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A great book
On a great man by a great scholar and writer.

Life (5 stars) and Lit Crit (zero)
Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's slightly younger contemporary, is the earliest English author who left behind enough evidence to make a literary biography possible.Not that the evidence is, by modern standards, voluminous.We do not know for certain when Jonson was born, who his father was or how long he went to school.His relationships with patrons and fellow writers are obscure, and his conduct was sometimes so reckless as to defy rational explanation.His determined efforts to fashion a persona only make his personality murkier.On paper, he was both a champion of morality and a venturer into the near neighborhood of pornography.In praxis, he seduced other men's wives while risking his own life and well-being as a religious dissident.

David Riggs' thorough biography emphasizes Jonson's contradictions.Actually, it may find more contradictions than really exist.The author appears to be a convinced disciple of modern critical theory, a searcher after ambiguity who frequently drowns text in subtext.Foucault, Barthes, Fish and lesser lights of the deconstructionist priesthood receive proper marks of respect.Happily, though, Riggs is not quite so dense as his inspirers; except when quoting them directly, his meaning can be more or less understood.

With the lit crit trappings (happily only a fraction of the whole work) stripped away, the tale of Jonson's rise from bricklayer's stepson to cultural arbiter is fascinating.Though claiming descent from an official of Henry VIII's court, he grew up among the laboring classes and would doubtless have followed his stepfather into the bricklaying trade, had some unknown benefactor not enabled him to enroll at Winchester, one of the finest grammar schools of the day.While Riggs finds no evidence that young Ben's education continued beyond the Fourth Form (his prodigious classical learning came from adult reading), it was sufficient, apparently, to instill a love of books and literature that led him, after detours into the army and acting, as well as some serious scrapes with the law, to become a professional writer for the stage.

Jonson's career spanned the full range of the literary world of his time.In the beginning, he cadged advances from impresarios and earned so little that, after selling several plays, he returned for a while to his bricks.At the height, he enjoyed the bounty of royal and noble patrons, who rewarded him well for masques and occasional poems.At the end, though patrons grew fewer and his plays no longer appealed to the popular taste, he had the comfort of a circle of acolytes, the "Sons of Ben", and unrivaled prestige.

On the ups and downs of this life, Riggs' detailed account is clear and authoritative.On the other hand, his analysis of the plays and poems that make us interested in the life is more likely to puzzle than enlighten.Fellow scholars will no doubt find useful nuggets, but the reader whose acquaintance with Jonson is perhaps limited to a long-ago perusal of "Volpone" or "Everyman in His Humour", and who wishes to get a better idea of the nature of the author's works, will find little help.

There is also one noteworthy omission.The first name that most readers will look for in Riggs' index is "Shakespeare", and they will find almost nothing.That gap stems from a praiseworthy reluctance to speculate beyond the evidence or to accept as evidence the dubious legends of later generations.Still, the subject is one on which a slight boldness of inference would be welcome.

A successful literary biography, someone has said, recruits new readers for its subject.This one does not pass that test, but, for anyone who is already interested in the second greatest dramatist of the Elizabethan Age, it will be quite satisfactory. ... Read more

Book Description

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a must have
Very well written, insightful, a joy to read while at the same time gaining wisdom. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Ben Jonson's 'Epigrams' and 'The Forest'
Ben Jonson might with some justice be called the forgotten master of 17th century literature. Bearing in mind the degree to which not just English poetry but English culture is saturated in Shakespeare, this is understandable. But ignorance of Jonson does him an injustice, and our poetry a disservice.

Jonson, although remembered as a dramatist, thought of himself as a poet. (The contemporary term for a playwright was "poet". Indeed Jonson may have been the person who invented the word "playwright" -- as a term of scorn for those who made plays with no more art than a wheelwright makes wheels.) Fantastically ambitious, he had the unheard-of audacity to include his plays -- considered a disreputable form of writing -- in a large book of his 'Works' (the very title audaciously claiming for his writing a respect due, in contemporary thought, only to more valued genres).

A modern theatregoer might be surprised to find out that what Jonson introduced as "the ripest of my studies" were not his plays, but a collection of poems called 'Epigrams' (printed along with the plays and 'The Forest' in his 'Works'). If Jonson is the forgotten master, 'Epigrams' could be called his forgotten masterpiece. Saturated with the poetry of Martial, Horace and Catullus ("for a good poet's made as well as born," as he wrote wrote of Shakespeare) Jonson's epigrams self-consciously and stringently set themselves the task of rebuking and praising the age.

'Epigrams' is full of the variety of Elizabethan and Stuart London (Jonson is a thoroughly urban poet): its charlatans, hypocritical creatures, would-be ladies, bad poets, braggarts and moneylenders; but also of its King (James I), genuine poets (two epigrams are addressed to John Donne), and cultured lords and ladies. Both in 'Epigrams' and 'The Forest' (a collection of poems ranging from lyrics to odes to long poems dealing with the "virtuous and noble") Johnson is keenly aware of, and interested in, problems of authorship and readership. His first epigram implores the reader who holds the book "to read it well", and there are a number of poems that warn off readers who misread -- who laugh at the wrong point, out of sheer stupidity, or in an attempt to pretend that the poet's satire doesn't apply to them.

