Volpone; Or, The Fox
of actual life be it observed in passing); and, placing these typified
traits in juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck the
spark of comedy. Downright, as his name indicates, is "a plain squire";
Bobadill's humour is that of the braggart who is incidentally, and with
delightfully comic effect, a coward; Brainworm's humour is the finding
out of things to the end of fooling everybody: of course he is fooled
in the end himself. But it was not Jonson's theories alone that made the
success of "Every Man in His Humour." The play is admirably written
and each character is vividly conceived, and with a firm touch based on
observation of the men of the London of the day. Jonson was neither in
this, his first great comedy (nor in any other play that he wrote),
a supine classicist, urging that English drama return to a slavish
adherence to classical conditions. He says as to the laws of the old
comedy (meaning by "laws," such matters as the unities of time and place
and the use of chorus): "I see not then, but we should enjoy the same
licence, or free power to illustrate and heighten our invention as they
[the ancients] did; and not be tied to those strict and regular forms
which the niceness of a few, who are nothing but form, would thrust upon
us." "Every Man in His Humour" is written in prose, a novel practice
which Jonson had of his predecessor in comedy, John Lyly. Even the word
"humour" seems to have been employed in the Jonsonian sense by Chapman
before Jonson's use of it. Indeed, the comedy of humours itself is only
a heightened variety of the comedy of manners which represents life,
viewed at a satirical angle, and is the oldest and most persistent
species of comedy in the language. None the less, Jonson's comedy
merited its immediate success and marked out a definite course in which
comedy long continued to run. To mention only Shakespeare's Falstaff
and his rout, Bardolph, Pistol, Dame Quickly, and the rest, whether in
"Henry IV." or in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," all are conceived in
the spirit of humours. So are the captains, Welsh, Scotch, and Irish
of "Henry V.," and Malvolio especially later; though Shakespeare never
employed the method of humours for an important personage. It was not
Jonson's fault that many of his successors did precisely the thing
that he had reprobated, that is, degrade "the humour: into an oddity of
speech, an eccentricity of manner, of dress, or cut of beard. There was
an anonymous play called "Every Woman in Her Humour." Chapman wrote "A
Humourous Day's Mirth," Day, "Humour Out of Breath," Fletcher later,
"The Humourous Lieutenant," and Jonson, besides "Every Man Out of His
Humour," returned to the title in closing the cycle of his comedies in
"The Magnetic Lady or Humours Reconciled."
With the performance of "Every Man Out of His Humour" in 1599, by
Shakespeare's company once more at the Globe, we turn a new page in
Jonson's career. Despite his many real virtues, if there is one feature
more than any other that distinguishes Jonson, it is his arrogance; and
to this may be added his self-righteousness, especially under criticism
or satire. "Every Man Out of His Humour" is the first of three "comical
satires" which Jonson contributed to what Dekker called the poetomachia
or war of the theatres as recent critics have named it. This play as a
fabric of plot is a very slight affair; but as a satirical picture
of the manners of the time, proceeding by means of vivid caricature,
couched in witty and brilliant dialogue and sustained by that righteous
indignation which must lie at the heart of all true satire--as a
realisation, in short, of the classical ideal of comedy--there had been
nothing like Jonson's comedy since the days of Aristophanes. "Every Man
in His Humour," like the two plays that follow it, contains two kinds
of attack, the critical or generally satiric, levelled at abuses
and corruptions in the abstract; and the personal, in which specific
application is made of all this in the lampooning of poets and others,
Jonson's contemporaries. The method of personal attack by actual
caricature of a person on the stage is almost as old as the drama.
Aristophanes so lampooned Euripides in "The Acharnians" and Socrates in
"The Clouds," to mention no other examples; and in English drama this
kind of thing is alluded to again and again. What Jonson really did,
was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual
burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions
and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his
uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no
wonder that Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal
quarrels with his fellow-authors. The circumstances of the origin of
this 'poetomachia' are far from clear, and those who have written on the
topic, except of late, have not helped to make them clearer. The origin
of the "war" has been referred to satirical references, apparently to
Jonson, contained in "The Scourge of Villainy," a satire in regular form
after the manner of the ancients by John Marston, a fellow playwright,
subsequent friend and collaborator of Jonson's. On the other hand,
epigrams of Jonson have been discovered (49, 68, and 100) variously
charging "playwright" (reasonably identified with Marston) with
scurrility, cowardice, and plagiarism; though the dates of the epigrams
cannot be ascertained with certainty. Jonson's own statement of the
matter to Drummond runs: "He had many quarrels with Marston, beat
him, and took his pistol from him, wrote his "Poetaster" on him; the
beginning[s] of them were that Marston represented him on the stage."*
* The best account of this whole subject is to be
found in the edition of "Poetaster" and "Satiromastrix" by
J. H. Penniman in "Belles Lettres Series" shortly to appear.
See also his earlier work, "The War of the Theatres," 1892,
and the excellent contributions to the subject by H. C. Hart
in "Notes and Queries," and in his edition of Jonson, 1906.
