The Life of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
Thomas Wyatt was born to Henry and Anne Wyatt at Allington Castle, near Maidstone,
Kent, in 1503. Little is known of his childhood education. His first court appearance was
in 1516 as Sewer Extraordinary to Henry VIII. In 1516 he also entered St. John's College,
University of Cambridge. Around 1520, he married Lord Cobham's daughter Elizabeth
Brooke. She bore him a son, Thomas Wyatt Jr., in 1521. He became popular at court, and
carried out several foreign missions for King Henry VIII, and also served various offices at
home.
Around 1525, Wyatt separated from his wife, charging her with adultery; it is also the year
from which his interest in Anne Boleyn probably dates. He accompanied Sir Thomas
Cheney on a diplomatic mission to France in 1526 and Sir John Russell to Venice and the
papal court in Rome in 1527. He was made High Marshal of Calais (1528-1530) and
Commissioner of the Peace of Essex in 1532. Also in 1532, Wyatt accompanied King Henry
and Anne Boleyn, who was by then the King's mistress, on their visit to Calais. Anne
Boleyn married the King in January 1533, and Wyatt served in her coronation in June.
Wyatt was knighted in 1535, but in 1536 he was imprisoned in the Tower for quarreling
with the Duke of Suffolk, and possibly also because he was suspected of being one of Anne
Boleyn's lovers. During this imprisonment Wyatt witnessed the execution of Anne Boleyn
on May 19, 1536 from the Bell Tower, and wrote V. Innocentia Veritas Viat Fides
Circumdederunt me inimici mei. He was released later that year. Henry, Wyatt's father
died in November 1536.
Wyatt was returned to favor and made ambassador to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor,
Charles V, in Spain. He returned to England in June 1539, and later that year was again
ambassador to Charles until May 1540. Wyatt's praise of country life, and the cynical
comments about foreign courts, in his verse epistle Mine Own John Poins derive from his
own experience.
In 1541 Wyatt was charged with treason on a revival of charges originally levelled against
him in 1538 by Edmund Bonner, now Bishop of London. Bonner claimed that while
ambassador, Wyatt had been rude about the King's person, and had dealings with Cardinal
Pole, a papal legate and Henry's kinsman, with whom Henry was much angered over Pole's
siding with papal authority in the matter of Henry's divorce proceedings from Katharine of
Aragón. Wyatt was again confined to the Tower, where he wrote an impassioned 'Defence'.
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He received a royal pardon, perhaps at the request of then queen, Catharine Howard, and
was fully restored to favor in 1542. Wyatt was given various royal offices after his pardon,
but he became ill after welcoming Charles V's envoy at Falmouth and died at Sherborne on
11 October 1542.
None of Wyatt's poems had been published in his lifetime, with the exception of a few
poems in a miscellany entitled The Court of Venus. His first published work was Certain
Psalms (1594), metrical translations of the penitential psalms. It wasn't until 1557, 15 years
after Wyatt's death, that a number of his poetry appeared alongside Surrey's in printer
Richard Tottel's Songs and Sonnets written by the Right Honorable Lord Henry Howard late
Earl of Surrey and other. Until modern times it was called simply Songs and Sonnets, but
now it is generally known as Tottel's Miscellany. The rest of Wyatt's poetry, lyrics, and
satires remained in manuscript until the 19th and 20th centuries "rediscovered" them.
Wyatt, along with Surrey, was the first to introduce the sonnet into English, with its
characteristic final rhyming couplet. He wrote extraordinarily accomplished imitations of
Petrarch's sonnets, including 'I find no peace' ('Pace non trovo') and 'Whoso List to
Hunt'—the latter, quite different in tone from Petrarch's 'Una candida cerva', has often been
seen to refer to Anne Boleyn as the deer with a jewelled collar. Wyatt was also adept at
other new forms in English, such as the terza rima and the rondaeu. Wyatt and Surrey
often share the title "father of the English sonnet."
