Influence of Ben Jonson on English comedy, 1598-1642

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INFLUENCE OF BEN JONSON
ON ENGLISH COMEDY

1598-1642

BY

MINA KERR

DEAN or MILWAUKEE-DOWNER COLLEGE

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, AGENTS, NEW YORK

' 1912 Jo"

Copyright, 1912
BY THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

TR

1
K37

J. F. TAPLEY CO.
NEW YORK

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PREFACE

This study of Ben Jonson's influence on Elizabethan
and Restoration comedy has been made at the suggestion
of Professor Felix E. Schelling, and has been done in par
tial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doc
tor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. Much
suggestion and direction have been gained from Ward's
History of English Dramatic Literature, Schelling 's Eliza
bethan Drama, and Woodbridge's Studies in Jonson's Com
edy. The method pursued has consisted for the most part
of a first-hand examination and comparison of the plays
written by Jonson, his contemporaries and later followers.
The question of how far and in what way one man's work
has been influenced by that of another is always open to
dispute, and it is impossible to fix absolute limits. The
t. f]^np;er is that of finding what one is looking.
what actually exists. Many quotations
have been included, especially f fom 'minor writers, so as
to put before the reader as far as possible the materials
upon which judgment has been based.

I desire to express my gratitude to Professor Felix E.
Schelling of the University of Pennsylvania for his wise
counsel and gracious encouragement during the preparation
of this monograph, and for the many valuable suggestions
he has given out of his broad and minute knowledge of the
history and content of Elizabethan drama.

M. K.

Milwaukee-Downer College,
December, 1911.

CONTENTS

Chapter PAGE

I. The Character of Jonson's Comedy 1

II. The Influence of Jonson's Comedy on that of His Immedi

ate Contemporaries 18

III. Nathaniel Field and Richard Brome in Relation to

Jonson 52

IV. Other " Sons of Ben " in English Comedy before the Clos

ing of the Theaters in 1642 76

V. Conclusion .' 120

Bibliography 125

Index 128

"But all so clear, and led by Keason's flame,
As but to stumble in her sight were shame;
These I will honor, love, embrace, and serve,
And free it from all question to preserve.
So short you read my character, and theirs
I would call mine, to which not many stairs
Are asked to climb. First give me faith, who know
Myself a little ; I will take you so,
As you have writ yourself : now stand, and then,
Sir, you are Sealed of the Tribe of Ben."
An Epistle, Answering to One that
Asked to ~be sealed of the Tribe of Ben.

' ' Son, and my friend, I had not called you so
To me ; or been the same to you, if show,
Profit, or chance had made us: but I know, *
What, by that name, we each to other owe,
Freedom and truth ; with love from those begot :
Wise-crafts, on which the flatterer ventures not."
An Epigram to a Friend and Son.

The Influence of Ben Jonson
on English Comedy

CHAPTER I

THE CHARACTER OP JONSON 's COMEDY

The purpose in the present study is to follow but one of
*e, lines along which the work of Ben Jonson affected Eng
lish literature, to determine where, how, and to what ex
tent, his influence was felt in comedy as written by con
temporaries and later "Sons" between 1598, when Every
Man in His Humor was first acted, and the closing of the
theaters in 1642. It is helpful, first of all, to consider
what in Jonson gave him the power of attaining the posi
tion of importance which he holds in English dramatic
history, and necessary to define clearly what were the dis
tinguishing characteristics of his comedy, in order to set
up criteria by which to judge the presence or absence of
his influence.

The nature of Jonson 's personality and the character
of his art were both such as would inevitably draw to him
many loyal followers. His. first essay in the .comedy of
humors marked him out at once as a writer of originality
and power among his contemporary craftsmen. Some of
these opposed what was plainly the blazing of a new path
in English comedy, but others applauded enthusiastically,
and soon showed in their own work evidences of approval
and acceptance of the new method. In his later years Jon
son was surrounded by a group of -young disciples, who

2 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

were proud to be "Sealed of the Tribe of Ben," and who
looked upon the patriarch of their clan both as chief of
good comrades and as supreme authority in matters of
literature. Whether in comedy, tragedy, masque, epi
gram, or occasional verse, in matter or form, he was re
garded as a dictator, so that both during his own age and
during the following century we find unmistakable and
effective traces of his influence.

There are several reasons why Ben Jonson had such
position and power in establishing a new school. First of
all, _ Ms. .art and workmanship were thoroughly self-con-
• scious, and he had fixed, positive theories about literature.
These he talked continuously and vociferously for forty
years . and explained clearly in his inductions, prefaces,
prologues, epilogues, and Discoveries, so that there could
be no doubt as to what he believed on each and every ques
tion of literary art. With his first play he set forth defi
nite dramatic methods, and for the most part he made his
practice to accord with his theories. Further, whatever
idea or theory he adopted received his vigorous, whole
hearted support ; and hence his statements of literary creed
were positive assertions, free from the numerous modifica
tions and exceptions that may be necessary for complete
ness and the most exact truth, but which, nevertheless,
tend to involve in uncertainty those who would imitate.
Jonson 's theory and art were, therefore, such as could be
readily laid hold of and patterned after. Again, in lit
erary as in other fashions originality and novelty act as
powerful forces in gaining followers, and Jonson in his
>iirst comedy of humors made a deliberate innovation, un-
Idertaking what had never before been done in English
\£rama. In the prologue to Every Man in His Humor he
foretold a reaction from romantic and idealistic to classic
and realistic drama, and declared that he would portray

CHARACTER OF JONSON'S COMEDY 3

"deeds and language such as men do use,
And persons such as comedy would choose,
When she would show an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes."

Certainly the personality of this remarkable man had
much to do with the desire of those who knew and loved
him to follow along the same paths in literature. He won
loyal friends and as strong enemies in his personal life,
enthusiastic followers in his particular form of art and as
decided opponents. That he had a warm heart and a rare
capacity for friendship or that his relations to people were
marked by unusual intensity and sincerity, no one can
doubt who has read his various dedications, poems, and the
Discoveries. His very weaknesses were the weaknesses of
strength, and he was a most human mixture of qualities, —
forceful but intolerant, warm in praise but self-assertive,
clear in thought and speech but arrogant, just in judgment
but imprudent, never passive or affected but always pas
sionate and sincere — a man toward whom others could not
remain indifferent, but whom they must either love or hate
warmly.

At the various taverns of London, Jonson reigned among
his fellows and later his disciples by right of character,
wit and learning. Of the early days at the Mermaid,
Beaumont wrote in a letter to Jonson :

1 'what things have we seen,
Done at the Mermaid! heard words that
Have been so nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whom they came,
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest."

The merry feasts of wit and laughter that took place later
in the famous Apollo Room of the Devil Tavern at Tern-

4 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

pie Bar and in other public houses of the day, Herrick
celebrates in his well-known verse :

"Ah Ben!

Say how or when

Shall we thy guests
Meet at those lyric feasts

Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the Triple Tun?
Where we such clusters had,
As made us nobly wild, not mad;

And yet each verse of thine
Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine."

The real character of these meetings we may judge best,
however, from the Leges Convivales written by Ben Jon-
son himself and engraved in marble over the chimney in
the Apollo Room. There are described the guests invited
to join the happy company:

"Let the learned and witty, the jovial and gay,
The generous and honest, compose our free state, ' '

There we learn that, while the ordinary theater of the day
was no fit place for women, the conduct of the Apollo Club
was such that they could be freely admitted to its meet
ings:

"And the more to exalt our delight whilst we stay,
Let none be debarred from his choice female mate. ' '

Among the other rules laid down were these :

* ' Let the contests be rather of books than of wine.
Let the company be neither noisy nor mute.

CHARACTER OF JONSON'S COMEDY 5

Let none of things serious, much less of divine,
When belly and head's full, profanely dispute."
"Let raillery be without malice or heat."
"Let argument bear no unmusical sound,
Nor jars interpose, sacred friendship to grieve."1

The Leges Convivales testify that the Apollo Club aimed to
hold sacred things sacred, honor women, exclude malicious
speech, respect learning, prize friendship, and they con
vince us that the meetings were characterized by true no
bility of tone. It was surely through these happy gather
ings that many comrades and "Sons of Ben," learning to
understand and admire the character and art of Jonson,
were moved to accept him as master in their own literary
attempts.

Lowell, in his essay on Shakespeare Once More, asserts
that "no poet of the first class has ever left a school, be
cause his imagination is incommunicable;" that "you may
detect the presence of a genius of the second class in any
generation by the influence of his mannerism, for that, be
ing an artificial thing, is capable of reproduction. " 2 It is
true that the highest poetic gift of imagination or what
Lowell calls "aeration of the understanding by the imagi
nation" can not be imitated. We must not look in Jon-
son's dramatic work, nor in that of his followers as influ
enced by him, for essential charm, for deep tenderness,
for sublime tragedy and pathos, for the inevitability of
the very greatest poetry. Many truly great qualities we
may find. Jonson 's place is not, as Swinburne puts it,
among the gods of harmony and creation in English lit
erature, but among the giants of energy and invention,
where he stands supreme.

The ethical aim Jonson placed foremost in his theory of

i Jonson, Works, ed. by Gifford, 3 vols., Ill, 364, 365.
= Lowell, Works, Riverside ed., Ill, 38.

6 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

comedy. He was frankly, consciously didactic, and his
whole dramatic career was a battle against vice and folly.
From beginning to end, he assumed the attitude of a cen
sor and reformer, purposing always through the laughter
of comedy to improve morals and correct taste. It is pos
sible to quote many passages from the plays where the
moral intent is plainly stated. Asper in Every Man out
of His Humor, representing Jonson himself, declares:

"with an armed and resolved hand,
I'll strip the ragged follies of the time
Naked as at their birth.

I fear no mood stamped in a private brow,
When I am pleased t' unmask a public vice." s
" Well I will scourge those apes,
And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror,
As large as is the stage whereon we act;
Where they shall see the time's deformity
Anatomized in every nerve and sinew
With constant courage, and contempt of fear."4

The prologue to Volpone defends the poet

"Whose true scope, if you would know it,
In all his poems still hath been this measure,
To mix profit with your pleasure."5

Again, the prologue to The Alchemist asserts that

"this pen

Did never aim to grieve, but better men ;
Howe'er the age he lives in doth endure
The vices that she breeds, above their cure.

s Jonson, Works, I, 65; Induction.
., I, 67.
., I, 336.

CHARACTER OP JONSON 'S COMEDY 7

But when the wholesome remedies are sweet,
And in their working gain and profit meet,
He hopes to find no spirit so much diseased,
But will with such fair correctives be pleased. ' ' *

Even in the masques Jonson does not forget ''that rule
of the best artist, to suffer no object of delight to pass
without his mixture of profit and example. ' ' T His
method of teaching was by dramatic satire. Like Swift,
Carlyle, and all great satirists, Jonson was an ardent
idealist, whose spirit was so deeply stirred by the con
trast between his ideals and the actualities around him
that in passionate bitterness he sought to scourge men out
of their follies and vices, and to spur them by negative
teaching to knowledge and virtue.

Jonson was a classicist, and his comedies were written
under the guidance of "tart Aristophanes, neat Terence,
witty Plautus." He was thoroughly familiar with Greek
and Latin literature, and whether the' need were in plot,
character, description, or philosophical maxim, there was
no lack of material from classical sources stored up in
the poet's mind ready to be poured forth. His was what
Dr. Schelling calls an "assimilative classicism.'* What
he read he made so completely his own that his illustra
tions and quotations from the classics form an organic
part of his writings. Symonds says of him: "He held
the prose writers and poets of antiquity in solution in his
spacious memory. He did not need to dovetail or weld
his borrowings into one another; but rather, having fused
them in his own mind, poured them plastically forth into
the moid of thought. ' ' 8 However, as Jonson himself
asserts both in the prologue to Every Man out of His

« Jonson, Works, II, 4.

'Ibid., Ill, 45.

• Symonds, Ben Jonson, 52.

8 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

Humor and in the Discoveries, he was no slavish follower
of the ancients, but always so broadened classical theories
as to make them applicable to English conditions. The
artistic logic and careful construction as well as the finish
and restraint of his comedies were due in large measure
to his understanding knowledge of the spirit and form
of classic comedy.

He was a scholar-poet and his learning embraced not
only Latin and Greek knowledge but also Renaissance
lore and literature, and even extended to the arts and
sciences of his own day. Whether the subject were
alchemy, cookery, botany, or cosmetics he wrote with
equal fullness and ease. Furthermore, he Avas the
only playwright of the times who sought to avoid anachro
nisms and had conscientious regard for historical accuracy.
Symonds closes his study of Jonson with this tribute:
"What we most marvel at in his writings, is the prodigious
brain- work of the man, the stuff of constant and inex
haustible cerebration they contain. Moreover, we shall
not be far wrong in saying that, of all the English poets
of the past, he alone, with Milton and Gray, deserves the
name of a great and widely learned scholar. ' ' 9

With this weight of learning, Jonson naturally does not
rule in the kingdom of the heart but in the realm of the
intellect. The appeal in all his dramas is directly and
fundamentally intellectual. He cares to win commenda
tion only from "the judicious." In the prologue to
Cynthia's Revels, he describes the audience sought by his
muse:

"Pied ignorance she neither loves nor fears.
Nor hunts she after popular applause,
Or foamy praise, that drops from common jaws :
The garland that she wears, their hands must twine,
» Symonds, Ben Jonson, 198.

CHARACTER OF JONSON'S COMEDY 9

Who can both censure, understand, define,
What merit is."10

The Staple of News is referred

"To scholars that can judge and fair report
The sense they hear, above the vulgar sort
Of nut crackers, that only come for sight." u

Jonson deliberately chose to make supreme the things of
the understanding, hence, the subordination of the love
motive throughout his dramas. We must not seek from
him tender romance or beautiful love story. Perhaps he
was criticised for disregard of this element, so universally
dear to men and women, and was making reply in his
verse in The Forest, Why I Write not of Love:

1 1 Some Act of Love 's bound to rehearse,
I thought to bind him in my verse :
Which when he felt, Away, quoth he,
Can poets hope to fetter me ?
It is enough, they once did get
Mars and my mother, in their net :
I wear not these my wings in vain.
With which he fled me ; and again,
Into my rhymes could ne 'er be got
By any art: then wonder not
That since, my numbers are so cold,
When Love is fled, and I grow old. ' ' 12

Hence, too, the lack of feeling for nature, the entire ab
sence of that background of English fields and woods that
we find in Shakespeare or Heywood. Jonson, as he him-

10 Jonson, Works, I, 148.

11 lUd., II, 278.

12 Ibid,, III, 262.

10 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

self well knew, was not "nature's child," and we must not
expect in his plays the scent of the violet by a mossy stone
nor the soft lights and shadows of the Forest of Arden.

London was the cradle of Jonson's genius, and London
is the scene of all his principal comedies except Volpone,
and even that is the outcome of his studies of London life.
He knew the court and the city and could give transcripts
from high life and low life. He takes us to the taverns,
the private houses, the fairs, the market-places, the trades
men's shops, the courts of justice, the theaters, the aisles
of St. Paul's, and portrays to us what was said and done
in the public and private life of contemporary London.
The prologue to The Alchemist declares:

"Our scene is London, 'cause we would make known,
No country 's mirth is better than our own. ' ' 13

Jonson with keen vision noted every detail of the world
around him that might contribute to the "satirically
heightened picture of contemporary life" that it was the
especial object of his art to produce.

Chaucer, Jonson's great predecessor in the study and por
trayal of London life, was a product of the early Renais
sance, and Shakespeare, who alone among contemporary
writers was his equal as an observer, expressed fully and
richly the spirit of the later Renaissance. Jonson himself
was at every point the complete antithesis of all that the
Renaissance stood for. Chaucer and Shakespeare looked
on the life around them with frank wonder, wide sympathy,
and spontaneous enthusiasm of heart; while Jonson's at
titude was always that of careful scrutiny, judicial regard
for ethical values, and unfailing self-consciousness. Where
they sought simply to know and picture the world as they
found it, their senses ever alert for beauty and the highest
is Jonson, Works, U, 4,

CHARACTER OF JONSON'S COMEDY 11

truth implicit in beauty, he could never free himself wholly
from a bookishness that came often perilously near pedan
try, an overweening regard for authority, and an attitude of
assumed censorship. He was the chief representative of
1 'the school of conscious effort"14 in Elizabethan drama,
with all that that implies of faults and virtues. A simple,
unaffected, purely artistic picture of contemporary life we
do not get from him.

As has often been pointed out, the emphasis in Jonson's .
comedies is on the characters rather than the plots. With
his first play he gave the portrayal of character a new im
portance in English comedy. He seems to have conceived
his persons, then invented plots to bring out their predomi
nant qualities from as many different aspects as possible.
In the typical Jonsonian comedy, as Miss Woodbridge has
carefully demonstrated, the dramatis persona can always
be, divided into two groups, a large group of victims and
a small group of victimizers, or those possessed by folly and
thQse possessed of guile.15 Further, the characters do not
grow or become, but remain fully determined and station
ary; hence we have revelation and not development. This
is a natural outcome of Jonson's regard for unity of time
and his restriction of the action of a play within twenty-
four hours.

Jonson's treatment of character is original and peculiar V
in^ his use of humors, and his emphasis of both superficial '
peculiarities and eccentricities that strike into character
itself. He makes use of oddities of dress or manner, but
he also goes deeper to individual twists and imperfections.
"Among the English," Dryden says, "by humor is meant
some extravagant habit, passion, or affection, particular to
some one person, by the oddness of which he is immediately
distinguished from the rest of men ; which being lively and

"Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, I, p. XXXII.
IB Woodbridge, Studies in Jonson's Comedy, 42.

12 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

naturally represented, most frequently begets that mali
cious pleasure in the audience which is testified by laugh
ter; as all things which are deviation from the common
customs are ever the aptest to produce it. ... The
description of these humors, drawn from the knowledge
and observation of particular persons, was the peculiar
genius and talent of Ben Jonson."16 However, no de
scription of humors can be better than that which Jonson
himself gives in Every Man out of His Humor:

"As when some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his effects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a humor.
But that a rook, by wearing a pyed feather,
The cable hatband, or the three-piled ruff,
A yard of shoe-tye, or the Switzer's knot
On his French garters, should affect a humor!
0, it is more than most ridiculous. ' ' 17

Jonson is not always true to his theory here, and in spite of
what he says, a humor is often a superficiality and a con
scious or unconscious affectation.

He creates each of his persons, then, out of a main trait
or eccentricity which rules that person in all he does and
says. Such a method leads to an emphasis of the type,
and has, on the one hand, the danger of personal satire
in too great concreteness, and on the other, hand, that of
allegory in too great abstraction.18 Into each of these ex
tremes Jonson fell at times. Here is that same tendency
to abstraction which has reappeare.d now and again from
the moralities straight on down through English drama.

i« Dryden, Essays, ed. by Ker, I, 85, 86.

17 Jonson, Works, I, 67; Induction.

is Woodbridge, Studies in Jonson's Comedy, 33.

CHARACTER OF JONSOX'S COMEDY 13

The very names of Jonson 's personages are allegorical^ and
aim to set forth a predominant characteristic. He dwells
on one motive presented under many conditions, and his
characters in varied relations do just what we should logic-
dly_j!xpect ; thus, while they gain in emphasis and dis
tinctness, they lose in reality and hnTT^nnassT for people
are mixtures of motives and by no means always act logic
ally in accordance with what we should expect from one
characteristic that we happen to know. It is a detached
rather than a sympathetic view of human nature. However,
w.e do get clear conceptions of Jonson 's personages, and re
member distinctly such creations as Moscat Face, or Zeal-
of-the-Land Busy. The types, too, are often more than
local and immediate; they are universal, such as we our
selves meet in contemporary life. Jonson attains the same
kind of reality that Bunyan gives us in Pilgrim's Progress.
Here we have the highest development of the allegorical
method in the presentation of character. Our attention
is fixed upon a quality embodied in a person rather than
upon the person possessing a certain quality. For such
treatment of character there is a legitimate place in litera
ture, for we often meet people in daily life who impress
us by their embodiment of self-assertion or of testiness, of
jealousy or of hypocrisy, long before we feel their human
personality.

What are some of the prominent types of character in
Jonson 's comedies? We find recurring again and again
the denunciation of those who practice particular forms
of vice and folly. Alchemists are satirized in the masque
Mercury Vindicated as well as in The Alchemist; the

^

ship of Mammon is exposed over and over in Volpone. The
Alchemist, The Staple of News, and The Magnetic Lady;
the voluptuary is painted in unsparing pictures in Volpone_
and The Alchemist; the hypocrisy and canting phraseology
of the Puritans are held up to ridicule in Bartholomew Fair

14 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

and The Alchemist. We find masterful portraits of the
clever brainy rascal in Mosca, Face, Subtle or Brainworm ;
for Jonson had decided admiration and sympathy for the in
tellect it takes to make a thorough-going rascal. Simple
tons, town and country gulls, appear in various aspects in
Stephen, Matthew, La-Foole, John Daw, Fitzdotterel, Kas-
tril, and Cokes, and these seem to have affected vividly the
imagination of later playwrights. Bobadil, the supreme
representative of the bragging, swaggering, disbanded sol
dier living by his wits, is well seconded by Tucca and Shift.
The projectors, Meercraft and Engine, are the ancestors
of a long line of descendants in later plays. Sir Politick
Would-be of Volpone and the various intelligencers in The
Staple of News represent those who make a business of dis
tributing sensational news drawn largely from their own
imagination. In Fastidious Brisk, Fungoso and Amorphus,
Jonson satirizes the affected courtier and fool of fashion
toward whom he always felt the most unmitigated con
tempt. Such are the types that recur most frequently in
Jonson 's comedies and most readily invite imitation on the
part of his disciples and followers.

The plots are in almost all cases Jonson 's own invention.
He starts with the characters, prepares situations to pre
sent these as clearly and fully as possible, and then com
bines the situations in plots. There is much episodic
humor-study in the earlier plays, where the consideration
of a person's peculiarities is an end in itself. The plots
are series of closely woven intrigues and skillful tricks,
planned and executed by some of the characters as in
triguers against the others as victims. We *are sometimes
bewildered by the multitude of persons, incidents and situ
ations placed before us without a clear and unifying line
of interest in Every Man out of His Humor, Cynthia's
Revels, or The Poetaster. The complexity, however, as
Miss Woodbridge has shown, is really on the surface and

CHARACTER OF JONSON'S COMEDY 15

the underlying plan is very simple.19 The critics whp cen
sure Jonson for lack of constructive power must form their
judgment from the above plays rather than from his ma
ture work and those marvels of logical construction, Vol-
pone, The Silent Woman, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew
Fair. Here every individual trick is woven into the cen
tral line of intrigue so that we get complete unity of im
pression. It was Coleridge who declared The Alchemist
to have one of the three best plots in existence.

The unities of time and place are regarded in that Jon-
son confines his action within the limits of twenty-four
hours and within the boundaries of one city or town. The
unity of action is perfectly preserved in Volpone or The
Alchemist through all the schemes and incidents, but in
Cynthia's Revels or The Poetaster is kept only by means of
a uniform tone in the comic element, the centralization of
comic episodes in the group of chief intriguers, and the ar
rangement of having all the persons know one another.20
The action is always the inevitable and strictly logical re
sult of the motives presented in character. The plays have
no central climax, no distinct rising and falVimr aftion hni
jjush on through a rework nf tricks to the last act, where
results are disclosed. Jonson likes to make the discovery
of the trickery seem unavoidable in the latter part of the
fourth act, as in Volpone, The Alchemist, or Bartholomew
Fair, then on the very appearance of failure build up a
new success before the final exposure.

There are several minor matters in which Jonson 's
usage was original and had considerable effect on other
dramatists. His prologues and epilogues were marked by a
novel independence of attitude toward the public and a
definite announcement of moral and artistic purposes.
The induction, where two or more persons discuss the play

i» Woodbridge, Studies in Jonson's Comedy, 42.
54.

16 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

to be given and expound opinions on things in general, is
a favorite Jonsonian device to forestall criticism and
set forth the author's own views. Several plays have a
character whose especial function is to comment on the
process of the action and serve as what Miss Woodbridge
calls a " demonstrator" — such are Macilente in Every Man
out of His Humor and Crites in Cynthia's Revels. In the
presentation of character, one personage is frequently made
to describe another and prepare the way for his entrance
upon the stage. This is an indirect and expository method
of getting quickly before the audience prevailing char
acteristics by what others say rather than by what the per
son does and says himself. Jonson did much to make pop
ular in English comedy of the time a number of words par
ticularly applicable to his plots and types of character,
such as " humor," "gull," "cozen," "engine," "pro
ject," or "device," and also many oaths, terms of pro
testation, and slang phrases, current in the street language
of the day.

As to form, sometimes we find blank verse and prose al
most equally divided, as in Every Man in His Humor and
Every Man out of His Humor; sometimes blank verse alone,
as in The Alchemist, or prose alone, as in Bartholomew's
Fair; and again, the two forms combined in varying propor
tions. A writer's general characteristics in literary temper,
construction, style, are usually repeated in his versification,
and in Jonson we find no exception. His blank verse is
marked by regularity and dignity, restraint and careful
workmanship. His ear was atune to regularity and his
lines are almost absolutely decasyllabic. The couplet is
frequently used. Jonson 's verse, as compared with
Fletcher's, is characterized by a certain rigidity, yet he
believed in freedom of phrasing and there are many run on
lines. Here, his influence on the drama of his time was not
great, because the tendency in dramatic blank verse was
0-

CHARACTER OF JONSON 'S COMEDY 17

toward greater freedom and fluency, and also because
comedy was more and more making use of prose.21

"We have before us now the distinguishing features of
Jonson's comedy of humors. The foremost innovation is
the construction of personages in accordance with the
theory of humors so as to bring out ruling peculiarities of
conduct or character. Jonson, assuming a critical and ju
dicial attitude, insisted on an underlying, ethical intent,
and gave a new emphasis and importance to jnoral^atirE
against contemporary ToTrie^^n3^^cgs[ Further, his
comedy stands lor constructive excellence, constant regard
for the demands of form, and masterly control of the in
tricacies of intrigue. A background of classical learning
and a high appreciation of the rules of classic comedy, vig
orous realistic portrayal of contemporary life, self-con
sciousness on the part of the writer, a large expository
element, and an original use of prologue, epilogue, induc
tion, and commentator on the progress of the action, are also
characteristic of the Jonsonian comedy. In the following
chapters we shall consider how far Jonson 's immediate con
temporaries and later "Sons" were influenced by these
characteristics of his comedy.

