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Updated: May 3, 2025
Spenser revived many of his obsolete words, both in his pastorals and in his Faerie Queene, thereby imparting an antique remoteness to his diction, but incurring Ben Jonson's censure, that he "writ no language."
But at the end of Elizabeth's reign a writing of brief witty characters appears to have come into fashion as one of the many forms of ingenuity that pleased society, and might be distantly related to the Euphuism of the day. Ben Jonson's "Cynthia's Revels," first acted in 1600, two or three years before the end of Elizabeth's reign, has little character sketches set into the text.
The first is the performance, on the 21st of September, of Ben Jonson's play of "Every Man in his Humour," by a select company of amateur actors, among whom Dickens held chief place. "He was the life and soul of the entire affair," says Forster. "I never seem till then to have known his business capabilities. He took everything on himself, and did the whole of it without an effort.
There came loud cries for a song, and, in answer, the voice of Crailey rose over the general din, somewhat hoarse, and never so musical when he sang as when he spoke, yet so touching in its dramatic tenderness that soon the noise fell away, and the roisterers sat quietly to listen. It was not the first time Ben Jonson's song had stilled a disreputable company.
Jones and Jonson's quarrel originated because the poet had, in the "Masque of Chloridia," performed in 1630, prefixed his own name before that of Jones. In consequence of this "rare old Ben" was deprived through Jones' influence of employment at Court.
They were, in their own time, much more "up to date" than Shakespeare, who chose for his material old stories that nearly every one had read. Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair is glorified journalism. It brims over with contemporary gossip and timely witticisms. Therefore it is out of date to-day, and is read only by people who wish to find out certain facts of London life in Jonson's time.
I speak for myself when I say that, in fitness for the particular end it had to serve, Milton's poem appears to me to be surpassed, for instance, by the best of Jonson's masques, no less than it surpasses them, and all others of their kind, in the poetical beauty of the verse, whether of the 'tragical' or lyrical portions.
But it may be said that Shakspere, of all men, is able to speak for himself without aid or comment. His works appeal to all, young and old, in every time, every nation. It is true; he can be understood. He is, to use again Ben Jonson's oft-quoted words, "Not of an age, but for all time."
In "these memorable words," every non-Baconian sees Ben's opinion about his friend's lack of scholarship. Greenwood has already adverted often to "these memorable words." " . . . if this testimony is to be explained away as not seriously written, then are we justified in applying the same methods of interpretation to Jonson's other utterances as published in the Folio of 1623.
Ben Jonson's 'Underwoods' with his own corrections; a presentation copy of Andrew Marvell's 'Poems, with autograph notes; manuscript volumes of letters, containing almost every famous name known to English literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the literary cream, in fact, of all the vast collection which filled the muniment room upstairs; books which had belonged to Addison, to Sir William Temple, to Swift, to Horace Walpole; the first four folios of Shakespeare, all perfect, and most of the quartos everything that the heart of the English collector could most desire was there.
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