SOURCE: Kerr, Mina. “The Character of Jonson's Comedy,” “The Influence of Jonson's Comedy on That of His Immediate Contemporaries,” and “Nathaniel Field and Richard Brome in Relation to Jonson.” In Influence of Ben Jonson on English Comedy, 1598-1642, pp. 1-75. New York: Phaeton Press, 1967.

[In the following excerpts from a work originally published in 1912, Kerr outlines the distinguishing features of Jonson's comedy of humors and discusses his influence on other playwrights.]

THE CHARACTER OF JONSON'S COMEDY

The purpose in the present study is to follow but one of the lines along which the work of Ben Jonson affected English literature, to determine where, how, and to what extent, his influence was felt in comedy as written by contemporaries and later “Sons” between 1598, when Every Man in His Humor was first acted, and the closing of the theaters in 1642. It is helpful, first of all, to consider what in Jonson gave him the power of attaining the position of importance which he holds in English dramatic history, and necessary to define clearly what were the distinguishing characteristics of his comedy, in order to set up criteria by which to judge the presence or absence of his influence.

The nature of Jonson's personality and the character of his art were both such as would inevitably draw to him many loyal followers. His first essay in the comedy of humors marked him out at once as a writer of originality and power among his contemporary craftsmen. Some of these opposed what was plainly the blazing of a new path in English comedy, but others applauded enthusiastically, and soon showed in their own work evidences of approval and acceptance of the new method. In his later years Jonson was surrounded by a group of young disciples, who were proud to be “Sealed of the Tribe of Ben,” and who looked upon the patriarch of their clan both as chief of good comrades and as supreme authority in matters of literature. Whether in comedy, tragedy, masque, epigram, or occasional verse, in matter or form, he was regarded as a dictator, so that both during his own age and during the following century we find unmistakable and effective traces of his influence.

There are several reasons why Ben Jonson had such position and power in establishing a new school. First of all, his art and workmanship were thoroughly self-conscious, and he had fixed, positive theories about literature. These he talked continuously and vociferously for forty years and explained clearly in his inductions, prefaces, prologues, epilogues, and Discoveries, so that there could be no doubt as to what he believed on each and every question of literary art. With his first play he set forth definite dramatic methods, and for the most part he made his practice to accord with his theories. Further, whatever idea or theory he adopted received his vigorous, wholehearted support; and hence his statements of literary creed were positive assertions, free from the numerous modifications and exceptions that may be necessary for completeness and the most exact truth, but which, nevertheless, tend to involve in uncertainty those who would imitate. Jonson's theory and art were, therefore, such as could be readily laid hold of and patterned after. Again, in literary as in other fashions originality and novelty act as powerful forces in gaining followers, and Jonson in his first comedy of humors made a deliberate innovation, undertaking what had never before been done in English drama. In the prologue to Every Man in His Humor he foretold a reaction from romantic and idealistic to classic and realistic drama, and declared that he would portray

                    deeds and language such as men do use,
And persons such as comedy would choose,
When she would show an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes.

Certainly the personality of this remarkable man had much to do with the desire of those who knew and loved him to follow along the same paths in literature. He won loyal friends and as strong enemies in his personal life, enthusiastic followers in his particular form of art and as decided opponents. That he had a warm heart and a rare capacity for friendship or that his relations to people were marked by unusual intensity and sincerity, no one can doubt who has read his various dedications, poems, and the Discoveries. His very weaknesses were the weaknesses of strength, and he was a most human mixture of qualities,—forceful but intolerant, warm in praise but self-assertive, clear in thought and speech but arrogant, just in judgment but imprudent, never passive or affected but always passionate and sincere—a man toward whom others could not remain indifferent, but whom they must either love or hate warmly.

At the various taverns of London, Jonson reigned among his fellows and later his disciples by right of character, wit and learning. Of the early days at the Mermaid, Beaumont wrote in a letter to Jonson:

                                                                                what things have we seen,
Done at the Mermaid! heard words that
Have been so nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whom they came,
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest.

The merry feasts of wit and laughter that took place later in the famous Apollo Room of the Devil Tavern at Temple Bar and in other public houses of the day, Herrick celebrates in his well-known verse:

                    Ah Ben!
          Say how or when
          Shall we thy guests
Meet at those lyric feasts
          Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the Triple Tun?
Where we such clusters had,
As made us nobly wild, not mad;
          And yet each verse of thine
Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine.

The real character of these meetings we may judge best, however, from the Leges Convivales written by Ben Jonson himself and engraved in marble over the chimney in the Apollo Room. There are described the guests invited to join the happy company:

Let the learned and witty, the jovial and gay,
The generous and honest, compose our free state.

There we learn that, while the ordinary theater of the day was no fit place for women, the conduct of the Apollo Club was such that they could be freely admitted to its meetings:

And the more to exalt our delight whilst we stay,
Let none be debarred from his choice female mate.

