Ben Jonson's chief Plays

Name: Ranjan Velari

Class: M.A. Sem.:1

Roll No. -25

Paper No. – 1

Email Id: ranajnvelari@gmail.com

Topic: Ben Jonson’s Chief Plays

Submitted to: Smt.S.B. Gardi 
                       Department of English 

                       M.K. Bhavnagar University

Question:

What are Ben Jonson’s chief plays? In what important respects did they differ from those of Shakespeare? Tell the story of The Alchemist and The silent Woman. Name other contemporaries and successors of Shakespeare. What causes led to decline of the drama?

·       Ben Jonson’s chief Plays:

  Jonson’s is the most commanding literary figure among the Elizabethans. For 25 years he was the literary dictator of London, the chief of all the wits that gathered nightly at the old Devil Tavern. With his great learning, his ability and his commanding position as poet Laureate, he set himself squarely against his contemporaries and the romantic tendency of the age.

His works:

A.    Satires

1.    Every Man in His Humor

2.    Cynthia’s Revels

3.    The Poetaster

B.    Comedies

1.    Volpone or the Fox

2.    The Alchemist

3.    Epicoene or the Silent Woman

C.    Tragedies

1.    Sejanus

2.    Catiline

D.   Travelope

1.    Foot Pilgrimage

E.     Unfinished Work

1.    Sad Shepherd

So, let’s have a look on one by one his famous work.

Every Man in His Humor

·       Jonson’s first comedy Every Man in His Humor, is a key to all his dramas. The word “humor” in his age stood for some characteristic whim or quality of society. Jonson gives to his leading character, some prominent humor, exaggerates it, as the cartoonist enlarges the most characteristic feature of a face and so holds it before our attention that all other qualities are lost sight of; which is the method that Dickens used later in many of his novels.

·       Every Man in His Humor was the first of three satires. Its special aim was to ridicule the humors of the city.

Cynthia’s Revels

·       The second Cynthia’s Revels, satirizes the humors of the city.

The Poetaster

·       While the third, The Poetaster, the result of a quarrel with his contemporaries was leveled at the false standards of the poets of the age.

   The three best known of Jonson’s comedies are Volpone or the Fox, The Alchemist, or The Silent Woman. Volpone is a keen and merciless analysis of a man governed by an overwhelming love of money for its own sake. Volpone’s method of increasing his wealth is to play upon the avarice of men. He pretends to be at the point of death and his “suitors” who know his love of gain and that he has no heirs, Endeavour hypocritically to sweeten his last moment by giving him rich presents, so that he will leave them all his wealth. The intrigues of these suitors furnish the story of the play, and show to what infamous depths avarice will lead a man.

The Alchemist

·       The Alchemist is a study of quackery on one side and of gullibility on the other, founded on the medieval idea of the philosopher’s stone, and applies as well to the patent medicines and get-rich-quick schemes of his day as to the peculiar forms of quackery with which Jonson was more familiar.

·       In plot and artistic construction The Alchemist in an almost perfect specimen of the best English drama. It has some remarkably good passages, and in the most readable of Jonson’s plays.

·       Epicoene or The Silent Woman is a prose exceedingly well constructed, full of life, abounding in fun and unexpected situations. Here is a brief outline materials Jonson made up his comedies.

The Silent Woman

·       The chief character is Morose, a rich old codger whose humor is a horror of noise. He lives in a street so narrow that it will admit no carriages; he pads the doors; plugs the keyhole; puts mattresses on the stairs. He dismisses a servant who wears squeaky boots; make all the rest go about in thick stockings; and they must answer to him by signs, since he can not bear to hear anybody but himself talk. He disinherits his poor nephew Euginie, and , to make sure that the latter will not get any money out of him, resolves marry. His confident in this delicate matter is Cutbeard the barbar, who unlike his kind, never speaks unless spoken to, and does not even knick his scissors as he works. Cutbeard tells him of Epicoene, a rare, silent woman, and Morose is so delighted with her on the spot. Cutbeard produces a parson with a bad cold, who can speak only a whisper, to marry them; and when the parson coughs after the ceremony Morose demands back five shillings of the fee. To save it the parson coughs more, and is hurriedly bundled out if the house.

·       The silent woman finds her voice immediately after the marriage, begins to talk loudly and to make reforms in the household, driving Morose to distraction. A noisy dinner party from a neighboring house, with drums and trumpets and a quarreling man and wife, is skillfully guided in at this moment to celebrate the wedding. Morose flees for his life, and is found perched like a monkey on a crossbeam in the attic, with all his nightcaps tied over his ears. He seeks a divorce, but is driven frantic by the loud arguments of a lawyer and a divine, who are no other than Cutberad and a sea captain disguised. When Morose is past all hope the nephew offer to release him from his wife and her noisy friends if ha will allow him five hundred pounds a year. Morose offer him anything, everything, to escape his torment, and signs a deed to that effect. Then comes the surprise of the play when Euginie whips the wig from Epicoene and shows a boy in disguise.

