“Ben Jonson is the person who tells us most about Shakespeare. Ben Jonson was a colleague of Shakespeare, in the sense that some of his plays were put on by Shakespeare’s company, or one of them was, and he clearly, he writes very intimately about Shakespeare, he writes sometimes critically about Shakespeare, but he also writes that he loved him this side idolatry, he writes the first full critical appreciation of Shakespeare, the Ben Jonson elegy in the First Folioʼs a very important piece of criticism, the finest piece of Shakespeare criticism before Dryden, later in the seventeenth century.”
Sir Stanley Wells, president emeritus Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
The next four posts in this series will undertake to examine Jonson’s contributions to Shakespeare’s First Folio as literary works, which must be interpreted as literary texts, with understanding as Jonson requests. In so doing I will follow the precepts laid my in the fourth post in the sequence Why Ben Jonson Writes Not of Love. In particular I will endeavour to establish the literary sources that Jonson references explicitly and by implication, then consider what contribution to his overall project can be gotten by reading them intertextually, that is by reading the texts together with Jonson’s poem to find a synthetic meaning which is apparent from combining the two. Wells tells us that Jonson’s poem performs two functions, one to provide a critical overview of Shakespeare, the other to provide insight into the author’s identity and biography. I will therefore focus on these two aspects when considering potential allusive content in the poem. For critical value I will look for potential references to the critical theory followed and advanced by Jonson, Shakespeare and their contemporaries. With respect to biography, I will consider historically accepted references to William of Stratford, (Sweet Swan of Avon is considered one of the most important bits of evidence linking Shakespeare to Stratford) but will be open to materials that connect the poem to Mary Sidney Herbert, following the apparent hint in Jonson’s To Penshurst that she is linked to the author.
To the Memory of my Beloved: What Ben Jonson tells us about Shakespeare
When the Shakespeare folio finally reached the public in November 1623, it was prefaced with a curious portrait of the author, a poem addressed To the Reader, which faced the portrait, and a memorial poem both signed by Ben Jonson, and two letters purportedly written by Shakespeare’s fellow actors Hemmings and Condell. Modern scholars believe it is all the work of Jonson, working at the behest of the Herbert brothers to whom the volume is dedicated.
It is the memorial poem on which I will focus for the most part. It has the long and somewhat cumbersome title:
To the memory of my beloved,
THE AUTHOR
MR. WILLIAM SHAKE-SPEARE
And what he hath left us.
The poem consists of 80 lines in rhyming couplets. The first 16 constitute an apology of sorts for the impossibility of properly memorializing the author, citing first the limitations of language and poetic ability, then the inevitability that readers will misconstrue and twist his words as if they were the praise of a baud or whore. In line 17 he reverses course, “I will begin,” and promises the author, “thou art alive still while thy book doth live and we have wits to read and praise to give.” The introductory 16 lines are considered a palinode, a rhetorical false start which sets up the body of the work. In the next section Jonson makes a series of comparisons to ancient and contemporary writers claiming that Shakespeare outshines them all as a writer of both tragic and comedic drama. Finally Jonson addresses the source of Shakespeare’s greatness finding both nature (his in borne qualities) and art (the craft and labor of writing) which have delighted Shakespeare’s royal patrons and earned a place as a constellation in the heavens, while those left behind can only mourn their loss.
Many readers have noted the concentration of pronouns in the poem. Even in the title it is my beloved and what he has left us. For most of the poem Jonson addresses the author with the second person familiar thee and thy. Thou art alive still while thy book doth live… However, half way through he switches to third person, He was not of an age but for all time! before returning the the and thou at the end, I see thee advanced as a constellation.