21 Schelling, Eastward Hoe and The Alchemist, Belles-Lettres
Series, p. XXIX.

CHAPTER II

THE INFLUENCE OF JONSON'S COMEDY ON THAT OF HIS IM
MEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES

Jonson's comrade playwrights were affected by his
comedy of humors in a different way from his later dis
ciples and ' ' Sons. ' ' To the former, he was not a master but
a fellow-worker. They watched with interest his develop
ment of a new form of English comedy, chose out and as
similated to their own use what seemed to them valuable
or popularly pleasing. In their plays, therefore, we find
his influence to be general rather than particular. There
are several reasons for this. First of all, Chapman, Beau
mont, and the others were men of independent genius who
accepted no one writer as complete master; but, learning
from the various dramatists of the time where each had
attained greatest success, worked out individual methods
of their own. The prevailing spirit of Elizabethan drama
was romantic and most of Jonson's companions were too
thoroughly in touch with their time to conform to any great
degree to the classical ideals of Jonson's art. Indeed,
"the whole spirit of the contemporary drama, its careless
ness and ease, its amateurishness, its negligent construc
tion, its borrowings and pilferings, were alien to the prac
tice of his art, the first demands of which were originality
of design, conscious literary consistency and a professional
touch leading at times to mannerism. ' ' * Then, also, Jon-
son never met with uninterrupted and enthusiastic success
on the popular stage, and the Elizabethan playwrights

iSchelling, Eastward Hoe and The Alchemist, Belles-Lettres Se
ries, p. XXVII.

18

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES 19

were interested in producing not ''closet dramas" but
plays that would act and win approval from the ordinary
theater audience of the day.

An original and forceful writer must necessarily influ
ence his contemporaries to a greater or less degree, and a
careful study of all the Elizabethan dramatists would prob
ably result in the discovery of at least minor effects on
most of those who wrote after Jonson had produced his
first satirical pictures of contemporary life. But to trace
influences is a subtle process, and the searcher is in danger
of finding what he is looking for, rather than what ac
tually exists. We shall confine our study in this chapter
to the group of contemporary writers who show most
clearly effects of Jonson 's comedy: Chapman, Marston,
Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger and
Shirley, who, though their dramatic careers came a decade
later, belong here by virtue of their literary relations and
the character of their work. Two anonymous plays written
about 1600 also require consideration.

Although George Chapman was some fifteen years older
than Jonson, yet his first comedies, The Blind Beggar of
Alexandria and A Humorous Day's Mirth, were printed
in 1598 and 15991 and produced about the same time as
Every Man in His Humor. These men were kindred
spirits, and similarities in their work are assuredly in part
due to like qualities of temperament and like modes of
education rather than to direct influence. Both had read
deeply in classical literature and both had caught the
spirit of ancient learning. As Chapman was so much the
elder, perhaps Jonson was led by him to become a student in
the school of Terence and Plautus. Both adopted directly
and with mutual sympathy the classical ideal of comedy, its
intrigue, satire and conscious restraint; so that we find
them for the most part developing side by side rather than
as leader and follower. Both possessed genuine scholar-

20 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

skip, both used frequent classical allusions, both made not
an emotional but an intellectual appeal, and both were
characterized by conscious effort.

Jonson told Drummond of Hawthornden that Chapman
was "loved of him," and their correspondence shows that
they were life-long friends. In the Underwoods we find
lines of warm admiration addressed to "My worthy, and
Honored Friend, Master George Chapman."2 On both
Sejanus and Volpone Chapman wrote complimentary
verses. In the character of Virgil in The Poetaster Jonson
is supposed to portray Chapman. Henslowe 's Diary records
a payment of £1, Dec. 3, 1597, to Jonson for a plot; and
final payment Jan. 8, 1599, to Chapman for a tragedy on
' ' bengemens plotte. ' ' 3 Nor must we forget that they were
co-authors in Eastward Hoe and together were imprisoned
for references to Scotch fashions and knights considered
by a sensitive Scotchman as lacking in due respect. Close
personal associations and common literary tastes make us
expect likenesses in the comedies of Chapman and Jonson.

In The Blind Beggar of Alexandria* Chapman has writ
ten a comedy of the romantic type, making use of dis
guise and caring little for the discrimination of character,
without any satirical or ethical intent and with the use
of humor only in the general early Elizabethan sense.
When we turn to A Humorous Day's Mirth, we have the
word humor with the Jonsonian signification, several char
acters conceived in Jonson 's manner, a string of episodes
and a series of tricks such as make up the slight plots of
Every Man in His Humor and Every Man out of His
Humor. The Comedy of Humors was performed by the
Admiral's Men as a new play, May 11, 1597. Among the

2 Originally prefixed to Chapman's Translation of Hesiod's Works
and Days, 1618.

s Henslowe's Diary, ed. by W. W. Greg, II, 188, 199.
* Printed 1598. Fleay gives date of first production, 1596, I, 55.

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES 21

properties mentioned are hose for Verone's son and a cloak
for Labesha, these being characters in A Humorous Day's
Mirth; so it would seem that this play was first acted in
1597. Accepting 1^97 as the date of the production of A
Humorous Day's Mirth and 1598 as that of Every Man in
His Humor, we certainly have in the former a forerunner
of the comedy of humors developed by Jonson. Perhaps
Jonson and Chapman talked over together the idea of
"humorous" characters and at the same time were seeking
to work it out in plays. Lemot in A Humorous Day's
Mirth, assumes the position of demonstrator and on his
first appearance announces, ' ' thus will I sit, as it were, and
point out all my humorous companions. ' ' Blanuel, who is a
"complete ape, so long as the compliments of a gentleman
last"; Dowsecer, the young student possessed by melan
choly and misanthropy; and Florilla, the Puritan wife
whose vaunted Puritanism when put to the test proves to
be but superficial — these are personages of the humorous
type.

All Fools 5 has many points of likeness to Jonson 's best
comedy of humors. Swinburne, it will be remembered, con
siders this one of the finest comedies in the English lan
guage. Here is that same excellence of reflective wisdom
and practical philosophy of life that characterizes Volpone
or The Alchemist, and we find again and again such utter
ances as these:

"But he's the man indeed that hides his gifts,

And sets them not to sale in every presence ; ' '
' ' The bold and careless servant still obtains,

The modest and respective nothing gains ; ' '
1 ' Such an attendant then as smoke to fire,

Is jealousy to love ; better want both

Than have both."

o Printed 1605; Fleay considers The World Run on Wheels of
1599 the same play as All Fools, I, 57. Henslowe, II, 200, 203.

22 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

The plot is intricate and ingenious and shows that Chap
man had been taking lessons of Jonson's masters, Plautus
and Terence. The various schemes are remarkably well
managed, and Chapman attains here what is for him un
wonted success in threading his way clearly through the
many tricks to produce an effective climax and a unified
impression. As Ward remarks,6 there is some resemblance
in the conception of the plot to that of Every Man out of
His Humor in the fact that all the characters are finally
gulled. The theory and practice of gulling are set forth
very fully. This is put into the mouth of one of the char
acters :

"Nay, never shun it to be call'd a gull;

For I see all the world is but a gull ;

One man gull to another in all kinds:

A merchant to a courtier is a gull ;

A client to a lawyer is a gull ;

A married man to a bachelor, a gull;

A bachelor to a cuckold is a gull ;

All to a poet, or a poet to himself. ' ' 7

Rinaldo, the cynical scholar, is the central person who
sets all the other personages in motion and comments on
what takes place. The description of Dariotto, the fash
ion-struck courtier, is in perfect accord with Jonson's
scorn for that type of man and might have been written
of Fastidious Brisk:

1 ' 'Tis such a picked fellow, not a hair
About his whole bulk, but it stands in print.
Each pin hath his due place, not any point
But has his perfect tie, fashion, and grace ;
A thing whose soul is specially employed
In knowing where best gloves, best stockings, waistcoats
e Ward, II, 434.
7 Chapman, Works, ed. by R. H. Shepherd, 60; All Fools, II, 1.

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES 23

Curiously wrought, are sold; sacks milliners' shops

For all new tires and fashions, and can tell ye

What new devices of all sorts there are,

And that there is not in the whole Rialto

But one new fashion 'd waistcoat, or one nightcap." 8

Gostanzo, the over-careful father, as completely deceived
as the Elder Knowell in his son's knowledge of the world;
Cornelius, the upstart gentleman, jealous of his wife's ac
quaintance as was Kitely or Corvino; Pock, the physician,
who can lengthen or shorten cures at his discretion: these
are personages after Jonson's own heart. The play has
such a combination of prose and verse as we find in Jon-
son's earlier comedies, and makes frequent use of the vo
cabulary of roguery and gulling, "cozen," "device,"
"project," and the rest.

May Day and The Widow's Tears are also comedies of
intrigue and of humors, and both show in plot the influ
ence of Italian and Roman comedy. The former portrays
a representative of simple gulls in Innocentio who has a
great ambition to be introduced at an ordinary, and be
lieves as he is told, that there 's no prescription for gentility
but good clothes and impudence. In Quintiliano, who un
dertakes to coach the innocent Innocentio in the ways of
the world, appears again the bragging, swaggering captain.
The Widow's Tears gives us the bold Tharsalio winning
out by his unwavering self-confidence, but shows little if
any regard for the idea of humors in the construction of
character. In the last act there is a sharp satire of farcical
judicial proceedings in the person of the governor, who is
made to say, "in matters of justice, I am blind."

The Gentleman Usher and Monsieur D 'Olive are largely
romantic in plot and tone, but have also connection in their
personages with the comedy of humors. The former de-

s Chapman, Works, 72; All Fools, V, 1.

24 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

scribes Pogio as the never-failing bringer of ill news, and
portrays the humors of Bassiolo, the usher, who is dis
tinguished by "overweening thought of his own worth."
Monsieur D' Olive, in the person of the gentleman about
town, whose name gives title to the play, affords a most suc
cessful humorous study of a combination of wag and fool.
The tricks played on him are cleverly managed, and he is
amusingly and completely gulled. The manners of con
temporary high life are realistically portrayed in this play,
and as in all Chapman's comedies, we find frequent clas
sical allusions. The satire on Puritans and on the use of
tobacco in one of D 'Olive's speeches, is quite in the manner
of Jonson.9

The study of Chapman 's comedies makes evident marked
likenesses to Jonson 's in the use of tricks and intrigues
for effective gulling, in the production of characters of
humors, in the use of classical allusions, and in a satirical
portrayal of contemporary manners. Just how far these
likenesses are due to similar development and how far to
direct influence, it is impossible to determine.

Marston belongs with Chapman and Jonson as a scholarly
poet and member of the school of conscious effort.10 He
too had studied carefully the classic dramatists of Roman
comedy, and sought to conform to classic theories of art.
His scholarship like Jonson 's not only embraced ancient
learning but extended also to the knowledge of his own
time. In independence of the public taste of the day, as
sumption of censorship and invention of intrigue, Jonson
and Marston are also to be closely likened. "While Marston
prefers to give his comedies a foreign setting, and has laid
the scene of all except The Dutch Courtesan in Italy, yet
they are full of realistic touches from surrounding life.
That Jonson, Chapman and Marston were all three akin

» Chapman, Works, 123, 124; Monsieur D'Olive, II, 1.
loSchelling, Elizabethan Drama, I, pp. XXXII, XXXV.

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES 25

in temper and training and could work together in com
plete harmony is proved by the successful product of their
joint labors in Eastward Hoe.

Marston 's personal relations with Jonson were not those
of undisturbed good fellowship such as we found existing
between Chapman and Jonson. The earliest connection
that we know of is in the "War of the Theaters" " between
1598 and 1602, where Jonson and Marston were the chief
combatants. Almost all of the plays involved in the con
troversy were written by them and are full of personal
satire directed against each other. Jonson says in his
Conversations that "he had many quarrels with Marston,
beat him and took his pistol from him." This, as Cun
ningham notes,12 must have taken place before 1604, since
Eastward Hoe was acted in 1605, and before that time the
poets were certainly on friendly terms again. Moreover,
The Malcontent, printed in 1604, was dedicated to Jonson
in most flattering words: "Bemamino Jonsonio, poetae
elegantissimo, gravissimo, amico suo, candido et cordato,
Johannes Marston, musarum alumnus, asperam hanc suam
Thaliam, D. D."; 13 while the epilogue pays a fine compli
ment to him and refers to his forthcoming play The Fox.1*
Marston also wrote a commendatory epigram for the 1605
edition of Sejanus. All these facts show that Marston
came to have a high and hearty admiration for Jonson
and his work.

Before three plays, Antonio and Mellida, The Malcon
tent, and What You Will, Marston introduces preliminary
dialogues in inductions such as Jonson was particularly
fond of using.15 That to What You Will, where three

11 Schelling, I, 475-491 ; and Penniman, The War of the Theaters.

12 Jonson, Works, III, 479.
is Marston, Works, I, 197.
"Fleay, II, 79.

10 That to The Malcontent was added in the second edition and
was perhaps written by John Marston.

26 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

poets sit upon the stage and talk together, is decidedly
Jonsonian. Fleay thinks that Sir Signior Snuff, Monsieur
Mew and Cavaliero Blirt signify Armin, Jonson and Mid-
dleton.18 The comedies are full not only of classical al
lusions but also of direct quotations from Seneca, Martial,
Cicero, Ovid, and other of the Latin writers so constantly
appearing in Jonson 's work. Dignified, weighty reflections
on life are scattered here and there, as from The Fawn:

f l Thus few strike sail until they run on shelf,
The eye sees all things but his proper self;"17

or from The Malcontent:

"Mature discretion is the life of state;"18
"He ever is at home that's ever wise."19

The satire of Chapman is marked by a frank cynicism,
but that of Marston goes further even to bitterness. In
What You Will one of the characters tells us to "look for
the satire." In this play is described the seeming vanity
of the scholar's search for knowledge:

"Nay, mark, list. Delight,
Delight, my spaniel slept, whilst I baus'd leaves,
Toss'd o'er the dunces, pored on the old print
Of titled words, and still my spaniel slept.
Whilst I wasted lamp-oil, bated my flesh,
Shrunk up my veins, and still my spaniel slept.
And still I held converse with Zabarell,
Aquinus, Scotus, and the musty saw
Of antic Donate; still my spaniel slept.

i« Fleay, II, 76, 77.

IT Marston, Works, II, 204; The Fawn, IV, 1.

tU, I, 292; The Malcontent, IV, 2.

., I, 310; The Malcontent, V, 3.

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES 27

Still on went I ; first an sit anima,

Then, and it were mortal. 0 hold, hold ! at that

They're at brain-buffets, fell by the ears amain

Pell-mell together ; still my spaniel slept,

Then whatever 'twere corporeal, local, fix'd,

Extraduce; but whether 't had free will

Or no, tho philosophers

Stood banding factions all so strongly propp 'd,

I stagger 'd, knew not which was firmer part:

But thought, quoted, read, observed and pried,

Stuff 'd noting-books ; and still my spaniel slept.

At length he waked and yawned and by yon sky,

For aught I know he knew as much as I. " 20

Marston satirizes the current affectation of speech, " I
protest, ' ' 21 the habit of promiscuous kissing in greetings,22
the curiosity for sensational news,23 the cant of Puritan
ism,24 and many other customs and conditions of the time.
It was to Marston 's didactic satire that Jonson referred
in the Conversations when he said, "Marston wrote his
father-in-law's preachings, and his father-in-law his com
edies."

In characters, there is some slight application of the
theory of humors. The Duke of Ferrara, disguised as
Malevole, in The Malcontent, belongs to the type of "hu
morous" cynical railer found in Macilente. Sometimes
Marston makes the name indicate ruling quality as Male-
vole, or Malheureux in The Dutch Courtesan, or Simplicius
in What You Will. Coqueteur, "a prattling gull," and
Cocledemoy, "a knavishly witty city companion" in The
Dutch Courtesan, begin with Jonsonian conceptions but

20 Marston, Works, II, 363-364; What Ton Will, II, 2.
2i/6td., II, 346-347; What You Will, II, 1.
22/&id., II, 46-47; The Dutch Courtesan, III, 1.
23/6td., II, 42-43; The Dutch Courtesan, II, 3.
., II, 62; The Dutch Courtesan, III, 3.

28 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

are not developed in accord with the Jonsonian method.
In The Faivn, Gonzago, the weak Duke of Urbin, who is
filled with self-admiration and prides himself on his wit and
shrewdness, is completely gulled and made the instrument
of furthering the marriage he is seeking to prevent. The
Duke of Ferrara, disguised as Faunus, assumes here the
office of censor and exposes most effectively the follies and
vices of the other personages. Lampatho Doria, the bitter
satirist of What You Will, is identified by Marston with
himself, in the way that Jonson so often uses one of his
dramatic personages as a mouthpiece for his own utter
ances. Simplicius in this play is a simple gull who would
affect the ways of the fashionable world. Thus, minor
likenesses may be found between Marston and Jonson in
the characters created, but on the whole, Marston con
ceived and developed his personages according to the ro
mantic methods.

The Fawn 25 and What You Will 26 have more traces of
Jonson 's influence than the other comedies, not only in
conception of character but also in vocabulary. The Fawn
shows a marked increase in the use of Jonson 's favorite
oaths and terms for gulling over The Malcontent and The
Dutch Courtesan, while of all the comedies What You Will
has by far the greatest number of such words. This would
make us expect to find What You Will written about the
same time as The Fawn, perhaps a little later, after Mar
ston had worked with Jonson on Eastward Hoe and had
come to feel for him and his work a friendly admiration.

In scholarship, conscious effort, classicism, satire and
didacticism, Marston shows resemblances to Jonson, due,
it would seem, as in the case of Chapman, to like temper
and training even more than to direct influence. How
ever, in the use of inductions and in the conception of

23 Printed 1606, acted, according to Fleay, 1604; Chronicle, II, 79.
2« Printed 1607, acted, according to Fleay, 1601 ; Chronicle II, 76.

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES 29

character, there certainly was exerted some definite influ
ence.

Shakespeare and Jonson felt for each other warm friend
ship and hearty admiration. Although their purposes and
methods in writing plays were very different, yet as men
they were great enough and keen enough each to recognize
the value and power of the other's work. The earliest
trace of relationship is in the tradition that Shakespeare
read Every Man in His Humor, saw its worth and recom
mended it to his company, thus aiding Jonson at a time of
need to win his first great success on the stage. From 1598
on practically to the end of his career Jonson occasionally
wrote for Shakespeare's company.27 The earliest editions
of Every Man in His Humor and Sejanm include the name
of Shakespeare in the lists of actors. There is a possibility
that the two greatest dramatists of the age collaborated in
the first version of Sejanus. Jonson in the preface to the
quarto states 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 mine own, than to defraud so happy a genius of his right
by my loathed usurpation." Fleay tells us that the only
known writers at this date for the King's men, who acted
the play, were Wilkins, W. S., Shakespeare, and possibly
Tourneur. Of these, Shakespeare is the only one that
could have been the second pen alluded to, and, as he acted
one of the principal parts, he may have inserted or altered
scenes in which he himself appeared.28

Shakespeare stood sponsor for one of Jonson 's children.
Both frequented the Mermaid Tavern, and their wit com
bats, celebrated in Fuller's well-known description, must
have been wonderful to hear. There is another tradition

27 Fleay, Chronicle History of the London Stage, 157-160.
as Fleay, Shakespeare, 50.

30 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

that in 1616, just before Shakespeare's death, Jonson and
Drayton visited New Place in Stratford and that the three
poets had a merry meeting.29 Jonson 's own attitude to
ward his fellow-poet is fully expressed in the Lines pre
fixed to the folio of 1623, where with enthusiastic and
also discerning praise he addresses "My Shakespeare,"
"star of poets," "Sweet Swan of Avon," "the applause,
delight and wonder of our stage." "What he writes of
"my beloved Master "William Shakespeare" could come
only out of years of intimate association and affectionate
admiration. Again, in the Timber, he tells us that he
"loved the man," and honored his memory "on this side
idolatry."

The question here is, do Shakespeare's comedies show
any reflex influence of Jonson 's theory of humors?
Shakespeare's genius was highly adaptable. He had not,
like Jonson, fixed dramatic theories in accordance with
which he consistently contructed his plays; but, observant
of all artistic forms and methods of the time, he responded
quickly to the popular taste or interest of the moment,
adopted and assimilated to his own use whatever seemed
of value in making a good play and pleasing the public.
About 1600, Jonson 's comedy of humors and Middleton's
comedy of bare, even bitter, realism were winning great
applause on the Elizabethan stage. Surely it is not far
fetched to discover traces of Middleton's influence in the
tone of Measure for Measure and All's Well that Ends
Well. So also, in several groups of irregular humorists
and in one character of All's Well that Ends Well Shake
speare does show the effect of Jonson 's conception of
humor.

Koeppel indicates three places in Jonson 's comedies in
which he considers the situations to owe something to the
influence of Shakespeare: in The Case is Altered, the re-

2» Halliwell-Phillips, Outlines, 1898, II, 70.

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORAKIES 31

lation of Jaques and Rachel, the girl's flight to her lover,
and the miser's lament over his gold and girl, as bearing
direct relation to The Merchant of Venice; in The Poetaster,
the love-scene between Ovid and Julia, as a Romeo and
Juliet situation; in Epicoene, the duel episode between Sir
John Daw and Sir Amorous La-Foole as reminiscent of
that in Twelfth Night between Sir Andrew Aguecheek and
Viola.30 Miss Henry in her edition of Epicwne accepts
Twelfth Night as a source of Jonson's play and carefully
traces likenesses between the gulling of Daw and La-Foole
by Truewit and the duel between Sir Andrew and Viola
as urged on by Sir Toby.31 However, as Dr. Schelling
points out, Jonson was not in the habit of borrowing ideas
from contemporary dramatists,32 and these parallels are
far-fetched and decidedly doubtful.

Six plays written by Shakespeare between 1597 and 1602,
Henry IV, Parts I and II, Henry V, Merry Wives of Wind
sor, Twelfth Night and All's Well that Ends Wvll, show
the effects of Jonson's conception of humor. It was Shake
speare, if we are to trust the old tradition, that read Every
Man in His Humor, understood the greatness of its basic
idea, and prepared the way for its production in 159*8.
I Henry IV was acted in 1597, II Henry IV in 1598, Every
Man out of His Humor in 1599, and Henry V in 1599.
Thus the three historical plays coincide in time with the
two humor plays of Jonson. The comedies, Merry Wives,
Twelfth Night and All's Well, are dated between 1598 and
1602, when the humor idea was at the height of its novelty
and popularity.

In Henry IV Falstaff and his followers are unlike any
previous group of Shakespeare's characters. Touched as

soRoeppel, Quellen Studien, 2, 5-6, 11-12.

si Henry, Aurelia: Epicaene, Yale Studies in English, XXXI,
1906; Introduction, XXXV-XL.
32 Schelling, I, 540.

32 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

they are, humanized as they are, by Shakespeare's indi
vidual genius, yet humorous are they also in their concep
tion and portrayal. Falstaff, himself a ''trunk of hu
mors," forms the center of a group which, while the in
dividual members change somewhat, remains a source of
keen interest and enjoyment through Henry IV, Merry
Wives of Windsor and Henry V. Falstaff, * ' not only witty
in myself but the cause that wit is in other men," "huge
bombard of sack," and "vanity in years," believing "the
better part of valor is discretion, ' ' troubled with ' ' the dis
ease of not listening" when accusations are brought against
him, and having "more flesh than another man and there
fore more frailty, ' ' is not only the possessor of humors but
also the means of calling forth humors in others. Prince
Henry, away from the court in association with Falstaff,
declares : " I am now of all humors, that have showed them
selves humors since the old days of goodman Adam to the
pupilage of this present twelve o'clock at midnight."33

Poins and Peto, the Prince's attendants, Gadshill, and,
above all, Bardolph with his big purple nose, "Knight of
the burning lamp," in I Henry IV take part in the es
capades, sack festivities and wit combats of which Sir John
is the leader. Ancient Pistol takes the place of Gadshill
in II Henry IV, and here also are introduced Shallow, an
old acquaintance of Sir John's earlier years and now a
country justice whose humor is to prate of the wildness
of his youth, and Shallow's cousin, the silent Silence.
This cousin is replaced by another, Slender, the simple,
self-conceited and yet fearful wooer of Anne Page, in
Merry Wives of Windsor. Bardolph and Pistol reappear
and Falstaff has a new follower in Corporal Nym. His
humor is a humor and his comment on every possible oc
casion is "that's the humor of it," "that's my humor,"
or "I thank thee for that humor." Sir Hugh Evans, the

331 Henry IV, II, 4.

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES 33

pedantic Welsh parson, and Dr. Caius, the hot-tempered
French physician, are also humorists. Lieutenant Bar-
dolph, Ancient Pistol and Corporal Nym survive to follow
the King to the French Wars in Henry V. They still pos
sess their individual humors, and of their old leader Fal-
staff, who has just died, they speak with regret and affec
tion. Nym and Bardolph are hanged for thieving and
Pistol alone returns from France, old, weary, and lonely
without his former companions. Henry V has a new group
of humorists in Fluellen, the pedantic but loyal Welshman,
Macmorris, the valiant quick-tempered Irishman, and
Jamy, the slow solid Scotchman, over all of whom is placed
the practical Englishman, Captain Gower.

Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Malvolio
of Twelfth Night are most successful examples of the use
of humors in the creation of character. Sir Toby, with his
weakness for quaffing and drinking and his superficial
learning, has yet a keen wit and a shrewd insight into his
fellow-sinners. Sir Andrew Aguecheek has studied fen
cing, dancing, and bear-baiting, and above all else, can
"cut a caper"; but, impressed by Sir Toby's show of learn
ing, he wishes he had studied the tongues and arts. His
importance to Sir Toby lies in the fact that he has three
thousand ducats a year and furnishes that impecunious,
fun-loving old toper with opportunity to replenish his own
empty purse and to have some sport by the way. Sir An
drew * ' besides that he 's a fool, he 's a great quarreler ; and,
but that he hath the gift of a coward to allay the gust he
hath in quarreling, 'tis thought among the prudent he
would quickly have the gift of a grave. ' ' 34 Malvolio is
"sick of self-love" and possessed by "the spirit of humors
intimate." Maria, a "noble gull-catcher," sets out to
"gull" him and "make him a common recreation." As
a result of her device, he appears in yellow stockings,

« Twelfth Night, I, 3.

34 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

cross-gartered, and with a wonderful smile such that "he
does smile his face into more lines than are in the new map,
with the augmentation of the Indies." 35

In Parolles of All's Well that Ends Well we have a char
acter very different from most of Shakespeare 's personages
and like many of Jonson 's. He is " a most notable coward,
an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker,
the owner of no one good quality. ' ' 36 Shakespeare in
tends his name to indicate his ruling characteristic. He
is nothing but words, "there can be no kernel in this light
nut, the soul of this man is his clothes. ' ' 37 Parolles real
izes that his tongue prattles him into all sorts of troubles,
and as one of the other characters who hears him talking
to himself says, "the wonder is that he should know what
he is and be that he is." A plot is made and effectively
carried out by which his folly and falsehood are mercilessly
exposed. The comic portrayal here is not sympathetic, as
is usual with Shakespeare, but wholly satirical.

Shakespeare grasped the idea of humors and applied it,
not rigidly and lifelessly, as did many of the later drama
tists, but sympathetically and humanly, vitalizing the ;
theory by the power of his own marvelous genius. He was
not beguiled from his general realistic and romantic man
ner by Jonson 's conception of comedy, but he did try in
Henry IV, Henry V, Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth
Night and All's Well that Ends Well the method of humor
in the presentation of individual characters.

Two anonymous plays, The Fair Maid of the Exchange,
and Every Woman in Her Humor, both, according to
Fleay, acted in 1602, are best considered here before we
take up the study of Beaumont and Fletcher. The title-
so Twelfth Night, III, 3.
so All's Well That Ends Well, III, 6.
ST All's Well That Ends Well, II, 5.

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES 35

page of The Fair Maid of the Exchange advertises the play
as presenting "the Humors of the Cripple of Fan-
church"; and the father of the heroine is characterized in
the dramatis persons as "an humorous old man"; yet in
reality the only personage created according to the method
of humor or caricature is Bowdler, ' ' an humorous gallant, ' '
"an humorous blossom," "a fond humorist, parenthesis of
jests, whose humor like a needless cypher fills a room." He
puts on an " antick garment of ostentation, ' ' takes especial
pride in his "caper and turn o' the toe," and pretends
that all the maids he meets are prone to love him, when in
truth he himself is afraid to speak to them and arouses
their merry ridicule. The cripple of Fanchurch under
takes and effects his "purgation."

Every Woman in Her Humor is an example of the height
or depth of crude undiscerning imitation, and was written
by some author who knew little of human character and
less of dramatic construction. The title was plainly sug
gested by Jonson's first comedy of humors. The plot is
slight, consisting of little more than a series of situations
strung together on a slender thread of accidental connec
tion, and lacking the underlying unity of the seemingly
careless plots of Jonson's earlier plays. The scene is laid
in Rome, perhaps, if the play was produced in 1602, in imi
tation of The Poetaster acted in 1601; but the stupid an
achronisms bear evidence that the author possessed none of
Jonson's regard for accuracy. Some of the characters are
direct imitations of Jonsonian personages. Graccus and
Acutus at the beginning of the play, like Asper and Maci-
lente in Every Man out of His Humor, discuss "this im
pious world." Acutus wears "a vizard of melancholy"
and rails against prevailing follies and vices. This de
scription of him by Tully recalls the praises of Crites in
Cynthia's Revels:

36 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

"his spirit is free as air,
His temper temperate, if aught 's uneven,
His spleen weighs down towards lenity ; but how
Stirred by reproof! Ah, then he's bitter and like
His name Acute, vice to him is a foul eyesore,
And could he stifle it in bitterest words he would,
And whoso offends to him is parallel,
He will as soon reprove the cedar state
As the low shrub."38

Getica is even more foolishly concerned for her dog than
is the like humorist Puntarvolo for his in Every Man out
of His Humor, and Acutus longs to teach it "the trick of
the rope." The talkative, fussy, but honest Host is ever
ready with the proverbial expression "dun's the mouse"
or "the mouse shall be dun." The Hostess constantly
complains of her busy life, yet seems to be happy in it and
finds recreation in a lively gossip. The citizen's wife, an
Elizabethan Wife of Bath, who has buried six husbands
and thinks there is good hope that she may have as many
more, loudly resents the new statute which forbids a wo
man to marry again until two months after her husband 's
death. The portraiture of these vigorous lower-class per
sonages is the best part of the play. In dramatic value,
Every Woman in Her Humor ranks among the comedies
of humors of some of Jonson's later followers rather than
among those of his immediate contemporaries.

With Beaumont and Fletcher we must at the very be
ginning remember that they stand fundamentally as rep
resentatives of the romantic school. They were influenced
in their work as a whole far more by preceding dramatists
of that school than by the classical and conscious art of
Jonson. However, they were first of all practical play-

ssBullen's Old Plays, vol. IV, 372; Every Woman in Her Humor,
V, 1.

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES 37

wrights who aimed to please the public taste of the time
and to make plays that would act ; so they chose out from
the methods of other writers what suited their purposes.
Their own method was eclectic, and they found it possible
in their earlier days to get valuable instruction from Jon
son in matters of construction, humorous character-
studies and versification. Especially is this true of Beau
mont who began writing plays decidedly under the influ
ence of Jonson.

Beaumont had gained the friendship of Ben Jonson as
early as 1607, for in that year we find him addressing
verses that show good critical judgment "To my Dear
Friend, Master Ben Jonson, upon his Fox. ' ' Again, in 1609
he wrote commendatory verses on The Silent Woman and
in 1611 on Catiline. However improbable may seem Dry-
den's statement that "Beaumont was so accurate a judge
of plays, that Ben Jonson, while he lived, submitted all
his writings to his censure, and 'tis thought, used his judg
ment in correcting if not contriving all his plots, ' ' 30 yet it
is certainly based on a tradition of close relationship.
Beaumont's Letter to Ben Jonson with its famous descrip
tion of the gatherings at the Mermaid and high compliment
to Jonson 's wit, reveals clearly the younger man 's admira
tion and enthusiasm for his older friend.40 He is ready
there to

"Protest it will my greatest comfort be
To acknowledge all I have to flow from thee."

The short poem in which Jonson makes answer to this letter
is full of cordial appreciation and affectionate regard:

"How I do love thee, Beaumont, and thy muse
That unto me dost such religion use!

" Dryden, Essays, ed. by W. P. Ker, I, 80.
« Jonson, Works, I, CXIV-CXV.

38 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

How I do fear myself, that am not worth
The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth !
At once thou mak'st me happy and unmak'st;
And giving largely to me, more thou tak'st!
What fate is mine, that so itself bereaves?
What art is thine, that so thy friend deceives?
When even there, where most thou praisest me,
For writing better, I must envy thee."41

Jonson 's remark to Drummond "that Francis Beaumont
loved too much himself and his own verses" is not at all
destructive of the above evidence of warm friendship and
mutual admiration.

Pleasant personal relations also existed between Jonson
and Fletcher, and expressions of good-will were exchanged.
Fletcher wrote verses on The Fox in 1607 and on Catiline
in 1611, Jonson being called in the latter, "dear friend."
Brome says that Jonson was proud to call Fletcher "son"
and

' ' Swore he had outdone
His very self."42

When Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess failed to receive
the recognition and praise it deserved, Jonson wrote some
lines of warm admiration, prophesying for his friend that
his poem

"shall rise

A glorified work to time, when fire

Or moths shall eat what all these fools admire." 43

Later, he told Drummond "that next himself, only
Fletcher and Chapman could make a mask." Dyce sug-

4i Jonson, Works, III, 235.

*2 Beaumont and Fletcher, Works, I, 92.

« Jonson, Works, III, 291.

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES 39

gests that Beaumont and Fletcher were perhaps first
brought together by Jonson.44

As playwrights, Beaumont and Fletcher learned most
from Jonson in ideals of constructive excellence. In man-
agement of detail with constant reference to the entire
plot and regard for complete unity of impression, in care
ful preparation for important characters before their en
trance, in clever invention of tricks and skillful conduct of
intrigue, they show that they were his quick and intelligent
pupils. Such plays as The Woman Hater, The Scornful
Lady, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, The Tamer Tamed, or
The Humorous Lieutenant, include in their plots tricks
equal in wit and ingenuity to those invented by Jonson
and probably for conception and management in part due
to his teaching. In The Scornful Lady, it is of interest to
note the knowledge of Plautus and Terence shown in a
quotation from the former and a situation from the latter.
The Four Triumphs and The Knight of the Burning Pestle
have inductions, and the latter has also a running comment
in dialogue form within the play. Such description as
that which prepares us for the entrance of Lazarillo and
Lucio in The Woman Hater is frequently found in Jonson.
The censor and satirical commentator on personage and ac
tion we find also in The Woman Hater — probably written
by Beaumont and showing more than any other play di
rect Jonsonian influence.

There are characters of humors in a number of plays.
In The Woman Hater Lazarillo, "the hungry courtier/' is
in pursuit of a fish 's head famed as most rare and delicate ;
Gondarino is almost a monomaniac in his hatred of woman
kind; Lucio, a simple lord, is possessed with the idea that
he has great powers of statesmanship ; a mercer is moved by
an overwhelming desire to ape scholars. The Scornful
Lady portrays the humor of "the scornful lady" as an at-

4* Beaumont and Fletcher, Works, ed. by Alex. Dyce, I, 12.

40 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

titude of scorn toward all men; that of her waiting-wo
man, the pursuit of young lovers; and that of a widow
the acquisition of a knight. Merrythought in The Knigh
of the Burning Pestle is forever merry in the midst of a]
sorts of trials and perplexities; Humphrey is an ordinary
simple gull ; and Ealph, who of course owed his creation t
Don Quixote, has, we are told, the "humor" of going on
adventures. Bessus,45 the braggart coward in A King and
No King, may have been suggested in part by Bobadil, bu
certainly lacks the individuality and personal eccentricity
that make that personage amusing and interesting through
out. The character of the lawyer in The Little French
Lawyer is conceived in Jonson's spirit. La Writ having
been forced by a stranger to take part as a second in a due
and having won a victory, becomes so possessed with the
love of fighting that he deserts his business and sets up as
a regular duelist, being cured of his whimsical humor a
length by means of a trick played on him. The person
who gives title to The Humorous Lieutenant passec
rapidly from the humor for fighting when he was sick to
the humor of cowardice when he was well. Various tricks
are devised and carried through to purge him of his humor
Beaumont and Fletcher sometimes give names to indicate
the reigning quality of character as "the scornful lady'
and Merrythought or Lady Heartwell, Lovegood and Hare
brain in Wit Without Money. This method of course goes
back to the allegorical element in the miracle plays anc
moralities, but it was given new impetus by Jonson
There is, however, a marked difference in the treatment of
types by Jonson and by Beaumont and Fletcher. While
he seeks to emphasize the individuality of his representa
tion of the type, they dwell almost always upon the class
qualities.

The spirit of satire and the definite purpose of ridiculing
"Koeppel compares Bessus to Falstaff, Quellen-Studien, 44, 45.

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES 41

folly we find only in the earlier plays, The Woman Hater,
The Scornful Lady and The Knight of the Burning Pestle,
all ascribed in large part to Beaumont. In the first of
these we are plainly told that the desire is to see the wo
man hater "purged" and a "cure" wrought upon him.
The description of court-life and of theater-going in this
same play contains keen and effective satire of contempo
rary conditions.46 The Scornful Lady shows how the
scornful lady and also a usurer were turned from their
follies. The Knight of the Burning Pestle is throughout
a satire on the city and on the extravagances of the
earlier stage. The dialogue between the citizen and his
wife has all Jonson 's vivid realism.

Koeppel remarks the transformation of Leon in Rule a
Wife and Have a Wife from a meek silent creature before
marriage to a masterful lord immediately afterward, able
to talk and act boldly, as similar to that of Epicoene in The
Silent Woman™ The same writer notes further that the
astonishment of the husband over the sudden independence
and self-assertion of his newly married wife in The Tamer
Tamed seems a reminiscence of the perplexity and amaze
ment of Morose.48 He does not call attention to the fact
that the name of the rich old man in this same play who is
seeking a young wife is Moroso. Fletcher's verse is es
sentially different from Jonson's, but Beaumont's, as has
been often remarked, shows many of the same char
acteristics. Beaumont adheres strictly to the metrical
scheme of regular decasyllabic lines, uses largely the mas
culine internal caesura, has free dignified phrasing with
many run on lines. In his blank verse Beaumont certainly
followed Jonson as master and teacher.

What are the conclusions as to the influence of Jonson

* « Beaumont and Fletcher, Works, I, 99; The Woman Hater, T, 3.
47Koeppel, Quellen-Studien, 110.
« Hid., 90.

42 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

on Beaumont and Fletcher? That both were influenced
to a considerable degree in dramatic construction, and to
a limited extent in conception of characters; that Beaumont
was more deeply impressed than Fletcher, really began his
work under the tutelage of Jonson, caught from him the
spirit of dramatic satire, and learned much in the art of
writing blank verse.

There is no direct evidence that Massinger knew Jon-
son or was personally associated with him, but it is alto
gether likely, from Massinger 's relation of friendship and
co-authorship with Fletcher and from his prominence
among the London playwrights of Jonson 's later life, that
he was sometimes present at the meetings of the Apollo
Club, and that he was impressed by the forceful serious
ness of Jonson 's attitude to life as well as by the excellence
of his art. Massinger went up to London in 1606 or 1607,
and although we have no mention of his name as a drama
tist until 1621, we know that during this interval of time
he was writing plays and learning the business of the
stage. That in some matters he was a pupil of Jonson, a
study of his plays clearly shows. Like Beaumont and
Fletcher, he was by no means a plagiarist or imitator, but
he understood his art and with ready ease and remarkable
facility could learn from many sources and adapt what he
learned to the making of plays that would act.

He seems to have been affected most by Jonson in con
struction and moral satire, but also to have felt his influ
ence in the portrayal of contemporary life and in the con
ception of character. Of course we must certainly re
member that Middleton's influence as well as Jonson 's was
decidedly at work in picturing contemporary life, drawing
character, portraying manners, and it is impossible to de
termine absolutely the exact limits of the influence of each
on the younger dramatists. The plays that relate Mas-
singer's art most definitely with Jonson 's are The City

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES 43

Madam and A New Way to Pay Old Debts, produced ac
cording to Fleay, about 1619 and 1621,40 and ranking high
among English comedies of manners. In both we find
great ingenuity and skill in weaving and then untangling
the intricacies of the intrigues. Each single incident, each
separate trick, is made to take its place in preparing with
sureness for the final outcome. Each detail of description
or action serves its part in unfolding and developing the
characters. In his mastery of construction and sense of
artistic logic, Massinger undoubtedly received valuable in
struction from Ben Jonson.

The City Madam and A New Way to Pay Old Debts
present realistic transcripts from contemporary life and
aim to exhibit and satirize the follies and vanities of the
day. Massinger here, like Jonson, assumed an attitude
of censorship toward society. In his wealth of observa
tion of both London and provincial life, and in his keen and
telling satire of social abuses, he fell not greatly below his
master. He would

' ' scourge a general vice,
And raise up a new satirist. ' ' 80

Not only in general didactic tone, but also in direct moral
utterances, generalizations, maxims and proverbs, he proves
himself always a strict and conscientious moralist and
never makes us feel, as Beaumont and Fletcher sometimes
do, that all moral principles are in a state of uncertain
solution.

Massinger follows the example set by both Jonson and
Middleton of giving names descriptive of their owners, in
The City Madam and A New Way to Pay Old Debts. In the
former, we have Sir John Frugal, the economical merchant ;
Mr. Plenty, the wealthy country gentleman; Stargaze, the

« Fleay, Chronicle, I, 214, 225.

BO Massinger, Best Plays, I, 475 ; The City Madam, IV, 4.

44 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

astrologer; Holdfast, the penurious steward; Goldwire and
Tradewell, the middle class tradesmen. The same method
is used in A New Way to Pay Old Debts with Justice
Greedy, whose one aim in life is to satisfy his passion for
eating; Marrall, who, we are told, "marred all"; Sir
Giles Overreach, whose previous career has been one of
unbroken success in overreaching; Furnace, the cook;
Watchall, the porter ; Wellborn, a young man of good birth
(a name used by Jonson in Bartholomew Fair] • Amble, the
usher (Ambler is the usher in The Devil Is an Ass) ; and
Order, the steward. The characters are built up on the
basis of one predominant quality, and like Jonson 's comic
types are subject to the faults of exaggeration and carica
ture. However, there is a difference of treatment in that
Massinger dwells with Beaumont and Fletcher upon the
common characteristics of the type, instead of seeking with
Jonson the subtle individual quality of the particular rep
resentative of the type. A comparison of the two gluttons,
Justice Greedy and Zeal-of-the-land Busy, makes manifest
this difference.

James Shirley, although born in the last years of the six
teenth century and considerably younger than the preced
ing dramatists, yet belongs in the same group on account
of his personal connections and the character of his work.
He collaborated with Chapman and Fletcher in writing
plays during the latter parts of their careers, prepared the
prefatory matter for the Beaumont and Fletcher folio,
worked side by side with Massinger in developing the later
comedy of manners based on the combined methods of Jon
son and Middleton, and was addressed as "judicious and
learned friend" by Massinger who also called himself "a
modest votary at the altar of thy muse." In Shirley's
plays, as in Beaumont's and Fletcher's and Massinger 's,
the romantic element is in the ascendancy, but in the eclec
ticism of all these playwrights there was a place for the

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES 45

comedy of manners and of humors. Shirley, like Mas-
singer, was a pupil of both Jonson and Middleton in com
edy of manners. Here we are especially concerned with
evidences of Jonson 's influence.

Shirley, too, must have known and enjoyed part in the
gatherings at the Devil Tavern. In one of his plays a
servant is told to "run to the Devil" for wine.51 As a
young student of playwriting, he must have been impressed
by the originality and force of Jonson 's work, and in his
own first attempt, Love Tricks, shows unmistakably who
was one of his teachers. In the dedication of The Grate
ful Servant, he speaks with honor and admiration of "our
acknowledged master, learned Jonson." William Habing-
ton, in commendatory verses to Shirley, associates his name
with Jonson 's:

"and when his muse expires,
Whose English stains the Greek and Latin lyres,
Divinest Jonson, live to make us see
The glory of the stage reviv'd in thee."

In the writing of masques as well as comedies of man
ners Shirley was influenced, and in court entertainments
succeeded largely to Jonson 's popularity and success, pro
ducing The Triumph of Peace, one of the greatest masques
of the time. In this, the antimasque especially recalls Jon
son, in the presentation of six projectors, such as he so ef
fectively satirized in The Devil Is an Ass, and of the dot
terels whose foolish bent for imitation appealed to him and
gave name to the gulled Fitzdotterel in the same play.
The talk of the citizens in The Triumph of Peace resembles
that in The Masque of Augurs or Neptune's Triumph.

Such influence as we find in this masque, in character
that of reminiscence and general recollection, is exerted
also in the comedies. Shirley is a happy and original com-

6i Shirley, Works, ed. by Alex. Dyce, I, 383, The Wedding, II, 1.

46 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

bination of what had gone before him and he certainly
learned somewhat from Jonson. In originality and variety
of plots Shirley excelled, and here he followed the example
of Jonson in turning from the use of old plays and novels
to invent new situations. Further, his plots are closely
knit, unified, and in regard for constructive detail, directly
or indirectly he had benefited by Jonson 's work.

The pictures of London life given in such plays as Love
Tricks, Hyde Park, The Lady of Pleasure, The Ball, The
Gamester, The Example, The Witty Fair One or The
Wedding, are more attractively realistic than those we get
from Middleton's plays. They show a deeper insight into
the human significance of a conversation, situation and ac
tion, a more thoughtful and understanding grasp of under
lying meaning. Much of the difference is due to Shirley's
own temperament, but perhaps in some part also to Jon-
son's attitude. Shirley yields neither to the absolute re
alism of Middleton nor the didactic satire of Jonson, but
learning from both, gives pictures in some ways truer than
those we get from either of the others. There is in Shir
ley a moral sanity and ethical sense that we oftentimes find
lacking in Middleton, and while here again we must ascribe
much to Shirley's own well-balanced nature, yet perhaps
some influence was exerted also by Jonson 's strong ethical
bent.

Several prologues are written in a Jonsonian tone of in
dependence and even arrogance toward the public. Com
pare this from the prologue to The Example :

''Nay, he that in the parish never was
Thought fit to be o' the jury, has a place
Here, on the bench, for sixpence ; and dares sit,
And boast himself commissioner of wit:
Which though he want, he can condemn with oaths,
As much as they that wear the purple clothes,

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES 47

Robes, I should say, on whom, i' the Roman state,
Some ill-look 'd stage-keepers, like lictors wait,
With pipes for fasces, while another bears
Three-footed stools instead of ivory chairs,"83

with this from the prologue to The Staple of News:

(the maker) " prays you'll not prejudge his play for ill,

Because you mark it not, and sit not still ;

But have a longing to salute, or talk

With such a female, and from her to walk

With your discourse, to what is done, and where,

How, and by whom, in all the town but here.

If that not like you that he send to-night,
'Tis you have left to judge, not he to write. ' ' 6S

Again, in the prologue to The Duke's Mistress, we meet
with just such an utterance as we have become familiar
with in Jonson:

"We do observe the general guests to plays '/

Meet in opinion of two strains that please,
Satire and wantonness; the last of these,
Though old, if in new dressing it appear,
Will move a smile from all, — but shall not here.
Our author hath no guilt of scurril scenes.
For satire, they do know best what it means,
That dare apply; and if a poet's pen
Aiming at general errors, note the men,
'Tis not his fault : the safest cure is, they
That purge their bosoms, may see any play. ' ' "

Several plays have situations or devices that recall Jon-
»2 Shirley, Works, III, 282.
03 Jonson, Works, II, 277.
e* Shirley, Works, IV, 191.

48 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

son. In Love Tricks, the mock duel, described so boast
fully by Bubulcus, has a marked resemblance to the ac
count given by Fastidious Brisk of his supposed victory in
Every Man out of His Humor.™ The passage from Love
Tricks is worth quoting, so much is it in Jonson's manner:

"Bubulcus. We threw our doublets off, to shew we had no
coat of mail, or privy shirt upon us, against the laws
of dueling : in fine, I bid him say his prayers.

Antonio. 'Twas well thought upon; and what did you?

Bub. I let them alone, for I knew I should kill him, and
have time enough to say them afterwards at my lei
sure.

Hilaria. When he had prayed, what then ?

Bub. When he had said his prayers, he thought upon it,
and let fall words tending to reconcilement. On my
conscience, he would have asked my forgiveness, but I
stood upon my honor, and would fight with him, and
so we stood upon our guard — but not a word of fight
ing, if you love me.

Ant. Oh, by no means: but when did you fight?

Bub. I'll tell you; Antonio, when he saw no remedy, but
that I would needs fight with him, and so consequently
kill him, made a desperate blow at my head, which I
warded with my dagger, better than he looked for, and
in return, I cut off his left hand; whereat amazed, and
fainting, I nimbly seconded it, as you know I am very
nimble, and run my rapier into his right thigh, two
yards.

Hit. Then you were on both sides of him?

Ant. Your rapier? Did you not say your weapons were
long swords?

Bub. But mine was both a sword and rapier, there 'tis—

Elizabethan Drama, II, 287. Compare with Jonson,
Works, I, 119-120, Every Man Out of His Humor, IV, 4.

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES 49

but not a word of fighting, as you love me. Well, not
to weary you with the narration of the innumerable
wounds I gave him, I cut off every joint from his toe
upwards, to his middle; by these hilts, now, you may
believe me; there ended Antonio, my rival. Judge,
judge now, whether Bubulcus be valiant or not — but
not a word of fighting, as you love me ; let it die.
Ant. 'Twas very valiantly done."50

The School of Compliment in this same play brings
together a group of humorous characters such as Jonson
assembled in the Ladies Collegiate of The Silent Woman,
the news-collecting agency of The Staple of News, or the
school of cosmetics and behavior in The Devil is an Ass.
The situation of the old man Rufuldo married to a man
disguised as a woman, and, finding himself tied to a mas
terful shrew, in the end thoroughly glad to be freed from
his burden, may perhaps be a reminiscence of The Silent
Woman. The likeness of the passage in The Young Ad
miral where the foolish Pazzarello is introduced to the
supposed enchantress who is to make him invulnerable
in battle, to that in The Alchemist where Dapper is taken
into the presence of the " fairy" whose favorite he has
been assured he is, has been noticed by Gifford.57

When we turn to characters, we find a number created
on the basis of humors or seemingly reminiscences of Jon-
son. In Love Tricks, Bubulcus, an "exact piece of stolid
ity" comes to the school of compliment to "have a delicate
speech" for his lady-love, and "a powdering speech" for
his rival, whom he would kill without danger of the law,
and so with wrords. He gives boastful account of his
prowess in dueling and like Shift with his thefts in Every
Man out of His Humor later confesses to base cowardice

o« Shirley, Works, I, 74-75; Love Tricks, IV, 6.
"/bid., Ill, 145; The Young Admiral, IV, 1.

