief in something falling under the category of burlesque or farce. Jonson's world is not defined by the word satire. Jonson poses as a satirist. But satire like Jonson's is great in the end not be hitting off its object, but by creating it. The satire is merely the means which leads to the aesthetic result, the impulse [in Bartholomew Fair. ** in Every Man in His Humour] which projects a new world into a new orbit. Every Man in His Humour is a very neat comedy of humours. In discovering and proclaiming in this play the new genre Jonson was simply recognizing, unconsciously, the route which opened out in the proper direction for his instincts. His characters are and remain, like Marlowe's simplified characters; but the simplification does not consist in the dominance of a particular humour or monomania. That is a very superficial account of it. The simplification consists largely in reduction of detail, in the seizing of aspects relevant to the relief of an emotional im- pulse which remains the same for that character, in making the character conform to a particular setting. This stripping is essential to the art, to which is also essential a flat distortion in the drawing; it is an art of caricature, of great caricature, like Marlowe's. It is a great caricature, which is beautiful; and a great humour, which is serious. The world of Jonson is sufficiently large; it is a world of poetic imagination; it is sombre. He did not get the third dimension, but he was not trying to get it.

Theatrical qualities. 

Of all the dramatists of his time, Jonson is probably the one whom the present age would find the most sympathetic, if it knew him. At least, if we had a contemporary Shakespeare and a contemporary Jonson, it might be the Jonson who would arouse the enthusiasm of the intel- ligentsia. Though he is saturated in literature, he never sacrifices the theatrical qualities-theatrical in the most favourable sense- to literature or to the study of character. His work is a titanic show. Jonson's masques, an important part of his work, are neglected; our flaccid culture lets shows and literature fade but prefers faded literature to faded shows. The masques can still be read, and with pleasure, by anyone who will take the trouble to imagine them in action, displayed with the music, costumes, dances, and scenery. They are additional evidence that Jonson had a fine sense of form, of the purpose for which a particular form is intended; evidence that he was a literary artist even more than he was a man of letters.