Sejanus: His Fall

Ben Jonson

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Title: Sejanus: His Fall

Author: Ben Jonson

Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5232]

[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]

[This file was first posted on June 10, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Robert Prince <[email protected]>

millenia and a half before Jonson wrote it. Jonson added 247

scholarly footnotes to this play; all were in Latin (except

for a scattering of Greek). They, and the Greek quotation which

forms Tiberius Caesar's tag line in Scene II, Act II, have been

elided.

INTRODUCTION

THE greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first

literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose,

satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time

affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben

into prison and forfeited." He entered the church, but died a

month before his illustrious son was born, leaving his widow and

child in poverty. Jonson's birthplace was Westminster, and the

time of his birth early in 1573. He was thus nearly ten years

Shakespeare's junior, and less well off, if a trifle better born.

But Jonson did not profit even by this slight advantage. His

mother married beneath her, a wright or bricklayer, and Jonson was

for a time apprenticed to the trade. As a youth he attracted the

attention of the famous antiquary, William Camden, then usher at

Westminster School, and there the poet laid the solid foundations

into St. John's College, Cambridge." He tells us that he took no

degree, but was later "Master of Arts in both the universities, by

their favour, not his study." When a mere youth Jonson enlisted as

a soldier trailing his pike in Flanders in the protracted wars of

William the Silent against the Spanish. Jonson was a large and

raw-boned lad; he became by his own account in time exceedingly

bulky. In chat with his friend William Drummond of Hawthornden,

Jonson told how "in his service in the Low Countries he had, in the

face of both the camps, killed an enemy, and taken 'opima spolia'

from him;" and how "since his coming to England, being appealed to

for some years he lived apart from her in the household of Lord

Albany. Yet two touching epitaphs among Jonson's 'Epigrams', "On

my first daughter," and "On my first son," attest the warmth of the

poet's family affections. The daughter died in infancy, the son of

the plague; another son grew up to manhood little credit to his

domestic life.

How soon Jonson drifted into what we now call grandly "the

theatrical profession" we do not know. In 1593 Marlowe made his

tragic exit from life, and Greene, Shakespeare's other rival on the

popular stage, had preceded Marlowe in an equally miserable death

the year before. Shakespeare already had the running to himself.

Jonson appears first in the employment of Philip Henslowe, the

exploiter of several troupes of players, manager, and father-in-law

down to us, we know that Jonson was connected with the Admiral's

unto the company which he promised to deliver unto the company at

Christmas next." In the next August Jonson was in collaboration

with Chettle and Porter in a play called "Hot Anger Soon Cold."

All this points to an association with Henslowe of some duration,

as no mere tyro would be thus paid in advance upon mere promise.

From allusions in Dekker's play, "Satiromastix," it appears that

Jonson, like Shakespeare, began life as an actor, and that he

"ambled in a leather pitch by a play-wagon" taking at one time the

part of Hieronimo in Kyd's famous play, "The Spanish Tragedy." By

the beginning of 1598, Jonson, though still in needy circumstances,

Latin, and Italian Poets," printed in 1598, and for his mention

Jonson a place as one of "our best in tragedy," a matter of some

lost, in which he had a hand. These are "Page of Plymouth," "King

Robert II. of Scotland," and "Richard Crookback." But all of these

came later, on his return to Henslowe, and range from August 1599

to June 1602.

Returning to the autumn of 1598, an event now happened to sever for

a time Jonson's relations with Henslowe. In a letter to Alleyn,

dated September 26 of that year, Henslowe writes: "I have lost one

of my company that hurteth me greatly; that is Gabriel [Spencer],

for he is slain in Hogsden fields by the hands of Benjamin Jonson,

squabble. Duelling was a frequent occurrence of the time among

arraigned at Old Bailey, tried, and convicted. He was sent to

prison and such goods and chattels as he had "were forfeited." It

is a thought to give one pause that, but for the ancient law

permitting convicted felons to plead, as it was called, the benefit

of clergy, Jonson might have been hanged for this deed. The

received only a brand of the letter "T," for Tyburn, on his left

thumb. While in jail Jonson became a Roman Catholic; but he

returned to the faith of the Church of England a dozen years later.