THE LOVER FORSAKETH HIS
UNKIND LOVE.Y heart I gave thee, not to
do it pain,
But to preserve, lo, it to thee was taken.
I served thee, not that I should be forsaken ;
But, that I should receive reward again,
I was content thy servant to remain ;
And not to be repayed after this fashion.
Now, since in thee there is none other reason,
Displease thee not, if that I do refrain.
Unsatiate of my woe, and thy desire ;
Assured by craft for to excuse thy fault :
But, since it pleaseth thee to feign default,
Farewell, I say, departing from the fire.
For he that doth believe, bearing in hand,
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Plougheth in water, and soweth in the sand.
Michael Drayton
Michael Drayton was born at Hartshill in Warwickshire in 1563 and as a youth he
became page to Sir Henry Goodeere of Polesworth. Goodeere is to be credited for
Drayton's education. Drayton fell in love with Sir Henry's daughter, Anne, who served
as an inspiration for 'Idea'.
Drayton's career as a poet was long: from his first published work in 1591 to
his last in 1630. Drayton constantly revised his works, rewriting and reissuing them,
sometimes under different titles. His first published work was Harmonie of the
Church (1591), a metrical rendering of scriptural passages, rife with alliteration. Soon
thereafter Drayton, a disciple of Edmund Spenser, wrote Idea, the Shepherd's Garland
(1593), consisting of nine eclogues, or pastoral verse dialogues. Drayton revised and
reissued it in 1606. Next, Drayton published the historical poems Peirs Gaveston
(1593), and Matilda (1594). Drayton used Holinshed as one of the sources. Idea's
Mirror (1594) is a collection of love sonnets, the first version of his later sonnet
sequence Idea. In 1595 Drayton published Endymion and Phoebe, one of the sources
for Keats' Endymion. Endymion and Phoebe is an epyllion, an erotic treatment of
mythological narratives. It, too, was later revised and reissued as The Man in the
Moon (1606 and 1619).
In 1596, Drayton published Robert, Duke of Normandy (revised 1605 and
1619), a legend. In it, Fame and Fortune tell Robert's story in the presence of Robert's
ghost. In the same year, 1596, Drayton also published the historical poem
Mortimeriados, which underwent an extensive rewriting and reappeared as The
Barons' Wars in 1603. Both versions owe a debt to Marlowe's Edward II. The first
was in rhyme royal, a series of scenes, the latter in ottava rima, several hundred lines
longer and more serious in tone and in its interest in the nature of civil war. The
Barons' Wars was itself revised in 1619.
One of Drayton's finest works, England's Heroical Epistles (1597), a
collection of verse letters by lovers, earned Drayton the title of 'our English Ovid'.1
The work was in the model of Ovid's Heroides, but instead of mythological lovers,
Drayton's lovers were figures from English history.
Drayton's only extant play, The First Part of Sir John Oldcastle (1600), played
on the popularity of Falstaff from Shakespeare's plays. It may have been a
collaboration, like the now lost plays of which only records survive.
Drayton's Poems Lyric and Pastoral (1606) was the first to introduce
imitations of Horace's Odes. The collection contains the odes To the Virginian Voyage
and The Battle of Agincourt. Drayton's masterpiece, however, is Poly-Olbion (1612
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and 1622), a thirty-thousand-line historical-geographical poem celebrating all the
counties of England and Wales.2
In 1627 appeared The Battle of Agincourt, an attempt at epic, The Miseries of
Queen Margaret, and Nymphidia, the Court of Fairy, Drayton's most popular work.
Nymphidia is a mock-heroic series of fairy poems, or 'Nimphalls'1, much influenced
by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Drayton's last published work, The
Muses' Elizium, is a return to the pastoral. Michael Drayton died in London on
December 2, 1631. He was buried in Westminster Abbey under a monument with an
epitaph by Ben Jonson commissioned by the Countess of Dorset.