Among the other rules laid down were these:

“Let the contests be rather of books than of wine.
Let the company be neither noisy nor mute.
Let none of things serious, much less of divine,
When belly and head's full, profanely dispute.”
“Let raillery be without malice or heat.”
“Let argument bear no unmusical sound,
Nor jars interpose, sacred friendship to grieve.”(1)

The Leges Convivales testify that the Apollo Club aimed to hold sacred things sacred, honor women, exclude malicious speech, respect learning, prize friendship, and they convince us that the meetings were characterized by true nobility of tone. It was surely through these happy gatherings that many comrades and “Sons of Ben,” learning to understand and admire the character and art of Jonson, were moved to accept him as master in their own literary attempts.

Lowell, in his essay on Shakespeare Once More, asserts that “no poet of the first class has ever left a school, because his imagination is incommunicable;” that “you may detect the presence of a genius of the second class in any generation by the influence of his mannerism, for that, being an artificial thing, is capable of reproduction.”² It is true that the highest poetic gift of imagination or what Lowell calls “aeration of the understanding by the imagination” can not be imitated. We must not look in Jonson's dramatic work, nor in that of his followers as influenced by him, for essential charm, for deep tenderness, for sublime tragedy and pathos, for the inevitability of the very greatest poetry. Many truly great qualities we may find. Jonson's place is not, as Swinburne puts it, among the gods of harmony and creation in English literature, but among the giants of energy and invention, where he stands supreme.

The ethical aim Jonson placed foremost in his theory of comedy. He was frankly, consciously didactic, and his whole dramatic career was a battle against vice and folly. From beginning to end, he assumed the attitude of a censor and reformer, purposing always through the laughter of comedy to improve morals and correct taste. It is possible to quote many passages from the plays where the moral intent is plainly stated. Asper in Every Man out of His Humor, representing Jonson himself, declares:

                              “with an armed and resolved hand,
I'll strip the ragged follies of the time
Naked as at their birth.
…
I fear no mood stamped in a private brow,
When I am pleased t' unmask a public vice.”(3)
“Well I will scourge those apes,
And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror,
As large as is the stage whereon we act;
Where they shall see the time's deformity
Anatomized in every nerve and sinew
With constant courage, and contempt of fear.”(4)

The prologue to Volpone defends the poet

Whose true scope, if you would know it,
In all his poems still hath been this measure,
To mix profit with your pleasure.(5)

Again, the prologue to The Alchemist asserts that

                                                                                                                                  this pen
Did never aim to grieve, but better men;
Howe'er the age he lives in doth endure
The vices that she breeds, above their cure.
But when the wholesome remedies are sweet,
And in their working gain and profit meet,
He hopes to find no spirit so much diseased,
But will with such fair correctives be pleased.(6)

Even in the masques Jonson does not forget “that rule of the best artist, to suffer no object of delight to pass without his mixture of profit and example.”⁷ His method of teaching was by dramatic satire. Like Swift, Carlyle, and all great satirists, Jonson was an ardent idealist, whose spirit was so deeply stirred by the contrast between his ideals and the actualities around him that in passionate bitterness he sought to scourge men out of their follies and vices, and to spur them by negative teaching to knowledge and virtue.

Jonson was a classicist, and his comedies were written under the guidance of “tart Aristophanes, neat Terence, witty Plautus.” He was thoroughly familiar with Greek and Latin literature, and whether the need were in plot, character, description, or philosophical maxim, there was no lack of material from classical sources stored up in the poet's mind ready to be poured forth. His was what Dr. Schelling calls an “assimilative classicism.” What he read he made so completely his own that his illustrations and quotations from the classics form an organic part of his writings. Symonds says of him: “He held the prose writers and poets of antiquity in solution in his spacious memory. He did not need to dovetail or weld his borrowings into one another; but rather, having fused them in his own mind, poured them plastically forth into the mold of thought.”⁸ However, as Jonson himself asserts both in the prologue to Every Man out of His Humor and in the Discoveries, he was no slavish follower of the ancients, but always so broadened classical theories as to make them applicable to English conditions. The artistic logic and careful construction as well as the finish and restraint of his comedies were due in large measure to his understanding knowledge of the spirit and form of classic comedy.

He was a scholar-poet and his learning embraced not only Latin and Greek knowledge but also Renaissance lore and literature, and even extended to the arts and sciences of his own day. Whether the subject were alchemy, cookery, botany, or cosmetics he wrote with equal fullness and ease. Furthermore, he was the only playwright of the times who sought to avoid anachronisms and had conscientious regard for historical accuracy. Symonds closes his study of Jonson with this tribute: “What we most marvel at in his writings, is the prodigious brain-work of the man, the stuff of constant and inexhaustible cerebration they contain. Moreover, we shall not be far wrong in saying that, of all the English poets of the past, he alone, with Milton and Gray, deserves the name of a great and widely learned scholar.”⁹

With this weight of learning, Jonson naturally does not rule in the kingdom of the heart but in the realm of the intellect. The appeal in all his dramas is directly and fundamentally intellectual. He cares to win commendation only from “the judicious.” In the prologue to Cynthia's Revels, he describes the audience sought by his muse:

Pied ignorance she neither loves nor fears.
Nor hunts she after popular applause,
Or foamy praise, that drops from common jaws:
The garland that she wears, their hands must twine,
Who can both censure, understand, define,
What merit is.(10)

The Staple of News is referred

To scholars that can judge and fair report
The sense they hear, above the vulgar sort
Of nut crackers, that only come for sight.(11)

