3.6. Ben Jonson (1572?-1637)
3.6.1. Classicism
3.6.2. Dramatic theory
3.6.1. Classicism
Ben Jonson is not only a playwright, but also a critic who commented on his own plays and took care to collect them in a definitive edition, an uncommon practice at the time (1616). He was also the first Englishman object of a critical monography, Jonsonus Virbius (1638). Jonson's thought is influenced by Sidney, but he presents us with a more severe brand of classicism than the one we had found in Sidney. Sidney stressed idealization and passion; Jonson will insist on imitation and regularity instead. His moral purpose is also more explicit. Jonson's plays are much more respectful of the unities than Shakespeare's, even though there is scarcely a single one in which they may be said to remain intact (vide Dryden on The Silent Woman). Jonson's classicism is native; it is not an extraneous foreign element, but rather blends easily with the English tradition, of which it is a logical evolution. Much of this easy implantation comes from the nature of Jonson's talent: he is caustic and vulgar, obscene yet at the same time moralising. He does not deal with unknown places or attitudes, but rather with London and now. This topical character of his plays is also found in his criticism, and it is a great obstacle to its comprehension, because he is always referring to some current topic which is obscure to us now. Jonson also has the self-righteous and confident tone of many neo-Classics after him.
Jonson was a kind of literary dictator in his circle of the Mermaid Tavern, which included Shakespeare. Being energetic and overbearing, he became involved in literary disputes such as the Playwright's Quarrel (1599-1602), but he never wrote a theoretical work stating his principles. Much of his criticism, as is usual in the early seventeenth century, is dispersed in his poetical works: prologues, memorial verses, satires, essays in verse. . . The thing most resembling a book on literature written by Jonson was published posthumously (1640) under the long-wound title Timber: or, Discoveries; Made upon Men and Matter; as they have flow'd out of his daily Reading, or had their refluxe to his peculiar Notion of the Times. It is a miscellany of late writings (mostly 1620-35) which includes political and moral writings, satire, drafts for future works, and lecture notes -it seems that Jonson was a professor of rhetoric at university for one year. Two thirds of the whole, however, consists in literary criticism, dealing with rhetoric, poetry, and drama. Only the ideas are not Jonson's, at least not exclusively. The greater part is a series of verbatim quotations from classical sources, which we may however take to express Jonson's literary creed. He also borrows from some contemporary critics, such as Daniel Heinsius, Pontanus, and Hoskins. The exposition is aphoristical throughout: rules of thumb, practical advice for composition, and sententious comments on previous authors. Jonson's neoclassical doctrine consists more of practical principles and concrete advice than of systematic theories.
The qualities of style in oratory and letter-writing favoured by Jonson are the ones appreciated by most Renaissance critics: brevity, perspicuity, vigor and discretion. He rejects artifice, recalling the ancient phrase oratio imago animi:
(39) Language most shows a man: speak, that I may see thee. It springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind.
Jonson is the enemy of obscurity:
(40) As it is fit to read the best authors to youth first, so let them be of the openest and clearest, as Livy before Sallust, Sidney before Donne.
The tone of Jonson's comments on specific authors is more personal than in most Renaissance critics. He appreciates Spenser's subject-matter, but he opposes his 'Chaucerisms': "in affecting the ancients he writ no language." Moreover, the allegory of the Faerie Queene is too complex and confusing. Indeed, Jonson seems to believe that English poetry needs some guiding principles: Donne deserves hanging for not keeping his accents in place. And when he is told that Shakespeare, whom he admires "on this side Idolatry", never blotted a line while composing, he answers "would he had blotted a thousand." Jonson is all for classical restraint: Shakespeare had the use of his wit, he said, but the power to restrain it was beyond him. We see here a typical notion of neoclassical criticism: that an author needs not a principle of dynamism and creation within him, but also a principle of restriction: he needs to be a critic of his own invention. The idea that "Shakespeare wanted art," that he could not control his writing, was to be a commonplace of neoclassical criticism of Shakespeare. But Jonson had no quarrel with Shakespeare: he sets him above all English writers, and writes that "He was not of an age, but for all time."
