Halleck's New English Literature Part 26

It is pleasant to think that he was a friend of Shakespeare. Jonson's pithy volume of prose, known as _Discoveries made upon Men and Matter_, contains his famous criticism on Shakespeare, noteworthy because it shows how a great contemporary regarded him, "I loved the man and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any." Few English writers have received from a great rival author such convincing testimony in regard to lovable personality.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEN JONSON'S TOMB IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]

In 1616, the year in which Shakespeare died, Jonson was made poet laureate. When he died in 1637, he was buried in an upright position in Westminster Abbey. A plain stone with the unique inscription, "O Rare Ben Jonson," marks his grave.

Plays.--Ben Jonson's comedies are his best dramatic work. From all his plays we may select three that will best repay reading: _Volpone, The Alchemist_, and _The Silent Woman_. _Volpone_ is the story of an old, childless, Venetian n.o.bleman whose ruling pa.s.sion is avarice.

Everything else in the play is made tributary to this pa.s.sion. The first three lines in the first act strike the keynote of the entire play. Volpone says:--

"Good morning to the day; and next, my gold!-- Open the shrine, that I may see my saint.

Hail the world's soul and mine!"

_The Alchemist_ makes a strong presentation of certain forms of credulity in human nature and of the special tricks which the alchemists and impostors of that day adopted. One character wants to buy the secret of the helpful influence of the stars; another parts with his wealth to learn the alchemist's secret of turning everything into gold and jewels. The way in which these characters are deceived is very amusing. A study of this play adds to our knowledge of a certain phase of the times. In point of artistic construction of plot, _The Alchemist_ is nowhere excelled in the English drama; but the intrusion of Jonson's learning often makes the play tedious reading, as when he introduces the technical terms of the so-called science of alchemy to show that he has studied it thoroughly. One character speaks to the alchemist of--

"Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heautarit,"

and another asks:--

"Can you sublime and dulcify? calcine?

Know you the sapor pontic? sapor stiptic, Or what is h.o.m.ogene, or heterogene?"

Lines like the following show that Jonson's acute mind had grasped something of the principle of evolution:--

"...'twere absurd To think that nature in the earth bred gold Perfect in the instant: something went before.

There must be remote matter."

_The Silent Woman_ is in lighter vein than either of the plays just mentioned. The leading character is called Morose, and his special whim or "humor" is a horror of noise. His home is on a street "so narrow at both ends that it will receive no coaches nor carts, nor any of these common noises." He has mattresses on the stairs, and he dismisses the footman for wearing squeaking shoes. For a long time Morose does not marry, fearing the noise of a wife's tongue. Finally he commissions his nephew to find him a silent woman for a wife, and the author uses to good advantage the opportunity for comic situations which this turn in the action affords. Dryden preferred _The Silent Woman_ to any of the other plays.

Besides the plays mentioned in this section, Jonson wrote during his long life many other comedies and masques as well as some tragedies.

Marks of Decline.--A study of the decline of the drama, as shown in Jonson's plays, will give us a better appreciation of the genius of Shakespeare. We may change Jonson's line so that it will state one reason for his not maintaining Shakespearean excellence:--

"He was not for all time, but of an age."

His first play, _Every Man in his Humor_, paints, not the universal emotions of men, but some special humor. He thus defines the sense in which he uses humor:--

"As 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 Humor."

Unlike Shakespeare, Jonson gives a distorted or incomplete picture of life. In _Volpone_ everything is subsidiary to the humor of avarice, which receives unnatural emphasis. In _The Alchemist_ there is little to relieve the picture of credibility and hypocrisy, while _The Silent Woman_ has for its leading character a man whose princ.i.p.al "humor" or aim in life is to avoid noise.

No drama which fails to paint the n.o.bler side of womanhood can be called complete. In Jonson's plays we do not find a single woman worthy to come near the Shakespearean characters, Cordelia, Imogen, and Desdemona. His limitations are nowhere more marked than in his inability to portray a n.o.ble woman.

Another reason why he fails to present life completely is shown in these lines, in which he defines his mission:--

"My strict hand Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe Squeeze out the humor of such spongy souls As lick up every idle vanity."

Since the world needs building up rather than tearing down, a remedy for an ailment rather than fault-finding, the greatest of men cannot be mere satirists. Shakespeare displays some fellow feeling for the object of his satire, but Jonson's satire is cold and devoid of sympathy.

Jonson deliberately took his stand in opposition to the romantic spirit of the age. Marlowe and Shakespeare had disregarded the cla.s.sical unities and had developed the drama on romantic lines.

Jonson resolved to follow cla.s.sical traditions and to adhere to unity of time and place in the construction of his plots. The action in the play of _The Silent Woman_, for instance, occupies only twelve hours.

General Characteristics.--Jonson's plays show the touch of a conscientious artist with great intellectual ability. His vast erudition is constantly apparent. He is the satiric historian of his time, and he exhibits the follies and the humors of the age under a powerful lens. He is also the author of dainty lyrics, and forcible prose criticism.

Among the shortcomings of his plays, we may specially note lack of feeling and of universality. He fails to comprehend the nature of woman. He is not a sympathetic observer of manifold life, but presents only what is perceived through the frosted gla.s.s of intellect. His art is self-conscious. He defiantly opposed the romantic spirit of the age and weakened the drama by making it bear the burden of the cla.s.sical unities.

MINOR DRAMATISTS

Beaumont and Fletcher.--Next to Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson, the two most influential dramatists were Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625). They are usually mentioned together because they collaborated in writing plays. Fletcher had the great advantage of working with Shakespeare in producing _Henry VIII_.