Jonson deliberately chose to make supreme the things of the understanding, hence, the subordination of the love motive throughout his dramas. We must not seek from him tender romance or beautiful love story. Perhaps he was criticised for disregard of this element, so universally dear to men and women, and was making reply in his verse in The Forest, Why I Write not of Love:

Some Act of Love's bound to rehearse,
I thought to bind him in my verse:
Which when he felt, Away, quoth he,
Can poets hope to fetter me?
It is enough, they once did get
Mars and my mother, in their net:
I wear not these my wings in vain.
With which he fled me; and again,
Into my rhymes could ne'er be got
By any art: then wonder not
That since, my numbers are so cold,
When Love is fled, and I grow old.(12)

Hence, too, the lack of feeling for nature, the entire absence of that background of English fields and woods that we find in Shakespeare or Heywood. Jonson, as he himself well knew, was not “nature's child,” and we must not expect in his plays the scent of the violet by a mossy stone nor the soft lights and shadows of the Forest of Arden.

London was the cradle of Jonson's genius, and London is the scene of all his principal comedies except Volpone, and even that is the outcome of his studies of London life. He knew the court and the city and could give transcripts from high life and low life. He takes us to the taverns, the private houses, the fairs, the market-places, the tradesmen's shops, the courts of justice, the theaters, the aisles of St. Paul's, and portrays to us what was said and done in the public and private life of contemporary London. The prologue to The Alchemist declares:

Our scene is London, 'cause we would make known,
No country's mirth is better than our own.(13)

Jonson with keen vision noted every detail of the world around him that might contribute to the “satirically heightened picture of contemporary life” that it was the especial object of his art to produce.

Chaucer, Jonson's great predecessor in the study and portrayal of London life, was a product of the early Renaissance, and Shakespeare, who alone among contemporary writers was his equal as an observer, expressed fully and richly the spirit of the later Renaissance. Jonson himself was at every point the complete antithesis of all that the Renaissance stood for. Chaucer and Shakespeare looked on the life around them with frank wonder, wide sympathy, and spontaneous enthusiasm of heart; while Jonson's attitude was always that of careful scrutiny, judicial regard for ethical values, and unfailing self-consciousness. Where they sought simply to know and picture the world as they found it, their senses ever alert for beauty and the highest truth implicit in beauty, he could never free himself wholly from a bookishness that came often perilously near pedantry, an overweening regard for authority, and an attitude of assumed censorship. He was the chief representative of “the school of conscious effort”¹⁴ in Elizabethan drama, with all that that implies of faults and virtues. A simple, unaffected, purely artistic picture of contemporary life we do not get from him.

As has often been pointed out, the emphasis in Jonson's comedies is on the characters rather than the plots. With his first play he gave the portrayal of character a new importance in English comedy. He seems to have conceived his persons, then invented plots to bring out their predominant qualities from as many different aspects as possible. In the typical Jonsonian comedy, as Miss Woodbridge has carefully demonstrated, the dramatis personœ can always be divided into two groups, a large group of victims and a small group of victimizers, or those possessed by folly and those possessed of guile.¹⁵ Further, the characters do not grow or become, but remain fully determined and stationary; hence we have revelation and not development. This is a natural outcome of Jonson's regard for unity of time and his restriction of the action of a play within twenty-four hours.

Jonson's treatment of character is original and peculiar in his use of humors, and his emphasis of both superficial peculiarities and eccentricities that strike into character itself. He makes use of oddities of dress or manner, but he also goes deeper to individual twists and imperfections. “Among the English,” Dryden says, “by humor is meant some extravagant habit, passion, or affection, particular to some one person, by the oddness of which he is immediately distinguished from the rest of men; which being lively and naturally represented, most frequently begets that malicious pleasure in the audience which is testified by laughter; as all things which are deviation from the common customs are ever the aptest to produce it. … The description of these humors, drawn from the knowledge and observation of particular persons, was the peculiar genius and talent of Ben Jonson.”¹⁶ However, no description of humors can be better than that which Jonson himself gives in Every Man out of His Humor:

As when some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his effects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a humor.
But that a rook, by wearing a pyed feather,
The cable hatband, or the three-piled ruff,
A yard of shoe-tye, or the Switzer's knot
On his French garters, should affect a humor!
O, it is more than most ridiculous.(17)

Jonson is not always true to his theory here, and in spite of what he says, a humor is often a superficiality and a conscious or unconscious affectation.

He creates each of his persons, then, out of a main trait or eccentricity which rules that person in all he does and says. Such a method leads to an emphasis of the type, and has, on the one hand, the danger of personal satire in too great concreteness, and on the other hand, that of allegory in too great abstraction.¹⁸ Into each of these extremes Jonson fell at times. Here is that same tendency to abstraction which has reappeared now and again from the moralities straight on down through English drama. The very names of Jonson's personages are allegorical and aim to set forth a predominant characteristic. He dwells on one motive presented under many conditions, and his characters in varied relations do just what we should logically expect; thus, while they gain in emphasis and distinctness, they lose in reality and humanness, for people are mixtures of motives and by no means always act logically in accordance with what we should expect from one characteristic that we happen to know. It is a detached rather than a sympathetic view of human nature. However, we do get clear conceptions of Jonson's personages, and remember distinctly such creations as Mosca, Face, or Zeal-of-the-Land Busy. The types, too, are often more than local and immediate; they are universal, such as we ourselves meet in contemporary life. Jonson attains the same kind of reality that Bunyan gives us in Pilgrim's Progress. Here we have the highest development of the allegorical method in the presentation of character. Our attention is fixed upon a quality embodied in a person rather than upon the person possessing a certain quality. For such treatment of character there is a legitimate place in literature, for we often meet people in daily life who impress us by their embodiment of self-assertion or of testiness, of jealousy or of hypocrisy, long before we feel their human personality.

