VI.
We have in conclusion decided to focus the interest of the reader chiefly in the attestation of Ben Jonson for the works which were associated with the name of William Shakspere of Stratford. Ben Jonson presents a contrast to William Shakspere, in almost every respect, so striking as to awaken an irrepressible desire to compare the mass of proven facts adduced from authentic records. Being born in the city of London in the early part of 1574, he was ten years younger than Shakspere. He was the son of a clergyman. In spite of poverty he was educated at Westminster School, William Camden being his tutor, to whom Jonson refers as “Camden, most reverend head, to whom I owe all that I am—in arts all that I owe.” A recent writer on the subject of Jonson says, “No other of Shakspere’s contemporaries has left so splendid and so enthusiastic an eulogy of the master.” In this statement all must concur, for Jonson is the only writer of eminence among Shakspere’s cotemporaries, who has left words of praise or censure, or have taken any notice, either of Shakspere, or of the works which bear his name; notwithstanding, it was the custom among literary men of the day to belaud their friends in verse or prose, Shakspere in his lifetime was honored with no mark of Ben Jonson’s admiration. Not a single line of commendatory verse was addressed to Shakspere by Jonson, although this promiscuous panegyrist was, with characteristic extravagance, so indiscriminate in sympathy or patronage. What shrimp was there among hack writers who could not gain a panegyric from his generous tongue?
For five and twenty years Shakspere and Jonson jostled in London streets, yet there was no sign or word of recognition as they passed each other by. Writers on the subject of Jonson and Shakspere say that we have abundant tradition of their close friendship. There are no credible traditions. The manufactured traditions, so conspicuous in books called, “A Life of William Shakspere,” are the dreams of fancy, fraud and fiction, used to fill the lacuna, or gap, in the life of the Stratford man.
The proven facts of William Shakspere’s life are facts unassociated with authorcraft—facts that prove the isolation and divorcement of player and poet. The proven facts of Ben Jonson’s life are facts interlacing man and poet. Almost every incident in his life reveals his personal affection, or bitter dislike, for his fellow craftsmen, always ready for a quarrel, arrogant, vain, boastful and vulgar. There is much truth in Dekker’s charge, “’Tis thy fashion to flirt ink in every man’s face and then crawl into his bosom.” He had many quarrels with Marston, beat him, and wrote his “Poetaster” on him. He was federated in a comedy “(Eastward Ho)” with Chapman, and was sent to prison for libeling the Scottish nobility. Ben Jonson’s personality and literary work are inseparable. Drunk or sober, few have served learning with so much pertinacity, and fewer still, have so successfully challenged admiration even from literary rivals, with whom at times he was most bitterly hostile, and at other times, indisputably open-handed and jovial.
Ben Jonson had a literary environment always for there is perfect interlacement of man and craft. He became one of the most prolific writers of his age occupying among the men of his day a position of literary supremacy. “In the forty years of his literary career he collected a library so extensive that Gifford doubted whether any library in England was so rich in scarce and valuable books.” From the pages of Isaac De Israeli we read, “No poet has left behind him so many testimonials of personal fondness by inscriptions and addresses in the copies of his works which he presented to his friends.” But of all these, as strange as it must seem to the votaries of Shakspere, not a single copy of Jonson’s works is brought forward to bear witness of his personal regard and admiration for Shakspere, and we may add that there is no testimonial by Shakspere of his regard and personal fondness for Ben Jonson, although many of the literary antiquaries have unearthed in their researches facts or new discoveries, which they have brought forward as new particulars of the life of William Shakspere. These, if not incompatible with authorship, are surely divorcing Shakspere, the actor, from Shakespeare, the author poet. They but deepen the mystery that surrounds the personality of the author of the immortal plays—“The shadow of a mighty name.” At the same time they disclose the true character of Shakspere the actor, money-lender, land-owner and litigant, which is affirmative of John Bright’s opinion that “any man who believes that William Shakspere of Stratford wrote ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Lear’ is a fool.”
The student reader will perceive that Jonson’s verse does not agree with his prose, and that his “Ode to Shakespeare,” which Dryden called “an insolent, sparing, and invidious, panegyric,” was not the final word of comment which is contained in Ben Jonson’s “Discoveries”—a prose reference in disparagement of Shakespeare, the writer, while laudatory of the man whom he may have believed was identifiable with the play-wright. We believe he was mistaken in so believing. Ben Jonson was vulnerable most in his character as a witness. The reader must therefore be indulgent if we make some remarks upon the credibility and competency of this witness. The elder writers on the subject of Jonson and Shakespeare before Gifford’s time (1757-1826) were always harping on Ben Jonson’s jealousy and envy of Shakespeare. Since Gifford’s day the antiquary has been abroad in the land without having discovered anything of a literary life of Shakespeare. As if by general consent, all recent writers on the subject regard Jonson’s attestation, or his metrical tribute, to the “memory of my beloved author, Mr. William Shakespeare, an essential element in Shakespeare’s biography as the title deed of authorship.” Having made him their star witness, we shall hear no more of Jonson’s jealousy and envy of Shakespeare.