On his release, in disgrace with Henslowe and his former

associates, Jonson offered his services as a playwright to

Henslowe's rivals, the Lord Chamberlain's company, in which

Shakespeare was a prominent shareholder. A tradition of long

standing, though not susceptible of proof in a court of law,

company a refusal; that Shakespeare called him back, read the play

the list of actors prefixed to the comedy in the folio of Jonson's

works, 1616. But it is a mistake to infer, because Shakespeare's

name stands first in the list of actors and the elder Kno'well

first in the 'dramatis personae', that Shakespeare took that

particular part. The order of a list of Elizabethan players was

generally that of their importance or priority as shareholders in

the company and seldom if ever corresponded to the list of

characters.

"Every Man in His Humour" was an immediate success, and with it

Jonson's earliest comedy, and we have just learned that he was

Jonson's extant comedies, "The Case is Altered," but one never

combines, in fact, situations derived from the "Captivi" and the

"Aulularia" of that dramatist). But the pretty story of the

beggar-maiden, Rachel, and her suitors, Jonson found, not among the

classics, but in the ideals of romantic love which Shakespeare had

already popularised on the stage. Jonson never again produced so

fresh and lovable a feminine personage as Rachel, although in other

respects "The Case is Altered" is not a conspicuous play, and, save

for the satirising of Antony Munday in the person of Antonio

Balladino and Gabriel Harvey as well, is perhaps the least

characteristic of the comedies of Jonson.

follow his supposedly studious son to London, and there observe his

he was neither chary in talking of them nor in experimenting with

them in his plays. This makes Jonson, like Dryden in his time, and

Wordsworth much later, an author to reckon with; particularly when

we remember that many of Jonson's notions came for a time

definitely to prevail and to modify the whole trend of English

in restraint and precedent in art in opposition to the prevalent

ungoverned and irresponsible Renaissance spirit. Jonson believed

that there was a professional way of doing things which might be

reached by a study of the best examples, and he found these

examples for the most part among the ancients. To confine our

attention to the drama, Jonson objected to the amateurishness and

haphazard nature of many contemporary plays, and set himself to do

something different; and the first and most striking thing that he

evolved was his conception and practice of the comedy of humours.

his own words as to "humour." A humour, according to Jonson, was a

All his affects, his spirits, and his powers,

In their confluctions, all to run one way."

But continuing, Jonson is careful to add:

"But that a rook by wearing a pied feather,

The cable hat-band, or the three-piled ruff,

A yard of shoe-tie, or the Switzers knot

On his French garters, should affect a humour!

O, it is more than most ridiculous."

Jonson's comedy of humours, in a word, conceived of stage

simplification of actual life be it observed in passing); and,

braggart who is incidentally, and with delightfully comic effect, a

coward; Brainworm's humour is the finding out of things to the end

of fooling everybody: of course he is fooled in the end himself.

But it was not Jonson's theories alone that made the success of

"Every Man in His Humour." The play is admirably written and each

character is vividly conceived, and with a firm touch based on

observation of the men of the London of the day. Jonson was

neither in this, his first great comedy (nor in any other play that

he wrote), a supine classicist, urging that English drama return to

a slavish adherence to classical conditions. He says as to the

who are nothing but form, would thrust upon us." "Every Man in His

Jonson's use of it. Indeed, the comedy of humours itself is only a

heightened variety of the comedy of manners which represents life,

viewed at a satirical angle, and is the oldest and most persistent

species of comedy in the language. None the less, Jonson's comedy

merited its immediate success and marked out a definite course in

Falstaff and his rout, Bardolph, Pistol, Dame Quickly, and the

rest, whether in "Henry IV." or in "The Merry Wives of Windsor,"

all are conceived in the spirit of humours. So are the captains,

Welsh, Scotch, and Irish of "Henry V.," and Malvolio especially

later; though Shakespeare never employed the method of humours for

an important personage. It was not Jonson's fault that many of his

successors did precisely the thing that he had reprobated, that is,

degrade "the humour: into an oddity of speech, an eccentricity of

manner, of dress, or cut of beard." There was an anonymous play

Humourous Lieutenant," and Jonson, besides "Every Man Out of His

Shakespeare's company once more at the Globe, we turn a new page in

Jonson's career. Despite his many real virtues, if there is one

feature more than any other that distinguishes Jonson, it is his

arrogance; and to this may be added his self-righteousness,

especially under criticism or satire. "Every Man Out of His

Humour" is the first of three "comical satires" which Jonson

contributed to what Dekker called the 'poetomachia' or war of the

theatres as recent critics have named it. This play as a fabric of

plot is a very slight affair; but as a satirical picture of the

manners of the time, proceeding by means of vivid caricature,

satire--as a realisation, in short, of the classical ideal of

of Aristophanes. "Every Man in His Humour," like the two plays

of all this in the lampooning of poets and others, Jonson's

contemporaries. The method of personal attack by actual caricature

of a person on the stage is almost as old as the drama.