What are some of the prominent types of character in Jonson's comedies? We find recurring again and again the denunciation of those who practice particular forms of vice and folly. Alchemists are satirized in the masque Mercury Vindicated as well as in The Alchemist; the worship of Mammon is exposed over and over in Volpone, The Alchemist, The Staple of News, and The Magnetic Lady; the voluptuary is painted in unsparing pictures in Volpone and The Alchemist; the hypocrisy and canting phraseology of the Puritans are held up to ridicule in Bartholomew Fair and The Alchemist. We find masterful portraits of the clever brainy rascal in Mosca, Face, Subtle or Brainworm; for Jonson had decided admiration and sympathy for the intellect it takes to make a thorough-going rascal. Simpletons, town and country gulls, appear in various aspects in Stephen, Matthew, La-Foole, John Daw, Fitzdotterel, Kastril, and Cokes, and these seem to have affected vividly the imagination of later playwrights. Bobadil, the supreme representative of the bragging, swaggering, disbanded soldier living by his wits, is well seconded by Tucca and Shift. The projectors, Meercraft and Engine, are the ancestors of a long line of descendants in later plays. Sir Politick Would-be of Volpone and the various intelligencers in The Staple of News represent those who make a business of distributing sensational news drawn largely from their own imagination. In Fastidious Brisk, Fungoso and Amorphus, Jonson satirizes the affected courtier and fool of fashion toward whom he always felt the most unmitigated contempt. Such are the types that recur most frequently in Jonson's comedies and most readily invite imitation on the part of his disciples and followers.

The plots are in almost all cases Jonson's own invention. He starts with the characters, prepares situations to present these as clearly and fully as possible, and then combines the situations in plots. There is much episodic humor-study in the earlier plays, where the consideration of a person's peculiarities is an end in itself. The plots are series of closely woven intrigues and skillful tricks, planned and executed by some of the characters as intriguers against the others as victims. We are sometimes bewildered by the multitude of persons, incidents and situations placed before us without a clear and unifying line of interest in Every Man out of His Humor, Cynthia's Revels, or The Poetaster. The complexity, however, as Miss Woodbridge has shown, is really on the surface and the underlying plan is very simple.¹⁹ The critics who censure Jonson for lack of constructive power must form their judgment from the above plays rather than from his mature work and those marvels of logical construction, Volpone, The Silent Woman, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair. Here every individual trick is woven into the central line of intrigue so that we get complete unity of impression. It was Coleridge who declared The Alchemist to have one of the three best plots in existence.

The unities of time and place are regarded in that Jonson confines his action within the limits of twenty-four hours and within the boundaries of one city or town. The unity of action is perfectly preserved in Volpone or The Alchemist through all the schemes and incidents, but in Cynthia's Revels or The Poetaster is kept only by means of a uniform tone in the comic element, the centralization of comic episodes in the group of chief intriguers, and the arrangement of having all the persons know one another.²⁰ The action is always the inevitable and strictly logical result of the motives presented in character. The plays have no central climax, no distinct rising and falling action, but push on through a network of tricks to the last act, where results are disclosed. Jonson likes to make the discovery of the trickery seem unavoidable in the latter part of the fourth act, as in Volpone, The Alchemist, or Bartholomew Fair, then on the very appearance of failure build up a new success before the final exposure.

There are several minor matters in which Jonson's usage was original and had considerable effect on other dramatists. His prologues and epilogues were marked by a novel independence of attitude toward the public and a definite announcement of moral and artistic purposes. The induction, where two or more persons discuss the play to be given and expound opinions on things in general, is a favorite Jonsonian device to forestall criticism and set forth the author's own views. Several plays have a character whose especial function is to comment on the process of the action and serve as what Miss Woodbridge calls a “demonstrator”—such are Macilente in Every Man out of His Humor and Crites in Cynthia's Revels. In the presentation of character, one personage is frequently made to describe another and prepare the way for his entrance upon the stage. This is an indirect and expository method of getting quickly before the audience prevailing characteristics by what others say rather than by what the person does and says himself. Jonson did much to make popular in English comedy of the time a number of words particularly applicable to his plots and types of character, such as “humor,” “gull,” “cozen,” “engine,” “project,” or “device,” and also many oaths, terms of protestation, and slang phrases, current in the street language of the day.