To Humour by Michael Drayton
You cannot love, my pretty Heart! and why?
There was a time you told me that you would;
But now again, you will the same deny!
If it might please you, would to God you could!
What, will you hate? Nay, that you will not neither!
Nor love, nor hate! How then? What will you do?
What, will you keep a mean betwixt either?
Or will you love me, and yet hate me too?
Yet serves not this! What next, what other shift?
You Will, and Will Not; what a coil is here!
I see your craft! Now, I perceive your drift!
And all this while, I was mistaken there.
Your love and hate is this, I now do prove you!
You love in hate, by hate to make me love you. (1599)
Sir Philip Sidney
Sir Philip Sidney was born on November 30, 1554, at Penshurst, Kent. He was the
eldest son of Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland, and nephew of Robert Dudley,
Earl of Leicester. He was named after his godfather, Philip II of Spain. After private
tutelage, he entered Shrewsbury School at the age of ten in 1564, on the same day as
Fulke Greville, who became his fast friend and, later, his biographer. After attending
Christ Church, Oxford, (1568-1571) he left without taking a degree in order to
complete his education by travelling the continent. Among the places he visited were
Paris, Frankfurt, Venice, and Vienna.
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Sidney returned to England in 1575, living the life of a popular and eminent courtier.
In 1577, he was sent as ambassador to the German Emperor and the Prince of Orange.
Officially, he had been sent to condole the princes on the deaths of their fathers. His
real mission was to feel out the chances for the creation of a Protestant league. Yet,
the budding diplomatic career was cut short because the Queen found Sidney to be
perhaps too ardent in his Protestantism, the Queen preferring a more cautious
approach. Upon his return, Sidney attended the court of Elizabeth I and actively
encouraged such authors as Edward Dyer, Greville, and most importantly, the young
Edmund Spenser, who dedicated The Shepheardes Calender to him.
In 1580, he incurred the queen's displeasure by opposing her projected marriage to the
Duke of Anjou, Roman Catholic heir to the French throne, and was dismissed from
court for a time. He left the court for the estate of his cherished sister Mary Herbert,
Countess of Pembroke. During his stay, he wrote the long pastoral romance Arcadia.
At some uncertain date, he composed a major piece of critical prose that was
published after his death under two titles, The Defence of Poesy and An Apology for
Poetry. Sidney's Astrophil and Stella ("Starlover and Star") was begun probably
around 1576, during Sidney's courtship with Penelope Devereux. Astrophil and
Stella, which includes 108 sonnets and 11 songs, is the first in the long line of
Elizabethan sonnet cycles. Most of the sonnets are influenced by Petrarchan
conventions.
Yet Sidney was growing restless with lack of appointments. In 1585 he made a covert
attempt to join Drake's expedition to Cadiz. Elizabeth summoned Sidney to court, and
appointed him governor of Flushing in the Netherlands. In 1586 Sidney, along with
his younger brother Robert Sidney, took part in a skirmish against the Spanish at
Zutphen, and was wounded of a musket shot that shattered his thigh-bone. Some
twenty-two days later Sidney died of the unhealed wound at not yet thirty-two years
of age. His death occasioned much mourning in England as the Queen and her
subjects grieved for the man who had come to exemplify the ideal courtier. It is said
that Londoners, come out to see the funeral progression, cried out "Farewell, the
worthiest knight that lived." 1
Astrophel and Stella
Sonnet XIV
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Alas, have I not pain enough, my friend,
Upon whose breast a fiercer gripe doth tire
Than did on him who first stole down the fire,
While Love on me doth all his quiver spend ;
But with your rhubarb words ye must contend,
To grieve me worse in saying, that Desire
Doth plunge my well-formed soul even in the mire
Of sinful thoughts, which do in ruin end?
If that be sin which doth the manners frame,
Well stayed with truth in word and faith of deed,
Ready of wit and fearing nought but shame
If that be sin which in fixt hearts doth breed
A loathing of all loose unchastity,
Then love is sin, and let me sinful be !