A final consideration will show how little Ben Jonson is to be relied on “as attesting the responsibility of the Stratford player for the works which are associated with his name.” There is not a word or sentence in all Jonson’s writings which bear witness to Shakspere as a writer of plays or poems anterior to the Stratford player’s death, as all reference to Shakespeare in Jonson’s verse and prose are posterior to this event. They refute each other and discredit the writer. “Conversations of Ben Jonson with William Drummond” are of great literary and historical value and are important too, as bearing on Ben Jonson’s competency and credibleness as a witness. The Drummond notes were first printed by Mr. David Lang, who discovered them among the manuscripts of Sir Robert Sibbald, a well known antiquarian. “Conversations,” as we have it on the evidence of Drummond, is in accord with almost every contemporary reference to Jonson and internally they agree with Ben Jonson’s own “Discoveries.” There should be no controversy in regard to the justice of the Scottish poet’s criticism. From the notes recorded by Drummond we learn, “He (Ben Jonson) is a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others, especially after drink which is one of the elements in which he liveth.” The conversations recorded by Drummond took place when Jonson visited him at Hawthornden in 1618-19 and disclose the fact that “Rare Ben” was a vulgar, boastful, tipsy backbiter, who black-guarded many of his fellow craftsmen. The last circumstance recorded of Ben Jonson is where reference is made to his display of self-worship at the expense of others. In a letter dated from Westminster April 5, 1636, James Howell describes a Solem supper given by Jonson at which he and Thomas Carew were present, when Ben seems to have drenched himself with his favorite canary wine. Howell writes,
“I was invited yesternight to a Solem supper by B. J. whom you deeply remember. There was good company, excellent cheer, choice wines, and jovial welcome. One thing intervened which almost spoiled the relish of the rest. Ben began to engross all the discourse to vapour extremely of himself and by vilifying others to magnify his own muse. Thomas Carew buzzed me in the ear that Ben had barreled up a great deal of knowledge, yet seems he had not read the ‘Ethiques’ which, among other precepts of morality, forbid self commendation. But for my part I am content to dispense with this Roman infirmity of B’s now that time has snowed upon his pricranium.”
The reader is not unmindful that the language of Ben Jonson is sometimes grossly opprobrious, sometimes basely adulatory, while his laudatory verses on Shakespeare, Silvester, Beaumont and other cotemporary writers, are in striking contrast by the discrepancy of testimony disclosed by his prose works and conversations. In the memorial verses Jonson tells us Shakespeare stood alone—“Alone for the comparison of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome sent forth or since did from their ashes come.” The strictest scrutiny, however, into the life and works of Ben Jonson fails to denote his actual acquaintance with the works of the greatest genius of our world. What became of his enthusiastic eulogy of Shakespeare, when “from my house in the Black-Friars this 11th day of February, 1607” Ben Jonson writes his dedication—“Volpone” to “The Two Famous Universities,” which should have disclosed his close friendship with, and admiration for, William Shakespeare, for the great dramatist was then in the zenith of his power. The dedication of “Volpone” was written nine years before the death of William Shakspere, the player, when Jonson declared “I shall raise the despised head of poetry again and stripping her out of those rotten and base rags wherewith the times have adulterated her form.”
It should be remembered, that at the time of this sweeping condemnation of what he terms dramatic or stage-poetry, thirty-one of the thirty-six of the immortal Shakespearean plays were then written. All of the very greatest—“Hamlet,” “Lear,” “Macbeth”—were, in Ben Jonson’s estimation in 1607, “rotten and base rags.” While in 1623 in the “Memorial Verses” he tells us that their reputed author was the “soul of the age.” “It is a legal maxim that a witness who swears for both sides swears for neither, and a rule of common law no less than common sense that his evidence must be ruled out.” Ben Jonson’s egotism would, of course, preclude a just judgment of the work of his fellow craftsman. He felt that his own writings were immeasurably superior. Did he ever read the so-called Shakspere plays before he wrote the “Ode to the Memory of my Beloved The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us” for the syndicate of printers? For the affirmative of the proposition there is not the faintest presumption of probable evidence. Jonson often became the generous panegyrist of poets whose writings in all probability he never had read. He took pleasure in commending in verse the works of men not worthy of his notice, and in lauding and patronizing juvenile mediocrity and poeticules of the gutter-snipe order. In his prefatory remarks to the reader in “Sejanus” there is the same display of excess of commendation. Ben Jonson writes, “Lastly I would inform you that this book in all numbers is not the same with that which was acted on the public stage wherein a second pen had good share, in place of which I have rather chosen to put weaker and no doubt less pleasing of my own than to defraud so happy a genius of his right by my loathed usurpations.”