Here at least we are on certain ground; and the principals of the
quarrel are known. "Histriomastix," a play revised by Marston in 1598,
has been regarded as the one in which Jonson was thus "represented on
the stage"; although the personage in question, Chrisogonus, a poet,
satirist, and translator, poor but proud, and contemptuous of the common
herd, seems rather a complimentary portrait of Jonson than a caricature.
As to the personages actually ridiculed in "Every Man Out of His
Humour," Carlo Buffone was formerly thought certainly to be Marston,
as he was described as "a public, scurrilous, and profane jester," and
elsewhere as the "grand scourge or second untruss [that is, satirist], of
the time" (Joseph Hall being by his own boast the first, and Marston's
work being entitled "The Scourge of Villainy"). Apparently we must now
prefer for Carlo a notorious character named Charles Chester, of whom
gossipy and inaccurate Aubrey relates that he was "a bold impertinent
fellow... a perpetual talker and made a noise like a drum in a room. So
one time at a tavern Sir Walter Raleigh beats him and seals up his mouth
(that is his upper and nether beard) with hard wax. From him Ben Jonson
takes his Carlo Buffone ['i.e.', jester] in "Every Man in His Humour"
['sic']." Is it conceivable that after all Jonson was ridiculing
Marston, and that the point of the satire consisted in an intentional
confusion of "the grand scourge or second untruss" with "the scurrilous
and profane" Chester?
We have digressed into detail in this particular case to exemplify the
difficulties of criticism in its attempts to identify the allusions in
these forgotten quarrels. We are on sounder ground of fact in recording
other manifestations of Jonson's enmity. In "The Case is Altered" there
is clear ridicule in the character Antonio Balladino of Anthony Munday,
pageant-poet of the city, translator of romances and playwright as well.
In "Every Man in His Humour" there is certainly a caricature of Samuel
Daniel, accepted poet of the court, sonneteer, and companion of men of
fashion. These men held recognised positions to which Jonson felt his
talents better entitled him; they were hence to him his natural enemies.
It seems almost certain that he pursued both in the personages of his
satire through "Every Man Out of His Humour," and "Cynthia's Revels,"
Daniel under the characters Fastidious Brisk and Hedon, Munday as
Puntarvolo and Amorphus; but in these last we venture on quagmire once
more. Jonson's literary rivalry of Daniel is traceable again and again,
in the entertainments that welcomed King James on his way to London, in
the masques at court, and in the pastoral drama. As to Jonson's personal
ambitions with respect to these two men, it is notable that he became,
not pageant-poet, but chronologer to the City of London; and that, on
the accession of the new king, he came soon to triumph over Daniel as
the accepted entertainer of royalty.
"Cynthia's Revels," the second "comical satire," was acted in 1600, and,
as a play, is even more lengthy, elaborate, and impossible than "Every
Man Out of His Humour." Here personal satire seems to have absorbed
everything, and while much of the caricature is admirable, especially in
the detail of witty and trenchantly satirical dialogue, the central idea
of a fountain of self-love is not very well carried out, and the persons
revert at times to abstractions, the action to allegory. It adds to our
wonder that this difficult drama should have been acted by the Children
of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, among them Nathaniel Field with whom Jonson
read Horace and Martial, and whom he taught later how to make plays.
Another of these precocious little actors was Salathiel Pavy, who died
before he was thirteen, already famed for taking the parts of old men.
Him Jonson immortalised in one of the sweetest of his epitaphs. An
interesting sidelight is this on the character of this redoubtable
and rugged satirist, that he should thus have befriended and tenderly
remembered these little theatrical waifs, some of whom (as we know) had
been literally kidnapped to be pressed into the service of the theatre
and whipped to the conning of their difficult parts. To the caricature
of Daniel and Munday in "Cynthia's Revels" must be added Anaides
(impudence), here assuredly Marston, and Asotus (the prodigal),
interpreted as Lodge or, more perilously, Raleigh. Crites, like
Asper-Macilente in "Every Man Out of His Humour," is Jonson's
self-complaisant portrait of himself, the just, wholly admirable, and
judicious scholar, holding his head high above the pack of the yelping
curs of envy and detraction, but careless of their puny attacks on his
perfections with only too mindful a neglect.
The third and last of the "comical satires" is "Poetaster," acted, once
more, by the Children of the Chapel in 1601, and Jonson's only avowed
contribution to the fray. According to the author's own account, this
play was written in fifteen weeks on a report that his enemies had
entrusted to Dekker the preparation of "Satiromastix, the Untrussing of
the Humorous Poet," a dramatic attack upon himself. In this attempt to
forestall his enemies Jonson succeeded, and "Poetaster" was an immediate
and deserved success. While hardly more closely knit in structure than
its earlier companion pieces, "Poetaster" is planned to lead up to
the ludicrous final scene in which, after a device borrowed from the
"Lexiphanes" of Lucian, the offending poetaster, Marston-Crispinus, is
made to throw up the difficult words with which he had overburdened his
stomach as well as overlarded his vocabulary. In the end Crispinus with
his fellow, Dekker-Demetrius, is bound over to keep the peace and never