As to form, sometimes we find blank verse and prose almost equally divided, as in Every Man in His Humor and Every Man out of His Humor; sometimes blank verse alone, as in The Alchemist, or prose alone, as in Bartholomew's Fair; and again, the two forms combined in varying proportions. A writer's general characteristics in literary temper, construction, style, are usually repeated in his versification, and in Jonson we find no exception. His blank verse is marked by regularity and dignity, restraint and careful workmanship. His ear was atune to regularity and his lines are almost absolutely decasyllabic. The couplet is frequently used. Jonson's verse, as compared with Fletcher's, is characterized by a certain rigidity, yet he believed in freedom of phrasing and there are many run on lines. Here, his influence on the drama of his time was not great, because the tendency in dramatic blank verse was toward greater freedom and fluency, and also because comedy was more and more making use of prose.²¹

We have before us now the distinguishing features of Jonson's comedy of humors. The foremost innovation is the construction of personages in accordance with the theory of humors so as to bring out ruling peculiarities of conduct or character. Jonson, assuming a critical and judicial attitude, insisted on an underlying ethical intent, and gave a new emphasis and importance to moral satire against contemporary follies and vices. Further, his comedy stands for constructive excellence, constant regard for the demands of form, and masterly control of the intricacies of intrigue. A background of classical learning and a high appreciation of the rules of classic comedy, vigorous realistic portrayal of contemporary life, self-consciousness on the part of the writer, a large expository element, and an original use of prologue, epilogue, induction, and commentator on the progress of the action, are also characteristic of the Jonsonian comedy. In the following chapters we shall consider how far Jonson's immediate contemporaries and later “Sons” were influenced by these characteristics of his comedy.

THE INFLUENCE OF JONSON'S COMEDY ON THAT OF HIS IMMEDIATE CONTEMPORARIES

Jonson's comrade playwrights were affected by his comedy of humors in a different way from his later disciples and “Sons.” To the former, he was not a master but a fellow-worker. They watched with interest his development of a new form of English comedy, chose out and assimilated to their own use what seemed to them valuable or popularly pleasing. In their plays, therefore, we find his influence to be general rather than particular. There are several reasons for this. First of all, Chapman, Beaumont, and the others were men of independent genius who accepted no one writer as complete master; but, learning from the various dramatists of the time where each had attained greatest success, worked out individual methods of their own. The prevailing spirit of Elizabethan drama was romantic and most of Jonson's companions were too thoroughly in touch with their time to conform to any great degree to the classical ideals of Jonson's art. Indeed, “the whole spirit of the contemporary drama, its carelessness and ease, its amateurishness, its negligent construction, its borrowings and pilferings, were alien to the practice of his art, the first demands of which were originality of design, conscious literary consistency and a professional touch leading at times to mannerism.”²² Then, also, Jonson never met with uninterrupted and enthusiastic success on the popular stage, and the Elizabethan playwrights were interested in producing not “closet dramas” but plays that would act and win approval from the ordinary theater audience of the day.

An original and forceful writer must necessarily influence his contemporaries to a greater or less degree, and a careful study of all the Elizabethan dramatists would probably result in the discovery of at least minor effects on most of those who wrote after Jonson had produced his first satirical pictures of contemporary life. But to trace influences is a subtle process, and the searcher is in danger of finding what he is looking for, rather than what actually exists. We shall confine our study in this chapter to the group of contemporary writers who show most clearly effects of Jonson's comedy: Chapman, Marston, Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger and Shirley, who, though their dramatic careers came a decade later, belong here by virtue of their literary relations and the character of their work. Two anonymous plays written about 1600 also require consideration.

Although George Chapman was some fifteen years older than Jonson, yet his first comedies, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria and A Humorous Day's Mirth, were printed in 1598 and 1599 and produced about the same time as Every Man in His Humor. These men were kindred spirits, and similarities in their work are assuredly in part due to like qualities of temperament and like modes of education rather than to direct influence. Both had read deeply in classical literature and both had caught the spirit of ancient learning. As Chapman was so much the elder, perhaps Jonson was led by him to become a student in the school of Terence and Plautus. Both adopted directly and with mutual sympathy the classical ideal of comedy, its intrigue, satire and conscious restraint; so that we find them for the most part developing side by side rather than as leader and follower. Both possessed genuine scholarship, both used frequent classical allusions, both made not an emotional but an intellectual appeal, and both were characterized by conscious effort.

Jonson told Drummond of Hawthornden that Chapman was “loved of him,” and their correspondence shows that they were life-long friends. In the Underwoods we find lines of warm admiration addressed to “My worthy, and Honored Friend, Master George Chapman.”²³ On both Sejanus and Volpone Chapman wrote complimentary verses. In the character of Virgil in The Poetaster Jonson is supposed to portray Chapman. Henslowe's Diary records a payment of £1, Dec. 3, 1597, to Jonson for a plot; and final payment Jan. 8, 1599, to Chapman for a tragedy on “bengemens plotte.”²⁴ Nor must we forget that they were co-authors in Eastward Hoe and together were imprisoned for references to Scotch fashions and knights considered by a sensitive Scotchman as lacking in due respect. Close personal associations and common literary tastes make us expect likenesses in the comedies of Chapman and Jonson.