·       It will be seen that The Silent Woman, with its rapid action and its unexpected situations, offers an excellent opportunity for the actors; but the reading of the play, as of most Jonson’s comedies, is marred by low intrigues showing a sad state of morals among the upper classes.

In what important respects did they differ from those of Shakespeare?

·       In disagree with the Lord Admiral’s Men for the murder of one their players, Jonson offered his services to the rival Lord Chamberlain’s Men and in 1598 Every Man in His Humor was accepted by them and performed with Shakespeare taking a part. This play made Jonson’s reputation. Apart from writing for public stage Jonson made a career for himself in the writing of court masques in collaboration with the architect Inigo Jones. For a contemporary account of a court masque see ‘Shakespearean Stage’. These elaborate entertainments became highly developed under king James and Jonson was by far the most successful and prolific exponent of the art form.

·       This set of oppositions is one which Jonson himself was interested in fostering. In referring to Shakespeare’s lack of classical learning is commendatory verse he was deliberately distinguishing Shakespeare’s practice from his own. There are many valuable contrasts to be made between the two writers, but it is important to recognize that the writers themselves knew each other and that their careers intersected. The competition between the two men is one of the reasons why they have been , and still are two same extent, viewed as appropriates other reasons for this oppositional view include the history of literary criticism since the mid 17^th century, and are beyond the scope of this subjective introduction. The differences between the two dramatists which are relevant to this unit can all be explored through the text on the syllabus, and no special biographical knowledge is necessary.

·       Shakespeare’s Contemporaries:

1.   Christopher Marlowe:

The brilliant, young playwright Christopher Marlowe was killed on a Tavern Brawl on 30^th May,1593, known as Shakespeare’s only literary peer until his untimely death, Marlowe is responsible for some of the finest lyrical poetry of any age and possibly add and in writing for of Shakespeare’s early dramas. Marlowe is supposed to have penned all the works attributed to Shakespeare and had then smuggled back to England.

2.   King James I:

After the death of Elizabeth I, James the VI of Scotland became the new ruler known an England as King James I. His fascination with the occults prompted him to write on treaties on witchcraft, their menology and many believe that James vehement belief in the divine right of kings influenced Shakespeare playwriting methodology. James I is probably best known for his translation of the Bible into English with became known as the authorized King James Version.

3.   Sir Walter Raleigh:

Certainly Sir Walter Raleigh the explorer, poet, philosopher, soldier, statesman and political pundit, had the busiest life of any Elizabethan subject. As one of Queen Elizabeth’s favorite courtiers, the charming Raleigh enjoyed a life of fame, and riches. However, Raleigh’s arrogance and bravado made him unpopular with many and ha was eventually executed for treason against the new monarch, James I.

4.   Dr. Simon Forman:

The mysterious Dr. Forman, an English astrologer and doctor whose many scandals riveted Elizabethan England, wrote scores of papers on the subjects of medicine and astrology. He saved countless lives during the plague of 1592 and 1594, yet was imprisoned by the Royal College of Physicians in London for use of “magical potions” to the patients.

5.   Richard Burbage:

The famed Elizabethan actor, artist and theatrical entrepreneur unprecedented acclaim by playing many of the major Shakespearean characters, including Othello, Hamlet, King Lear and Richard III. In 1599, Richard with the help of his brother, built what is now the most recognizable playhouse in the Western world- the Globe Theatre.

·       Shakespeare’s Successors in the Drama:

1.   Beaumont and Fletcher:

·       The work of these two men is so closely interwoven that, though Fletcher outlived Beaumont by nine years and the latter had no band in 40 of the plays that bear their joint names, we still class them together, and only scholars attempt to separate their works so as to give writer his due share. Unlike most of the Elizabethan dramatists, they both came from noble and cultured families and were University trained. Their work, in strong contrast with Jonson’s is, intensely romantic, and in at all, however course or brutal the scene, there is still, as Emerson pointed out, the subtle “recognition of gentility”.

·       Beaumont (1584-1616) was the brother of Sir John Beaumont of Leicestershire. From Oxford he came to London to study law, but soon gave it up to write for the stage.