John Donne
John Donne was born in Bread Street, London in 1572 to a prosperous Roman
Catholic family, a precarious thing at a time when anti-Catholic sentiment was rife in
England. His father, John Donne, was a well-to-do ironmonger and citizen of London.
Donne's father died suddenly in 1576, and left the three children to be raised by their
mother, Elizabeth, the daughter of John Heywood, epigrammatist, and a relative of Sir
Thomas More.
Donne's first teachers were Jesuits. At the age of 11, Donne and his younger
brother Henry were entered at Hart Hall, University of Oxford, where Donne studied
for three years. He spent the next three years at the University of Cambridge, but took
no degree at either university because he would not take the Oath of Supremacy
required at graduation. He was admitted to study law as a member of Thavies Inn
(1591) and Lincoln's Inn (1592), and it seemed natural that Donne should embark
upon a legal or diplomatic career.
In 1593, Donne's brother Henry died of a fever in prison after being arrested
for giving sanctuary to a proscribed Catholic priest. This made Donne begin to
question his faith. His first book of poems, Satires, written during this period of
residence in London, is considered one of Donne's most important literary efforts.
Although not immediately published, the volume had a fairly wide readership through
private circulation of the manuscript. Same was the case with his love poems, Songs
and Sonnets, assumed to be written at about the same time as the Satires.
Having inherited a considerable fortune, young "Jack Donne" spent his money
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on womanizing, on books, at the theatre, and on travels. He had also befriended
Christopher Brooke, a poet and his chamber-fellow at Lincoln's Inn, and Ben Jonson
who was part of Brooke's circle of literary associates. In 1596, Donne joined the naval
expedition that Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, led against Cádiz, Spain, and the
following year joined an expedition to the Azores, where he wrote "The Calm". Upon
his return to England in 1598, Donne was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas
Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, afterward Lord Ellesmere.
Donne was beginning a promising career. He sat in Queen Elizabeth's last
Parliament, for Brackley. But in 1601, he secretly married Lady Egerton's niece,
seventeen-year-old Anne More, daughter of Sir George More, Lieutenant of the Tower,
and thereby ruined his own worldly hopes. Donne wrote to the livid father, saying:
"Sir, I acknowledge my fault to be so great as I dare scarce offer any other prayer to
you in mine own behalf than this, to believe that I neither had dishonest end nor
means. But for her whom I tender much more than my fortunes or life (else I would, I
might neither joy in this life nor enjoy the next) I humbly beg of you that she may not,
to her danger, feel the terror of your sudden anger."1 Sir George had Donne thrown to
Fleet Prison for some weeks, along with his friends Samuel and Christopher Brooke
who had aided the couple's clandestine affair. Egerton dismissed Donne from his post,
and for the next dozen years the poet had to struggle to support his growing family.
Donne later summed up the experience: "John Donne, Anne Donne, Undone." Anne's
cousin offered the couple refuge in Pyrford, Surrey, and the couple was helped by
friends like Lady Magdalen Herbert, George Herbert's mother, and Lucy, Countess of
Bedford, women who also played a prominent role in Donne's literary life. It was not
until 1609 that a reconciliation was effected between Donne and his father-in-law, and
Sir George More was finally induced to pay his daughter's dowry.
During the next few years Donne made a meager living as a lawyer, serving
chiefly as counsel for Thomas Morton, an anti-Roman Catholic pamphleteer, later
Bishop of Durham. Donne may have collaborated with Morton in writing pamphlets
that appeared under Morton's name from 1604 to 1607. Donne's principal literary
accomplishments during this period were Divine Poems (1607) and the prose work
Biathanatos (posthumously published 1644). In the latter he argued that suicide is not
intrinsically sinful.