In The Blind Beggar of Alexandria,²⁵ Chapman has written a comedy of the romantic type, making use of disguise and caring little for the discrimination of character, without any satirical or ethical intent and with the use of humor only in the general early Elizabethan sense. When we turn to A Humorous Day's Mirth, we have the word humor with the Jonsonian signification, several characters conceived in Jonson's manner, a string of episodes and a series of tricks such as make up the slight plots of Every Man in His Humor and Every Man out of His Humor. The Comedy of Humors was performed by the Admiral's Men as a new play, May 11, 1597. Among the properties mentioned are hose for Verone's son and a cloak for Labesha, these being characters in A Humorous Day's Mirth; so it would seem that this play was first acted in 1597. Accepting 1597 as the date of the production of A Humorous Day's Mirth and 1598 as that of Every Man in His Humor, we certainly have in the former a forerunner of the comedy of humors developed by Jonson. Perhaps Jonson and Chapman talked over together the idea of “humorous” characters and at the same time were seeking to work it out in plays. Lemot in A Humorous Day's Mirth, assumes the position of demonstrator and on his first appearance announces, “thus will I sit, as it were, and point out all my humorous companions.” Blanuel, who is a “complete ape, so long as the compliments of a gentleman last”; Dowsecer, the young student possessed by melancholy and misanthropy; and Florilla, the Puritan wife whose vaunted Puritanism when put to the test proves to be but superficial—these are personages of the humorous type.

All Fools²⁶ has many points of likeness to Jonson's best comedy of humors. Swinburne, it will be remembered, considers this one of the finest comedies in the English language. Here is that same excellence of reflective wisdom and practical philosophy of life that characterizes Volpone or The Alchemist, and we find again and again such utterances as these:

But he's the man indeed that hides his gifts,
And sets them not to sale in every presence;
The bold and careless servant still obtains,
The modest and respective nothing gains;
Such an attendant then as smoke to fire,
Is jealousy to love; better want both
Than have both.

The plot is intricate and ingenious and shows that Chapman had been taking lessons of Jonson's masters, Plautus and Terence. The various schemes are remarkably well managed, and Chapman attains here what is for him unwonted success in threading his way clearly through the many tricks to produce an effective climax and a unified impression. As Ward remarks,²⁷ there is some resemblance in the conception of the plot to that of Every Man out of His Humor in the fact that all the characters are finally gulled. The theory and practice of gulling are set forth very fully. This is put into the mouth of one of the characters:

Nay, never shun it to be call'd a gull;
For I see all the world is but a gull;
One man gull to another in all kinds:
A merchant to a courtier is a gull;
A client to a lawyer is a gull;
A married man to a bachelor, a gull;
A bachelor to a cuckold is a gull;
All to a poet, or a poet to himself.(28)

Rinaldo, the cynical scholar, is the central person who sets all the other personages in motion and comments on what takes place. The description of Dariotto, the fashion-struck courtier, is in perfect accord with Jonson's scorn for that type of man and might have been written of Fastidious Brisk:

'Tis such a picked fellow, not a hair
About his whole bulk, but it stands in print.
Each pin hath his due place, not any point
But has his perfect tie, fashion, and grace;
A thing whose soul is specially employed
In knowing where best gloves, best stockings, waistcoats
Curiously wrought, are sold; sacks milliners' shops
For all new tires and fashions, and can tell ye
What new devices of all sorts there are,
And that there is not in the whole Rialto
But one new fashion'd waistcoat, or one nightcap.(29)

Gostanzo, the over-careful father, as completely deceived as the Elder Knowell in his son's knowledge of the world; Cornelius, the upstart gentleman, jealous of his wife's acquaintance as was Kitely or Corvino; Pock, the physician, who can lengthen or shorten cures at his discretion: these are personages after Jonson's own heart. The play has such a combination of prose and verse as we find in Jonson's earlier comedies, and makes frequent use of the vocabulary of roguery and gulling, “cozen,” “device,” “project,” and the rest.

May Day and The Widow's Tears are also comedies of intrigue and of humors, and both show in plot the influence of Italian and Roman comedy. The former portrays a representative of simple gulls in Innocentio who has a great ambition to be introduced at an ordinary, and believes as he is told, that there's no prescription for gentility but good clothes and impudence. In Quintiliano, who undertakes to coach the innocent Innocentio in the ways of the world, appears again the bragging, swaggering captain. The Widow's Tears gives us the bold Tharsalio winning out by his unwavering self-confidence, but shows little if any regard for the idea of humors in the construction of character. In the last act there is a sharp satire of farcical judicial proceedings in the person of the governor, who is made to say, “in matters of justice, I am blind.”

The Gentleman Usher and Monsieur D'Olive are largely romantic in plot and tone, but have also connection in their personages with the comedy of humors. The former describes Pogio as the never-failing bringer of ill news, and portrays the humors of Bassiolo, the usher, who is distinguished by “overweening thought of his own worth.” Monsieur D'Olive, in the person of the gentleman about town, whose name gives title to the play, affords a most successful humorous study of a combination of wag and fool. The tricks played on him are cleverly managed, and he is amusingly and completely gulled. The manners of contemporary high life are realistically portrayed in this play, and as in all Chapman's comedies, we find frequent classical allusions. The satire on Puritans and on the use of tobacco in one of D'Olive's speeches, is quite in the manner of Jonson.³⁰

The study of Chapman's comedies makes evident marked likeness to Jonson's in the use of tricks and intrigues for effective gulling, in the production of characters of humors, in the use of classical allusions, and in a satirical portrayal of contemporary manners. Just how far these likenesses are due to similar development and how far to direct influence, it is impossible to determine.