50 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

and lying with ' ' thinking to have got himself some credit, ' '
as Shift "to get" himself "a name." Orlando Furioso,
who comes to learn to ' * roar ' ' and quarrel, recalls Kastrill,
the angry boy in The Alchemist. Shirley makes many ref
erences to the roarers of the time, satirized by Jonson not
only in The Alchemist but also in The Silent Woman as the
"terrible boys" and in The Staple of News as the "can
ters." Sir Valentine Wantbrain, who has been newly put
into commission for the peace and comes to the School of
Compliment to have drawn up his first charge to the jury;
the countryman who brings his son Oaf to be made a
scholar and a courtier; and Ingeniolo, the justice's clerk,
who wishes to be taught to speak his passion of love in
blank verse — these are "humorous" conceptions, though
slightly developed.

Brains in The Wedding, whose pride it is that he has
never been overreached in any action, whose * ' nourishment
runs upward into brains" and who boasts that he "was
never yet cozened," seems to be a reminiscence of Brain-
worm. Sir Solitary Plot in The Example, pointed out by
Dyce as an imitation of Jonson,58 believes "the world is
full of plots" and spends most of his time in solitude,
planning methods of precaution. The suggestion for Jack
Freshwater in The Ball, Gifford thinks was furnished by
Puntarvolo in Every Man out of His Humor.™ The like
ness between Freshwater 's account of marvelous experi
ences on his supposed return from travel and Puntarvolo 's
fantastic preparations for a journey is certainly not very
evident; but the conception of the character probably de
veloped in Shirley's mind under the influence of Jonson 's
personages. Pazzarello in The Young Admiral, who, duped
to believe that he has been made invulnerable, waxes ex-

ss Shirley, Works, I, Introduction, XXX.
w IUd., Ill, 3.

IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORABIES 51

ceedingly valiant; Caperwit, the poetaster in Love in a
Maze, and Sir Gervase Simple of the same play —

"one that has

But newly cast his country skin, come up
To see the fashions of the town, has crept
Into a knighthood, which he paid for heartily
And in his best clothes, is suspected for
A gentleman;"60

and Orseolo, who gives name to The Humorous Courtier
and whose humor is to rail against women, — all are con
ceived in Jonson 's manner. The influence of Jonson is
manifested in the fundamental idea of a prevailing humor
or bias much more than in the method of development.
Shirley does not, as Jonson, take the trouble to present
the humor under many different aspects and in many re
lations so as to produce a many-sided study.

Here, as with the other dramatists of the group studied,
it is impossible to state definitely the exact limits of Jon-
son's influence. Shirley's first play was plainly modeled
in plot, characters, satirical pictures of contemporary life
and vocabulary on Jonson 's comedy. In later plays, care
ful logical construction manifests a permanent effect of
the teaching Shirley had had. Now and then appears a
character conceived according to the theory of humors.
Several prologues are Jonsonian in tone. An occasional
situation, device or expression, seems reminiscent of Jon-
son's plays. Shirley was no imitator, no slavish follower,
but an original and inventive playwright who could take
lessons from a master and then apply them with independ
ence and power.

«° Shirley, Works, II, 277; Love in a Maze, I, 1.

CHAPTER III

NATHANIEL FIELD AND RICHARD BROME IN RELATION TO
JONSON

We turn now to the younger dramatists who were dis
tinctively "Sons of Ben," who consciously and definitely
took the attitude of disciples toward the master of the
comedy of humors, fully acknowledged his authority and
sought to follow closely in the paths marked out by him.
In this group we shall study the comedies of Nathaniel
Field, Richard Brome, Thomas May, Robert Davenport,
Thomas Randolph, Shakerley Marmion, William Cart-
wright, Jasper Mayne, Henry Glapthorne, Thomas Nabbes,
Sir Aston Cockayne, William Cavendish, Earl of New
castle, and Sir William Davenant. First of all, we shall
consider Field and Brome, to whom Jonson stood in the di
rect relation of teacher to pupils. These had especially
close personal associations with him and gained the ad
vantage of being personally instructed by him in the art
of making plays, of learning their craft under his immedi
ate supervision.

Nathaniel Field was an "actor playwright" and began
his connection with the stage as a member of one of the
boy companies prominent about 1600, the Children of the
Chapel, known in the reign of King James as the Queen's
Revels. He was chief actor in three of Jonson 's plays
acted at Blackfriars by the Chapel Children: Cynthia's
Revels in 1600, Poetaster in 1601, Epiccene in 1609.
Again, in 1614 he was chief actor in Bartholomew Fair
produced at the Hope by the Lady Elizabeth's Men.1 It
is in the last play that Jonson pays him the high compli-

i Fleay, Eng. Stud., XIII, 1889.

52

FIELD AND BROME 53

ment of associating his name with that of Burbage, and
praises him as the best actor in his company:

' ' Cokes. Which is your Burbage now ?
Leatherhead. What mean you by that, sir?
Cokes. Your best actor, your Field ? " 2

We can imagine that an additional appeal was made to
Jonson 's sympathies by the fact that Field was one of the
boys kidnaped by Nathaniel Giles, Master of her Maj
esty's Chapel, in abuse of his privilege of taking young
boys to sing in the royal chapels, and pressed into enforced
service as an actor in the company of which Giles had the
management, the Children of the Chapel.3 When carried
off, Field was a pupil at Westminster School, and only
thirteen years old at the time he took the chief part in
Cynthia's Revels* Evidently Jonson pitied the boy so
early snatched away from his books, and gave him lessons ;
for we learn from the Conversations that "Nat. Field was
his scholar, and that he had read to him the Satires of
Horace and some Epigrams of Martial."5 Field quotes
Latin in the address to the reader before A Woman is a
Weathercock, and in the dedication points out the fact
that he ends his epistle without a Latin sentence, as if
priding himself that he could do so if he wished.6 During
the hours of study and of rehearsal, he had abundant op
portunity to learn the playwright's craft from Jonson him
self. The admiration Field felt for his teacher is directly
expressed in the verses he wrote in 1611 to his "worthy
and beloved friend, Master Ben Jonson, on his Catiline."

But two of Field's comedies survive, A Woman is a

2 Jonson, Works, II, 199; Bartholomew Fair, V, 3.

a Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, I, 472-473.

« Knight, Article in D. N. B. XVIII, 1889.

5 Jonson, Works, III, 477.

« Nero and Other Plays, Mermaid Series, 338-339.

54 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

Weathercock, and Amends for Ladies. We know that he
did considerable work of revision and collaboration, but
that need not concern us here. The above comedies do
credit to the instruction that Field had received, show
practical knowledge of the requirements of the stage and
intelligent grasp of the fundamental ideas of Jonsonian
comedy. The satirical tone adopted reveals at once the
source whence Field obtained his attitude in viewing life.
His first play, A Woman is a Weathercock, is a satire on
the inconstancy of women, and is dedicated "to any wo
man that hath been no weathercock." In this play the in
discriminate creation of knights by James I is ridiculed:

" Count Frederick. Young Master Abraham! Cry ye
mercy, sir.

Abraham Ninny. Your lordship's poor friend and Sir
Abraham Ninny.

The dub-a-dub of honor, piping hot,

Doth lie upon my worship's shoulder-blade.

Sir Innocent Ninny. Indeed, my lord, with much cost
and labor we have got him knighted ; and being under
favor, my lord, let me tell ye he'll prove a sore knight,
as e'er run at ring. He is the one and only Ninny
of our house. ' ' 7

Again, the prevailing injustice in matters of law is bitterly
satirized :

"it will be thought

Your greatness and our money carries it:

For some say some men on the back of law

May ride and rule it like a patient ass,

And with a golden bridle in the mouth

Direct it unto anything they please.

Others report it is a spider's web,

Made to entangle the poor helpless flies,
iNero and Other Plays, 352; A Woman is a Weathercock, I, 2.

FIELD AND BROME 55

Whilst the great spiders that did make it first,
And rule it, sit i' th' midst secure and laugh."'

"He has the advantage of you, being a lord;
For should you kill him, you are sure to die,
And by some lawyer with a golden tongue,
That cries for right (ten angels on his side),
Your daring meet him called presumption :
But kill he you, he and his noble friends
Have such a golden snaffle for the jaws
Of man-devouring Pythagorean law,
They '11 reign her stubborn chops even to her tail :
And (though she have iron teeth to meaner men),
So master her, that, who displeased her most,
She shall lie under like a tired jade." 9

Both A Woman is a Weathercock and Amends for Ladies
present vivid and realistic pictures of contemporary life.
The scene of the former is laid in the neighborhood of
London and of the latter within the city. Both are full
of local allusions to such places as the theater at Newing-
ton Butts, the Fortune theater in Cripplegate, the cooks'
shops of Pie corner in Smithfield, the ducking-ponds at
Islington, Moorfields — a noted resort of outcasts, Turn-
mill Street — a haunt of thieves, or Bear Tavern below Lon
don Bridge. Thus Field produces the effect of actuality
that Jonson obtains by similar means in The AlcJiemist or
Bartholomew Fair. Effective and realistic, if coarse, pre
sentation of every-day London life we get in such a scene as
that inside a tavern, in Amends for Ladies, where Lord
Feesimple is introduced among a group of "roaring boys,"
and by way of drinking a large number of healths is tem
porarily inspired with the courage of a roarer.10

s Nero and Other Plays, 369; A Woman is a Weathercock, II, 1.
*Nero and Other Plays, 472; Amends for Ladies, IV, 3.
., 456-460; Amends for Ladies, III, 4.

56 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

A number of the characters are conceived and executed
on the basis of humors, and given names to indicate the
ruling quality. In A Woman is a Weathercock we have
Pendant, a sycophant who lives ''upon commending"
Count Frederick, and whom men call his lord's "commen
dations ' ' ; Sir John Worldly, whose one great desire is for
money and who assures us " Worldly 's my name, worldly
must be my deeds"; Pouts, the irascible and vindictive
captain; and above all, the Ninnies, Sir Innocent Ninny,
Lady Ninny and Sir Abraham Ninny. Count Frederick
asks: "What countrymen were your ancestors, Sir Abra
ham?" and that brainless youth replies: "Countrymen!
they were no countrymen : I scorn it. They were gentle
men all : my father is a Ninny and my mother was a Ham
mer. ' ' " Like Jonson 's Matthew, Sir Abraham prides
himself on his verses of passionate love, but to unpreju
diced critics he is "like a hard-bound poet whose brains
had a frost in 'em." Amends for Ladies gives us Well-
tried, the trusty friend; Bold, of unlimited daring; Lord
Proudly, Sir John Loveall, Subtle, Ingen, Ladies Honor,
Perfect, and Bright, all sufficiently described by their
names; the group of roarers, such as Tearchaps and Spill-
blood; and the chief humorous character, Lord Feesimple,
whose humor is that he grows faint at sight of a naked
sword, and who longs, like Jonson 's Kastrill, to be taught
to quarrel and become a roarer.

Again, in the ready invention and admirable execution
of his plots, Field proves that he possessed a practical
knowledge of the stage and that he made good use of Jon-
son's precept and example in the way of careful construc
tion. At the close of A Woman is a Weathercock he takes
pains to inform us that the action of the play is included
within twelve hours :

''Ne'er was so much (what cannot heavenly powers?)
Done and undone and done in twelve short hours."
11 Aero and Other Plays, 353; A Woman is a Weathercock, I, 2.

FIELD AND BROME 57

He was a skillful playwright, and while the intrigue of the
two comedies is intricate and complicated, it is effectively
conducted and untangled. The tricks in A Woman is a
Weathercock by which Sir Abraham Ninny is gulled into
marrying Mistress Wagtail (the waiting- woman), Captain
Pouts is punished by Master Strange for slandering his
wife, and Bellafront is kept by Nevill from a valid mar
riage with Count Frederick and so saved for his friend, are
clever and interesting. That a masque is used as an or
ganic part of the plot of A Woman is a Weathercock is
probably another evidence of Jonson's influence. Though
both comedies were written about the same time and there
seems no manifest reason for the difference, it is of interest
to note that the Amends for Ladies has four or five times
as many of the words we found constantly reappearing in
Jonson's comedy as occur in the earlier play.

This study of Field's two extant comedies shows unmis
takable traces of Jonson's influence in satirical attitude,
realistic pictures of London life, construction of plots, and
humorous characters.

Among the "Sons of Ben," Richard Brome must be
given precedence as having had the best opportunity to
gain accurate knowledge of Jonson's methods and spirit
in writing comedy, and as having produced the largest
number of plays possessing the fundamental characteristics
of the comedy of humors. The first reference to Brome
that we find is in the induction to Bartholomew Fair where
the stagekeeper says : " I am looking lest the poet hear me,
or his man, Master Brome, behind the arras";12 so that at
least from 1614, when this play was written, he was serv
ant to Ben Jonson. As far as we know, he so remained
until the master's death in 1637. When The Northern
Lass was published in 1632, Jonson stood as sponsor for
it and wrote commendatory verses "to my old faithful
servant, and (by his continued virtue) my loving friend,

12 Jonson, Works, II, 143.

58 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

Mr. Eichard Brome." Not only as a servant and friend
does Jonson praise him, but also as a follower of the comic
laws he himself had taught :

' ' I had you for a servant once, Dick Brome,
And you performed a servant 's faithful parts ;
Now you are got into a nearer room
Of fellowship, professing my old arts.
And you do them well, with good applause,
Which you have justly gained from the stage,
By observation of those comic laws
Which I, your master, first did teach the age.
You learned it well, and for it served your time,
A prenticeship, which few do nowadays. ' ' 13

That Brome had the advantage of daily association with
Jonson during years is a fact of great significance and
he must have learned much and gained much. It was also
in collaboration with Jonson 's son that he began his dra
matic career with a non-extant play, A Fault in Friend
ship, licensed in 1623 as "by Brome and young
Jonson. ' '

Brome himself refers with pride to Jonson as his teacher
and master. In verses prefixed to the Beaumont and
Fletcher folio of 1647, he writes of him

' ' That was the master of his art and me,
Most knowing Jonson. ' ' 14

The prologue to The City Wit tells us the play

"was written, when
It bore just judgment, and the seal of Ben." 15

In the epilogue to The Court Beggar, the author seems to

is Brome, Works, III, p. IX.

i* Beaumont and Fletcher, Works, I, 92.

is Brome, Works, I, 276.

FIELD AND BROME 59

refer to Jonson in writing of him "by whose care and di
rections this stage is governed, who has for many years
. . . directed poets to write and players to speak till
he trained up these youths here to what they are now." 16
Many a time Brome must have gone with Jonson to the
Devil Tavern and heard given the order embodied in The
English Moor to "draw a quart of the best Canary into
the Apollo."17

According to the testimony of the commendatory verses
prefixed to his plays, Brome seems to have been on good
terms with many other dramatists and poets of the time,
and these generally show that they considered him frankly
as an imitator and follower of Jonson. Thomas Dekker,
John Ford, James Shirley, John Tatham, Sir Aston
Cockayne, John Hall, and Alexander Brome, wrote in warm
praise of his work. A number of these connect directly
the names of Brome and Jonson. Prefixed to The Antip
odes are some lines by C. G. beginning:

" Jonson 's alive! the world admiring stands,"
and ending

' ' Therefore repair to him, and praise each line
Of his Volpone, Sejanus, Catiline.
But stay, and let me tell you where he is,
He sojourns in his Brome 's Antipodes! "18

John Hall writes concerning A Jovial Crew:

"You do not invade,

But by great Jonson were made free o' th' trade,
So that we must, in this your labor find
Some image and fair relique of his mind. ' ' 19

ie Brome, Works, I, 272.

IT Ibid., II, 41, The English Moor, III, 2.

is Ibid., Ill, 229.

i»/6tU, III, 345.

60 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

With regard to the same play, John Tatham hopes the au
dience

"May be conformable to Ben's influence;
And finding here nature and art agree
May swear, thou liv'st in him and he in thee." 20

The ode by Thomas Randolph in answer to Jonson ?s Ode
to Himself after the failure of The New Inn in 1629, makes
uncomplimentary reference to "what Brome swept from
thee."21 On the title-page of The Weeding of Covent
Garden as published in 1658, the author is described as
"an ingenious servant and imitator of his master, that
famously renowned poet, Ben Jonson." "We have, then,
full and complete evidence that Brome was regarded by
his master, by his contemporaries, and by himself as a
follower of Ben Jonson in English comedy, and the plays
themselves confirm the judgment.

Fifteen independently written plays are extant. Of
these, three are distinctively romantic tragi-comedies : The
Lovesick Court, The Queen's Exchange, The Queen and
the Concubine; two more have large romantic elements:
The Novella and The English Moor; and the remaining
ten are pure comedies of manners and of humors based on
the every-day life of London. From the last group chiefly
do we get the material for a study of Jonson 's influence
on Brome. In the romances Ward finds traces of the in-
fluence of Shakespeare, Fletcher and Massinger.22 Koep-
pel discovers parallels between A Mad Couple Well-
Matched, The City Wit, The Court Beggar, The Antipodes,
The English Moor, The Lovesick Court, The Queen's
change, The Queen and the Concubine f and various Shake
spearian plays.23 We must remember that Jonson himsel

20 Brome, Works, III, 348.

21 Jonson, Works, II, 387.

22 Ward, III, 129-131.

23Koeppel, Studien uber Shakespeare's Wirkung, 42-47.

FIELD AND BROME 61

yielded in part to the allurement of the romantic method
in his early The Case is Altered and his late The New Inn.
Let us see, first of all, what is the evidence of the pro
logues and epilogues regarding the extent to which Brome
had absorbed Jonson's theories of comedy. In the epi
logue to The English Moor he expresses his wish that

" You judge but by the ancient comic laws.
Not by their course who in this latter age
Have sown such pleasing errors on the stage,
Which he no more will choose to imitate. ' ' 2*

Again, in the prologue to The Novella:

"He'll bide his trial, and submits his cause
To you the jury, so you'll judge by laws." 25

He proceeds in this same prologue to ask judgment only
from the judicious and to address his audience quite in
Jonson 's tone of independence :

"If pride or ignorance should rule, he fears
An unfair trial, 'cause not tried by's peers.
Faith, be yourselves a while, and pass your vote
On what you understand, and do not dote
On things 'bove nature or intelligence;
All we pretend to is but mirth and sense."

The prologue to The Sparagus Garden again repeats that
the author never did

"strive

By arrogance or ambition to achieve
More praise unto himself, or more applause
Unto his scenes, than such, as know the laws
Of comedy do give ; he only those
Now prays may scan his verse and weigh his prose. ' ' 2ft

2* Brome, Works, II, 86.
28 Hid., I, 104.
20 /&{</., Ill, 115.

62 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

Brome would, like Jonson, appeal to the intellect rather
than the heart, and he intends that

"No handsome love-toy shall your time beguile,
Forcing your pity to a sigh or smile." 27

Nevertheless, a love-story does run through every one of
his comedies, and while the love-motive is not always the
predominant one, yet it is used much more freely and
fully than by Jonson. The master's preference for "deeds
and language such as men do use" has affected the disciple
and he condemns those

"That count all slight that's under us or nigh;
And only those for worthy subjects deem,
Fetched or reached at (at least) from far or high;
When low and home-bred subjects have their use,
As well as those fetched from on high or far. ' ' 28

The prologues are marked by a decided self -consciousness
but it is not masterful and confident as was that of Jon
son. A strange mixture of self-praise and self-deprecia
tion appears in such prologues as those to The Northern
Lass, The Demoiselle or The Queen's Exchange. In the
last we find this :

' ' The writer of this play who ever uses
To usher with his modesty the muses
Unto the stage, he that scarce ever durst
Of poets rank himself above the worst,
Though most that he has wit has passed the rest,
And found good approbation of the best ;
He, as he never knew to bow, he says,
As little fears the fortune of his plays. ' ' 29

27 Brome, Works, I, 184.
2BlUd., Ill, 230.
2<> Hid., Ill, 456.

FIELD AND BROME 63

From the prologues we learn that Brome aimed to regard
the laws of Roman comedy, to value the criticism of the
judicious only, make chief appeal to the intellect and
present chiefly "low and homebred subjects"; and that,
furthermore, as a playwright he was a thoroughly self-
conscious workman. We should note, on the other hand,
the absence of the assertion of didacticism, the reminder
that we are to have profit mixed with our delight, con
stantly found in Jonson's prologues.

While Brome was not primarily concerned with scourg
ing vices and follies, yet again and again within the plays
he asserted the purpose of purging or. curing individuals,
groups of persons, or places. However, the moral and
ethical attitude taken by him seems often assumed, put on
from the outside, and not deeply ingrained in the whole
philosophy of life as with Jonson. He usually accepted
conventional moral standards, but never attained to a
really vital grasp of the spirit of morality. Brome some
times, as in A Mad Couple Well Matched, lost a true sense
of moral values; Jonson never was guilty of such offense.
We are definitely told that the aim is to "purge" and
"cure" certain personages of the comedies, as, Sir S within
Whimbly, the Crying Knight, and Camelion, the uxorious
citizen, in The New Academy; Pyannet, the scold, in The
City Wit; Joyless, the jealous old husband of a young wife,
and Peregrine, a monomaniac on the subject of traveling,
in The Antipodes; or in The Court Beggar, Citwit, whose
habit is to abuse everybody and never stand by anything
he has said. The object in The Sparagus Garden, we are
told, is to "run jealousy out of breath" and to "purge
the place of all foul purposes. ' ' Here are of interest some
lines written by C. G. on this play :

"It is no common play.
Within thy plot of ground, no weed doth spring

64 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

To hurt the growth of any underling;

Nor is thy labyrinth confus'd, but we

In that disorder may perfection see.

Thy herbs are physical and do more good

In purging humors than some 's letting blood. ' ' 30

The plays are full of satirical pictures of conditions and
classes of every day London life. We find the realism not
only of definite localization but of direct portrayal of life
seen ' ' from below stairs, ' ' 31 sometimes gross and repulsive,
but showing keenness and variety of satirical observation.
Brome knew and knew well ''the coarse and gross and
seamy side of life," and no finer sensibilities kept him
from picturing it often with "prosaic ruthlqssness. ' ' <33
Usually, he did have an honest purpose to further the
cause of morality. The Weeding of Covent Garden is a
direct attempt to promote a definite social reform in a cer
tain neighborhood. In the second prologue, written after
the play had accomplished the desired practical results, the
audience is urged to

"take the same survey,
Into your fancy, as our poet took
Of Covent Garden, when he wrote his book
Some ten years since, when it was grown with weeds,
Nor set, as now it is, with noble seeds
"Which make the garden glorious;"

and to remember how

"happily his pen

Foretold its fair improvement, and that men
Of worth and honor should renown the place. ' ' 33

so Brome, Works, III, 113.

si Schelling, II, 336.

32 Symonds, The Academy, March, 1874.

ss Brome, Works, II, 178.

FIELD AND BROME 65

Projects or speculations in monopolies, one of the great
est abuses of the time, and most effectively ridiculed in
The Devil is an Ass, Brome satirizes again and again, in
The Demoiselle, The Weeding of Covent Garden, The
Sparagus Garden, The Antipodes, and The Queen's Ex
change, while The Court Beggar finds here its chief theme.
In the last play, most of the characters in jest or earnest
put forth some project. Here are two of interest:

"My project is that no plays may be admitted to the
stage but of their making who profess or endeavor to live
by the quality; that no courtiers, divines, students at law,
lawyers' clerks, tradesmen or prentices, be allowed to write
'em, nor the works of any poet whatsoever to be received
to the stage, though freely given unto the actors; nay.
though any such poet should give a sum of money with his
play, as with an apprentice, unless the author do also be
come bound that it shall do true and faithful service for
a whole term ; " 3*

"a new project

For building a new theater or play-house
Upon the Thames on barges or flat boats,
To help the watermen out of the loss
They've suffer 'd by sedans."85

A passage on the same subject in The Antipodes is worth
quoting for the utter absurdity of the schemes:

"Your projects are all good. I like them well,
Especially these two: this for th' increase of wool;
And this for the destroying of mice: they're good,
And grounded on great reason. As for yours,
For putting down the infinite use of jacks,
Whereby the education of young children
In turning spits is greatly hindered,
It may be looked into. And yours against

3* Brome, Works, I, 215; The Court Beggar, II, 1.
I, 194; The Court Beggar, I, 1.

66 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

The multiplicity of pocket watches,
Whereby much neighborly familiarity
By asking, what d'ye guess it is a clock?
Is lost, when every puny clerk can carry
The time o' the day in's breeches. This and these
Hereafter may be looked into. For present,
This for the increase of wool, that is to say,
By flaying of live horses and new covering them
With sheep-skins, I do like exceedingly.
And this for keeping tame owls in cities
To kill up rats and mice, whereby all cats
May be destroyed, as an especial means
To prevent witchcraft and contagion. ' ' 36

The "roarers" with whom we became familiar in the
comedies of Jonson and his immediate contemporaries,
and whom we met again in Field's plays, are satirized by
Brome both as "roarers" or members of the "roaring
brotherhood" and as "blades," in The Demoiselle, The
Weeding of Covent Garden, and The Northern Lass.
Throughout The Weeding o>f Covent Garden, Brome at
tacks the Puritans in the character of Gabriel. The fol
lowing shows clearly direct relation to Jonson 's satire in
The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair:

"Gabriel. It is nevertheless a tavern, brother Mihil, and
you promised and covenanted with me at the last
house of noise and noisomeness, that you would not
lead me to any more taverns.

