I
Jonson versus Shakespeare
Throughout the seventeenth century Ben Jonson was considered by some to be England's leading dramatist and by many to share an equality with Shakespeare. It is sometimes said that he has now been unjustly overshadowed by Shakespeare; but his plays lack certain qualities which have made Shakespeare's appeal a lasting one. In particular, Shakespeare's poetry makes a profound exploration of the connotative, asso- ciative, and symbolic power of words and consequently operates at a level of human interest that transcends historicity and topicality. No one would claim this gift for Jonson to anything like the same degree.
Jonson's theory of humours in comedy
Jonson's best works are his comedies. He wrote many of them according to a prescription that has earned them the label, comedy of humours. The humours of which a man's body was supposedly compounded, according to their relative predominance, determined his disposition-choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic, or sanguine. Jonson applied the term metaphorically to what is now called a man's obsession or his complex, and he explained his theory in the Prologue to Every Man Out of His Humour: As when some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his effects, his spirits, and his powers, In their confluctions, all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a humour. Thus, in The Silent Woman, the central character, Morose, cannot en- dure noise. He plots to marry a silent woman and thereby disappoint his nephew of his expected inheritance. But his agents are counter-agents, and the selected silent woman, once the knot is tied, turns out to have a very noisy tongue. Her female friends come along in a group to add to an ever-increasing hubbub. Morose is desperate for divorce or annulment and humiliates himself in claim- ing nullity on the grounds of impotence. But finally the bride turns out to be a boy after all. There is maximal exploitation of deception and counter-decep- tion and a cunning network of manipulative devices by which the farcical moments of ironical discovery are produced.
Plot and character
Ben Jenson's theatrical virtuosity is unquestion- able. There is a dazzling quality about his accomplishment. If we cannot warm to his characters as we warm to Shakespeare's, there is a response of hearty admiration to replace the response of involvement and sympathy. In Every Man in His Humour, there is an old gentleman, Knowall,, who is given to solicitous concern for his son's behaviour. The son and his friends gather at the house of Kitely, a merchant constantly suspicious of designs on his wife. A web of intrigue is woven on this promising basis, reaching a climax of misunderstanding that is finally resolved in the exposure of the foolish and the hypocritical. Jonson's polished plots depend, for their speed and ease of development, on the presence in them of a character whose function it is to plot and to scheme and to entangle others in a complicated situation. Such a person is Knovall's man-servant, Brainworm.
Didactic satire in "Volpone"
Such too is Mosca, the servant in Volpone, a play whose satirical vein is more bitter. Volpone is rich and childless. Aided by Mosca, he pretends to be dying, then sits back to receive expensive gifts from greedy would-be heirs who visit him, and before whom he dangles the prospect of becoming his legatees. In the play's harshest and yet most moving episode, one of the friends, Corvino, is induced to offer his wife, Celia; and indeed Volpone is forcing her against all entreaty when a virtuous youth, Bonario, intervenes. Savage as the satire is, it is essentially moral, directed at avarice and hypocrisy. We can understand Jonson's claim, in his Dedication of the play to the two famous Universities, that he has laboured for the "instruction and amendment of his audience".
Hilarious situations
The Alchemist is a comparable study in swindling, though its tone is less severe. An outbreak of the plague causes Lovewit to leave his London house in the care of Face, his servant. Face, together with Subtle, the Alchemist, and Dol Common, embarks on a scheme for trading phoney alchemical expertise and so cheating gullible people who want to advance their affairs or satisfy their desires. Clients include the clerk, Dapper, who is promised infallible success at gaming, and the tobaccoman, Drugger, secking prosperity in business and marriage with a rich widow. Sir Epicure Mammon is lured by the prospect of infinite riches obtained through posses- sion of the philosopher's stone. Two Puritan clerics from Amsterdam, Tribu- lation Wholesome and Ananias, seek the powers of the stone ostensibly to advance the cause of their religion. The play pillories greed and hypocrisy, as ludicrous prescriptive demands are imposed and victims are cheated of their cash. Pertinax Surly alone is not duped. He turns the tables; but Face's bril- liant extemporization in trickery quickly, though precariously, restores the status quo. Lovewit's return puts an end to a frolic which is better hunoured than Mosca's. In this play Jonson contrives as hilarious a series of comic stage situations as is to be found in English literature. It was Coleridge's view that the Oedipus Tyrannus. The Alchemist, and Tom Jones were "the three most perfect plots ever planned."