Marston belongs with Chapman and Jonson as a scholarly poet and member of the school of conscious effort.³¹ He too had studied carefully the classic dramatists of Roman comedy, and sought to conform to classic theories of art. His scholarship like Jonson's not only embraced ancient learning but extended also to the knowledge of his own time. In independence of the public taste of the day, assumption of censorship and invention of intrigue, Jonson and Marston are also to be closely likened. While Marston prefers to give his comedies a foreign setting, and has laid the scene of all except The Dutch Courtesan in Italy, yet they are full of realistic touches from surrounding life. That Jonson, Chapman and Marston were all three akin in temper and training and could work together in complete harmony is proved by the successful product of their joint labors in Eastward Hoe.

Marston's personal relations with Jonson were not those of undisturbed good fellowship such as we found existing between Chapman and Jonson. The earliest connection that we know of is in the “War of the Theaters”³² between 1598 and 1602, where Jonson and Marston were the chief combatants. Almost all of the plays involved in the controversy were written by them and are full of personal satire directed against each other. Jonson says in his Conversations that “he had many quarrels with Marston, beat him and took his pistol from him.” This, as Cunningham notes,³³ must have taken place before 1604, since Eastward Hoe was acted in 1605, and before that time the poets were certainly on friendly terms again. Moreover, The Malcontent, printed in 1604, was dedicated to Jonson in most flattering words: “Beniamino Jonsonio, poetae elegantissimo, gravissimo, amico suo, candido et cordato, Johannes Marston, musarum alumnus, asperam hanc suam Thaliam, D.D.”;³⁴ while the epilogue pays a fine compliment to him and refers to his forthcoming play The Fox.³⁵ Marston also wrote a commendatory epigram for the 1605 edition of Sejanus. All these facts show that Marston came to have a high and hearty admiration for Jonson and his work.

Before three plays, Antonio and Mellida, The Malcontent, and What You Will, Marston introduces preliminary dialogues in inductions such as Jonson was particularly fond of using.³⁶ That to What You Will, where three poets sit upon the stage and talk together, is decidedly Jonsonian. Fleay thinks that Sir Signior Snuff, Monsieur Mew and Cavaliero Blirt signify Armin, Jonson and Middleton.³⁷ The comedies are full not only of classical allusions but also of direct quotations from Seneca, Martial, Cicero, Ovid, and other of the Latin writers so constantly appearing in Jonson's work. Dignified, weighty reflections on life are scattered here and there, as from The Fawn:

Thus few strike sail until they run on shelf,
The eye sees all things but his proper self;(38)

or from The Malcontent:

Mature discretion is the life of state;(39)
He ever is at home that's ever wise.(40)

The satire of Chapman is marked by a frank cynicism, but that of Marston goes further even to bitterness. In What You Will one of the characters tells us to “look for the satire.” In this play is described the seeming vanity of the scholar's search for knowledge:

                                                                                          Nay, mark, list. Delight,
Delight, my spaniel slept, whilst I baus'd leaves,
Toss'd o'er the dunces, pored on the old print
Of titled words, and still my spaniel slept.
Whilst I wasted lamp-oil, bated my flesh,
Shrunk up my veins, and still my spaniel slept.
And still I held converse with Zabarell,
Aquinus, Scotus, and the musty saw
Of antic Donate; still my spaniel slept.
Still on went I; first an sit anima,
Then, and it were mortal. O hold, hold! at that
They're at brain-buffets, fell by the ears amain
Pell-mell together; still my spaniel slept,
Then whatever 'twere corporeal, local, fix'd,
Extraduce; but whether 't had free will
Or no, tho philosophers
Stood banding factions all so strongly propp'd,
I stagger'd, knew not which was firmer part:
But thought, quoted, read, observed and pried,
Stuff'd noting-books; and still my spaniel slept.
At length he waked and yawned and by yon sky,
For aught I know he knew as much as I.(41)

Marston satirizes the current affectation of speech, “I protest,”⁴² the habit of promiscuous kissing in greetings,⁴³ the curiosity for sensational news,⁴⁴ the cant of Puritanism,⁴⁵ and many other customs and conditions of the time. It was to Marston's didactic satire that Jonson referred in the Conversations when he said, “Marston wrote his father-in-law's preachings, and his father-in-law his comedies.”

In characters, there is some slight application of the theory of humors. The Duke of Ferrara, disguised as Malevole, in The Malcontent, belongs to the type of “humorous” cynical railer found in Macilente. Sometimes Marston makes the name indicate ruling quality as Malevole, or Malheureux in The Dutch Courtesan, or Simplicius in What You Will. Coqueteur, “a prattling gull,” and Cocledemoy, “a knavishly witty city companion” in The Dutch Courtesan, begin with Jonsonian conceptions but are not developed in accord with the Jonsonian method. In The Fawn, Gonzago, the weak Duke of Urbin, who is filled with self-admiration and prides himself on his wit and shrewdness, is completely gulled and made the instrument of furthering the marriage he is seeking to prevent. The Duke of Ferrara, disguised as Faunus, assumes here the office of censor and exposes most effectively the follies and vices of the other personages. Lampatho Doria, the bitter satirist of What You Will, is identified by Marston with himself, in the way that Jonson so often uses one of his dramatic personages as a mouthpiece for his own utterances. Simplicius in this play is a simple gull who would affect the ways of the fashionable world. Thus, minor likenesses may be found between Marston and Jonson in the characters created, but on the whole, Marston conceived and developed his personages according to the romantic methods.