All this may provide some examples of the kind of critical observations which are to be found in Jonson, especially if we keep in mind that even these famous observations on Shakespeare are drawn from classical sources. This is the practical application of an important theoretical principle of Jonson's : imitation.
A poet, Jonson states, needs inspiration. But actually he allows a smaller role to inspiration and invention than either Sidney or Bacon. He immediately places the greater stress on exercise, study, imitation and art (technique). Imitation does not mean servile subjection:
(41) Nothing is more ridiculous , than to make an Author a Dictator as the schools have done Aristotle.
Imitation, Jonson says, is not plagiarism. It is Jonson who introduces the word "plagiarism" into the English language. He borrows it from Martial, who had used it playfully referring to literature (plagiarius meaning originally a kidnapper). Of course, the concept of plagiarism such as it is used today is still unthought of in Jonson's time. The use of models, in Jonson's view, involves their assimilation and invites their improvement. In any case, we have to discover the application which the general truth which can be extracted from the Classics may have in our own time.
3.6.2. Dramatic theory
Jonson's ideas on drama are close to Sidney's. His main statement about comedy is that it has a moral, rather than a libelous intent. Of course, he is not being original: he follows Horace and Minturno here. But it was important to take this position at a time when comedy and farce were intermingled to a degree which made their status problematic. Comic poetry, he says, is nearest to oratory among all literary genres. It portrays and stirs the affections; its end is to teach; laughter is only a means, not the end of comedy. Jonson seems to regard comedy as an essentially satiric genre: he does not care much in theory about its entity as an artistic object, apart form his advocation of the rules.
Jonson is best known for his theory of the comic humours:
(42)
When some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a Humour.
This results from the blending of medieval physiognomy (with its four humours: sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholy), a study ever fashionable, and the Plautine tradition of characterization, as revived by the Humanists. A humour is a type, but a somewhat peculiar and individual one; it is curious that Jonson demands both types and realism, because his humours are so narrow that they suggest caricatures of individuals rather than the "general nature" of neoclassical types. However, not all of his characters are humours, and so Jonson's practice goes beyond his theory.
An enthusiastic advocate of literary reform, Jonson disliked the current dramatic fashions which favoured tragicomedy, fantastic comedies and history plays. The business of the stage should be with none of these,
(43)
But deeds, and language, such as men doe use;
And persons, such as Comoedie would chuse,
When she would shew an Image of the times,
and sport with humane follies, not with crimes
(Prologue, Every Man in his Humour )
The solution for drama lies in greater realism, and this is linked to imitation of the great comedians of Antiquity, Plautus and Terence. "The curious irony of this reform is that his 'type' satirical figures appear to belong to the same order as the 'type' tragical figures of Marlowe. In general he approximates more to Molière than to Shakespeare, and anticipates the artificially patterned figures of Restoration comedy."
Jonson's plays, tragedies or comedies, do not always respect the unities, something he considers a concession to contemporary audiences. The essential qualities of tragedy named by Johnson are Senecan rather than Aristotle:
(44) truth of argument, dignity of persons, gravity and height of elocution and fullness and frequency of sentence.
Indeed, the Aristotelianism in Jonson is more apparent than real; his conception of drama is too moralistic and rhetorical for that, and he does not formulate a theory of universalization. However, his emphasis on reason, order and realism make him the first of the English neo-Classics, and his example will be followed in the second part of the 17th century. Some have accused him of being a pedant, and think that his theories are too narrow and regulative to account even for his own practice: " Ben Jonson the poet and dramatist shared an uneasy bed with Ben Jonson the scholar and critic. What the artist would have done excellently by instinct the critic required to be done less excellently by rule: so Ben Jonson has engaged the attention of persons and periods that are disconcerted by sheer creative fecundity and prefer writers with theories that can be discussed."