MihiL Lead you, brother ? Men use to be led from taverns
sometimes. You saw I did not lead you nor bring
you to any that was more a tavern than the last, nor
so much neither ; for here is no bush, you saw.

Gab. 'Twas that betrayed and entrapped me; but let us

yet forsake it.
se Brome, Works, III, 308; The Antipodes, IV, 9.

FIELD AND BROME 67

Mih. Pray, let us drink first, brother. By your leave,
here 's to you.

Gab. One glassful more is the most that I can bear. My
head is very full, and laboreth with that I have had
already.

Mih. There, sir, I'll undertake one good fellow, that has
but just as much religion as will serve an honest man's
turn, will bear more wine than ten of these giddy-
brained Puritans ; their heads are so full of whimsies.

Gab. 'Tis mighty heady, mighty heady, and truly I cannot
but think that the over-much abuse of these outlandish
liquors have bred so many errors in the Komish
Church.

Mih. Indeed, brother, there is too much abuse made of
such good creatures. Wine in itself is good, you will
grant, though the excess be naught; and taverns are
not contemptible, so the company be good.

Gab. It is most true, we find that holy men have gone to
taverns, and made good use of 'em upon their peregri
nations.

Mih. And cannot men be content to take now and then a
cup, and discourse of good things by the way? As
thus, brother, here's a remembrance, if she be living
and have not lost her honor, to our cousin Dorcas.
. 0 that kinswoman of ours ! She was the dearest loss
that e'er fell from our house.
lih. Pledge her, good brother.

Gab. I do—
Uh. I hope 'twill maudlinize him.

Gab. But have you never seen that miscreant that wronged
her, since he did that same? They say you knew him.

Mih. Alas, suppose I had, what could be done? She's lost,
we see. What good could she receive by any course
against him ?

Gab. It had been good to have humbled him, though, into

68 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

the knowledge of his transgression. And of himself,
for his soul's good either by course of law, or else in
case of necessity, where the law promiseth no release,
by your own right hand you might have smote him,
smote him with great force, yea, smote him unto the
earth, until he had prayed that the evil might be taken
from him.

Mih. This is their way of loving enemies, to beat 'em into
goodness. "Well, brother, I may meet with him again,
and then I know what to do. ' ' ST

From his master Brome had imbibed a thorough- going
dislike for gentlemen of fashion, and he ridicules them with
as strong feeling as Jonson, if not with as telling satire.
In The City Wit the question is asked: "Dost thou know
what a gallant of fashion is ? " and the answer given : ' ' I '11
tell thee. It is a thing that but once in three months has
money in his purse, a creature made up of promise and
protestation, a thing that . . . flatters all he fears,
contemns all he needs not, starves all that serve him, and
undoes all that trust him. ' ' 38 The rules for being a
courtier are: "Speak nothing that you mean, perform
nothing that you promise, pay nothing that you owe, flatter
all above you, scorn all beneath you, deprave all in pri
vate, praise all in public, keep no truth in your mouth, no
faith in your heart, no health in your bones, no friendship
in your mind, no modesty in your eyes, no religion in your
conscience, but especially no money in your purse."89

Occasionally the citizens get their turn: "A good man
i' the city is not called after his good deeds but the known
weight of his purse";40 and Pyannet in The City Wit scoffs
at the idea of an honest citizen: "Honest man! who the

37 Brome, Works, II, 61-62; The Weeding of Covent Garden, IV, 1.

38/6id., I, 292; The City Wit, I, 2.

38/&id, I, 306; The City Wit, II, 3.

*° Hid., Ill, 23; The Northern Lass, II, 1.

FIELD AND BROME 69

devil wished thee to be an honest man? Here's my wor
shipful husband, Mr. Sneakup, that from a grazier is come
to be a justice of peace, and what, as an honest man ? He
grew to be able to give nine hundred pound with my daugh
ter; and what, by honesty? Mr. Sneakup and I are come
up to live i' the city, and here we have lain these three
years, and what, for honesty? Honesty! What should
the city do with honesty when 'tis enough to undo a whole
corporation? Why are your wares gummed; your shops
dark ; your prizes writ in strange characters ; what, for hon
esty? Honesty! Why is hard wax called merchants'
wax, and is said seldom or never to be ripped off but it
plucks the skin of a lordship with it? What, for hon
esty?"41

In the construction of his plots, as we have seen, Brome
purposed to follow the classic rules, and we do find com
parative regularity. He was a skilled and trained workman,
a clever playwright who had learned his craft from Jonson
and knew well the requirements of the stage. He was in
genious and inventive, and some of the plays, as The North
ern Lass, A Jovial Crew, The Antipodes, and The City Wit,
have original situations that remain distinctively in mind.
As in Jonson 's plays, we have complicated intrigue, trick
ery and roguery of all kinds, usually skillfully managed.
Sometimes Brome fell into the error, from which Jonson
was by no means always free, of crowding the stage with
figures and entangling the action with schemes so many and
varied that confusion and bewilderment result. Through
out, the method of Jonson is clearly discernible in the con
struction of the plays.

There are situations that directly or indirectly recall
Jonson 's comedies. The Weeding of Covent Garden is
modeled on Bartholomew Fair, and the debt frankly ac
knowledged. Cockbrain, like Justice Overdo, zealously

« Brome, Works, I, 284-285; The City Wit, I, 1.

70 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

disguises himself and goes among the roisterers and law
breakers of Covent Garden, only to meet with experiences
similar to those of his worthy predecessor when he went to
Bartholomew Fair. As Cockbrain girds up his courage for
investigation and reform, he says: "And so, as my rever
end ancestor, Justice Overdo, was wont to say, ' In heaven 's
name and the King's, and for the good of the common
wealth, I will go about it. ' " 42 Gabriel, with his cant
phrases and assumed piety, goes to Covent Garden as Zeal-
of-the-land Busy to Bartholomew Fair; and Clotpoll, the
foolish gull with plenty of money to spend, is closely re
lated to Bartholomew Cokes in folly and resulting mishaps.
In The Court Beggar, the group of projectors working
upon Sir Andrew Mendicant and persuading him they can
make him a rich lord, recall the gulling of Fitzdotterel in
The Devil is an Ass. Swinburne thinks that the influence
of Volpone is evident in The Novella.43 There may be a
slight reminiscence of Volpone and Mosca in the manner
in which Victoria, the Novella, and her servant Paulo set
up an establishment and seek to draw men of all kinds to
them, but the purpose, methods and characters are entirely
different. The plot of The City Wit is decidedly Jon-
sonian in its processes of gulling and tricking a large group
of persons by a small group. Crazy, a young citizen who
has lost his money and whose friends have turned against
him, Jeremy his boy servant, and Crack, another boy, make
covenant together, "like Subtle, Doll and Face," 44 to cozen
the other characters, and they succeed admirably. The
influence of The Alchemist is manifest in the situations
that follow. Further, the boy Jeremy is dressed as a
woman and marries, as the boy in Epiccene. The School
of Compliment in The New Academy takes us back again

42Brome, Works, II, 2; The Weeding of Covent Garden, I, 1.

« Fortnightly Review, LVII, 1892.

44Brome, Works, I, 318 j The City Wit, III, 1.

FIELD AND BROME 71

to The Devil is an Ass and Epicoene with their ex
positions of fashion and compliment. The suggestion for
The Antipodes, Ward thinks, may have been taken from
Jonson's masque The World in the Moon*6

Brome in The Sparagus tells us what he thinks of hu
mors : ' ' For as in every instrument are all tunes to him that
has the skill to find out the stops, so in every man are all
humors to him that can find their faucets, and draw 'em
out to his purpose. " 46 In choice and execution of comic
types Brome shows constantly strong evidence of Jonson's
influence. Often we do get tricks and humors rather than
persons, but that is true also of Jonson, and some of
Brome 's humorous characters are original, interesting and
distinctive. The finer powers of Jonson in bringing out
the subtle individuality of the representative of a type
Brome does not possess. He lacks the true artistic sense
that hides bare fundamental conception, and he is often too
conscientiously concerned that his idea shall be fully
grasped. This is evident in the way he sometimes points
out the applicability of a name, as that of Touchwood in
The Sparagus Garden: "He has not his name for nothing,
old Touchwood! He is all fire if he be incensed; but so
soft and gentle that you may wind him about your finger
or carry him in your bosom if you handle him rightly ; but
still, be wary, for the least spark kindles him. ' ' 47 Brome
follows closely Jonson's custom of naming characters so
as to indicate ruling quality or humor. Frequently he
identifies his persons by means of catch phrases or say
ings, "tags," and sometimes falls into mere caricature.
Striker in The Sparagus Garden constantly reiterates,
"there I am wi' ye," and Hearty in A Jovial Crew,
"there's a whim now"; Geron of The Love-Sick Court is

"Ward, III, 130.

<8 Brome, Works, III, 160; The Sparagus Garden, III, 4.

<7 Ibid., Ill, 117-118; The Sparagus Garden, I, 1.

72 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

forever comparing everything to "as whilom said" or "as
whilom did" someone sometime; Saleware in A Mad
Couple Well Matched quotes on every possible occasion,
' ' Sapientia mea mihi, stultitia tua tibi. ' '

The personages that stand out most clearly in the com
edies are with few exceptions characters created according
to the theory of humors. Justice Bumpsey of The Demoi
selle, one of Brome's most original creations, by his humor
of spending recklessly an equal amount of money in a like
manner, cures his son-in-law of useless extravagance. The
humor of his "fashion-sick" wife is to "learn and practice
carriage." Pyannet who has "the tongue-ague," Sarpego,
the wearisome pedant, and Linsy-Wolsey, the miserly citi
zen, in The City Wit, are Jonsonian types. So also are Sir
Andrew Mendicant, of The Court Beggar, who sells his
country estate to purchase wit at court and is duped into
believing he may obtain a lordship by means of wild pro
jects; Lady Strangelove, "the humorous widow that loves
to be courted;" Sir Raphael Winterplum, "who has licked
up a living with his tongue, makes all great tables his own,
and eats for his talk;" and Citwit, whose humor is to an
swer all questions asked, whether addressed to him or not,
abuse everybody spoken of, and, when called to account,
excuse himself from a quarrel by declaring he spoke only
"comparatively." In The Weeding of Covent Garden,
Cockbrain, the reforming justice, and Gabriel, the sup
posed saintly Puritan, as we have seen above, bear direct
likeness to Justice Overdo and Zeal-of-the-land Busy in
Bartholomew Fair; Clotpoll is another country gull who
has come to town with money and is anxious to learn to
roar and be a gentleman; and Crosswill objects to every
thing proposed and crosses his children in all they ask, so
that they must get what they want by seeming to seek the
very opposite.

Mrs. Crostill, the humorous widow of A Mad Couple

FIELD AND BROME 73

Well Matched, is also moved by a spirit of contradiction,
and is won by the suitor that slights her most. Saleware
of this same play is foolishly proud of his courtly wife and
refuses to be made jealous, considering every plain piece
of evidence of her unfaithfulness but a plot to make him
jealous. Rafe Camelion in The New Academy is another
doting husband, as blind as Deliro in Every Man out of His
Humor and as effectively disillusioned. Sir Swithin Whim-
bly, "the crying knight," always weeps at the mention of
his dead wife, is "inspired with the infection of poetry"
whenever he thinks of her, and is cured by one of the other
characters who sets out to "turn the tide of's tears."
Matchill marries his maid to spite his daughter and kin
dred, thinking to get ' ' a rare piece of obedience, ' ' but finds
himself sadly mistaken. Justice Clark of A Jovial Crew, in
trying cases, does all the talking and testifying himself ; for
"if we both speak together, how shall we hear one an
other?" He tells a witness: "I can inform myself, sir,
by your looks. I have taken a hundred examinations i'
my days, of felons and other offenders, out of their very
countenances, and wrote 'em down verbatim to what they
would have said. I am sure it has served to hang some of
'em and whip the rest. ' ' 48

There are several characters of humors in The Northern
Lass: Widgine, a silly verse-maker who continually quotes
his sister, takes pride in his tutor's wit, and is a weaker
combination of Stephen and Matthew in Every Man in His
Humor; Captain Anville, a braggart and faint shadow of
Bobadil; Sir Solomon Nonsense, a Cornish countryman
and "a parrot or a popinjay"; and Howdee, who aspires
to the position of a gentleman usher and diligently cons
"the ushers' grammar." Buzzard in The English Moor,
as Ward points out,49 is evidently a relation to Jonson's

«Brome, Works, III, 435; A Jovial Crew, IV, 2.
"Ward, III, 1292.

74 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

Sir Amorous La-Foole. ' ' The Buzzards, ' ' he tells us, * ' are
all gentlemen. We came in with the Conqueror. Our
name (as the French has it) is Beau-Desert, which signifies
—Friends, what does it signify ? " 50 Geron, the pedant of
The Lovesick Court, has a humor of whiloming so persist
ently that even his doting old mother exclaims impatiently,
' ' Forbear your whiloms and your old said saws, ' ' while the
lady whom he courts, when told that he loves her, de
clares :

''That's more than I e'er knew or read by all
He speaks or writes of me. He clothes his words
In furs and hoods, so that I cannot find
The naked meaning of his business. ' ' 51

His old mother, Garrula, bears out her name and for very
talking cannot tell the news she comes to bring.

The comedies contain many other characters of humors,
but these suffice to show the types presented. A certain
rigidity and artificiality we do find, but some of the per
sonages are original and interesting and show that Brome
had a broad sense of humor and a real knowledge of the
foibles and follies of human nature. The influence of Jon-
son is constantly evident in conception and in method of
portrayal. However, Brome produced, on the whole, few
direct imitations of Jonson's characters. It was the gen
eral theory that he learned thoroughly and applied faith
fully.

Brome appears to have acquired a certain amount of
learning and makes some show of classical knowledge. In
several plays he attempts to give the impression of such
a background, but in general he was neither supported nor
weighed down by Jonsonian learning. We find an abun
dance of Latin quotations in The City Wit and The Queen

co Brome, Works, II, 43 ; The English Moor, III, 2.
61/6M.; II, 123; The Lovesick Court, III, I.

FIELD AND BROME

75

and the Concubine, and in some of the plays, as The City
Wit, The Lovesick Court and The Court Beggar, allusions
to classical writers are frequent. It is worth noting, too,
that these plays are all among Brome 's earliest productions.
He occasionally makes a display of out of the way learn
ing, as in the enumeration of dances in The New Academy,
the military terms of The Weeding of Covent Garden, or
the beggar's peculiar dialect in A Jovial Crew.

The vocabulary used in the plays shows, on the whole,
much less likeness to Jonson's than might have been ex
pected, not nearly so much as that of some of the play
wrights studied in the preceding chapter. The largest
number of words we find in The City Wit, The Demoiselle,
The Court Beggar, The Weeding of Covent Garden and
The Sparagus Garden. These plays present Brome 's most
realistic and direct pictures of contemporary life, and so
use the words of common street and tavern talk most fre
quently. Verse and prose are used in varying proportions.
Brome was not a poet, and his rough, halting verse, though
aiming at regularity, can hardly be said to show Jonson's
influence.

A study of Brome 's plays bears out fully the testimony
of Jonson and of contemporaries, as well as the claim of
Brome himself, that he was a ' * Son of Ben. ' ' In conscious
theory and in practical application he followed after his
master, however afar off when judged as to intellectual
mastery and literary genius. His realistic pictures of con
temporary life, moral satire, plots of complicated intrigue,
and characters of humors, testify clearly who was his
teacher in the art of writing comedy.

CHAPTEE IV

OTHER "SONS OF BE

CLOSING OF THE THEATERS IN 1642.

During the years between 1620 and 1642, a considerable
number of writers in one or more plays tried their hand
at the Jonsonian comedy of humors. Many of these were
gentlemen, and did not, like the dramatists whom we have
previously studied, find a profession and a livelihood in
connection with the stage, but wrote an occasional play as
a diversion from their work as preacher, teacher, soldier
or statesman. With some of them, we discover in com
mendatory verses and direct references of one kind or an
other, evidences of personal relation to Jonson; but with
others, only from a study of their plays do we know that
they admired and sought to imitate his comedy. They
did not, like the earlier and greater playwrights, work side
by side with him as comrades and rivals, but were, some
times near and sometimes far off, followers of an acknowl
edged master. Some show his general influence in hu
morous personages, satiric tone and plots of gullery ; others
are direct and close imitators of particular passages and
plots. Many of this group, though just what ones we do
not always know, must have shared in the happy feasts of
wit and laughter at the Devil Tavern. To curious stu
dents, a membership list of those admitted by Ben to his
sacred circle, would be of decided interest.

Thomas May, a Cambridge graduate, a lawyer of Gray's
Inn, and in his earlier years a member of court circles, was
allied to Jonson in his love of classical learning and his
production of English tragedies on historical themes, as

OTHER ''SONS OF BEN" 77

well as in his one comedy of manners and humors. He
has been better known as an historian of the Long Parlia
ment than as a dramatist. Langbaine tells us that in his
university days "he was a very close student and what
stock of learning he then treasured up is apparent from
his works."1 Virgil's Georgics, some of Martial's Epi
grams and Lucan's Pharsalia were translated by him, and
the last of these, to quote Langbaine again, "is extremely
commended by our famous Jonson. ' ' 2 About this work
Jonson wrote "To my chosen friend, the learned trans
lator of Lucan, Thomas May, Esquire," a highly compli
mentary poem, and signed it, "your true friend in judg
ment and choice, Ben Jonson. " 3 To the J&nsonus Virbius
May contributed a poem in praise of * ' Great Jonson, King
of English poetry," his "judgment, art and wit."4 Al
though the classical tragedies, Cleopatra, Julia Agrippina,
Antigone, and Julius Ccesar, are largely affected by the
contemporary spirit of romance and the work of Fletcher,
yet they show a frank following of Jonson in choice and
treatment of material.5

It is with May's one comedy of manners, The Old Couple,
that we are especially concerned here. This play was not
printed until 1658, but Fleay considers it to have been
written before The Heir, a tragi-comedy on the accepted
Fletcherian model definitely stated to have been acted in
1620, and so dates it 1619 or 1620.6 The general conduct
of the plot, which is originally conceived and planned,
tends toward the romantic method rather than the Jon-
sonian in such situations as that of Scudmore, supposed
to be slain but disguised as Lady Covet 's chaplain while

1 Langbaine, 360.

2 Ibid., 364.

s Jonson, Works, III, 294-295.
* Hid., Ill, 504.
BSchelling, II, 45, 268.
« Fleay, II, 83.

78 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

his betrothed lady wanders about in a wood singing songs
of bitter lament, or of Eugeny in close hiding in the wood
from pursuit for the murder he thinks he has committed.
However, in the schemes by which the miserly old people,
Sir Argent Scrape, Lady Covet and Earthworm are cured
of their avarice, and the simple gull Dotterel is fooled
into marrying Lady Whimsey, as well as in the regard for
the unities of time and place, we find traces of Jonson's
influence.

The moral intent of The Old Couple is unmistakable.
That it was ' ' chiefly designed an antidote against covetous-
ness," Langbaine had no doubt.7 Not only in the general
theme do we discover the ethical purpose but in expository
moral utterances on avarice and charity, and in plain
statements of intention to "purge" and "cure" the covet
ous-minded personages. A number of the characters have
descriptive names, are conceived along simple lines as pos
sessing a ruling quality, and are somewhat influenced by
the allegorical point of view, yet they are far from being
mere abstractions. Dotterel, the gull who is with good
reason not afraid of his brain being hurt by wine, is most
fully Jonsonian in conception and portrayal. "We have
before noted Jonson's fondness for references to and
analogies with the foolish dotterel, particularly as shown
in the name and character of Fitzdotterel of The Devil is
an Ass. The Dotterel of The Old Couple Lady Whimsey
succeeds in marrying, and thus also she gets control of his
wealth :

" Euphues. Our Dotterel, then, is caught?

Barnet. He is, and just

As Dotterels used to be : the lady first
Advanc'd toward him, stretch 'd forth her wing,
and he

? Langbaine, 364.

OTHER "SONS OP BEN" 79

Met her with all expressions; and he's caught
As fast in her lime-twigs as he can be,
Until the church confirm it.

Euph. There will be

Another brave estate for her to spend.

Bar. Others will be the better for't; and if

None but a Dotterel suffer for't, what loss
Of his can countervail the least good fortune
That may from thence blow to another man ? ' ' 8

The construction, didactic purpose and personages of
The Old Couple indicate a general acquaintance with the
methods of Jonson, and not a direct imitation of individual
plays nor even a close following of theories.

Robert Davenport can hardly be called a * ' Son of Ben, ' '
yet he deserves brief notice here as having felt, though only
to a slight extent and at long range, the influence of Jon-
son's theory of humors. His two comedies, The City
Night-Cap and A New Trick to Cheat the Devil, illustrate
well the way in which the idea of humors had become a
common dramatic possession and crept now and again,
perhaps often with little conscious thought on the part of
the writer, into plays which otherwise exhibit no traces of
Jonson 's methods. Lodovick of The City Night-Cap, li
censed in 1624, persists in foolishly trusting a faithless
wife, asserting "my humor's my humor" and forever re
peating "crede quo habes et habes." In A New Trick to
Cheat the Devil, printed in 1639, Treatwell, Master and
Mistress Changeable, and Slightall, are described by their
names and in a vague and general way have their humors.
One of the persons of this play pleads for quiet and de
clares

ksDodsley's Old English Plays, ed. by Hazlitt, XII, 41; The Old
louple, III, 1.

80 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

"I'm like the man that could endure no noise
In th' Silent Woman, answer all in signs." 9

Thomas Eandolph spent a great part of his short life
of twenty-nine years at the Universities of Cambridge and
Oxford, was a gentleman, a scholar, a poet, and the chief
university dramatist of the time. By reason of his
Amyntas, one of the two or three best Elizabethan pastoral
dramas, his Hey for Honesty, a readaptation of Aristo
phanes' Plutus, the farcical dialogue of Aristippus and
monologue of The Conceited Pedlar, two comedies, The
Jealous Lovers, and The Muses' Looking-glass, and his
various short poems, Randolph holds a high place among
the "Sons of Ben." Complimentary verses testify to his
friendship with James Shirley and Sir Aston Cockayne,
and we have abundant evidence of his admiration and affec
tion for Jonson. A study of such writers as May, Ran
dolph and Cartwright, whose work bears a decidedly aca
demic stamp and likewise has a clear relation to the comedy
of humors, makes us wish that we knew just what was Jon-
son's contact with the universities, and whether perhaps
he came in touch directly on academic ground with the
writers of college drama.

While an undergraduate, Randolph seems to have made
the acquaintance of Jonson, and the following anecdote,
interesting, whether or not authentic, has been handed
down:

"Randolph, who was then a student in Cambridge, hav
ing stayed in London so long that he might truly be said
to have had a parley with his empty purse, was resolved
to see Ben Jonson with his associates, who, as he heard, at
a set time kept a club together at the Devil Tavern, near
Temple Bar. Accordingly he went thither at the specified

»Bullen's Old Plays, New Series, III, Works of Davenport, 292;
A New Trick to Cheat the Devil, V, 3.

OTHER "SONS OP BEN" 81

time; but, being unknown to them, and wanting money,
which, to a spirit like Tom's, was the most daunting thing
in the world, he peeped into the room where they were, and
was espied by Ben Jonson, who, seeing him in a scholastic
threadbare habit, cried out, 'John Bo-peep, come in!'
which accordingly he did. They immediately began to
rhyme upon the meanness of his clothes, asking him if he
could not make a verse, and withal to call for his pot of
sack. There being but four of them he immediately re
plied —

" 'I John Bo-peep,

To you four sheep,
With each one his good fleece;

If that you are willing,

To give me five shilling,
'Tis fifteen pence a piece.'

'Why,' exclaimed Ben Jonson, 'I believe this is my son
Randolph'; which being made known to them, he was
kindly entertained in their company, and Ben Jonson ever
after called him his son." 10

By several contemporary writers Randolph's name is
closely linked with that of Jonson. Among some verses
before Harding 's Sicily and Naples or the Fatal Union,
1640, are these:

"Thus, friend, the bays still flourish. Jonson dead,
Randolph deceas'd, they fall to crown thy head."

In The Poet's Condition, 1662, by Rowland Watkyns, the
two poets are named together:

"What lands had Randolph, or great Ben?"11

10 Randolph, Works, Introduction, XI. Hazlitt's New London
Jest-Book, 1871, p. 338.

11 Ibid., I, p. XIII.

82 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

The writer of the preface to the reader before Hey for Hon
esty tells us that "the adopted son of Ben Jonson, being
the translator hereof, followed his father's steps; they both
of them loved sack and harmless mirth. ' ' 12
Richard West writes of Randolph:

"Read's flow'ry pastorals, and you will swear
He was not Jonson 's only, but Pan's heir."13

In some dedicatory verses G. W. calls him again ' ' true son
and heir" of "immortal Ben." 14

Three poems Randolph himself wrote to Jonson. The
first is "A gratulatory to Master Ben Jonson for his
adopting of him to be his son. ' ' He glories in the honor be
stowed on him:

"thy adoption quits me of all fear,
And makes me challenge a child's portion there.