Aristophanes so lampooned Euripides in "The Acharnians" and

Socrates in "The Clouds," to mention no other examples; and in

English drama this kind of thing is alluded to again and again.

What Jonson really did, was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an

art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a

dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. With the

arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon eloquence in

origin of the "war" has been referred to satirical references,

Jonson's. On the other hand, epigrams of Jonson have been

discovered (49, 68, and 100) variously charging "playwright"

(reasonably identified with Marston) with scurrility, cowardice,

and plagiarism; though the dates of the epigrams cannot be

ascertained with certainty. Jonson's own statement of the matter

and took his pistol from him, wrote his 'Poetaster' on him; the

beginning[s] of them were that Marston represented him on the

stage."*

[footnote] *The best account of this whole subject is to be found

in the edition of 'Poetaster' and 'Satiromastrix' by J. H. Penniman

in 'Belles Lettres Series' shortly to appear. See also his earlier

work, 'The War of the Theatres', 1892, and the excellent

contributions to the subject by H. C. Hart in 'Notes and Queries',

Here at least we are on certain ground; and the principals of the

contemptuous of the common herd, seems rather a complimentary

portrait of Jonson than a caricature. As to the personages

actually ridiculed in "Every Man Out of His Humour," Carlo Buffone

was formerly thought certainly to be Marston, as he was described

as "a public scurrilous, and profane jester," and elsewhere as the

grand scourge or second untruss [that is, satirist], of the time

(Joseph Hall being by his own boast the first, and Marston's work

being entitled "The Scourge of Villainy"). Apparently we must now

prefer for Carlo a notorious character named Charles Chester, of

whom gossipy and inaccurate Aubrey relates that he was "a bold

him and seals up his mouth (that is his upper and nether beard)

['i.e.', jester] in 'Every Man in His Humour' ['sic']." Is it

profane" Chester?

We have digressed into detail in this particular case to exemplify

the difficulties of criticism in its attempts to identify the

allusions in these forgotten quarrels. We are on sounder ground of

fact in recording other manifestations of Jonson's enmity. In "The

Case is Altered" there is clear ridicule in the character Antonio

Balladino of Anthony Munday, pageant-poet of the city, translator

of romances and playwright as well. In "Every Man in His Humour"

there is certainly a caricature of Samuel Daniel, accepted poet of

Daniel under the characters Fastidious Brisk and Hedon, Munday as

way to London, in the masques at court, and in the pastoral drama.

As to Jonson's personal ambitions with respect to these two men, it

is notable that he became, not pageant-poet, but chronologer to the

City of London; and that, on the accession of the new king, he came

soon to triumph over Daniel as the accepted entertainer of royalty.

"Cynthia's Revels," the second "comical satire," was acted in 1600,

and, as a play, is even more lengthy, elaborate, and impossible

than "Every Man Out of His Humour." Here personal satire seems to

have absorbed everything, and while much of the caricature is

admirable, especially in the detail of witty and trenchantly

satirical dialogue, the central idea of a fountain of self-love is

not very well carried out, and the persons revert at times to

abstractions, the action to allegory. It adds to our wonder that

this difficult drama should have been acted by the Children of

make plays. Another of these precocious little actors was

thus have befriended and tenderly remembered these little

theatrical waifs, some of whom (as we know) had been literally

kidnapped to be pressed into the service of the theatre and whipped

to the conning of their difficult parts. To the caricature of

Daniel and Munday in "Cynthia's Revels" must be added Anaides

(impudence), here assuredly Marston, and Asotus (the prodigal),

interpreted as Lodge or, more perilously, Raleigh. Crites, like

Asper-Macilente in "Every Man Out of His Humour," is Jonson's

self-complaisant portrait of himself, the just, wholly admirable,

and judicious scholar, holding his head high above the pack of the

once more, by the Children of the Chapel in 1601, and Jonson's only

"Satiromastix, the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet," a dramatic

attack upon himself. In this attempt to forestall his enemies

Jonson succeeded, and "Poetaster" was an immediate and deserved

success. While hardly more closely knit in structure than its

earlier companion pieces, "Poetaster" is planned to lead up to the

ludicrous final scene in which, after a device borrowed from the

"Lexiphanes" of Lucian, the offending poetaster, Marston-Crispinus,

is made to throw up the difficult words with which he had

overburdened his stomach as well as overlarded his vocabulary. In