As Donne approached forty, he published two anti-Catholic polemics
Pseudo-Martyr (1610) and Ignatius his Conclave (1611). They were final public
testimony of Donne's renunciation of the Catholic faith. Pseudo-Martyr, which held
that English Catholics could pledge an oath of allegiance to James I, King of England,
without compromising their religious loyalty to the Pope, won Donne the favor of the
King. In return for patronage from Sir Robert Drury of Hawstead, he wrote A
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Funerall Elegie (1610), on the death of Sir Robert's 15-year-old daughter Elizabeth.
The elegie won for Donne and his wife an apartment in Drury House. The two
Anniversaries— An Anatomy of the World (1611) and Of the Progress of the Soul
(1612) continued the patronage. Sir Robert encouraged the publication of the poems:
The First Anniversary was published with the original elegy in 1611, and both were
reissued with The Second Anniversary in 1612.
Donne had refused to take Anglican orders in 1607, but King James persisted,
finally announcing that Donne would receive no post or preferment from the King,
unless in the church. In 1615, Donne reluctantly entered the ministry and was
appointed Royal Chaplain later that year. In 1616, he was appointed Reader in
Divinity at Lincoln's Inn (Cambridge had conferred the degree of Doctor of Divinity
on him two years earlier). Donne's style, full of elaborate metaphors and religious
symbolism, his flair for drama, his wide learning and his quick wit soon established
him as one of the greatest preachers of the era. Fully 160 of his sermons survive.
Just as Donne's fortunes seemed to be improving, Anne Donne died, on 15
August, 1617, aged thirty-three, after giving birth to their twelfth child, a stillborn.
Seven of their children survived their mother's death. Struck by grief, Donne wrote
the seventeenth Holy Sonnet, "Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her last debt."
According to Donne's friend and biographer, Izaak Walton, Donne was thereafter
'crucified to the world'. Donne continued to write poetry, notably his Holy Sonnets
(1618), but the time for love songs was over. In 1618, Donne went as chaplain with
Viscount Doncaster in his embassy to the German princes. His Hymn to Christ at the
Author's Last Going into Germany, written before the journey, is laden with
apprehension of death. Donne returned to London in 1620, and was appointed Dean
of Saint Paul's in 1621, a post he held until his death. Donne excelled at his post, and
was at last financially secure. In 1623, Donne's eldest daughter, Constance, married
the actor Edward Alleyn, then 58.
Donne's private meditations, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, written
while he was convalescing from a serious illness, were published in 1624. In 1624,
Donne was made vicar of St Dunstan's-in-the-West. On March 27, 1625, James I died,
and Donne preached a sermon before Charles I. But for his ailing health, (he was
emaciated and suffering from infections of the mouth) Donne almost certainly would
have become a bishop in 1630. Obsessed with the idea of death, Donne preached what
was called his own funeral sermon, Death's Duel, just a few weeks before he died in
London on March 31, 1631. The last thing Donne wrote just before his death was
Hymne to God, my God, In my Sicknesse,
SONG.by John Donne
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GO and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.
If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.
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FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)
Francis Bacon was the son of Nicolas Bacon, the Lord Keeper of the Seal of
Elisabeth I. He entered Trinity College Cambridge at age 12. Bacon later
described his tutors as "Men of sharp wits, shut up in their cells of a few authors,
chiefly Aristotle, their Dictator." This is likely the beginning of Bacon's rejection
of Aristotelianism and Scholasticism and the new Renaissance Humanism.
His father died when he was 18, and being the youngest son this left him virtually
penniless. He turned to the law and at 23 he was already in the House of
Commons. His rich relatives did little to advance his career and Elisabeth
apparently distrusted him. It was not until James I became King that Bacon's
career advanced. He rose to become Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans and
Lord Chancellor of England. His fall came about in the course of a struggle
between King and Parliament. He was accused of having taken a bribe while a
judge, tried and found guilty. He thus lost his personal honour, his fortune and
his place at court.
