The Alchemist | Page 4

THE greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and
poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the
men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson,
and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least
in his age.
Ben Jonson came of the stock that was centuries after to give to the world Thomas
Carlyle; for Jonson's grandfather was of Annandale, over the Solway, whence he
migrated to England. Jonson's father lost his estate under Queen Mary, "having been cast
into prison and forfeited." He entered the church, but died a month before his illustrious
son was born, leaving his widow and child in poverty. Jonson's birthplace was
Westminster, and the time of his birth early in 1573. He was thus nearly ten years
Shakespeare's junior, and less well off, if a trifle better born. But Jonson did not profit
even by this slight advantage. His mother married beneath her, a wright or bricklayer, and
Jonson was for a time apprenticed to the trade. As a youth he attracted the attention of the
famous antiquary, William Camden, then usher at Westminster School, and there the poet
laid the solid foundations of his classical learning. Jonson always held Camden in
veneration, acknowledging that to him he owed,
"All that I am in arts, all that I know;"
and dedicating his first dramatic success, "Every Man in His Humour," to him. It is
doubtful whether Jonson ever went to either university, though Fuller says that he was
"statutably admitted into St. John's College, Cambridge." He tells us that he took no
degree, but was later "Master of Arts in both the universities, by their favour, not his
study." When a mere youth Jonson enlisted as a soldier, trailing his pike in Flanders in
the protracted wars of William the Silent against the Spanish. Jonson was a large and
raw-boned lad; he became by his own account in time exceedingly bulky. In chat with his
friend William Drummond of Hawthornden, Jonson told how "in his service in the Low
Countries he had, in the face of both the camps, killed an enemy, and taken opima spolia
from him;" and how "since his coming to England, being appealed to the fields, he had

killed his adversary which had hurt him in the arm and whose sword was ten inches
longer than his." Jonson's reach may have made up for the lack of his sword; certainly his
prowess lost nothing in the telling. Obviously Jonson was brave, combative, and not
averse to talking of himself and his doings.
In 1592, Jonson returned from abroad penniless. Soon after he married, almost as early
and quite as imprudently as Shakespeare. He told Drummond curtly that "his wife was a
shrew, yet honest"; for some years he lived apart from her in the household of Lord
Albany. Yet two touching epitaphs among Jonson's "Epigrams," "On my first daughter,"
and "On my first son," attest the warmth of the poet's family affections. The daughter
died in infancy, the son of the plague; another son grew up to manhood little credit to his
father whom he survived. We know nothing beyond this of Jonson's domestic life.
How soon Jonson drifted into what we now call grandly "the theatrical profession" we do
not know. In 1593, Marlowe made his tragic exit from life, and Greene, Shakespeare's
other rival on the popular stage, had preceded Marlowe in an equally miserable death the
year before. Shakespeare already had the running to himself. Jonson appears first in the
employment of Philip Henslowe, the exploiter of several troupes of players, manager, and
father-in-law of the famous actor, Edward Alleyn. From entries in "Henslowe's Diary," a
species of theatrical account book which has been handed down to us, we know that
Jonson was connected with the Admiral's men; for he borrowed 4 pounds of Henslowe,
July 28, 1597, paying back 3s. 9d. on the same day on account of his "share" (in what is
not altogether clear); while later, on December 3, of the same year, Henslowe advanced
20s. to him "upon a book which he showed the plot unto the company which he promised
to deliver unto the company at Christmas next." In the next August Jonson was in
collaboration with Chettle and Porter in a play called "Hot Anger Soon Cold." All this
points to an association with Henslowe of some duration, as no mere tyro would be thus
paid in advance upon mere promise. From allusions in Dekker's play, "Satiromastix," it
appears that Jonson, like Shakespeare, began life as an actor, and that he "ambled in a
leather pitch by a play-wagon" taking at one time the part of Hieronimo in Kyd's