. . . Ovid, Virgil and the Latin lyre
That is so like thee, Horace, the whole quire
Of poets are, by thy adoption, all
My uncles . . . .

boast I must,

Being son of his adoption
And to say truth, that which is best in me
May call you father; 'twas begot by thee.
Have I a spark of that celestial flame
Within me? I confess I stole the same
Prometheus-like, from thee. ' ' 15

Another poem is ' ' An answer to Master Ben Jonson 's Ode,

12 Randolph, Works, II, 376.
is Ibid., II, 517.
i* Ibid., II, 507.
ic IUd., II, 537-538.

OTHER "SONS OF BEN" 83

to persuade him not to leave the stage" after the failure
of The New Inn, 16291, for

"I know thy worth, and that thy lofty strains
Write not to clothes, but brains.
But thy great spleen doth rise,
Cause moles will have no eyes ;
This only in my Ben I faulty find,
He 's angry, they '11 not see him that are blind. ' ' ie

In "An Eclogue to Master Jonson" Tityrus is Jonson
and Damon, Randolph. Damon has broken his reed and
does not care to mend it. Tityrus urges him to continue
to serve the muses, for

"I meant to thee
Of all the sons I have, by legacy
To have bequeath 'd my pipe. Thee, thee of all
I meant it should her second master call."17

Randolph's dramatic work was done between the years
1629 and 1633, and includes a pastoral, a dialogue, a mono
logue and three comedies. The testimony of contempo
raries and the full recognition of debt from Randolph him
self would make us expect to find in his work many evi
dences of Jonson 's influence. Randolph, however, was a
close student and genuine lover of the classics, and drew
first hand from Aristophanes, Plautus and Terence, as Jon
son had done, ideas about plot, satire and character in
comedy. Whether Jonson had anything to do with the
direction Randolph's study and interest took, we do not
know. Edward Fraunces wrote of The Jealous Lovers:

i« Randolph, Works, II, 582-583.
IT Ibid, II, 606.

84 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

"if by chance, through injury of time,
Plautus and Terence and that fragrant thyme
Of Attic wit should perish, we might see
All those reviv'd in this one comedy." 18

In The Muses' Looking-glass the moral value of comedy
is very fully set forth :

"On the stage

We set an usurer to tell this age,
How ugly looks his soul : a prodigal
Is taught by us, how far from liberal
His folly bears him. Boldly, I dare say,
There has been more by us in some one play
Laugh 'd into wit and virtue, than hath been
By twenty tedious lectures drawn from sin
And foppish humors: hence the cause doth rise,
Men are not won by th' ears so well as eyes."19

Again, the soul sees her face

In comedy, and has no other glass. ' ' 20
Comedy works "with shame —

A thing more powerful in a generous breast.
Who sees an eating parasite abus'd;
A covetous bawd laugh 'd at; an ignorant gull
Cheated; a glorious soldier knock 'd and baffl'd;
A crafty servant whipp 'd ; a niggard churl
Hoarding up dicing-moneys for his son;
A spruce, fantastic courtier, a mad roarer,
A jealous tradesman, an o'erweening lady,
A corrupt lawyer — rightly personated;

is Randolph, Works, I, 63.

is lUd., I, 183, The Muses' Looking-glass, I, 2.
I, 185; The Muses' Looking-glass, I, 3.

OTHER "SONS OF BEN" 85

But (if we have a blush) will blush, and shame
As well to act these follies as to own them. ' ' 21

Jonson himself nowhere expresses more plainly or more
emphatically a belief in the didactic purpose of comedy
to expose and scourge follies and vices.

Ward explains the purpose of The Muses' Looking-glass
as the vindication of the moral power of comedy,22 and
marks Randolph's difference here from Jonson in dispen
sing entirely with action and showing in a series of dia
logues between abstract personages representing various
vices and virtues, that practicable virtue is a mean be
tween two extremes. The Jealous Lovers, The Muses'
Looking-glass and Hey for Honesty, all contain many al
lusions to abuses and knaveries of the time. In the two
latter plays, unjust and indifferent justices, proud and
whimsical ladies, zealous saints of Amsterdam, corrupt
churchmen, and flattering courtiers, are severely satirized.
We hear again in The Muses' Looking-glass of the old
project to drain the fens, and there also a proposal is made
to found a free school in London to teach young gentlemen
how to drink and take tobacco, swear, roar and quarrel.

The picture of the Puritans that we get in The Muses'
Looking-glass is full of humor and interest, and is such
skillful portraiture as Jonson had created models for in
The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair. Bird and Mis
tress Flowerdew, who serve the theater at Blackfriars with
feathers and other small wares, express their abhorrence
of playhouses ; Roscius, the demonstrator of the action that
we learned to look for in Jonson 's comedies, joins them,
prevails on them to see the play to be given, and, as it
proceeds, explains its significance. Of all the later drama
tists who followed Jonson 's lead in satirizing the Puritans,

21 Ibid., I, 188-189; The Muses' Looking-glass, I, 4.

22 Ward III 135.

86 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

no other has been so successful as Randolph here, and one
or two passages are worthy of quotation:

Mistress Flowerdew. See, brother, how the wicked throng

and crowd

To Works of vanity! Not a nook or corner
In all this house of sin, this cave of nlthiness,
This den of spiritual thieves, but it is stuff 'd,
Stuff 'd and stuff 'd full, as is a cushion,
With the lewd reprobate.

Bird. Sister, were there not before inns —
Yes, I will say inns, for my zeal bids me
Say filthy inns — enough to harbor such
As travel 'd to destruction the broad way ;
But they will build more and more — more shops of
Satan?

Mis. Flo. Iniquity aboundeth, though pure zeal

Teach, preach, huff, puff, and snuff at it; yet still
Still it aboundeth. Had we seen a church,
A new-built church, erected north and south,
It had been something worth the wondering at.

Bird. Good works are done.

Mis. Flo. I say no works are good ;

Good works are merely popish and apocryphal.

Mis. Flo. It was a zealous prayer

I heard a brother make concerning playhouses.

Bird. For charity, what is't?

Mis. Flo. That the Globe,

Wherein (quoth he) reigns a whole world of vice,

Had been consum'd: the Phrenix burnt to ashes:

The Fortune whipp'd for a blind whore: Blackfriars,

He wonders how it 'scap'd demolishing

I' th' time of reformation: lastly, he wish'd

The Bull might cross the Thames to the Bear Garden,

OTHER "SONS OF BEN" 87

And there be soundly baited.
Bird. A good prayer.
Miss. Flo. Indeed, it something pricks my conscience

I come to sell 'em pins and looking-glasses.
Bird. I have their custom too for all their feathers:

'Tis fit that we, which are sincere professors,

Should gain by infidels. ' ' 23
Again :

"Mis. Flo. What do you next present?
Roscius. The several virtues.
Bird. I hope there be no cardinal virtues there!
Ros. There be not.
Bird. Then I'll stay. I hate a virtue

That will be made a cardinal : cardinal virtues,

Next to pope-virtues, are most impious.

Bishop-virtues are unwarrantable.

I hate a virtue in a morrice-dance.

I will allow of none but deacon-virtues,

Or elder virtues.
Ros. These are moral virtues.
Bird. Are they lay-virtues?
Ros. Yes.
Bird. Then they are lawful :

Virtues in orders are unsanctified.
Ros. We do present them royal, as they are

In all their state in a full dance.
Bird. What dance?

No wanton jig, I hope ; no dance is lawful

But prinkum-prankum !
Mis. Flo. Will virtues dance?

0 vile, absurd, maypole, maid-marian virtue ! " *4

It is in the characters with their descriptive names, al-

23 Randolph, Works, I, 179-182; The Muses' Looking-glass, I, 1.
., 259-260; The Muses' Looking-glass, V, 1.

88 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

legorical significance, and distinguishing humors that we
trace most surely the direct influence of Jonson. Asotus
of The Jealous Lovers in name and main characteristics
owes much to Asotus, the citizen's heir and prodigal of
Cynthia's Revels. Ballio persuades the Asotus of The
Jealous Lovers to turn over his purse by convincing him
that it indicates a lack of gentility to carry his own money,
in much the same way that Amorphus inveigles the Asotus
of the earlier play out of his new beaver. Ballio and
Amorphus both tutor their rich, foolish and self-loving
pupils in the art of compliment. As Asotus has the hu
mor of spending, so his father has the humor of acquiring
for the son on whom he dotes; Tyndarus and Techmessa,
that of jealousy; and Dipsas, that of scolding. Edward
Fraunces commends this comedy as a picture of humors:

"Pander, gull and whore:
The doting father, shark, and many more
Thy scene doth represent unto the life,
Beside the character of a curst wife :
So truly given, in so proper style,
As if thy active soul had dwelt a while
In each man's body and at length had seen
How in their humors they themselves demean. ' ' 25

Ward considers The Muses' Looking-glass "an inter
esting illustration of the effect exercised upon literary minds
of quick apprehension by the theories and examples which
they found in Jonson 's comedy of character,"26 and Dr.
Schelling finds here "especially the influence of Jonson 's
later revulsion to the methods and ideals of the old mo
ralities."27 The author declares frankly that he brings

25 Randolph, Works, I, 63.

26 Ward, III, 134.

27 Schellinv. II, 86.

OTHER "SONS OF BEN" 89

"No plot at all, but a mere Olla Podrida,
A medley of ill-plac'd and worse penn'd humors.
His desire was in single scenes to show
How comedy presents each single vice
Ridiculous. ' ' 28

We get abstract and yet witty, original and effective pre
sentation of flattery and impertinence, overweening con
fidence and foolish distrust, vain ostentation and base pen
ury, and many other excesses of virtue that have become
vices.

In regard for classical rules of construction, in moral
intent, in subject and quality of satire, and in characters
of humors, Randolph's work has likenesses to Jonson's.
Just how far these are due to Randolph's own classic bent
and academic study, and how far to Jonson's direct influ
ence, it is impossible definitely to decide. We can say,
however, that in the follies and views he satirized and the
humors he portrayed, Randolph certainly had accepted
the teaching of Jonson.

Shakerley Marmion, having graduated from Oxford and
afterwards tried his fortune as a soldier in the Low Coun
tries, came to London to make his way as a man of letters
and gained the patronage of Jonson. Brome, Heywood,
and Nabbes were his friends and wrote verses for his Cupid
and Psyche in 1637. In A Fine Companion there is a pas
sage which seems to refer to the gatherings at the Devil
Tavern :

Whence come you? from Apollo?
Careless. From the heaven

Of my delight, where the boon Delphic god
Drinks sack, and keeps his Bacchanalias,
And has his incense, and his altars smoking,

28 Randolph, Works, I, 193-194; The Muses' Looking-glass, I, 4.

90 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

And speaks in sparkling prophecies; thence do I
come."29

For the Jonsonus Virbius, Marmion wrote verses "to the
sacred memory of his thrice honored father," declaring
that from Jonson 's light "myself have lately received in
fluence."30

Holland's Leaguer, A Fine Companion and The Anti
quary were written in the thirties and are all comedies of
manners and humors. That Marmion had an ethical pur
pose in mind when he began to write we know from the ad
dress to the reader before his earliest play, Holland's
Leaguer: "However my muse has descended to this subject,
let men esteem of her only as a reprover, not an interpreter
of wickedness," for "former writers in their accurate dis
covery of vice, have mingled their precepts of wisdom.31
Philautus in this play is sick of self-love and his friend Fi-
delio sets out in the first act to find ' * a means to cure him of
his folly. ' ' Here and there, through all these plays we fine
that expository satire which so many of his successor
learned from Jonson. In Holland's Leaguer several char
acters rail against the ever-recurring abuse of bribery
projectors are once again scornfully satirized in account
of their impossible schemes for making money; and th
true gallant who promises anything, never pays, vows lov
to every fair lady he meets and talks idly all the day long
is described at length. Again, in The Fine Companio
"the time's disease of compliment" is ridiculed, and als
the vulgar idea concerning a lady that it is necessary fo
her to "have clients wait at her gates with presents anc
yet have their servile offices pass unregarded," "be a
proud as she list and have new ways to express it, " " rid

29 Marmion, Dramatic Works, 138; A Fine Companion, II, 4.
so Jonson, Works, III, 515-516.
31 Marmion, Works, 5.

OTHER "SONS OF BEN"

91

up and down in her litter and have a coach and four horses
to follow after, full of gentleman ushers and waiting
women."32 The subject of watches to which Jonson him
self refers several times comes up again in The Antiquary :

"Petrutio. And now you talk of time, what time of day is

it by your watch?
Lionell. I have none, sir.

Pet. How, ne'er a watch? Oh monstrous! How do you
consume your hours? Ne'er a watch? 'Tis the great
est solecism in society that e'er I heard of: ne'er a
watch ?

Lio. How deeply you conceive of it !

Pet. You have not a gentleman, that's a true gentleman,

without one; 'tis the main appendix to a plush lining:

besides, it helps much to discourse; for, while others

confer notes together, we confer our watches, and

spend good part of the day with talking of it. ' ' 33

These examples show that while Marmion did succeed

in catching something of Jonson 's satirical tone, he simply

rang the changes on subjects already overworked.

According to a passage in The Antiquary, Marmion held
that "So many men, so many humors." Now and again
a particular person in the comedies is pointed out as pos
sessing or as evidencing in some way a characteristic hu
mor, and many of the characters are named in accordance
with their chief quality. Trimalchio in Holland's Leaguer
is "a humorous gallant" and "a giant in conceit," who
thus explains his name:

"my father's name
Was Malchio, for my three additions
Of valor, wit and humor, 'tis enlarged
To Mr. Trimalchio."34

32 Marmion, Dramatic Works, 130; A Fine Companion, II, 2.

33 Ibid., 204; The Antiquary, I, 1.

, 28; Holland's Leaguer, II, 1.

92 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

His wit is such that

"it never fails me,
I have it at a certainty: I'll set it
To run so many hours, and when 'tis down,
I can wind it up like a watch." 35

He fights by geometry :

"I'll show you in geometry,
Two parallels can never meet : now we two
Being parallels, for so we are, that is
Equal in wit and valor, can never meet,
And if we never meet, we shall ne 'er fight. ' ' 36

Spruce in A Fine Companion is a gallant who continu
ally proffers but never performs courtesies, is a suitor to
every woman he meets and keeps a bundle of blank love-
letters ready to have names inserted. Lackwit of the same
play harks back to Jonson's La-Foole tribe: "This is a
book of heraldry, forsooth, and I do find by this book that
the Lackwits are a very ancient name, and of large ex
tent, and come of as good a pedigree as any is in the city ;
besides they have often matched themselves into very great
families, and can quarter their arms, I will not say with
lords, but with squires, knights, aldermen, and the like,
and can boast their descent to be as generous* as any of the
La-Fooles or the John Daws whatsoever. ' ' 37 Captain
Whibble is another swaggering, blustering, swearing rois
terer, called in one place, "Kastrill." Petrutio in The
Antiquary is a follower of strange fashions and follies,
who has traveled and therefore considers himself incom
parable for judgment. The Antiquary, Veterano, as has
already been pointed out,38 is the most novel of the per-

ssMarmion, Dramatic Works, 46; Holland's Leaguer, II, 5.
z*llid., 91; Holland's Leaguer, V, 4.
37 Hid., 142; A Fine Companion, II, 5.
ss Ward, III, 148, and Schelling, II, 276.

OTHER "SONS OF BEN" 93

sonages created by Marmion and a happy invention, though
in the end left with the possibilities of the original concep
tion undeveloped and unused. Veterano has directed all
his powers in one direction toward the collection of old
manuscripts and articles of various kinds until at length
he has become exceedingly credulous. After drinking
more wine than usual, he believes that he wears Hanni
bal's spectacles, Julius Caesar's hat and Pompey's breeches,
and is gulled into purchasing what he supposes a De Re-
publica in Cicero's own handwriting and a long lost book
of mathematics restored by Ptolemy.

Though far from attaining his master's powers, it is
evident from whom Marmion took lessons in conceiving
and portraying character. The plays show a liking for
Latin phrases and classical allusions that may have de
veloped under Jonson's influence. The prologue to A Fine
Companion consists of a dialogue between a critic and the
author, such as Jonson frequently used, and, according to
Ward, borrows part of its phraseology from Persius.*9
The plots are made up of schemes for gulling or for purg
ing, intrigues and tricks, neither especially clever nor
original. Marmion sought to apply Jonson's general the
ories in plot, character and satire, and, however rigid in
interpretation and lacking in originality the results may
be, he did not slavishly imitate any particular play or
plays.

William Cartwright, according to Wood, was "the most
noted poet, orator, and philosopher of his time," and "the
most florid and seraphical preacher in the university."40
Langbaine tells us that "the ablest judge of poetry at that
time, I mean Ben Jonson, said with some passion, 'My son
Cartwright writes all like a man. ' " 41 To the Jonsonus

»»Ward, III, 147.

40 Wood, Athen. Oxon., Ill, 09.

*i Langbaine, 53.

94 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

Virlius he contributed a long elegy, addressing Jonson as
"Father of poets." The earliest publisher of his poems
exclaimed in admiration of this: "What had Ben said,
had he read his own eternity in that lasting elegy given
him by our author ! " 42 Whether, however, it added much
to Jonson 's fame is a matter of great doubt.

Cartwright's one comedy of manners, The Ordinary,
probably written in 1634, is a coarse and dull picture of
the very lowest classes of London society and centers about
a city restaurant of the time. That he has obtained his
material at second-hand, the author himself admits in the
prologue :

"That web of manners which the stage requires,
That mass of humors which poetic fires
Take in, and boil, and purge, and try, and then
With sublimated follies cheat those men
That first did vent them, are not yet his art ;

Think, then, if here you find nought can delight,
He hath not yet seen vice enough to write. ' ' 43

It is very evident that Cartwright in this play took as his
model The Alchemist. Hearsay an intelligencer, Slicer a
discharged lieutenant, and Shape a cheater, three sharpers,
in imitation of Subtle, Face and Dol, form a confederacy
to give mutual assistance. They choose an ordinary as
their base of operations and here draw within their net
various victims, among others a gamester Caster, who comes
like Dapper to learn how to win unfailingly at cards and
dice, and Have-at-all, who like Kastrill would know how to
prove always valiant and victorious in a fight. In per
sonages, situations and dialogues, the play is closely remi
niscent of Jonson.

42 Langbaine, 55.

43 Dodsley's Old Plays, ed. by Hazlitt, XII, 209.

OTHER "SONS OP BEN" 95

The quarrel of Slicer, Hearsay and Shape with Widow
Potluck in the first act seems to have been suggested by the
violent dispute of Subtle, Face and Dol at the beginning
of The Alchemist. The way in which the gang draws its
victims and slyly dupes them out of their money is in di
rect imitation of the methods portrayed by Jonson. Take
as illustration this passage:

' * Caster. Do you think

I will betray myself or you, whom I
Esteem above myself? I have as yet
One hundred left, some part of which —

Shape. Faith, sir,

These lines require advice; if it should come
Unto the council's ear once, he might be
Sent into other kingdoms to win up
Money for the relief o' th' state, and so
Be as it were an honest kind of exile.

Cast. If I do e'er discover, may I want
Money to pay my ordinary : may I
At my last stake (when there is nothing else
To lose the game) throw ames-ace thrice together!
I '11 give you forty pound in hand —

Hearsay. I may

Show you the virtue oft, though not the thing:
I love my country very well. Your high
And low men are but trifles; your pois'd dye,
That's ballasted with quicksilver or gold,
Is gross to this —
lape. Proffer him more, I say.

Cas. Here's fifty—

Hear. For the bristle dye, it is

Not worth that hand that guides it: toys fit only
For clerks to win poor costermongers' ware with.

Shape. You do not come on well.

96 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

Gas. Here's threescore —

Hear. Then

Your hollowed thumb join'd with your wriggled

box —

The slur and such like are not to be talked of ;
They're open to the eye. For cards, you may
Without the help of any secret word
Or a false hand, without the cut or shuffle,
Or the pack'd trick, have what you will yourself;
There's none to contradict you.

Gas. If you please

But to instruct me, here is fourscore pound.

Hear. Do you think 'tis money I esteem? I can
Command each term by art as much as will
Furnish a navy. Had you but five pound
Left you in all the world, I'd undertake
Within one fortnight you should see five thousand.
Not that I covet any of your dross,
But that the power of this art may be
More demonstrably evident, leave in
My hands all but some smaller sum to set,
Something to stake at first.

Shape. He'll tell you all,

If you but seem to trust him.

Cos. Here I'll lay

Down in your hands all but this little portion,
Which I reserve for a foundation.

Hear. Being y'are confident of me, and I

Presume your lips are sealed up to silence,
Take that, which I did never yet discover:
So help you fortune, me philosophy. ' ' 44

Compare this with the following from The Alchemist:

"Subtle. Marry, to be so importunate for one
That, when he has it, will undo you all :
44Dodsley's Old Plays, XII, 243-245; The Ordinary, II, 3.

OTHER "SONS OF BEN"

He'll win up all the money in the town.
Face. How!
Siib. Yes, and blow up gamester after gamester

As they do crackers in a puppet-play.

Face. Do you think that I dare move him?
Dapper. If you please, sir;

All 's one to him, I see.
Face. What! for that money?

I cannot with my conscience ; nor should you

Make the request, methinks.
Dap. No, sir, I mean

To add consideration.
Face. Why then, sir,

I '11 try. Say that it were for all games, doctor ?
Sub. I say then, not a mouth shall eat for him

At any ordinary, but on the score,

That is a gaming mouth, conceive me.
Face. Indeed!
Sub. He'll draw you all the treasure of the realm

If it be set him.

97

Face. Go to. Go thank the doctor: he's your friend,

To take it so.
Dap. I thank his lordship.
Face. So! Another angel.
Dap. Must I ?
Face. Must you! 'slight,

What else is thanks ? Will you be trivial ? " 45

Caster's dream of what he will do with all the wealth
that is to be his is based upon Sir Epicure Mammon's
ecstasies of joy as he anticipates the possession of untold
riches. Caster exclaims :

« Jonson, Works II, 12-14; The Alchemist, I, 1.

98 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

' ' First, will I beggar all the gentlemen
That do keep terms ; then build with what I win.
Next I'll undo all gaming citizens,
And purchase upon that. The foreman shall
Want of his wonted opportunities ;
Old Thomas shall keep home, I warrant him.
I will ascend to the groom-porters next,
Fly higher games, and make my mincing knights
"Walk musing in their knotty freeze abroad;
For they shall have no home. There shall not be
That pleasure but I '11 balk : I '11 run o 'er nature ;
And when I've ransacked her, I'll weary art:
My means, I 'm sure, will reach it.

I'll send some forty thousand unto Paul's;
Build a cathedral next in Banbury;
Give organs to each parish in the kingdom ;
And so root out th' unmusical elect.
I'll pay all soldiers whom their captains won't;
Eaise a new hospital for those maim'd people
That have been hurt in gaming: then build up
All colleges that ruin hath demolish 'd,
Or interruption left imperfect. ' ' 46

Compare with this especially the following:

"Mammon, No, I assure you,
I shall employ it all in pious uses,
Founding of colleges and grammar schools,
Marrying young virgins, building hospitals,
And now and then a church. ' ' 47

The rogues, when alone, exult over the success of their
schemes, glorying not only in the money they have gained

"Dodsley's Old Plays, XII, 247-248; The Ordinary, II, 3.
*7 Jonson, Works, II, 25; The Alchemist, II, 1.

OTHER "SONS OF BEN" 99

but almost as much in the fun they have had out of their
tricks. They talk over what they have accomplished and
repeat to one another with keen sense of humor the foolish
utterances of their unsuspecting victims. All this is
plainly reminiscent of The Alchemist and perhaps also of
Volpone. All the sharpers at the end of the play escape
by their cleverness the punishment they deserve. We are
forced to admire their skill and judge them by an intel
lectual standard rather than a strictly moral one. Here
again the influence of The Alchemist is clearly manifested.
Ward suggests that the basis of the military dinner de
scribed in great detail, Act II, Scene 1, is to be found in the
cook's speech in Jonson's masque, Neptune's Triumph.48
Cartwright refers slightingly to the Puritans a number
of times in The Ordinary and shows that he has been im
pressed by Jonson's satire against them. We find this bit
of doggerel in the play :

"My name's not Tribulation,

Nor holy Ananias:
I was baptized in fashion,
Our vicar did hold bias. ' ' 49

The mercer 's speech, liberally interspersed with * ' brother, ' '
"verily," and "truly," is intended as satire against
the cant of the Puritans. In the final scene, Shape,
Slicer and Hearsay go off to New England :

" Slicer. There is no longer tarrying here: let's swear

Fidelity to one another, and

So resolve for New England.
Hearsay. 'Tis but getting

A little pigeon-hole reformed ruff—
Slicer. Forcing our beards into the orthodox bent —

« Ward, III, 1402.

"Dodsley's Old Plays, XII, 280; The Ordinary, IV, 1.

100 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

Shape. Nosing a little treason 'gainst the King,
Bark something at the bishops, and we shall
Be easily received.

Hear. No fitter place.

They are good silly people; souls that will
Be cheated without trouble. One eye is
Put out with zeal, th ' other with ignorance ;
And yet they think they're eagles.

Shape. We are made

Just fit for that meridian. No good work's
Allowed there : faith — faith is what they call for,
And we will bring it 'em.

Slicer. What language speak they?

Hear. English, and now and then a root or two

Of Hebrew, which we'll learn of some Dutch skipper
That goes along with us this voyage."50

Cartwright has imitated Jonson more closely than any
of the followers previously studied. The confused coarse
picture we get in The Ordinary but serves to throw into
stronger relief the vigor and power of The Alchemist.