Loren Eiseley in his beautifully written book about Bacon The Man Who Saw
Through Time remarks that Bacon: "...more fully than any man of his time,
entertained the idea of the universe as a problem to be solved, examined,
meditated upon, rather than as an eternally fixed stage, upon which man
walked."
This is the title page from Bacon's Instauratio Magna which contains
his Novum Organum which is a new method to replace that of
Aristotle. The image is of a ship passing through the pillars of
Hercules, which symbolized for the ancients the limits of man's
possible explorations. The image represents the analogy between the
great voyages of discovery and the explorations leading to the
advancement of learning. In The Advancement of Learning Bacon makes this
analogy explicit. Speaking to James I, to whom the book is dedicated, he writes:
"For why should a few received authors stand up like Hercules columns, beyond
which there should be no sailing or discovering, since we have so bright and
benign a star as your Majesty to conduct and prosper us." The image also
forcefully suggests that using Bacon's new method, the boundaries of ancient
learning will be passed. The Latin phrase at the bottom from the Book of Daniel
means: "Many will pass through and knowledge will be increased."
Bacon saw himself as the inventor of a method which would kindle a light in
nature - "a light that would eventually disclose and bring into sight all that is
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most hidden and secret in the universe." This method involved the collection of
data, their judicious interpretation, the carrying out of experiments, thus to
learn the secrets of nature by organized observation of its regularities. Bacon's
proposals had a powerful influence on the development of science in seventeenth
century Europe. Thomas Hobbes served as Bacon's last amunensis or secretary.
Many members of the British Royal Society saw Bacon as advocating the kind of
enquiry conducted by that society.
OF BEAUTY (a prose by Francis Bacon)
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set; and surely virtue is best, in a
body that is comely, though not of delicate features; and that hath
rather dignity of presence, than beauty of aspect. Neither is it almost
seen, that very beautiful persons are otherwise of great virtue; as if
nature were rather busy, not to err, than in labor to produce excellency.
And therefore they prove accomplished, but not of great spirit; and
study rather behavior, than virtue. But this holds not always: for
Augustus Cæsar, Titus Vespasianus, Philip le Belle of France, Edward
the Fourth of England, Alcibiades of Athens, Ismael the Sophy of
Persia, were all high and great spirits; and yet the most beautiful men
of their times. In beauty, that of favor, is more than that of color; and
that of decent and gracious motion, more than that of favor. That is the
best part of beauty, which a picture cannot express; no, nor the first
sight of the life. There is no excellent beauty, that hath not some
strangeness in the proportion. A man cannot tell whether Apelles, or
Albert Durer, were the more trifler; whereof the one, would make a
personage by geometrical proportions; the other, by taking the best
parts out of divers faces, to make one excellent. Such personages, I
think, would please nobody, but the painter that made them. Not but I
think a painter may make a better face than ever was; but he must do it
by a kind of felicity (as a musician that maketh an excellent air in
music), and not by rule. A man shall see faces, that if you examine
them part by part, you shall find never a good; and yet altogether do
well. If it be true that the principal part of beauty is in decent motion,
certainly it is no marvel, though persons in years seem many times
more amiable; pulchrorum autumnus pulcher; for no youth can be
comely but by pardon, and considering the youth, as to make up the
comeliness. Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and
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cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute youth, and an age
a little out of countenance; but yet certainly again, if it light well, it
maketh virtue shine, and vices blush.
Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson was born around June 11, 1572, the posthumous son of a clergyman. He
was educated at Westminster School by the great classical scholar William Camden
and worked in his stepfather's trade, bricklaying. The trade did not please him in the
least, and he joined the army, serving in Flanders. He returned to England about 1592
and married Anne Lewis on November 14, 1594.