Realism in the use of language
Along with a power of construction, Jonson has an unfailing fertility of verbal output which exploits the language of the day at all social levels and in every sphere of life. The slang of the under-world, the jargon of the professions, the colloquialisms appropriate to every mood or eccentricity seem to be at his disposal in abundance. Nowhere does his ear for living idiom serve him better than in Bartholomew Fair, a panoramic theatrical picture-gallery of a London fair, its boisterous scenes packed with the riff-raff of the under-world.
His tragic plays
Jonson's tragedies (Sejanus: His Fall, and Catiline: His Conspiracy) are scholarly reproductions of history but not effective theatre. The first traces the career of Sejanus as he gradually improves his position and his influence over his master, Emperor Tiberius, till the tables are turned and he is put to death. The play suffers from stiltedness in the rhetoric; there is too much static speechifying and too little action. There is also no adequate focus for the audience's sympathy. The two opposed protagonists are matched in wickedness. The same complaint cannot be made against Catiline, for Catiline represents destruction, anarchy, and selfish ambition; while Cicero stands for order and freedom in the republic. But Jonson's recipe for a dramatic text was not a happy one. He follows Sallust's account of the Catiline conspiracy closely and takes over large passages from Cicero's speeches verbatim.
II
The romantic note and the anti-romantic note
When Jonson first threw in his lot with the playwrights, he frankly followed a current demand for romantic drama. His first play was a half-romantic comedy, The Case is Altered (1597). Indeed, at this time he showed no small skill in adopting the full-blooded ro.nantic manner. In these early years of apprenticeship, he dis- played a vigorous power of imagination. But romantic drama was not charac- teristically expressive of his personality. In Every Man in His Humour, Jonson for the first time struck the anti-romantic note, and tried to establish a satirical comedy of manners. He saw clearly that, despite the splendid, exuberant power of Shakespearean drama, there was no under-lying theory or convention, and that its tendency to become formless and lawless would be a serious matter without the genius of such men as Shakespeare.
Plan of reform
In the Prologue to Every Man in His Homour, Jonson puts forward his plan of reform, choosing to "sport with human follies, not with crimes". The word "humour", as used by Jonson, implies some oddity of disposition, especially with regard to the manners of the day. The invention of Bobadil is one of his best; and the whole play, while clear and coherent in it framework, is alive with comic power.
No indiscriminate use of plots
Jonson made it quite clear that he dis- approved of the happy-go-lucky selection of plots. He did not wish to follow the example of those who "waylay all the old books they can hear of, in print or otherwise, to force their scenes withal.....as if their imagination lived wholly upon another man's trencher."
Moral aim too obvious
In Every Man Out of His Humour and Cynthia's Revels, he shows the same care for clearness and definition. But the moral aim of the satirist is somewhat too obvious, and the machinery creaks at times rather painfully.
Cynical harshness
Volpone, or the Fox is a study in avarice. Volpone is no common miser. He finds pleasure less in the hoarding of his treasure than in the process of acquiring it; and he enjoys the hypocrisy of those who are ever ready to cringe to the rich man: The play is extraordinarily clever, and brilliantly constructed. Its defects lie in a certain hardness, and in lack of humanity. It deals relentlessly with the most contemptible qualities in human nature, and its cynical humour is extremely bitter.
Farcical comedy
The Silent Woman is written in a more genial vein. Here is comedy, with a dash of farce. Coleridge considered it the most enter- taining of the author's comedies. It is certainly highly amusing, and in point of construction fully as admirable as Volpone. The farcical denouement is accomplished with many ingenious turns and great vivacity. The characters, one and all, are vigorously and amusingly drawn.
Humbugs and dupes
The Alchemist is another and less farcical study in trickery, though there is abundant merriment in it. There are excellent sketches of humbugs and dupes of every kind in this play, one of the most successful being Sir Epicure Mammon. This play, like Volpone, is written in blank verse-prose being used in The Silent Woman. The style throughout is animated and flexible, well-suited to the subject-inatter.
Contemporary manners
For sheer fun and high spirits, however, Bartholomew Fair must take the first position. Inferior to the other comedies in constructive skill and overdrawn in parts, it is an amazingly vivid and many- sided presentment of contemporary manners. The stage is crowded with amus- ing figures, the mounte bank, the fussy politician, the "Ebenezer Stiggins*" of the day, and many others. After an interval of nine years, came The Staple of News, modelled on Aristophanic lines, but lacking in the constructive power and comic invention of the earlier work. The plays that followed show even a greater decline. Dryden called them "mere dialogues".
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