Beaumont died nine years before Fletcher, and it is doubtful whether he collaborated with Fletcher in more than fifteen of the fifty plays published under their joint names.

Two of their greatest plays, _Philaster_ and _The Maid's Tragedy_, are probably their joint production. _The Faithful Shepherdess_ and _Bonduca_ are among the best of about eighteen plays supposed to have been written by Fletcher alone. After Beaumont's death, Fletcher sometimes collaborated with other dramatists.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRANCIS BEAUMONT.]

Almost all the so-called Beaumont and Fletcher plays are well constructed. These dramatists also have, in common with the majority of their a.s.sociates, the ability to produce occasional pa.s.sages of exquisite poetry. A character in _Philaster_ speaks of death in lines that suggest _Hamlet_:--

"'Tis less than to be born; a lasting sleep, A quiet resting from all jealousy; A thing we all pursue; I know besides It is but giving over of a game That must be lost."

Beaumont and Fletcher's work is noteworthy for its pictures of contemporary life and manners, for wealth of incident, rapidity of movement, and variety of characters.

Not long after the beginning of the seventeenth century there was a change in the taste of the patrons of the theater. Shakespeare declined in popularity. The playwrights tried to solve the problem of interesting audiences that wished only to be entertained. This attempt led to a change in dramatic methods.

Changed Moral Ideals.--Under Elizabeth's successors the Puritan spirit increased and the most religious part of the community seldom attended the theater. The later dramatists pay little attention to the moral development of character and its self-revelation through action.

They often merely describe character and paint it from the outside. We have seen that Shakespeare's great plays are almost a demonstration in moral geometry, but Beaumont and Fletcher are not much concerned over the moral consequences of an action. The gravest charge against them is that they "unknit the sequence of moral cause and effect." After reading such plays, we do not rise with the feeling that there is a divinity that shapes our ends.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN FLETCHER.]

Coleridge says, "Shakespeare never renders that amiable which religion and reason alike teach us to detest, or clothes impurity in the garb of virtue, like Beaumont and Fletcher." Much of the work of their contemporary dramatists is marred by such blemishes. Unpleasant as are numbers of these plays, they are less insidious than many which have appeared on the stage in modern times.

Love of Surprises.--The dramatists racked their inventive powers to introduce surprises to interest the audience. Here was a marked departure from Shakespeare's later method. He plans _Macbeth_ so as to have his audience forecast the logical result. Consequences of the most tremendous import, beside which Beaumont and Fletcher's surprises seem trivial, follow naturally from Macbeth's actions. In his greatest plays, Shakespeare, unlike the later dramatists, never relies on illogical surprises to sustain the interest. The witch queen in one of the plays of Thomas Middleton (1570-1627) suddenly exclaims:--

"...fetch three ounces of the red-haired girl I kill'd last midnight."

Shakespeare's witches suggest only enough of the weird and the horrible to transfix the attention and make the beholder realize the force of the temptation that a.s.sails Macbeth. Charles Lamb truly observes that Middleton's witches "can harm the body," but Shakespeare's "have power over the soul."

Middleton could, however, write a pa.s.sage like the following, which probably suggested to Milton one of the finest lines in _Lycidas_:--

"Upon those lips, the sweet fresh buds of youth, The holy dew of prayer lies, like pearl Dropt from the opening eyelids of the morn Upon a bashful rose."

Large Number of Playwrights.--Beaumont and Fletcher were only two of a large number of dramatists who were born in the age of Elizabeth, and who, with few exceptions, lived into the second quarter of the seventeenth century. Their work was the result of earlier Elizabethan impulses, and it is rightly considered a part of the great dramatic movement of the Elizabethan age. The popularity of the drama continued to attract many authors who in a different age might have produced other forms of literature.

George Chapman (1559?-1634), who is best known for his fine translation of Homer's _Iliad_, turned dramatist in middle life, but found it difficult to enter into the feelings of characters unlike himself. His best two plays, _Bussy D'Ambois_ and _The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois_, are tragedies founded on French history. Thomas Middleton, gifted in dramatic technique and dialogue and noted for his comedy of domestic manners, was the author of _Michaelmas Term_, _A Trick to Catch the Old One_, _The Changeling_ (in collaboration with William Rowley, 1585?-1640?). John Marston (1576?-1634) wrote _Antonio and Mellida_, a blood and thunder tragedy, and collaborated with Jonson and Chapman to produce _Eastward Hoe_, an excellent comic picture of contemporary life. _The Shoemaker's Holiday_ of Thomas Dekker (1570?-1640) is also a good comedy of London life and manners.

Philip Ma.s.singer (1584-1640), a later collaborator with Fletcher, wrote _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_, a play very popular in after times. Thomas Heywood (1572?-1650), one of the most prolific dramatists, claimed to have had "either an entire hand or at the least a main finger," in two hundred and twenty plays. His best work is _A Woman Killed with Kindness_, a domestic drama that appealed to the middle cla.s.ses.

A Tragic Group.--Three dramatists: John Webster (1602-1624), Cyril Tourneur (1575?-1626), and John Ford (1586-1640?), had a love for the most somber tragedy. In tragic power, Webster approaches nearest to Shakespeare. Webster's greatest play, _The d.u.c.h.ess of Malfi_ (acted in 1616), and _The White Devil_, which ranks second, show the working of a master hand, but Webster's genius comes to a focus only in depicting the horrible. He loves such gloomy metaphors as the following:--

"You speak as if a man Should know what fowl is _coffined_ in a baked meat Afore you cut it open."

Tourneur's _The Atheist's Tragedy_ is in Webster's vein, but far inferior to _The d.u.c.h.ess of Malfi_.