Jonson joined the theatrical company of Philip Henslowe in London as an actor and
playwright on or before 1597, when he is identified in the papers of Henslowe. In
1597 he was imprisoned for his involvement in a satire entitled The Isle of Dogs,
declared seditious by the authorities. The following year Jonson killed a fellow actor,
Gabriel Spencer, in a duel in the Fields at Shoreditch and was tried at Old Bailey for
murder. He escaped the gallows only by pleading benefit of clergy. During his
subsequent imprisonment he converted to Roman Catholicism only to convert back to
Anglicism over a decade later, in 1610. He was released forfeit of all his possessions,
and with a felon's brand on his thumb.
Jonson's second known play, Every Man in His Humour, was performed in 1598 by
the Lord Chamberlain's Men at the Globe with William Shakespeare in the cast.
Jonson became a celebrity, and there was a brief fashion for 'humours' comedy, a kind
of topical comedy involving eccentric characters, each of whom represented a
temperament, or humor, of humanity. His next play, Every Man Out of His Humour
(1599), was less successful. Every Man Out of His Humour and Cynthia's Revels
(1600) were satirical comedies displaying Jonson's classical learning and his interest
in formal experiment.
Jonson's explosive temperament and conviction of his superior talent gave rise to
"War of the Theatres". In The Poetaster (1601), he satirized other writers, chiefly the
English dramatists Thomas Dekker and John Marston. Dekker and Marston retaliated
by attacking Jonson in their Satiromastix (1601). The plot of Satiromastix was mainly
overshadowed by its abuse of Jonson. Jonson had portrayed himself as Horace in The
Poetaster, and in Satiromastix Marston and Dekker, as Demetrius and Crispinus
ridicule Horace, presenting Jonson as a vain fool. Eventually, the writers patched their
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feuding; in 1604 Jonson collaborated with Dekker on The King's Entertainment and
with Marston and George Chapman on Eastward Ho.
Jonson's next play, the classical tragedy Sejanus, His Fall (1603), based on Roman
history and offering an astute view of dictatorship, again got Jonson into trouble with
the authorities. Jonson was called before the Privy Council on charges of 'popery and
treason'. Jonson did not, however, learn a lesson, and was again briefly imprisoned,
with Marston and Chapman, for controversial views ("something against the Scots")
espoused in Eastward Ho (1604). These two incidents jeopardized his emerging role
as court poet to King James I. Having converted to Catholicism, Jonson was also the
object of deep suspicion after the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes (1605).
In 1605, Jonson began to write masques for the entertainment of the court. The
earliest of his masques, The Satyr was given at Althorpe, and Jonson seems to have
been appointed Court Poet shortly after. The masques displayed his erudition, wit, and
versatility and contained some of his best lyric poetry. Masque of Blacknesse (1605)
was the first in a series of collaborations with Inigo Jones, noted English architect and
set designer. This collaboration produced masques such as The Masque of Owles,
Masque of Beauty (1608), and Masque of Queens (1609), which were performed in
Inigo Jones' elaborate and exotic settings. These masques ascertained Jonson's
standing as foremost writer of masques in the Jacobean era. The collaboration with
Jones was finally destroyed by intense personal rivalry.
Jonson's enduring reputation rests on the comedies written between 1605 and 1614.
The first of these, Volpone, or The Fox (performed in 1605-1606, first published in
1607) is often regarded as his masterpiece. The play, though set in Venice, directs its
scrutiny on the rising merchant classes of Jacobean London. The following plays,
Epicoene: or, The Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew
Fair (1614) are all peopled with dupes and those who deceive them. Jonson's keen
sense of his own stature as author is represented by the unprecedented publication of
his Works, in folio, in 1616. He was appointed as poet laureate and rewarded a
substantial pension in the same year.
