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.
INDEX.
Pages
Alleyn Edward, 17, 18, 19, 42, 107
Addenbroke John, 115, 116
Aubrey John, 141
Blank Verse, 31
Bame Richard, 78
Burbages, 18, 42
Beaumont Francis, 122, 123, 142, 148, 150, 157, 169, 174
Burns Robert, 48
Burton Robert, 53, 157
Bruno, 79
Bodley Sir Thomas, 94
Betterton, 103
Bright John, 164
Brown Sir Thomas, 156
Brown Richard, 16
Bunyan John, 44, 45
Brown J. M., 54
Camden William, 160
Chapman George, 81, 93, 122, 136, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 154, 155, 163, 174, 175
Chettle Henry, 35, 43, 49, 63, 68, 69, 70, 71, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91
Collier J. P., 25
Cook Dr. James, 101
Coleridge S. T., 47, 144, 145
Cicero, 50, 84
Combe William, 109, 110, 125
Cromwell Oliver, 3
Dryden John, 39, 148, 165, 172
Drummond Sir William, 39, 166, 167, 173, 176
Dearborn, 43
Daniel Samuel, 145, 173
Davis Cushman K., 41
Dowland John, 17
Diggs Leonard, 128
Dance-Scene, 100, 111, 124, 129
Dyce A., 114
Davenant Sir William, 135
Donne, 174
Dekker, 143, 162, 174
Drayton, 150, 153, 174
Elizabeth Queen, 53, 157
Emerson R. W., 114, 130
Fletcher John, 43, 122, 142, 148, 150, 152, 157
Fleay, 70
Ford John, 122
Farmer Dr., 110
Fuller Thomas, 159
Garrick David, 111
Grosart A., 30
Greene Robert, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 121, 140, 150, 151
Gifford William, 165
Groats Worth of Wit, 6, 9, 61, 62, 65, 68, 76, 85, 87, 89
Galileo, 79
Hathaway Richard, 102, 103
Howell James, 168, 176
Hall Dr. John, 100, 111, 124, 129
Hathaway Agnes or Anne, 103, 104, 106
Herrick, 45
Henry VI., 30
Henslowe Diary, 17, 19
Henslowe Philip, 17, 19, 32, 42, 89, 93, 117, 118, 152, 156
Hallam Henry, 114, 118, 130
Heywood, 24, 143
Halliwell-Phillips, 32, 156
Harvey Gabriel, 18, 40, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 62, 69
Ingleby Dr., 37
Jonson Ben, 24, 39, 59, 81, 90, 92, 93, 94, 122, 136, 137, 139, 140, 142, 143, 145, 148, 152, 153, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 175, 176
James First, 43, 147
Jusserand J. J., 60
Jefferson Thomas, 79
Kemp William, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 35, 92
Kyd, 43, 151
Keats John, 146
Kind Hearts Dreams, 35, 63, 68, 76, 91
Lucy Sir Thomas, 107, 113, 114
Lincoln Abraham, 89
Lodge Thomas, 34, 72, 73, 140, 152
Lee Sidney, 133, 137, 151
London, 15, 20, 21, 105
Lee Miss Jane, 150
Lucrece, 131, 138
Lamb Charles, 146
Lander Walter Savage, 153
Marlowe Christopher, 6, 11, 30, 31, 35, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86, 144, 150, 151
Milton John, 49, 122, 146, 153
Mulcaster Richard, 101
Miller Joaquin, 50
Malone, 94
Mannering Arthur, 109, 110
Middleton, 174
Massinger Phillip, 122
Marston John, 24, 136, 162, 174
Meres Francis, 138, 139, 140, 141, 155
Nash Thomas, 7, 11, 15, 18, 29, 30, 32, 35, 38, 45, 49, 52, 62, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 140
Napoleon, 96
Nicholson Dr., 172
Norwich, 20, 22, 62
Overbury Sir Thomas, 43
Peele George, 7, 11, 30, 35, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 83, 86, 151
Poe Edgar Allen, 48
Quiney Richard, 108, 111, 112
Rathway Richard, 24
Rosebery Lord, 96
Rowe N., 103, 134, 135
William Shakspere the Stratfordian, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 41, 42, 45, 70, 71, 82, 86, 87, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 151, 152, 155, 156, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 166, 170, 171, 177
Shakespeare the Author Poet, 2, 31, 33, 37, 39, 43, 55, 60, 70, 72, 90, 124, 130, 131, 132, 138, 140, 142, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155, 158, 159, 164, 165, 166, 169, 170, 171, 172, 175
Shakspere John, 96, 97, 98, 101
Shakspere Susana, 100, 111
Shakspere Judith, 100, 112
Shakspere Hamnet, 108
Shake-scene, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16
Shake-rags, 16, 23
Spencer Edmund, 144, 156, 157, 173
Stratford-on-Avon, 1, 12, 41, 90, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108
Sidney Sir Phillip, 18, 144, 157
Stevens George, 2, 114, 130
Swinburne A., 47, 96, 146, 151
Scott Sir Walter, 59, 157
Strojenko Prof., 66
Stratford Bust, 128, 131
Spedding James, 150
Saunders, 132
Southampton Earl of, 132, 133, 134, 136, 137, 138, 149
Tarlton Richard, 15, 114, 130
Tyrwhitt Thomas, 9
“The Nine Days Wonder”, 16, 21
Twain Mark, 130
Thompson James, 49
Taft William H., 79
Taylor John, 175
Thorndike A. H., 152
Tolstoy Leo, 90
Upstart Crow, 5, 9, 28, 82
Venus and Adonis, 32, 131, 138, 149
Voltair, 157
Washington George, 3
Wilson Robert, Senior, 25, 26, 27
White Richard Grant, 116
Wallace Professor, 119
Waller Edmund, 145
Wately Anna, 102
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.
Some hyphen inconsistencies are retained as printed.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Page 21. “Anti-Martnist” replaced by “Anti-Martinist”. Page 21. “Bodelean Library” replaced by “Bodleian Library”. Page 24. “William Rowly” replaced by “William Rowley”. Page 25. “blamphemous” replaced by “blasphemous”. Page 28. “amendor” replaced by “amender”. Page 43. “Kid’s” replaced by “Kyd’s”. Page 47. “assauged” replaced by “assuaged”. Page 47. “Swinburn” replaced by “Swinburne”. Page 49. “harp and pendant” replaced by “sharp and pendant”. Page 72. “prediliction” replaced by “predilection”. Page 85. “‘of Wit’” replaced by “of Wit’”. Page 118. “ramsacking” replaced by “ransacking”. Page 121. “elegaic” replaced by “elegiac”. Page 122. ‘“Volpone,” There’ replaced by ‘“Volpone,” there’. Page 127. “charnal” replaced by “charnel”. Page 132. “Worthesley” replaced by “Wriothesley”. Page 138. “Palladin” replaced by “Palladis”. Page 141. “John Aubury” replaced by “John Aubrey”. Page 157. “Popuelin” replaced by “Poquelin”. Page 157. “Moliere.” replaced by “Molière”. Page 162. ‘“Poetaster on him.”’ replaced by ‘“Poetaster” on him.’. Page 166. ‘William Shakespeare, “an’ replaced by ‘William Shakespeare, an’. Page i. “Aubury John” replaced by “Aubrey John”. Page ii. “Robert Greene” replaced by “Greene Robert”. Page iv. “Swinburn” replaced by “Swinburne”.