A Short Biographical Sketch of Ben Jonson

A Short Biographical Sketch of Ben Jonson 

Early life and education of Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson was born in Westminster in late 1572, a month after the death of his father. Two years after his birth, his mother married again; her second husband was a master brick-layer who sent his step-son to a private school in St. Martin's Lane. Later, Jonson went to Westminster School at the expense of William Camden, the Headmaster of the famous school, and the firm friend of his pupil in later life. Immediately on leaving school, Johnson was put to his step-father's trade. According to some biographers, he went to Cambridge but there is no record of his pres- ence there in the registers. He soon had enough of brick-laying.

Marriage and children of Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson married some time in, or before, 1592. His eldest daughter, Maria died in November, 1593 when she was only six months old. His eldest son died of the plague ten years later. A younger son died in 1635. His wife was a shrew; and for a period of five years he preferred to live without her, enjoying the hospitality of Lord Albany (after- wards Duke of Lennox). He commemorated two of his several children in touching little tributes of verse.

Ben Jonson as An actor and playwright

Jonson's first connectio": with the theatre was as a member of a touring company of actors in 1597. As such he went to London, but it was as a writer that he was picked out by Henslowe, the man- ager of London's second company, who advanced twenty shillings to him in December, 1597 for a play to be completed before Christmas. The play was the Isle of Dogs. It was officially condemned as seditious and slanderous, and several members of the company were imprisoned, Jonson among them. Scon he was back, writing plays for Henslowe, none of which has been preserved. By the autumn of 1598, he was hailed as one of "the best for tragedy", with- out any reference to a connection on his part with the other branch of the drama. Whether this was a criticism based in material evidence or an uncon- scious slip, Jonson in the same year produced one of the most famous English comedies, Every Man in His Humour, which was first acted by Lord Chamberlain's Company. Shakespeare was one of the actors in this first pro- duction of Jonson's comedy. Every Man in His Humour was published in 1601; but the critical prologue first appeared in 1616.

Ben Jonson's Conversion to the Catholic faith

Before the year 1598 was out, how- ever, Jonson again found himself in prison, and this time in danger of being sentenced to death. In a duel, he had killed an actor of Henslowe's Company. Of course, he acted in self-defence, and the attack on him had probably some- thing to do with Jonson's work for a rival company. In prison Jonson was visited by a Roman Catholic priest, and the result was his conversion to the Church of Rome, to which he adhered for twelve years. He pleaded guilty to the charge of man-slaughter brought against him but, after a short imprison- ment, he was released after being branded on his left thumb.

Ben Jonson's Literary battles 

The affair did not affect his reputation. In 1599, he brought out Every Man Out of His Humour, in which he opened battle, though not yet openly, on contemporary writers. Cynthia's Revels, which appeared in 1601 and was primarily designed as a compliment to Queen Elizabeth, contained attacks on his old friends and associates, Dekker and Marston. According to Jonson, his quarrel with Marston had begun by the latter attacking his morals, and in the course of it they came to blows. Learning the intention of the two writers, whom he had satirised, to wreak literary vengeance upon him, he anticipated them in The Poetaster, in which he ridiculed both of them.

Ben Jonson In prison again

In 1603, Jonson produced the first of his two extant magic works. This play was Sejanus. It sought to restore classic loftiness to tragedy. But the groundlings were appalled by its long speeches. The number of its admirers was very small, and there was violent popular protest against it. Not long after this, Jonson joined Chapman and Marston in writing East- ward Ho. For the satire in this play against Scots in general, Chapman and Marston were put in prison, and Jonson voluntarily joined them. There was talk of ears and noses being cut off; but powerful friends intervened, and all three escaped unmutilated.

Ben Jonson's best work: plays and masques

Jonson showed his real talents as a dramatist during the earlier half of the reign of King 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, and the comedies of Volpone, The Silent Woman, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair, and The Devil is an Ass During the same period, he produced several masques, most of them in collaboration with Inigo Jones with whom, however, he seems soon to have quar- relled. The masques of this period are: The Masque of Blackness, Hymenaei, The Masque of Beauty, The Hue and Cry After Cupid, The Masque of Queens (described by Swinburne as the most splendid of all masques), and Oberon. In 1616, a modest pension was conferred on him, and in the same year Jonson published the first volume of this collected works.