According to Dryden, Ben Jonson’s compliments were left-handed. Nevertheless, the words “so happy a genius” have directed the thoughts of commentators to Shakespeare. Mr. Nicholson, however, has shown that the person alluded to is not Shakespeare, but a very inferior poet, Samuel Sheppard, who more than forty years later claimed for himself the honor of having collaborated in “Sejanus” with Ben Jonson. Compliments bestowed on inferior men of the elder time are in later times the reprisal of Shakespearean buccaneers; while many of Jonson’s versified panegyrics on cotemporary poets were retrieved by his withering contempt for many of them, orally expressed, or contained in his prose works, Shakespeare being included among these. Still, at the Apollo room of the Devil Tavern were numbered the most distinguished men of the day outside of literary circles, as well as within, who sought his fellowship and would gladly have sealed themselves of the tribe of Ben. Clarendon tells us that “his conversations were very good and with men of most note.”
The following is, in part, from the notes recorded by William Drummond, Laird of Hawthornden.
“Conversations of Ben Jonson. His censure of the English poets was this: That Sidney did not keep a decorum in making every one speak as well as himself. Spencer’s stanzas pleased him not nor his matter.
“Samuel Daniel was a good honest man, had no children, but no poet, and was jealous of him; that Michael Drayton’s long verses pleased him not—Drayton feared him and he esteemed not of him; that Donne’s ‘Anniversary’ was profane and full of blasphemies ... that Donne, for not keeping of accent deserved hanging; that Shakespeare wanted art; that Day, Dekker and Minshew were all rogues; that Abram Francis, in his English hexameters, was a fool; that next to himself only Fletcher and Chapman could make a masque.
“He esteemeth John Donne the first poet in the world in some things; that Donne, himself, for not being understood would perish.
“Sir Henry Wotton’s verses of a ‘Happy Life’ he hath by heart, and a piece of Chapman’s translation of the thirteen of the ‘Iliads,’ which he thinketh well done. That Francis Beaumont loved too much himself and his own verse.
“He had many quarrels with Marston; that Markham was not of the number of the faithful, and but a base fellow; that such were Day and Middleton; that Chapman and Fletcher were loved of him; that Spencer died for lack of bread in King street; that the King said Sir P. Sidney was no poet. Neither did he see any verses in England to the Scullers, meaning that John Taylor was the best poet in England; that Shakespeare in a play brought in a number of men saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia where there is no sea near by some 100 miles.
“Sundry times he (Jonson) hath devoured his books, sold them all for necessity; that he hath consumed a whole night in lying looking at his great toe, about which he hath seen Carthagenians and the Romans fighting; that the half of his comedies were not in print; he said to Prince Charles, of Inigo Jones, that when he wanted words to express the greatest villain in the world, he would call him an ‘Inigo,’ Jones having accused him for naming him, behind his back, a fool, he denied it; but, says he, I said he was an arrant knave, and I avouch it; of all his plays he never gained 200 pounds; he dissuaded me from poetry for that she had beggared him when he might have been a rich lawyer, physician, or merchant; that piece of the ‘Pucelle of the Court’ was stolen out of his pocket by a gentleman who drank him drowsy.”
These occasional infractions of sobriety by Ben Jonson when he conversed with Drummond at Hawthornden in 1618-19 became habitual with him long before James Howell’s invitation to a Solem supper by B. J. 1636.
Day, Middleton, Dekker and Sir Walter Raleigh could have instituted a civil suit against Ben Jonson for defamation of character, because of the defamatory words in conversation with William Drummond of Hawthornden, had the notes recorded by Drummond been published in the lifetime of the defamed. However, they had come to regard him, doubtless, as a notorious slanderer who would as soon falsify as verify, and was not to be believed in unsworn testimony about his fellowmen or as a credible witness as to any matter—one whose testimony was none too good under every sanction possible to give it. This is the writer who gave genesis to the Stratford myth. The matter-of-fact to be accentuated is that the contemporaries of the writer of the immortal plays did not know positively who wrote them; we do not know positively who wrote them; and our latest posterity, when Holy Trinity’s monuments, turrets, and towers shall have crumbled and commingled with the shrined dust of William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon, may not know positively who wrote them.
In conclusion, it has not been our design to point out, or suggest, who, in fact, wrote the poems and plays, but rather to show that the man of Stratford was by education, temperament, character, reputation, opportunity and calling, wholly unequal to so transcendent a task, and that the authorship assumed in favor of this man, rests upon no tangible proof, but to the contrary upon strained and farfetched conjecture, merely.