Having considered the structure of the poem I turn to potential sources and references. The initial palinode has a widely known classical exemplar in Plato’s Phaedrus. Phaedrus was central to Philip Sidney’s reclaiming Plato in the name of poets in his Defence of Poesy, the most important work of critical theory of the English Renaissance. Sidney in turn got the core of his idea from Julius Caesar Scaliger who advanced the idea of poet as maker from the Greek word poesis, a view echoed by Jonson’s favorite classical writer Horace in his Ars Poetica and used in the last third of Jonson’s elegy. The dangers of writing being misinterpreted to evil ends was commonplace in period, particularly associated with the Latin poet Ovid. In the preface to his translation of Metamorphosis Arthur Golding warns:
And therfore whooso dooth attempt the Poets woorkes too reede,
Must bring with him a stayed head and judgement too proceede.
For as there bee most wholsome hestes and precepts too bee found.
So are theyr rockes and shallowe shelves too ronne the ship a ground.
Some naughtie persone seeing vyce shewd lyvely in his hew,
Dooth take occasion by and by like vices too ensew.
Another beeing more severe than wisdome dooth requyre,
Beeholding vice (too outward shewe) exalted in desyre,
Condemneth by and by the booke and him that did it make,
And willes it too be burnd with fyre for lewd example sake.
It was these latter from whom Sidney defended poesy, quoting Scaliger, “Qua authoritate barbari quidam atq; hispidi abuti velint ad poetas e rep. Exigendos.” (There are some barbarians who would exile poets from the republic on the authority of Plato). In particular this first section evokes the 15th elegy of Book 1 of Ovid’s Amores, which provided the motto for Venus and Adonis, and in a translation by Marlow, appeared in the first act of Jonson’s Poetaster.
With, “I therefore will begin. Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!” Jonson offers perhaps the most famous description of Shakespeare and certainly what Wells refers to when he says Jonson provides the “finest bit of Shakespeare criticism before Dryden.”
Jonson next dismisses the suggestion that Shakespeare be buried in Westminster, with Chaucer, Spenser and Beaumont, apparently in response to an elegy for Shakespeare written by William Basse. This is another point Stratfordians claim as proof for the traditional identification for it seems to establish that the Basse elegy was written before the folio and therefore constitutes a contemporaneous reaction to the author’s death.
Jonson follows the prophetic promise (Thou) “art alive still while thy book doth live and we have wits to read and praise to give.” with lists of classical and contemporary writers who cannot compare with Shakespeare. The phrase “wits to read” and lists of authors would immediately bring to mind Francis Meres’ Palladis Tamia, a Treasury of Wit (1598). Meres’s commonplace book identified Shakespeare as the author of at least eight plays for the stage at a time when the name Shakespeare had only appeared in connection with the narrative poems. Only after Meres was Shakespeare identified as author on quarto publications of plays. In considering Meres we will look to the other important contemporary literary critics. Foremost of these are Sidney and Scaliger, already mentioned. Others who provided lists of this type that influenced Meres include Texor (Officina), Minturno (Arte Poetica) and Puttenham (Art of Poesy). This section also contains what is considered Jonson’s slight to Shakespeare, “Though thou hadst small Latin and lesse Greek”. This phrase has led some academics to accept that Shakespeare had little education beyond what he might have received in Stratford’s grammar school and thus to dismiss most classical references in the works, while others see it only as a measure of Jonson’s conceit and classicism and read it as true only in comparison to Jonson itself. The academy is slowly accepting that Shakespeare had a great command of classical sources and forms and so escaping the trap of this curious phrase.
As previously mentioned, the final section draws heavily on Horace’s Ars Poetica for its discussion of the proper role and method of the poet. We have two extent translations of the work by Jonson, an annotated version reputedly perished in the desk fire that inspired his Execration upon Vulcan. It is also the source of instructions for the anagrams William Bellamy claims Jonson uses to annotate his works. I will examine the poem for anagrams that might shed light on Jonson’s intentions. Many of the final lines have a peculiar resonance with published dedications to the Countess of Pembroke, I will consider those as well, particularly the Samuel Daniel sonnet in which he pledges But Avon, poor in fame, and poor in waters, Shall have my song, where Delia hath her seat.
I believe I can offer a reading of Jonson’s poem that offers a much more satisfactory synthesis of its contents than is currently available, both as a statement about the literary contribution of the author and as an effort to memorialize the author with the praise of contemporaries.
