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
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