He is a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others, given rather to lose a friend than a jest, jealous of every word and action of those about him (especially after drink, which is one of the elements in which he liveth), a dissembler of ill parts which reign in him, a bragger of some good that he wanteth, thinketh nothing well but what either he himself or some of his friends and countrymen hath said or done. He is passionately kind and angry, careless either to gain or keep, vindictive, but, if he be well answered, at himself.
WILLIAM DRUMMOND: Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden. Informations by Ben Jonson to W.D. When He Came to Scotland upon Foot (1619)
Descended from a Scottish family, Jonson was probably born in Westminster, the posthumous son of a clergyman. His stepfather, a master bricklayer, sent him to Westminster School, where William Camden was headmaster. Jonson practised his stepfather’s trade for a while and then went soldiering in the Low Countries, where he killed an enemy champion in single combat. On his return, he became a professional actor and playwright. John Aubrey, influenced perhaps by Dekker’s attacks, wrote that he was ‘never a good actor, but an excellent instructor’. He was part-author, with Thomas Nashe, of the satirical The Isle of Dogs (1597, now lost), and was imprisoned for his pains. After the success of Every Man in His Humour (1598), in which Shakespeare acted, he produced a succession of plays, including Cynthia’s Revels (1600), masques, revels, entertainments and poems. Having killed a fellow actor, Gabriel Spencer, during a duel in 1598, he pleaded benefit of clergy, but was thrown into prison, where he converted to Catholicism, though he returned to Anglicanism some twelve years later. Cynthia’s Revels appeared in 1600, but his finest satirical comedies were Volpone (1605), a withering attack on human cupidity, The Silent Woman (1609), a direct ancestor of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, which Stefan Zweig freely adapted for Richard Strauss’s Die schweigsame Frau (1935), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fayre (1614). His Roman tragedies, Sejanus: His Fall (1603) and Catiline: His Conspiracy (1611), pale in comparison with Shakespeare’s Roman plays; and his later comedies such as The Devil is an Ass (1616), The New Inn (1629) and A Tale of a Tub (1633) failed to match the success of his earlier work – Dryden called them, rather unfairly, his ‘dotages’. He was a prolific writer of court masques and produced more than thirty royal entertainments for King James. He was made Poet Laureate in 1616, and two years later undertook his famous journey on foot to Scotland to visit Drummond of Hawthornden, whose recorded Conversations, considered unreliable by some commentators, contain much biographical information not found elsewhere. Discoveries, a commonplace book published posthumously in the 1640–41 two-volume Folio edition of his works, contains an attractive blend of his own thoughts and those of others. Jonson suffered a stroke in 1628 and died almost a decade later. His funeral in Westminster Abbey was attended by many friends, some of whom contributed to Jonsonus Virbius (1638), a collection of memorial elegies. It was one of these friends, Jack Young, who inscribed the words ‘O rare Ben Jonson’ on the slab over his grave in Westminster Abbey.
Jonson was an extraordinarily versatile poet who could pen bitter epigrams, tender epigraphs, wonderful elegies on dead children (see ‘Epitaph on S[alomon] P[avy]’), religious verse and the most moving of love poems, all in a great variety of poetical forms; and, as with Goethe, some of his finest verse is to be found in his plays. His songs, almost all of which rhyme, were written in many different meters: there are Italian and English sonnets, Pindaric odes, quatrains, terza rima, and even skeltonic verse. It is perhaps the occasional nature of much of his verse – poetry occasioned by some external event – that has led to the comparative neglect; and many of the poems are included in the plays and thirty-three court masques he wrote for King James. The publication of the 1616 Folio was an historic event in the history of English literature; not only was it the first folio of a writer’s Works (including plays), but it was edited and corrected by Jonson himself, and its success almost certainly led to the publication of other dramatic collections, in particular the Shakespeare Folio of 1623, and the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio of 1647. Jonson’s plays were valued more highly than his poetry throughout the seventeenth century, and he was considered to be a more successful dramatist than Shakespeare, who was greatly admired by Jonson – see his touching poem ‘To the Memory of my Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare’.
The fifteen poems of The Forrest, printed in the Folio of 1616, are concerned with ‘the virtuous life’. Most of the poems are apostrophes to virtue, as exemplified in a number of individuals, especially Sir Philip Sidney, whose influence, and that of his family, is felt throughout. Juxtaposed with these poems about paragons are the wonderful love lyrics, such as ‘Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes’ and ‘Come my Celia, let us prove’, which express a sensuality and a delight in the pleasures of the world, and imply that ‘the virtuous life’ is far from easy to attain. This duality is mirrored in the structure of the work: ‘Come, my Celia’, for example, is placed immediately after ‘To the World’, which bears the subtitle ‘A Farewell for a Gentlewoman, Virtuous and Noble’; and ‘Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes’ follows ‘To Sickness’. The collection ends with ‘To Heaven’, in which a state of grace is finally reached. Under-woods, Jonson’s most varied collection of poems, appeared posthumously in the 1640 Folio edition.
Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kisse but in the cup,
And Ile not looke for wine.
The thirst that from the soule doth rise,
Doth aske a drinke divine:
But might I of JOVE’S Nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
I sent thee, late, a rosie wreath,
Not so much honoring thee,
As giving it a hope, that there
It could not withered bee.
But thou thereon did’st onely breath,
And sent’st it backe to mee:
Since when it growes, and smells, I sweare,
Not of itselfe, but thee.2
Come my Celia, let us prove2,
While we may, the sports of love;
Time will not be ours, for ever:
He, at length, our good will sever.
Spend not then his guifts in vaine.
Sunnes, that set, may rise againe:
But if once we loose this light,
’Tis, with us, perpetuall night.
Why should we deferre our joyes?
Fame, and rumor are but toyes3.
Cannot we delude the eyes
Of a few poore houshold spyes?
Or his easier eares beguile,
So removed by our wile?
’Tis no sinne, loves fruit to steale,
But the sweet theft to reveale:
To be taken, to be seene,
These have crimes accounted beene.
A close friend of Rupert Brooke at Rugby School, Browne (1888–1915) went up to Clare College, Cambridge, in 1907, where he formed influential friendships with Edward Dent, Armstrong Gibbs, Vaughan Williams and the singer Steuart Wilson. Though he matriculated in Greats, he was soon devoting all his energies to music and became an organ scholar at his college. After university he spent some time at the home of Ferruccio Busoni, was appointed assistant music teacher at Repton School and then moved to London as organist of Guy’s Hospital. He wrote reviews for The Times and the New Statesman, gave the first London performance of Berg’s Piano Sonata, and was killed in the Gallipoli campaign on 4 June soon after he had buried Rupert Brooke on the island of Skyros. His compositions are few: church music, orchestral dances, a piano piece, a choral setting of Tennyson’s ‘The Kraken’, an unfinished ballet and eleven songs, including two of Tennyson – ‘Move, eastward, happy earth’ and ‘The snowdrop’ (1910) – the only songs that were published during his lifetime. There are also two early settings of Yeats. It is, however, with his final four songs (settings of Jonson’s ‘Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy’, Lovelace’s ‘To Gratiana dancing and singing’, Constable’s ‘Diaphenia’ and de la Mare’s ‘Arabia’) that his extraordinary promise is manifested.
Weepe with me all you that reade
This little storie:
And know, for whom a teare you shed,
Death’s selfe is sorry.
’Twas a child, that so did thrive
In grace, and feature,
As Heaven and Nature seem’d to strive
Which own’d the creature.
Yeeres he numbred scarse thirteene
Yet three fill’d Zodiackes had he beene
The stages jewell;
And did act (what now we mone)
Old men so duely,
As, sooth, the Parcae2 thought him one,
He plai’d so truely.
So, by error, to his fate
They all consented;
But viewing him since (alas, too late)
They have repented.
And have sought (to give new birth)
In bathes to steepe him;
But, being so much too good for earth,
Heaven vowes to keepe him.
Slow, slow, fresh fount, keepe time with my salt teares;
Yet slower, yet, ô faintly gentle springs:
List to the heavy part the musique beares,
Woe weepes out her division2, when shee sings.
Droupe hearbs, and flowres;
Fall griefe in showres;
Our beauties are not ours:
O, I could still
(Like melting snow upon some craggie hill,)
drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since natures pride is, now, a wither’d daffodill.
(Gurney, Rorem)
Doe but looke, on her eyes! They doe light –
All that Loue’s world comprizeth!
Doe but looke on her hayre! it is bright,
As Loue’s star, when it riseth!
[Doe but marke, her fore-head’s smoother,
Then words that sooth her!
And from her arched browes, such a grace
Sheds it selfe through the face;
As alone, there triumphs to the life,
All the gaine, all the good, of the elements strife!]
Haue you seene but a bright Lilly grow2
Before rude hands haue touch’d it?
Haue you mark’d but the fall of the Snow,
Before the soyle hath smuch’d it?
Haue you felt the wooll o’ the Beuer?
Or Swans downe, euer?
Or, haue smelt o’ the bud o’ the Bryer?
Or the Nard i’ the fire?
Or, haue tasted the bag o’ the Bee?
O, so white! O, so soft! O, so sweet is shee!
O, that ioy so soone should waste!
or so sweet a blisse
as a kiss
Might not for euer last!
So sugred, so melting, so soft, so delicious,
The dew that lies on roses,
When the morne her selfe discloses,
is not so precious.
O, rather then I would it smother,
Were I to taste such another;
It should be my wishing
That I might dye, kissing.
(Henry Lawes)
Queene and Huntresse, chaste, and faire,
Now the Sunne is laid to sleepe,
Seated, in thy siluer chaire,
State in wonted manner keepe:
Hesperus intreats thy light,
Goddesse, excellently bright.
Earth, let not thy enuious shade
Dare it selfe to interpose;
Cynthias shining orbe was made
Heauen to cleere, when day did close:
Blesse us then with wished sight,
Goddesse, excellently bright.