Ben Jonson's Other literary pursuits

In 1613, Jonson went to France as tutor to the eldest son of Sir Walter Raleigh (who was then a State prisoner in the Tower of London). After 1616, he continued to produce masques and entertainments when called upon to do so; but he was attracted by many other literary pur- suits. He was already the presiding genius of the meetings of literary persons at Mermaid Tavern in Brest Street, Cheapside.

Ben Jonson's Visit to Scotland

In 1618, he resolved to have a real holiday, and about mid-summer started for his ancestral country, Scotland (his grandfather having come from Annadale). He had determined to make the journey on foot, he was followed by John Taylor, the water-poet, who proposed to accomplish his pilgrimage without a penny in his pocket. Jonson spent more than a year and a half in Scotland. The best-remembered hospitality which he enjoyed was that of the learned Scottish poet, William Drummond. The product of this association was Jonson's Conversations. In these famous jottings, Jonson lives to this day, delivering his censures in an expansive mood. His host describes him as "a great lover and praiser of himself, a condemner and scorner of others." A poetical account of his journey was burnt with Jonson's library, a calamity which befell him probably in 1623-24.

Ben Jonson Honoured by Oxford: increase in pension 

After his return to London in May, 1619, Jonson visited Oxford to receive the honorary degree of M.A.. Among his noble patrons were the Countess of Rutland and her cousin, Lady Wroth. In 1621, his pension was increased to two hundred pounds, though the increase proved to be temporary. In 1625, Jonson produced The Staple of News, a comedy excellent in some respects but little calculated to become popular.

Ben Jonson's Later work

In 1626, Jonsor had a paralytic stroke. In 1628, he was arrested by mistake on the false charge of having eulogised the assassin of Buckingham, but was soon released. In 1629, he produced the comedy of The New Inn, which was condemned on the first performance, and Jonson de- fended himself against his critics in his spirited Ode to Himself. To his later years belong the comedies, The Magnetic Lady (1632) and The Tale of a Tub (1633), and some niasques. Jonson had now quarrelled with Inigo Jones, and mocked him in his last comedy.

Ben Jonson's Death: burial in Westminster Abbey

Jonson was by now the acknowledged chief of the English world of letters. When, nearly two years after he had lost his surviving son, death came upon the sick old man on August 6, 1637, he left behind him an unfinished work of great beauty, the pastoral drama of The Sad Shepherd. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and on his tombstone were inscribed the words: "O Rare Ben Jonson". In the beginning of the eighteenth century a portrait best was put up to his memory in the Poets' Corner by Harley, Earl of Oxford.

Ben Jonson Not so jealous

The old belief that Jonson was filled with malignant jealousy of the greatest of his fellow- dramatists has proved to be wrong. Occasional jesting allusions to particular plays of Shakespeare were certainly made by Jonson but these amount to nothing collectively; and against them have to be set the many pleasant traditions concerning the long intimacy between the pair and Jonson's tribute to the great bard.

Ben Jonson's Non-dramatic work

Jonson's learning and industry appear also in his non-dramatic works which include the Epigrams, and a large number of lyrics and epistles. Mention must also be made of the Discoveries or Timber, a commonplace book of aphorisms noted by the poet in his daily readings.

Ben Jonson's work, a mirror of his times

The strength of Jonson's dramatic genius lay in the power of depicting a great variety of characters, and in comedy alone he succeeded in finding a wide field for the exercise of this power. The real atmosphere of his comedies is that of London town, and his times live for us in his men and women, his country-gulls and town-gulls, his alchemists and exorcists, his "skeldring" captains and whining Puritans, and the whole ragamuffin rout of his Bartholomew Fair, the comedy par excellence of Elizabethan low life. He described the past times, fashionable and unfashionable of his age, its feeble superstitions and its flaunting naughtinesses, its vapouring affectations and its lying effronteries, with an odour as of "divine tobacco" pervading the whole.

Conclusion 

Though Jonson never altogether recognized the truth of the maxim that the dramatic art has, properly speaking, no didactic purpose, his long and laborious life was not wasted upon a barren endeavour. In tragedy he added two works of unusual merit to English dramatic literature. In comedy his aim was higher, his effort more sustained, and his success more solid than that of any of his fellows. In the sphere of the masque, he helped to open a new and attractive path. His intellectual endowments surpassed those of most of the great English dramatists in richness and breadth; and in energy of application the probably left them all behind. Inferior to more than one of his fellow-dramatists in the power of imaginative sympathy, he was among the first and foremost of the Elizabethans in the power of observation.