·       Fletcher (1579-1625) was the son of bishop of London, and shows in all his work of the influence of his high social position and of his Cambridge education. The two dramatist met at the under Ben Jonson’s leadership and soon became inseparable friends, living and working together. Tradition has it that Beaumont supplied the judgment and the solid work of the play, while Fletcher furnished the high-colored sentiment and the lyric poetry, without which an Elizabethan play would have been incomplete. Of their joint plays, the two best known are Philaster, whose old theme, like that of Cymbeline and Griselda, is the jealously of a lover and the faithfulness of a girl, and The Maid’s Tragedy.

·       Concerning Fletcher’s work the most interesting literary question is how much did he write of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, and how much did Shakespeare help him in The Two Noble Kinsmen.

2.   John Webster:

·       Of Webster’s personal history we know as a dramatist under James I. His extraordinary rank him talent seems to have been largely devoted to the blood-and –thunder play begun by Marlowe.

·       His two best known plays are The White Devil, and The Duchees of Malfi. The latter, spite of its horror, ranks him as one of the greatest masters of English tragedy. All the so-called blood tragedies of the Elizabethan period, from Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy down, however much they may condemn the brutal taste of English audiences, are still only so many search lights thrown upon a history of horrible darkness.

3.   Thomas Middleton:

·       Middleton is the best known by two great plays, The Changeling and Women Beware Women. In poetry and diction they are almost worthy at times to rank with Shakespeare’s plays; otherwise; in their sensationalism and unnaturalness they do violence to the moral sense and are repulsive to the modern reader.

·       Two earlier plays, A Trick to catch the old One, his best comedy, and A Fair Quarrel, his earliest tragedy, are less mature-in thought and expression, but more readable, because they seem to express Middleton’s own idea of the drama rather than that of the corrupt court and playwrights of his later age.

4.   Thomas Heywood:

·       Heywood’s life, of which we know little in detail, covers the whole period of the Elizabethan drama. To the glory of that drama he contributed, according to his own statement, the greater part, at least, of nearly two hundred and twenty plays.

·        Heywood’s undoubted ability, are A Woman Killed with Kindness, a pathetic story of domestic life, and The Fair Maid of the West, a melodrama with plenty of fighting of popular kind.

5.   Thomas Dekker:

·       Dekker is in pleasing contrast with most of the dramatists of the time. Dekker’s personality and erratic genius in The Shoemaker’s Holiday, a humorous study of plain working people, and Old Fortunatus, a fairy drama of the wishing had and no end of money.

What causes led to decline of the drama?

·       It was inevitable that the drama should after Shakespeare, for the simple reason that there was no other great enough to fill his place. Aside from this, over causes were at work, and the chief of these was at the very source of the Elizabethan dramas. It must be remembered that our first playwrights wrote to please their audiences; that the drama rose in England because of the desire of a patriotic people to see something of the stirring life of the times reflected on the stage. For there were no papers and magazines in those days, and people came to the theaters not only to be amused but to be informed.

·       Like children, they wanted to know what is meant. Shakespeare fulfilled their desire. He gave them their story, and his genius was great to enough to show in every play not only their own life and passions but something of the meaning of all life, and of that eternal justice which uses the war of human passions for its own great ends. Thus good and evil is mingling freely in his dramas; but the evil is never attractive, and the good triumphs as inevitably as fate. Though his language is sometimes coarse, we are to remember that it was the custom of his age to speak somewhat coarsely, and that in language, as in thought and feeling, Shakespeare is far above most of his contemporaries.

·       With his successors all this was changed. The audience itself had gradually changed, and in place of plain people eager for a story and for information, we see a larger and larger proportion of those who went to the play because they had nothing else to do. They wanted amusement only, and since they had blunted by idleness the desire for simple and wholesome amusement, they called for something more sensational.

·       Shakespeare’s successors catered to the depraved tastes of this new audience. They lacked not only Shakespeare’s genius, but his broad charity, his moral insight into life. With the exception of Ben Jonson, they neglected the simple fact that man in his deepest nature is a moral being, and that only a play which satisfied the whole nature of man by showing the triumph of the moral law can ever wholly satisfy an audience or a people.

·       Beaumont and Fletcher, forgetting the deep meaning of life, strove for effect by increasing the sensationalism of their plays; Webster reveled in tragedies of blood and thunder; Massinger and Ford made another step downward, producing evil and licentious scenes for their own sake, making characters, and situation more immortal till, notwithstanding these dramatist’s ability, the stage had become insincere, frivolous, and bad.

·       Ben Jonson’s Ode, “Come Leave the Loathed Stage”, is the judgment of a large and honest nature grown weary of the plays and the players of the time. We read with a sense of relief that in 1642, only twenty-six years after Shakespeare’s death both houses of Parliament of lies and immortality.