Jasper Mayne was an intimate friend of Cartwright, and
like him was a divine, a royalist, a contributor to the Jon-
sonus Virbius, and the writer of one comedy in Jonson 's
manner. His translation of Lucian's Dialogues, 1638, is
dedicated to Jonson 's friend and patron, the Earl of New
castle. The City Match, 1639, is as close an imitation of
The Silent Woman as The Ordinary is of The Alchemist.
The address to the reader declares that the author did not
court fame from the stage, and published his play only
by way of self -protection that it might not in a false copy
''appear to the world with more than its own faults." His
aim was to present nothing

ooDodsley's Old Plays, XII, 316-317; The Ordinary, V, 5.

OTHER "SONS OF BEN" 101

' ' But what was first a comedy i ' th ' street :
Cheapside brought into verse; no passage strange
To any here that hath been at th' Exchange."51

And the play is full of allusions to well-known places and
localities in London such as the Temple, the Exchange, the
Strand, Fleet Street, the Mermaid, St. Paul's or Westmin
ster Hall.

Warehouse, the miserly uncle, corresponds to Morose
in The Silent Woman; Frank Plotwell is another clever
Dauphine ; Bright and Newcut are slight copies of Truewit
and Clerimont; Bannswright fills the office of Cutbeard
in obtaining a wife for the old uncle who is to be duped;
and the "philosophical madams" are later representatives
of the ' ' ladies collegiate. ' ' Warehouse, utterly out of con
ceit of his wild and extravagant nephew, resolves to marry
and disinherit the scapegrace. To prevent the marriage,
the same sort of device used in The Silent Woman is re
sorted to, but modified in that he is married by a mock
priest to a girl already wedded to the nephew. The speech
in which Warehouse asserts his determination to marry
immediately is modeled after that of Morose when he has
decided to take a like step. There are similar threats,
similar plans, and similar chuckles of delight over the an
ticipated confusion of the disappointed nephew. After
marriage, there is a like sudden transformation of the wife
from a quiet timid girl to a loud-voiced dictatorial shrew.
Situations and dialogue afford here close parallels. Ware
house, like Morose, is driven to the thought of suicide.
Plotwell assures speedy relief to the harassed uncle in
return for a promise of reward, written, signed and sealed,
in imitation again of Dauphine 's procedure. The entire
second half of the play is patterned throughout after Jon-
son's great comedy.

oiDodsley's Old Plays, XIII, 319; Epilogue to The City Match.

102 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

Many of the minor imitations in descriptions, jokes and
allusions have already been pointed out by Miss Henry in
her edition of Epiccene,52 Take, for instance, the descrip
tion of the widow in The City Match:

"some old widow, which at every cough
Resigns some of her teeth, and every night
Puts off her leg as duly as French hood,
Scarce wears her own nose, hath no eyes but such
As she first bought in Bread Street, and every morning,
Is put together like some instrument. " 53

Compare this with Tom Otter's description of his wife:
"All her teeth were made in the Blackfriars, both her
eyebrows in the Strand, and her hair in Silver Street.
Every part of the town owns a piece of her. . . . She
takes herself asunder still when she goes to bed, into some
twenty boxes; and about next day noon is put together
again, like a great German Clock."54 Anything bat at
tractive these descriptions certainly are, but they serve to
show how minutely Mayne again and again followed
Jonson. Miss Henry refers the account of monstrosities
in The City Match, Act III, Sc. 1 to Epiccene, Act II,
Sc. 1, but the latter is simply a reference to "masques,
plays, Puritan preachings, mad folks, and other strange
sights." There seems to be a more direct parallel here
with The Alchemist, Act V, Sc. I, where there is a like
enumeration of particular strange sights.

Mayne does not forget to take his turn at satirizing the
Puritans. The requirements for becoming one of them are
defined as the ability to turn up the eyes, "speak in the
nose, draw sighs of an ell long, and rail at discipline."
Dorcas, who in the progress of the plot is married to

52 Yale Studies in English. XXXI, 1906; Introduction, LVII-
LVIII.

Old Plays, XIII, 237; The City Match, II, 4.
Jonson, Works, I, 438; The Silent Woman, IV, 1.

OTHER "SONS OF BEN" 103

Warehouse, assumes for disguise the dress, speech and
manner of a Puritan, and then serves as a lady's maid.
Her mistress complains of her:

"I am never dress 'd

Without a sermon ; but am fore 'd to prove
The lawfulness of curling-irons, before
She'll crisp me in a morning. I must show
Texts for the fashions of my gowns. She'll ask
Where jewels are commanded? or what lady
I ' th ' primitive times wore ropes of pearl or rubies ? " 55

Two satirical references are made to * ' the new heresy, Pla
tonic love." The ridicule with which the popular eager
ness to see abnormal and unusual objects is portrayed has
already been mentioned. Two scenes are devoted to the ex
hibition by a crowd of wits of a simple gull as a man-fish.

The City Match is a clever and interesting imitation of
The Silent Woman, and Mayne is here largely indebted to
Jonson for plot, characters and satire.

In Henry Glapthorne for the first time in this study we
come to a man between whom and Jonson there is no evi
dence of any direct personal relation. We do not know
that Jonson ever called him "Son," or even received from
him complimentary verses. The testimony of his plays
must then be wholly depended upon to justify the assign
ment to him of a place in the present group of writers.
Beyond the fact that like Marmion, Cartwright and Mayne
he devotedly supported the royal cause, practically nothing
is known of his life. He wrote several tragedies and tragi
comedies, following the manner of Fletcher and Shirley;
but the plays with which we are chiefly concerned here are
two comedies of manners, The Hollander and Wit in a Con
stable, both belonging to the thirties, one acted in 1635 and
the other in 1639. The Ladies' Privilege, an heroic play,

ssDodsley's Old Plays, XIII, 226; The City Match, II, 2.

104 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

1640, contains also several characters conceived on the
basis of humors.

We find here not the same direct imitation of particular
plays, characters and passages that appeared in the com
edies of Cartwright and Mayne, but such more general in
fluence on plot, personage and satire as characterized the
work of Marmion. The same ever recurring fads, follies
and abuses are satirized; the same old kinds of tricks and
schemes are affected; the same familiar types of character
are presented.

In The Hollander the group of roarers call themselves
the ' ' Twibill Knights ' ' ; the rules of the order are set forth
at length ; and the initiation of a foolish coxcomb into the
brotherhood is satirically portrayed. Reference is scorn
fully made in both The Hollander and The Ladies' Privi
lege to the "precise precisians." The Hollander and Wit
in a Constable return to the overworked subject of monopo
lies, and both refer slightingly to the Puritans. The
make-up of the woman of fashion is ridiculed in The Hol
lander, and the abuse of fees and bribes deplored in the
same play. Both subject and manner of satire are such
as we have already become thoroughly acquainted with in
Jonson's imitators.

The Hollander and Wit in a Constable both have their
scenes laid in London, and both present coarse pictures of
the life of the city with many allusions to well-known
places. The plots have the usual network of trickery and
roguery. In The Hollander, a doctor and his wife set out
to gull all who come within their range, and after various
intrigues, projects and counter-projects, are themselves
gulled in the marriage of their daughter contrary to all
their plans. Wit in a Constable affords one or two new
situations and the plot is developed cleverly and interest
ingly. Jeremy Holdfast, who has been assuming scho
lastic tastes and seeking "to be esteemed by his volumes,"

OTHER "SONS OF BEN" 105

is persuaded by Thorowgood to turn city gallant. Thorow-
good himself then approaches the uncle of the girl intended
for Holdfast, and by his learned vocabulary and pedantic
cant deceives that admirer of those who * ' speak learnedly ' '
"metaphors and tropes scholastic."

The principal character of humors in The Hollander is
Sconce the Hollander, another member of the La-Foole
tribe. "My name," he says, "is Sconce, sir, Master
Jeremy Sconce. I am a gentleman of a good family, and
can derive my pedigree from Duke Alva's time; my an
cestors kept the inquisition out of Amsterdam. " 56 He is
duped to believe in a "weapon salve" which, when applied
to the iron or steel that has produced a wound, will heal
immediately an injury however great. There is a likeness
here to a Jonsonian character in Shirley's The Young Ad
miral — Pazzarello, who was led to believe that he had been
made invulnerable. In the satirical drawing of Sconce, we
see a hatred of the Dutch, manifested in a number of plays
written about the same time as The Hollander. The hu
mor of Alderman Covet in Wit in a Constable is a foolish
admiration for pedantry ; and that of Busy, a pride in his
own wit. The charge which the constable gives to his men,
as has been frequently noted, is plainly an imitation of that
delivered by Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing.
Other characters of humor are Jeremy Holdfast in his rapid
transfiguration from a pretended pedant to a gay gallant;
and Sir Timothy Shallowit, who has come up from the
country to change his "ancient garment to a new one of a
more spruce edition" and whose unvarying phrase of as
sent is "very right." Frangipan of The Ladies' Privi
lege always brings news already known and * ' relates things
by tradition as dogs bark ' ' ; Corimba, a woman of the court,
goes about provided with material to cut at a moment's
notice for any one's face a patch in the shape of a heart;

56 Glanthorne Dramatic Works I 85 : The Hollander. I, 1.

106 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

and Adorni has a humor for imitating whatever humors
in other men appear to him laughable and ridiculous.

Such are the satire, plots and humorous characters of
Glapthorne's comedies. We have come a long way from
Jonson 's vigorous characters, skillfully executed plots and
trenchant satire, but it is not difficult to trace the line of
descent.

Thomas Nabbes again was a gentleman, a scholar, a mem
ber of court circles, and a loyal friend of the Stuarts.
Like other play- writers of this group, he tried his hand at
several kinds of drama, classical tragedy, masque, and com
edy of every-day life. Three such comedies, written in the
thirties, entitle him to a place here. Complimentary verses
give testimony of his friendship with Shakerley Marmion
and Eichard Brome, and while there is no direct evidence
of association, yet he surely must have known Jonson.
There is a reference to Jonson in Tottenham Court wrhere
one of the characters cries out: "Give me Jonson and
Shakespeare ; there 's learning for a gentleman. ' ' 57

In the prologue to Covent Garden Nabbes lays claim to
originality and declares that he offers

"no borrow 'd strain
From the invention of another's brain;"58

and Langbaine supports this claim: "what our author has
published is his own and not borrowed from others. ' ' 59
Nabbes does have individuality of his own, and his freedom
from coarseness, first-hand observation of life, naturalness
of character and dialogue, bring a welcome relief from the
plays of the three or four preceding writers. Bullen com
ments on Nabbes' "virtuous and refined gentlemen" and
"modest, well-conducted girls, devoted to their lovers and

Old Plays, New Series, I, 133: Tottenham Court, III, 1.
os Hid., I, 5.
«» Langbaine, 379.

OTHER "SONS OF BEN" 107

courageous in the face of difficulties, ' ' *° and they fully de
serve the commendation given them. To assert that Nabbes
was influenced by Shirley and Jonson does not involve the
denial of his possession of originality. Bullen gives him
his "place at the feet of Shirley on the lower slopes of
Parnassus," for "he has much of Shirley's fluency and re
finement."61 A study of the three comedies, Covent Gar
den, Tottenham Court and The Bride proves also the pres
ence of Jonson 's influence.

Directly or indirectly the construction of these plays
points back to Jonson. There is comparative regularity,
and the action takes place within a few hours in London
and its environs. The epilogue to C&vent Garden declares
this a play

"wherein was no disguise,

No wedding, no improbable devise ;

But all an easy matter, and contain 'd

Within the time of action." 62

The plots include "projects" to "gull" and intrigues of
various kinds, some of them clever and inventive. Covent
Garden, Tottenham Court and The Bride all portray every
day London life and contain many allusions to such well-
known places as Middlesex, Tyburn, Ludgate or Bridewell,
and interesting descriptions of contemporary customs.
Here is some information from Covent Garden about the
methods of strolling players :

"Dobson. But tell me, Ralph, are those players the ragged
fellows that were at our house last Christmas, that
borrowed the red blanket off my bed to make their
mayor a gown; and had the great pot-lid for Guy of
Warwick's buckler?

«o Bullen, I, XIV.
«i Ibid., I, XX.
d., I, 91.

108 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

Ralph. No, Dobson, they are men of credit, whose actions
are beheld by every one, and allow 'd for the most part
with commendations. They make no yearly progress
with the anatomy of a sumpter-horse, laden with the
sweepings of Long-Lane in a dead vacation and pur-
chas'd at the exchange of their own whole wardrobes.
They buy not their ordinary for the copy of a prologue,
nor insinuate themselves into the acquaintance of an
admiring ningle, who for his free coming in is at the
expense of a tavern supper, and rinses their bawling
throats with Canary." 63

Nabbes is not wholly free from didactic purpose. In the
dedication of Tottenham Court he censures the vulgar "who
please their senses oftener with show than their intellects
with the true moral end of plays, instruction. ' ' 64 Several
times he expressly points out that he is whipping vice and
folly with "satire," and scattered through all three plays
are well-written moral observations and maxims on right
means to an end, temperance, good judgment, avoidance
of scandal, honesty and like subjects. Sir Generous
Worthy in Covent Garden is "purged" of his "humor" of
jealousy as are other characters of their corresponding
follies. We find no new objects of satire, but the familiar
ridicule of projectors, bribe-takers, fashionable courtiers
and superficial gentlemen, roarers, and Puritans.

The theory of humors is applied most fully in the char
acters of Covent Garden. Dungworth desires to sell his
acres, buy a knighthood and turn gallant; Susan, a wait
ing-woman, is greatly addicted to sack which never fails
to produce in her a "loving humor," so that she courts
every man she meets ; Warrant and Spruce, "Knight of the
Inkhorn" and "Knight of the Spanish Needle," boastfully

63Bullen's Old Plays, New Series, I, 9; Covent Garden, I, 1.
e* lUd., I, 95.

OTHER ''SONS OF BEN" 109

challenge each other to a duel but prove complete cowards ;
Littleword, true to his name, stands speechless before the
lady he would win ; and Mistress Tongall, the gossip, has an
unlimited supply of words and offers to every man on every
possible occasion her daughter Jinny as a reward of any
courtesy or service whatsoever. Nabbes seems to have re
alized the artificiality of such a method of constructing
character even while he made use of it, and caused Mistress
Tongall to say of some one who is watching her : ' * 'Tis his
practice of observation. He is taking a humor for a play ;
perhaps my talking of my daughter Jinny. ' ' 65

The chief humorous character of Tottenham Court is the
fantastic gallant, Changelove, "the Proteus of affection"
with "as many shapes of love as there are objects." In
The Bride we find a group of roarers; an antiquary ab
sorbed in his collection of rarities and antiquities; Plaster,
"the learned surgeon that speaks nothing but Latin, be
cause either he would not be understood or not contra
dicted"; and Mrs. Ferret, a rarely obedient wife to the
public ear and eye, but in private a shrew of shrews and
complete master of her husband. She changes her tone
with amazing rapidity when she addresses him in asides:

"Goodlove. Mr. Justice Ferret,

This was a large expression of your love
To come over the water.

Ferret. 'Twas my wife's desire.

Good. Kind Mistress Ferret!

M. Fer. Sir, the respects I bear you, and the obedience I
owe my husband that commanded it, brought me over
willingly to offer my service to so noble a friend.

Good. Your courtesies overcome me.

M. Fer. — A rot on the best linings of your three pil'd
durable, your everlasting almanac of high days,

«5Bullen's Old Plays, New Series, I, 71; Covent Garden, IV, 5.

110 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

feasts and sessions; was it my desire? Thou liest,
thou wrong side of a lawyer turn'd outwards: I had
better business at home. I could have seen if Mother
Whirl had spun the last pound of flax I sent her, or
called at Knock's the weaver's for my new napkins.
I have no maids to cudgel their tasks out of. Indeed
I can hardly keep any for such a goat as thou art.

Good. Are you offended with your husband, Mrs. Ferret?

M. Fer. Obedience forbid it ; my head, or if I may use the
honorable phrase here without offense, my cap of main
tenance.

Fer. No, no, sir ; she was but excusing a few faults.

M. Fer. — How, sir bubber, must the world take notice
by you that I have faults or modesty to excuse
them?"68

Bullen characterizes Mrs. Ferret as "quite a Jonsonian fig
ure recalling the immortal Mrs. Otter. ' ' 67

Nabbes was no slavish imitator, but in construction, real
istic portrayal of contemporary life, moral satire, and char
acters of humors, his comedies show clearly results of Jon-
son's general influence.

Sir Aston Cockayne seems to have felt the influence of
Jonson as diffused in the dramatic atmosphere of the time
rather than to have consciously studied and accepted his
theories in any such way as did "Sons" like Randolph,
Marmion, Cartwright, Mayne or the Duke of Newcastle.
Cockayne was a gentleman, educated in both universities,
much traveled abroad, and extensively connected with the
gentry and nobility of his time. Wood says of him that
* ' he was esteemed by many an ingenious gentleman, a good
poet and a great lover of learning, yet by others a perfect
boon fellow, by which means he wasted all he had." 68 He

eeBullen's Old Plays, II, 15-16; The Bride, I, 4.

07 Hid., I, XVII.

«8Wood, Athen. Oxon., IV, 129.

OTHER "SONS OF BEN" 111

knew intimately many contemporary poets and dramatists,
and had seen Jonson. He writes of "my good friend old
Philip Massinger, ' ' °9 and tells us elsewhere that ' * Donne,
Suckling, Randolph, Drayton, Massinger, Jonson, Chap
man, and Holland I have seen. ' ' 70 There is a general ref
erence to Jonson in the prologue to The Obstinate Lady:

"for if y' are come to-day
In expectation of a faultless play
Writ by learn 'd Jonson, or some able pen
Fam'd and approved of by the world, you then
We disappoint."71

Cockayne wrote some short poems, a masque, a transla
tion of an Italian romance, a tragedy, a tragi-comedy, and
a comedy. The Obstinate Lady, dating 1638 72 or 1639, as
has been noticed by several critics, owes its greatest debt in
plot and incident to Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher.73
In the characters alone are to be found traces of Jonson 's
influence. The "humor" of Lucora, the obstinate lady, is
a resolve never to marry ; Phyginois is ever ready to utter
a speech of meaningless eloquence, "a wordy nothing"; and
Lorece, a fantastic gallant, is the "poetical servant" of a
rich widow. The similarity of Lorece 's account of his
travels, Act II, Scene 1, to a narrative of imaginary experi
ences by Freshwater, a Jonsonian character, in Shirley's
Ball, has been pointed out.74 In the tragi-comedy, Tra-
polin, there are many references to the "humor" of the
good-natured, fun-loving buffoon who gives title to the play
and is through magic made to look like the Duke of Tuscany.

«»Eng. Stud., XIV, 50.

TO Randolph's Works, I, XII.

71 Cockayne, Dramatic Works, 21.

72 Fleay dates 1031, but Schelling, 1038 or 1039, on account of
reference to Brome's Antipodes of 1038.

73 Cockayne's Dramatic Works, 18-19.
T* Schelling, II, 282.

112 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

All these are characters of humors, sketched and outlined,
though not carefully nor fully developed.

It is not as a dramatist that William Cavendish, Duke
of Newcastle, is usually remembered, but as a loyal ad
herent of the Stuart kings in the Civil War and as a munifi
cent patron of contemporary men of letters. He was also
a great lover and master of the "art of manage", and wrote
two celebrated treatises on horsemanship. "No person
since the time of Augustus," says Langbaine, "better un
derstood dramatic poetry nor more generously encouraged
poets; so that we may truly call him our English Mae
cenas. ' ' 75 Shirley, Davenant, Dry den, Shad well, Flecknoe
and Congreve, all received favors from him; but to none
does he seem to have performed more fully and heartily
the office of friend and patron than to Jonson. This poet
wrote verses in praise of the Duke's riding and fencing,
epitaphs for various members of the family, an interlude
for the christening of his son Charles, and two masques,
Love's Welcome at Welbeck and Love's Welcome at
Bolsover, for entertainments given by him to the King and
Queen. The Duchess in her Letters reports that her hus
band said he had "never heard anyone read well but Jon-
son. ' ' 76 Two references to the Devil Tavern are made in
The Country Captain and perhaps the Duke sometimes
joined there the group of comrade-wits gathered about Jon-
son.

A number of letters from Jonson to the Duke testify to
the admiration and gratitude with which he regarded his
generous benefactor. The following, written about 1628,
when he was suffering from poverty and sickness, makes an
appeal for assistance :

"My noblest Lord and best Patron,
I send no borrowing epistle to provoke your lordship, for

75 Langbaine, 386.

76 Letters, quoted by Ward, II, 32 li.

OTHER "SONS OF BEN" 113

I have neither fortune to repay, nor security to engage,
that will be taken; but I make a most humble petition to
your lordship's bounty to succor my present necessities
this good time of Easter, and it shall conclude all begging
requests hereafter on the behalf of your truest beadsman
and most thankful servant, B. J. " 77

Another letter was written in response to the Duke's re
quest for a copy of some complimentary verses addressed
to Jonson by admirers:
"My noblest Lord and my Patron by excellence,

I have here obeyed your commands and sent you a packet
of my own praises, which I should not have done if I had
any stock of modesty in store: — but "obedience is better
than sacrifice," — and you command it. I am now like an
old bankrupt in wit, that am driven to pay debts on my
friends' credit; and for want of satisfying letters to sub
scribe bills of exchange.

Your devoted
4th Feb. 1632. Ben Jonson."78

Later, Jonson sent him, for reading and criticism, part
of a book now lost, and began the accompanying letter
thus:

"My Lord,

The faith of a fast friend with the duties of an humble
servant, and the hearty prayers of a religious beadsman,
are kindled upon this altar to your honor, my honorable
lady, your hopeful issue, and your right noble brother,
be ever my sacrifice. ' ' 79 The following is part of a letter
that probably accompanied Love's Welcome at Welbeck:

"My noble Lord and my best Patron,

I have done the business your lordship trusted me with ;

77Jonson's Works, ed. by Cunningham, I, p. CXXXIV.

78 Ibid., I, CXXXV.

79 Ibid., I, p. CXXXVIII.

114 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

and the morning after I received by my beloved friend,
Master Payne, your lordship's timely gratuity — I style it
such, for it fell like the dew of heaven on my necessities —
I pray to God my work may have deserved it; I meant it
should in the working it, and I have hope the performance
will conclude it. In the meantime, I tell your lordship
what I seriously think — God sends you these chargeable
and magnificent honors of making feasts, to mix with your
charitable succors, dropt upon me your servant ; who have
nothing to claim of merit but a cheerful undertaking what
soever your lordship thinks me able to perform."80

Not only did the Duke of Newcastle turn to Jonson for
the composition of masques to be used in entertainments to
the King and Queen, but, when for his own amusement he
tried his hand at writing plays, he sought guidance and di
rection from the same source. Langbaine gives his testi
mony that the Duke ''had a more particular kindness for
that great master of dramatic poesy, the excellent Jonson ;
and 'twas from him that he attained to a perfect knowl
edge of what was to be accounted true humor in com
edy. ' ' 81 Eichard Brome wrote in some verses ' ' To my
Lord of Newcastle on his play called The Variety, he hav
ing commanded to give him my true opinion of it, ' ' as fol
lows:

"I would depose each scene appear 'd to me
An act of wit, each act a comedy,
And all was such, to all that understood,

As knowing Jonson, swore by God 'twas good. ' ' 82

Of direct references to Jonson 's work within Newcastle's
plays, there is but one, a passing allusion to The Alchemist
in The Country Captain.

Four comedies are ascribed to the Duke of Newcastle:

so Jonson, Works, I, CXXXIX.

si Langbaine, 386.

«2 Brome, Works, II, 179.

OTHER "SONS OF BEN" 115

The Country Captain, The Variety, The Humorous Lovers
and The Triumphant Widow. The latter two have not
been available for the present study, and furthermore, were
acted after the Restoration. The former were printed to
gether in 1649, but acted at Blackfriars in 1639 or 1640.83
In the plot of The Country Captain may be traced remi
niscences of Shirley rather than of Jonson, and we are con
stantly reminded of situations and devices in The Witty
Fair One, The Wedding, Hyde Park and The Lady of
Pleasure. Not only in the plot but also in the class of so
ciety portrayed, the dialogue, the quality of the humor,
and the style of certain passages, the influence of Shirley
is manifest. Wood has told us that this dramatist assisted
the Duke in the composition of certain plays.84 Indeed,
The Country Captain was for a time ascribed to Shirley,
but has been proved to belong unquestionably to Newcastle.
The Variety, on the other hand, bears no marks of Shirley 's
influence. Ward thinks it the better play, but in the pres
ent writer's judgment it is not nearly so interesting nor
so well-constructed. Madame Voluble 's school of fashion,
with lectures on dress and manners, is another imitation of
Wittipol's discourses in The Devil is an Ass. The group
of humorists gathered about Lady Beaufield, a "lady of
spirit and entertainment, the only magnetic widow
i' th' town," 8B may have been suggested by the group cen
tered around Lady Loadstone in The Magnetic Lady.

The Duchess says of her husband's purpose in these plays
that "his chief design in them is to divulge and laugh at
the follies of mankind; to persecute vice and to encourage
virtue." 88 In The Country Captain the author shows folly
as folly and vice as vice with sane and true moral sense;
two of the principal characters at the end of the play de-

ss Fleay, I, 48.

e* Wood, Athen. Oxon., Ill, 739.

83 Newcastle, The Variety, 1649, p. 2; I, 1.

««Li/e, ed. by C. H. Firth, 1886, pp. 201-202.

116 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

clare themselves "cured" of wrongful purposes, and minor
personages as a result of their folly and stupidity are thor
oughly "gulled"; yet the fundamental intent does not
seem to be essentially didactic any more than in Shirley's
comedies. The Variety, in plot and general tone, is more
frankly satirical and more rigidly punishes each character
according to his deserts. Jeering, news-collecting, slavish
following of fashions, indiscriminate knighting, and super
ficial assuming of a humor are warmly ridiculed. A bit of
sixteenth century satire on "learned women" deserves to
be quoted:

"Newman. — But these ladies are very tedious; we must
have this lecture put down.