In 1618, when he was about forty-five years old, Jonson set out for Scotland, the
home of his ancestors. He made the journey entirely by foot, in spite of dissuasion
from Bacon, who "said to him he loved not to see poesy go on other feet than poetical
dactyls and spondæus." Jonson's prose style is vividly sketched in the notes of
William Drummond of Hawthornden, who recorded their conversations during
Jonson's visit to Scotland 1618-1619. Jonson himself was sketched by Hawthornden:
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" He is a great lover and praiser of himself ; a contemner and scorner of others ; given
rather to lose a friend than a jest ; . . . he is passionately kind and angry ; careless
either to gain or keep ; vindictive, but, if he be well answered, at himself . . . ;
oppressed with fantasy, which hath ever mastered his reason."1 After his return,
Jonson received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Oxford University and
lectured on rhetoric at Gresham College, London.
The comedy The Devil is an Ass (1616) had turned out to be a comparative flop. This
may have discouraged Jonson, for it was nine years before his next play, The Staple of
News (1625), was produced. Instead, Jonson turned his attention to writing masques.
Jonson's later plays The New Inn (1629) and A Tale of a Tub (1633) were not great
successes, described harshly, but perhaps justly by Dryden as his "dotages."
Despite these apparent failures, and in spite of his frequent feuds, Jonson was the dean
and the leading wit of the group of writers who gathered at the Mermaid Tavern in the
Cheapside district of London. The young poets influenced by Jonson were the
self-styled 'sons' or 'tribe' of Ben, later called the Cavalier poets, a group which
included, among others, Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, and
Richard Lovelace.
Jonson was appointed City Chronologer of London in 1628, the same year in which
he suffered a severe stroke. His loyal friends kept him company in his final years and
attended the King provided him some financial comfort. Jonson died on August 6,
1637 and was buried in Westminster Abbey under a plain slab on which was later
carved the words, "O Rare Ben Jonson!" His admirers and friends contributed to the
collection of memorial elegies, Jonsonus virbius, published in 1638. Jonson's last play,
Sad Shepherd's Tale, was left unfinished at his death and published posthumously in
1641.
Discoveries. (Ben Jonson)
Poetry, in this latter Age, hath prov'd but a meane Mistresse, to
such as have wholly addicted themselves to her, or given their names
up to her family. They who have but saluted her on the by, and now
and then tendred their visits, shee hath done much for, and advanced
in the way of their owne professions (both the Law, and the Gospel)
beyond all they could have hoped, or done for themselves, without
her favour. Wherein she doth emulate the judicious, but perposterous
bounty of the times Grandes : who accumulate all they can upon the
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Parasite, or Fresh-man in their friendship ; but thinke an old Client,
or honest servant, bound by his place to write, and starve.
[@ Jonson, Timber: or, Discoveries (Herford 622)]
I remember, the Players have often mentioned it as an honour to
Shake- Shakespeare, that in his writing, (whatsoever he penn'd) hee never
speare blotted out line. My answer hath beene, Would he had blotted a
nostrat. thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told
posterity this, but for their ignorance, who choose that circumstance
to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted. And to justifie
mine owne candor, (for I lov'd the man, and doe honour his memory
De
(on this side Idolatry) as much as any.) Hee was (indeed) honest, and
of an open, and free nature : had an excellent Phantsie ; brave
notions, and gentle expressions : wherein hee flow'd with that
facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stop'd :
Sufflaminandus erat ; as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in
his owne power ; would the rule of it had beene so too. Many times
hee fell into those things, could not escape laughter : As when hee
said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him ; Caesar, thou dost
me wrong. Hee replyed : Caesar did never wrong, but with just
cause : and such like ; which were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his
vices, with his vertues. There was ever more in him to be praysed,
then to be pardoned.
IngeniIn the difference of wits, I have observ'd ; there are many notes :
orum And it is a little Maistry to know them : to discerne, what every
disnature, every disposition will beare : For, before wee sow our land,
crimina. we should plough it. There are no fewer formes of minds, then of
Not. I. bodies amongst us. The variety is incredible ; and therefore wee must
search. Some are fit to make Divines, some Poets, some Lawyers,
some Physicians ; some to be sent to the plough, and trades.
[676]
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