Jonson's classical style -- free of ornament and wilful obscurity -- isn't immediately appealing. (Shakespeare is both, for instance, and Donne has a famous delight in obscurity.) His poetry, perhaps like Goethe's, isn't great because it of brilliance, but because of its strength, something that becomes apparent only when the poetry has been fully absorbed by a reader. The moral weight behind his deliberate and scrupulous art is embodied in the attentiveness of his poetry to words and syntax. (His syntax, by the way, is one of the most enjoyable and sophisticated features of his poetry.) Perhaps what T.S. Eliot wrote of Landor -- another patently classical poet, but much more limited in his ambitions and achievements -- could be, with greater justice, applied to Jonson: "He is ... a poet for those who want poetry and not something else, a stay for their own vanity." ... Read more

Book Description
Next to Shakespeare, Ben Jonson is perhaps the most widely studied Renaissance dramatist.Very few students of literature or drama would not encounter Volpone or Bartholomew Fair in the course of their studies, and there has been a recent resurgence of interest in Epicoene, or the Silent Women among gender theorists. As part of the Complete Critical Guide series, this volume offers the broadest range of information on Jonson and his works, from background on contexts to details of recent interpretations of his plays.A must for students of the Renaissance. ... Read more

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Lively, Humorous Visit to Bartholomew Fair
Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair (1614) is zany, much like the classic movie It's A Mad, Mad, Mad World. Respectable gentlemen and ladies of London somewhat unwisely visit the annual Batholomew Fair. Encountering an odd mix of conniving characters, they become embroiled in a maze ofplots, deceits, and disreputable festival activities and are robbed, tricked, mocked, beaten, thrown into stocks, and recruited as prostitutes.

I was continuously overwhelmed by the comings and goings of characters of all sorts, almost as though I was being jostled along in a festival crowd. I have now read Bartholomew Fair several times, and yet I still find it necessary to revisit the cast listing as new characters appear.

Many characters are aptly named: the attorney John Littlewit, the suitor Winwife, the zealous Judge Overdo, the quarrelsome Tom Quarlous, the satirical Humphrey Wasp, the respectable Grace Wellborn, the madman Trouble-All, and the ballad singer Nightingale. Other names are simply memorable: Joan Trash, Lantern Leatherhead, Ezekiel Edgeworth, Mooncalf, Captain Whit, and Punk Alice. The list goes on.

In Jonson's time little concern was given for the setting. Stages were largely empty, with perhaps a simple prop or two. Unexpectedly, Jonson has the second act begin with trades people assembling their stalls and booths on stage. The booths remain on stage throughout the play, helping the audience orient themselves as the action jumps from one spot to another.

The Drama Classics series published by Nick Hern Books of London provide affordable, tightly bound, small paperback editions of plays for students, actors, and theatregoers.The introduction by Colin Counsell to Bartholomew Fair was quite good. It outlines the plot, describes the characters, but avoids academic discussions on interpretational and textual analysis. I like the small, durable Drama Classics editions as they are easy to carry.

There is one drawback. A short glossary of difficult words is provided, but there are no footnotes. For a reader new to Ben Jonson, good footnotes offer substantial help. The lower class dialogue and topical allusions can be puzzling.

An inexpensive collection of Ben Jonson's plays is published by Oxford Univ. Press in the World's Classic series with the title The Alchemist and Other Plays. ... Read more

Book Description
In this wide-ranging and original study, Margaret Tudeau-Clayton examines how Virgil--the poet as well as his texts--was mediated in early modern England. She analyzes what was at stake in the reproduction and circulation of these mediations of Virgil, focusing specifically on the works of Ben Jonson and on one of Shakespeare's most resonantly Virgilian plays, The Tempest. She argues that the play offers a complex model of cultural and socio-political resistance by engaging critically not only with contemporary mediations of Virgil, but with the ways they were used, especially by Jonson, to reproduce structures of authority (in relation to nature and language as well as to the socio-political order). She also shows how instructive comparisons may be drawn between the ways Virgil was constructed and used in early modern England and the ways Shakespeare has been constructed and used, especially as national poet, from the early modern period until our own time. ... Read more

Book Description
Ben Jonson was commonly regarded during his lifetime and the century following his death as a writer whose powers were equal, if not superior, to those of Shakespeare. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, his reputation had sharply declined: while Shakespeare was increasingly venerated as a type of original genius, Jonson was contrastingly seen as a writer of patchy and derivative talents, excessively devoted to the authors of antiquity and to the social minutiae of his age, anxiously resentful of his great and 'gentle' rival. This popular, formalized contrast of the two men's characters and abilities profoundly affected the subsequent reputations of both Shakespeare and Jonson. In this new collection of biographical, critical and historical essays, Ian Donaldson challenges many long-held and recent assumptions about the nature of Jonson's personality and creative achievement, offering fresh readings of his life and art. ... Read more