Sir William. They are more like to purchase Gresham Col
lege, and enlarge it for public professors. You may
live to see another university built, and only women
commence doctors. ' ' 87

But it was chiefly in the construction of his characters
that Newcastle followed the lead of Jonson. In The Coun
try Captain another representative of the Matthew type is
found in Monsieur Device, who is "an English monsieur
made up by a Scotch tailor that was prentice in France,"
and a master of compliment who dresses himself out in col
ored ribbons to express the varying states of hopes and fears
in his affections, and above all, composes wonders in verse.
Underwit, an interesting variation of Stephen in Every Man
in His Humor, has been made captain of the train-band, so
feels it "honorable" to forget his best friends, refuses to
answer to "master," and orders his servant to go birding
each morning about the house and shoot pigeons that he
may get used to the noise of shot. Captain Sackbury is
again an imitation of Bobadil, a lover of sack, "that wears

87 Newcastle, The Variety, 1649, p. 20; II, 1.

OTHER "SONS OF BEN'

117

no money in his scarlet hose, and when he is drunk is in
flicted with counsel." He undertakes to teach Underwit
wars and fortifications, and having beaten his pupil after
too liberal a portion of sack, requires that foolish youth to
ask his pardon for the beating. Engine, who proposes to
make a patron rich by a monopoly of periwigs, recalls the
projector Meercraft and his assistant Engine in The Devil
is an Ass.

The idea of humors is prominent throughout The Variety.
The author by frequent use of the word insists that we shall
not fail to realize that humors are being portrayed.
Manly, with his fancy for wearing the habit of Leicester
and singing old songs, illustrates the humor that is super
ficial or temporarily assumed: Simpleton's one great de
sire is to be a gentleman; Sir William is in pursuit of a
wealthy wife; Galliard considers it the most important
thing in the world to be able to bow properly and dance
gracefully; Formall has a capacity for news-gathering
that would entitle him to a place in Jonson's Staple of
News, and like Sir Politick Would-be in Volpone is ac
quainted with secrets of court and state which he imparts
confidentially to any willing listener ; Lady Beaufield wishes
above all else to know the latest fashions ; the Jeers, Major
and Minor, have the method of jeering reduced to a system
and hold it a certain means of accomplishing any undertak
ing.

In several familiar situations, in the use of moral satire,
but chiefly in the characters of humors, do we find proofs
that the Duke of Newcastle in writing his comedies ac
cepted the teaching of Jonson.

With Sir William Davenant we end our study of ' ' Sons
of Ben" in English comedy before the Restoration. He
forms a connecting link between the drama before the clos
ing of the theaters in 1642 and after the return of Charles
II, and is chiefly known for his part in the development of

118 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

the Eestoration heroic play out of the Fletcherian tragi
comedy. However, Davenant's method was eclectic, and
while he was decidedly a follower of the romantic school,
yet, like Beaumont and Fletcher, Shirley and Massinger,
he did not disdain to learn somewhat from Jonson, and to
apply the theory of humors in one or two plays. He be
gan his dramatic career in 1629, the year that Jonson bit
terly realized in the failure of The New Inn that he had lost
his hold on the stage. There remains no evidence of direct
personal relation between the two poets. Sixteen months
after the death of Jonson, in 1638, Davenant was appointed
as his successor in the poet-laureateship, and this office he
held under both Charles I and Charles II. Thomas Peck
in an epigram to Davenant joins his name with that of Jon
son:

"That Ben, whose head deserved the Eoscian bays,
Was the first gave the name of works to plays :
You, his corival, in this waspish age,
Are more than Atlas to the fainting stage. ' ' 88

On his grave, in imitation of the famous epitaph to Ben
Jonson, was written, "0 rare Sir William Davenant!"

Some slight influence of the Jonsonian satire may be de
tected in Davenant's work. The Wits and News from
Plymouth, both dating from the first half of the thirties,
contain bits of expository satire against wits, news-gather
ers, takers of bribes, Puritans, silenced ministers and aca
demics. In The Wits there is brought about a "conver
sion" of the Elder Palatine and Sir Morglay Thwack, two
country gentlemen who have foolishly leased out all their
lands and rents for pious uses and have come to town to live
by their wits. The Platonic Lovers, 1636, aims throughout
to ridicule the fashionable court fancy of the time, Platonic
love.

It is in the characters of The Wits and News from

«8 British BiUiograpfor, II, 312.

OTHER "SONS OF BEN'

119

Plymouth that we find surest evidence of Jonson's influence.
Palatine the Elder and Sir Morglay Thwack of the former
play have unbounded confidence in their own wit and their
ability to live by it; Sir Tyrant Thrift is governed wholly
by avarice; Snore, the constable, puts to sleep his sense
of justice under the persuasive influence of money and
wine. More Jonsonian are Sir Solomon Trifle, Sir Furious
Inland, and Lady Loveright of News from Plymouth.
Lady Loveright 's "humor" is for a husband without money
or learning. Sir Furious Inland has a most belligerent
"humor," is "subject to the disease of quarreling" "and
ready always to beat any one with or without provocation. ' '
Sir Solomon Trifle recalls Justice Clack of Brome's A Jo
vial Crew:

"He's a Justice of Peace,
And in his country, custos rotulorum;
He can give a charge to the jury at Quarter-Sessions,
And tell aforehand what will be their answer;
To all his fellow justices he speaks gravely,
And will hear none but himself. ' ' 8t>

"The perpetual motion is in his tongue," and he does not
hesitate to interrupt all speakers with "give me leave"
or ' ' this you would say ' ' and to set forth at length what he
considers himself better able to express. By means of his
group of intelligencers, Scarecrow, Zeal and Prattle, he
sets up a staple of news, gathers and distributes "news of
all sorts and sizes" and can furnish complete information
about "the designs of Europe."

Perhaps Davenant was unconscious of being in any sense
a follower of Jonson, so thoroughly had the satiric tone and
the conception of character on the basis of humors, intro
duced in Every Man in His Humor, become accepted
phases of later dramatic method.

89 Davenant, Dramatic Works, IV, 118; News from Plymouth,
1, 2.

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

The preceding studies convince us of the extent and im
portance of Ben Jonson's influence in the history of Eng
lish drama. Few writers of comedy between 1598 and 1642
remained wholly unaffected by his striking plays as pro
duced on the stage, and his dramatic theories so forcefully
preached on every possible occasion. Mr. Fleay in the in
troduction to his Chronicle of the English Drama bears the
following testimony to Jonson 's position and power : * c I can
not pass over in silence one point which has been impressed
on me at every step in this long labor — the central impor
tance of Ben Jonson ... I have . . . studied
Jonson deeply, and I do not exaggerate when I say that, al
though Shakespeare is the central figure in our dramatic
literature, Jonson certainly is the central figure in our
dramatic history. ' ' 1

In comedy, Jonson's immediate contemporaries were in
fluenced chiefly by his theory of humors and his ideal of
constructive excellence. Chapman, Marston, Shakespeare,
Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Shirley, and one or two
anonymous writers, all made some trial of humors in crea
ting character, with success varying from the mere sketches
of humorous personages in Marston 's comedies or in the
anonymous Every Woman in Her Humor to Shakespeare's
Malvolio and the group of humorists centering about Fal-
staff. Shakespeare, however, was affected only superfi
cially, for he divined at once that such a method might
serve occasionally as foil for truer art, but was, in no wise,

i Fleav. Chronicle of the English Drama, I, 13.

120

CONCLUSION 121

to be universally applied. Beaumont and Fletcher, Mas-
singer and Shirley, owe not a little of their power in con
ducting skillfully involved plots and in gaining unity of
impression to Jonson's precept and example concerning
logical construction. Whether by parallel development or
direct influence, Chapman and Marston stand in close
relation to Jonson, not only in their characters and plots,
but also in scholarship, conscious effort, satire and reflective
wisdom. Beaumont, Massinger and Shirley owe something
to him in their satirical pictures of contemporary life.
Beaumont's regular versification and some of Shirley's
prologues also point back to him. However, all these
writers cared too much for the favor of the public to adopt
to any great extent Jonson's attitude of independence and
arrogance; they were too keenly alive to the essential re
quirement that drama shall present character in action,
to make frequent use of his expository method; and they
well knew that the aim of a play should not be primarily
ethical. They were great enough as playwrights to seize
and put to their own uses with original power Jonson's
most valuable discoveries in character and construction.

While the immediate contemporaries were professional
playwrights and rival comrades, most of the later "Sons"
were gentlemen, graduates of the university, members of
the court circle, and acknowledged disciples. While the
former for the most part accepted only a general influence
from Jonson's best characteristics, the latter sought to fol
low him more closely and less wisely, often even in his
faults of pedantry, caricature and didacticism. Among the
' ' Sons, ' ' Brome must be given the foremost place by reason
of his large number of comedies, and his conscientious,
often by no means unsuccessful effort to conform to all the
rules of Jonsonian art. The other "Sons," according to
the manner and extent of the influence felt, fall into a num
ber of groups. May and Randolph were themselves faith-

122 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

fill students of the classics, and so their moral purpose,
satire, plots of intrigue and characters of humors are prob
ably in part due to their own direct study and in part to
their admiration for Jonson. Field, Marmion, Glapthorne,
and Nabbes, all show the effects of a general Jonsonian in
fluence on their plots, personages and subjects of satire, in
contrast with Cartwright and Mayne, who slavishly imitate
particular Jonsonian plots, characters and satirical pas
sages. Among these writers, Field and Nabbes stand out
above the others, Field because of his practical skill in
stagecraft and keen satirical pictures of London life, and
Nabbes because of his pleasing style, refreshing freedom
from coarseness and first-hand touch with real life. New
castle turned to Jonson for much suggestion in the way of
situation, satire, and character, but did not, like Cart-
wright, go so far as to copy directly a particular play.
Davenport, Cockayne and Davenant, in plays otherwise
free from Jonson 's influence, apply the theory of humors
in characterization.

Every writer who gained anything from Jonson was af
fected first and foremost by the idea of humors. The crea
tion of new humorous types we have found in the plays of
such men of genius as Shakespeare, Fletcher, Beaumont or
Shirley, and even in those of Brome ; but on the other hand,
in the work of lesser men, there is an unending repetition of
certain definite types patterned after Jonson 's personages.
Stephen, the country gull; Matthew, the foolish versifier;
Bobadil, the braggart soldier; Fastidious Brisk, the fash
ionable gallant; Sir Amorous La-Foole, proud of his an
cestry of fools ; Mrs. Otter, the shrew ; Kastrill, the quarrel
some boy; Meercraft and Engine, the projectors; Fitzdot-
terel, a prey to sharpers ; Tribulation Wholesome, Ananias,
and Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, the hypocritical Puritan fa
natics; Sir Politick Would-be, dealer in sensational news:
— these recur in play after play and writer after writer,

CONCLUSION 123

sometimes with enlivening variation, but often with weari
some sameness.

While Beaumont, Massinger and Shirley were incited
by Jonson's ethical aim to a deeper moral earnestness and
an effective satirical portrayal of actual contemporary life,
such writers as Marmion, Glapthorne, Cartwright and
Mayne, failing to catch the true underlying spirit of Jon-
son's morality, painted dull coarse pictures of the lowest
stratum of London society, with the constantly repeated
assertion that the purpose was to scourge vice. Certain
subjects of satire, emphasized by Jonson, particularly the
cant and hypocrisy of the Puritans, the meannesses and
crimes of avarice, the foolish fads of Ladies Collegiate,
the projects of sharpers, the credulity of news-gatherers,
and a slavish pursuit of the fashions of the day, are used by
one after another of the "Sons" until it seems as if these
follies and abuses should have been forever whipped out of
English life.

Jonson taught contemporaries and disciples the value of
careful workmanship, regard within certain limits for the
dramatic unities, and that artistic logic which creates each
part with conscious reference to the whole. The greater
writers seized and applied these principles; the lesser pro
ceeded to copy or adopt particular situations. The fa
vorite ones were: the school of fashion introduced in The
Devil is an Ass, the grouping of irregular humorists first
found in Every Man in His Humor and Every Man out of
His Humor, the transformation effected by marriage and
also the device for making the contract void set forth in
The Silent Woman, the scheme for systematic news-gather
ing in The Staple of News, and the confederacy of rogues
in Volpone and The Alchemist.

The minor characteristics of Jonson's comedy reappear
now and again in other writers. His background of classi
cal learning, and the classical allusions and quotations

124 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

wrought into the very fiber of his plays, only such men as
were themselves classical scholars, Chapman, Marston, or
Eandolph, could in any sense approach; but his example
certainly increased the contemporary liking for passing
allusions to classical authors and literature. His influence
combined with that of Middleton to teach local color and
realistic portrayal of everyday life, and in this respect we
may be sure that Field and Brome, May and Randolph,
learned largely from Jonson. Brome followed him in self-
conscious attitude and intellectual appeal; Chapman and
Randolph, in the use of a commentator on the action ; Mar
ston and Marmion, in their inductions ; Shirley and Brome,
in independent prologues and epilogues addressed to the
public.

"Whether Jonson 's theories, when applied, resulted in
living plays or dull imitations depended largely on the per
sonal powers of the writers applying them, and many of
his followers were neither great thinkers nor great poets.
However, "the Sons' " besetting sins of pedantry, didac
ticism, abstraction, allegory, caricature, artificiality, and
sameness, were dangers inherent in his methods. On the
other hand, he gave to English comedy greater variety of
character and more effective portrayal of the manners and
humors of men, more careful and logical construction, and
a moral earnestness that was needed to counteract the in
fluence of Middleton and Fletcher.

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XVII (neue folge, V).
Beaumont and Fletcher: Works, with notes and a biographical

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Bullen, New Series, Vol. III. London, 1890.
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Plays, vol. IV. London, 1885.
Fair Maid of the Exchange: ed. by Barron Field in Publications

of the Shakespeare Society. London, 1846.
Field, Nathaniel: Plays, ed. by A. W. Verity, in Nero and Other

Plays, Mermaid Series. London, 1888.
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XIII, 1889.

A Chronicle History of the English Stage. London, 1890.

A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, 2 vols.

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Greg, W. W.: Edition of Henslowe's Diary. London, Part I, 1904;

Part II, 1908.

Hathaway, Charles M.: Edition of The Alchemist, with introduc
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Hazlitt, William: Lectures on the English Comic Writers, ed. by

W. Carew Hazlitt. London, 1884.
Henry, Aurelia: Edition of Epiccene, with introduction and notes,

Yale Studies in English, XXXI. New York, 1906.
Jonson, Ben: Works, with notes and a biographical memoir by

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126 JONSON AND ENGLISH COMEDY

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Timber; or Discoveries, ed. by F. E. Schelling. Bos
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Best Plays, ed. by Brinsley Nicholson, with an intro
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Koeppel, Emil : Studien iiber Shakespeare's Wirkung auf Zeit-
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INDEX

Admiral's Men, 20.

Alchemist, 6, 10, 13, 15, 21, 50,

66, 70, 85, 94, 114, 123.
Allegory, 12-13, 40, 88.
All Fools, 21.
All's Well That Ends Well, 30,

31, 34.

Amends for Ladies, 54, 55, 56.
Amyntas, 80.
Anachronisms, 8.
Antigone, 77.

Antipodes, 59, 60, 63, 65, 69, 71.
Antiquary, 90-92.
Antonio and Mellida, 25.
Apollo Club, 3-5, 42.
Aristippus, 80.
Aristophanes, 7, 80, 83.
Authority, Jonson's sense of, 11.

Ball, 46, 50, 111.

Bartholomew Fair, 13, 15, 57, 66,

69, 72, 85.
Beaumont, Francis, 3, 18, 19,

36-42, 120, 121.
Blind Beggar of Alexandria, 19-

20.

Bobadil, 40, 116.
Bride, 107, 109.
Brome, Alexander, 59.
Brome, Richard, 52, 57-75, 89,

106, 1*1.

Bullen, A. H., 106, 107.
Bunyan, 13.
Burbage, Richard, 53.

Cambridge University, 80.
Carlyle, Thomas, 7.
Cartwright, William, 52, 93-

100, 122.
Case Is Altered, 30, 61.

Catiline, 37, 38, 53.

Cavendish, William, Earl of
Newcastle, 52, 100, 112-117,
122.

Censor, Attitude of, 6.

Chapman, George, 18, 19-24, 120,
121.

Characters of Jonsonian Com
edy, 11-14.

Chaucer, 10.

Children of the Chapel, 52.

Cicero, 26, 93.

City Madam, 43.

City Match, 100-103.

City Night-Cap, 79.

City Wit, 58, 60, 63, 68-70, 72.

Classicism, of Jonson, 7; Chap
man, 19; Marston, 24, 26;
Randolph, 83.

Cleopatra, 77.

Cockayne, Sir Aston, 52, 59, 80,
110-112, 122.

Coleridge, S. T., 15.

College Drama, 80.

Comedy of Humors, 20.

Conceited Pedlar, 80.

Congreve, William, 112.

Construction of plays, 15, 43,
69, 107. — -

Conversations, 25, 27, 53.

Country Captain, 112, 115.

Court Beggar, 59-60, 63, 65, 70,
72.

Covent Garden, 106, 108.

Cunningham, Francis, 25.

Cynthia's Revels, 8, 14, 15, 16,
35, 53,, -88.

Davenant, Sir William, 52, 117-
119, 122.

129

130

INDEX

Davenport, Robert, 52, 79, 122.
Dekker, Thomas, 59.
Demoiselle, 62, 66, 72.
Devil Is An Ass, 44, 49, 65, 70,

78, 115, 123.
Devil Tavern, 3, 45, 59, 76, 80,

89, 112.

Didacticism, 63, 79, 85.
Discoveries, 2.
Donne, John, 111.
Drayton, Michael, 30, 111.
Drummond of Hawthornden, 20,

38.

Dry den, John, 11, 112.
Duke's Mistress, 47.
Dutch Courtesan, 24, 27.
Dyce, Alexander, 38.

Eastward Hoe, 20, 25, 28.

English Moor, 59-60.

Epiccene, 15, 31, 37, 100, 101,

123.
Ethical Aims, of Jonson, 5-6,

10; Brome, 63; May, 78;

Randolph, 85; Marmion, 90;

Nabbes, 108.
Every man in His Humor, 1, 2,

19, 20, 21, 29, 31, 73, 116.
Every Man Out of His Humor,

6, 7, 12, 14, 16, 20, 22, 31,

35, 48, 73, 123.
Every Woman in Her Humor,

34, 35-36, 120.
Example, 46.

Fair Maid of the Exchange, 34-

35.

Faithful Shepherdess, 38.
Falstaff, 32, 120.
Fault in Friendship, 58.
Faion, 26, 28.

Field, Nathaniel, 52-57, 122.
Fine Companion, 89.
Fleay, F. G., 26, 34, 77, 120.
Fletcher, John, 16, 19, 36-42, 60,

77, 120, 121.

Ford, John, 59.
Forest, The, 9.
Fortune, The, 55.
Four Triumphs, 39.
Fraunces, Edward, 83.
Fuller, Thomas, 29.

Gamester, 46.
Gentleman Usher, 23.
Giles, Nathaniel, 53.
Glapthorne, Henry, 52, 103-106,

122.

Grateful Servant, 45.
Gray's Inn, 76.
Gulling, 16, 24.

<

Habington, William, 45.

Hall, John, 59.

Heir, 77.

Henry, Aurelia, 31, 102.

Henry IV, 31.

Henry V, 31, 33.

Henslowe's Diary, 20.

Heroic drama, 118.

Herrick, Robert, 4.

Hey for Honesty, 80, 82,

85.

Heywood, Thomas, 9, 89.
Hollander, 103, 104, 105.
Holland's Leaguer, 90.
Hope, The, 52.
Humors, 11-12, 27, 30-34, 49, 56,

71-73, 79, 88, 91, 108, 111, 117,

118-120, 122.
Humorous Courtier, 51.
Humorous Day's Mirth, 19, 20,

21.

Humorous Lieutenant, 39-40.
Humorous Lovers, 114.
Hyde Park, 46, 115.

Inductions, 15-16, 25, 124.

Jealous Lovers, 80, 85, 88.
Jonsonus VirUus, 77, 90, 93,
100.

INDEX

131

Jovial Crew, 59, 69, 71, 73, 75,

119.
Julius Caesar, 80, 85, 88.

King and No King, 40.

Knight of the Burning Pestle,

39, 40.
Koeppel, Emil, 30, 41, 60.

Ladies Collegiate, 49, 123.
Ladies' Privilege, 103.
Lady of Pleasure, 46, 115.
Langbaine, Gerard, 77, 93, 106,

112, 114.

Learning of Jonson, 8.
Leges Convivales, 4-5.
Lines to Shakespeare, 30.
Little French Lawyer, 40.
Love in a Maze, 51.
Lovesick Court, 60, 71, 74.
Love's Welcome at Bolsover, 112.
Love's Welcome at Wclbeck, 112,

113.

Love Tricks, 45, 46, 48.
Lowell, J. K., 5.
Lucan, 77.

Mad Couple Well Matched, 60,
63.

Magnetic Lady, 13, 115.

Malcontent, 25, 27.

Malvolio, 33, 120.

Marmion, Shakerley, 52, 89-93,
106, 122.

Marston, John, 19, 24-29, 120.

Martial, 26, 77.

Massinger, Philip, 19, 42-44. 60,
111, 120, 121.

Masque of Augurs, 45.

Masques, of Jonson, 7; of Shir
ley, 45.

May Day, 23.

May, Thomas, 52, 76-79, 121.

Mayne, Jasper, 52, 100-103, 122.

Measure for Measure, 30.

Merchant of Venice, 31.

try Vindicated, 13.
Mermaid, The, 3, 29.
Merry Wives of Windsor, 31, 32.
Middleton, Thomas, 30, 42, 46.
Monsieur D'Olive, 23, 24.
Moralities, 12.

Much Ado About Nothing, 105.
Muses' Looking-Glass, 80, 84, 88.

Nabbes, Thomas, 52, 89, 106-
110, 122.

Nature, Jonson's lack of feeling
for, 9-10.

Neptune's Triumph, 45, 99.

New Academy, 63, 73, 75.

Newcastle, Duchess of, 112, 115.

Newcastle, Duke of. See Cav
endish, William.

Newington Butts, 55.

New Inn, 60, 61, 83.

Neics from Plymouth, 118.

New Way to Pay Old Debts, 43.

New Trick to Cheat the Devil,
79.

Northern Lass, 57, 62, 66, 69,
73.

Novella, 60, 70.

Obstinate Lady, 111.

Old Couple, 77-79.

Ordinary, 94-100.

Ovid, 26.

Oxford University, 80, 89.

Personality of Jonson, 3.
Pilgrim's Progress, 13.
Platonic love, 103, 118.
Platonic Lovers, 118.
Plautus, 7, 19, 22, 39, 83.
Plots of Jonson's Comedy, 14-

15.

Poetaster, 14, 15, 20, 31, 35.
Project, 65, 104.
Puritans, 24, 66, 85, 99, 102,

104.

Queen's Exchange, 60, 62.

132

INDEX

Queen and Concubine, 60, 75.

Kandolph, Thomas, 52, 80-89,

121.

Realism, 64, 75.
Renaissance, 10.
Restoration, 115, 117, 118.
Roarers, 66, 104.
Romance, 9.

Romantic School, 36, 44, 77, 118.
Romeo and Juliet, 31.
Rule a Wife and Have a Wife,

39, 41.

Satire, 7, 12, 27, 40-41, 43, 54,

116.

Schelling, F. E., 7, 31, 88.
School of Compliment, 49, 70.
Scornful Lady, 39.
Sejanus, 20, 25, 29.
Seneca, 26.

Shadwell, Thomas, 112.
Shakespeare, 9, 19, 29-34, 60,

120.
Shirley, James, 19, 44-51, 80,

107, 112, 115, 120, 121.
Silent Woman. See Epicoene.
Sparagus Garden, 61, 63, 71.
Staple of News, 9, 13, 14, 47,

117.

Suckling, Sir John, 111.
Swift, Jonathan, 7.
Swinburne, Algernon, 5, 21, 70.
Symonds, J. A., 7, 8.

Tamer Tamed, 39.
Tatham, John, 59.
Terence, 7, 19, 22, 39, 83.
Timber, 30.
Tottenham Court, 106, 108.

Tourneur, Cyril, 29.
Triumph of Peace, 45.
Triumphant Widow, 115.
Twelfth Night, 31, 33.
Types of character, 14, 40.

Underwoods, The, 20.
Unities, of drama, 11.

Variety, 114, 116.

Vergil, 77.

Versification, of Jonson, 16-17;

Beaumont and Fletcher, 41 ;

Brome, 75.
Volpone, 6, 10, 13, 14, 15, 20,

21, 38, 70, 99, 123.

War of the Theaters, 25.

Ward, A. W., 22, 60, 71, 73, 88,
93, 99.

Watkyns, Rowland, 81.

Wedding, 46, 50, 115.

Weeding of Covent Garden, 60,
64, 66, 69, 72, 75.

What You Will, 25, 26, 28.

Widow's Tears, 23.

Wife of Bath, 36.

Wilkins, G., 29.

Wit in a Constable, 103, 105.

Wit Without Money, 40.

Wits, 118.

Witty Fair One, 46, 115.

Woman Hater, 39.

Woman Is a Weathercock, 53,

54, 55, 56.

World in the Moon, 71.
Wood, Anthony, 93, 110, 115.
Woodbridge, Elizabeth, 11, 14.

Young Admiral, 49, 105.

•• • v *_r i l^ V3

PR Kerr, Mina
2636 Influence of Ben Jonson
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