The Fawn⁴⁶ and What You Will⁴⁷ have more traces of Jonson's influence than the other comedies, not only in conception of character but also in vocabulary. The Fawn shows a marked increase in the use of Jonson's favorite oaths and terms for gulling over The Malcontent and The Dutch Courtesan, while of all the comedies What You Will has by far the greatest number of such words. This would make us expect to find What You Will written about the same time as The Fawn, perhaps a little later, after Marston had worked with Jonson on Eastward Hoe and had come to feel for him and his work a friendly admiration.

In scholarship, conscious effort, classicism, satire and didacticism, Marston shows resemblances to Jonson, due, it would seem, as in the case of Chapman, to like temper and training even more than to direct influence. However, in the use of inductions and in the conception of character, there certainly was exerted some definite influence.

Shakespeare and Jonson felt for each other warm friendship and hearty admiration. Although their purposes and methods in writing plays were very different, yet as men they were great enough and keen enough each to recognize the value and power of the other's work. The earliest trace of relationship is in the tradition that Shakespeare read Every Man in His Humor, saw its worth and recommended it to his company, thus aiding Jonson at a time of need to win his first great success on the stage. From 1598 on practically to the end of his career Jonson occasionally wrote for Shakespeare's company.⁴⁸ The earliest editions of Every Man in His Humor and Sejanus include the name of Shakespeare in the lists of actors. There is a possibility that the two greatest dramatists of the age collaborated in the first version of Sejanus. Jonson in the preface to the quarto states that “this book in all numbers is not the same with that which was acted on the public stage; wherein a second pen had good share; in place of which I have rather chosen to put weaker, and no doubt less pleasing of mine own, than to defraud so happy a genius of his right by my loathed usurpation.” Fleay tells us that the only known writers at this date for the King's men, who acted the play, were Wilkins, W. S., Shakespeare, and possibly Tourneur. Of these, Shakespeare is the only one that could have been the second pen alluded to, and, as he acted one of the principal parts, he may have inserted or altered scenes in which he himself appeared.⁴⁹

Shakespeare stood sponsor for one of Jonson's children. Both frequented the Mermaid Tavern, and their wit combats, celebrated in Fuller's well-known description, must have been wonderful to hear. There is another tradition that in 1616, just before Shakespeare's death, Jonson and Drayton visited New Place in Stratford and that the three poets had a merry meeting.⁵⁰ Jonson's own attitude toward his fellow-poet is fully expressed in the Lines prefixed to the folio of 1623, where with enthusiastic and also discerning praise he addresses “My Shakespeare,” “star of poets,” “Sweet Swan of Avon,” “the applause, delight and wonder of our stage.” What he writes of “my beloved Master William Shakespeare” could come only out of years of intimate association and affectionate admiration. Again, in the Timber, he tells us that he “loved the man,” and honored his memory “on this side idolatry.”

The question here is, do Shakespeare's comedies show any reflex influence of Jonson's theory of humors? Shakespeare's genius was highly adaptable. He had not, like Jonson, fixed dramatic theories in accordance with which he consistently constructed his plays; but, observant of all artistic forms and methods of the time, he responded quickly to the popular taste or interest of the moment, adopted and assimilated to his own use whatever seemed of value in making a good play and pleasing the public. About 1600, Jonson's comedy of humors and Middleton's comedy of bare, even bitter, realism were winning great applause on the Elizabethan stage. Surely it is not far-fetched to discover traces of Middleton's influence in the tone of Measure for Measure and All's Well that Ends Well. So also, in several groups of irregular humorists and in one character of All's Well that Ends Well Shakespeare does show the effect of Jonson's conception of humor.

Koeppel indicates three places in Jonson's comedies in which he considers the situations to owe something to the influence of Shakespeare: in The Case is Altered, the relation of Jaques and Rachel, the girl's flight to her lover, and the miser's lament over his gold and girl, as bearing direct relation to The Merchant of Venice; in The Poetaster, the love-scene between Ovid and Julia, as a Romeo and Juliet situation; in Epicœne, the duel episode between Sir John Daw and Sir Amorous La-Foole as reminiscent of that in Twelfth Night between Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Viola.⁵¹ Miss Henry in her edition of Epicœne accepts Twelfth Night as a source of Jonson's play and carefully traces likenesses between the gulling of Daw and La-Foole by Truewit and the duel between Sir Andrew and Viola as urged on by Sir Toby.⁵² However, as Dr. Schelling points out, Jonson was not in the habit of borrowing ideas from contemporary dramatists,⁵³ and these parallels are far-fetched and decidedly doubtful.

Six plays written by Shakespeare between 1597 and 1602, Henry IV, Parts I and II, Henry V, Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night and All's Well that Ends Well, show the effects of Jonson's conception of humor. It was Shakespeare, if we are to trust the old tradition, that read Every Man in His Humor, understood the greatness of its basic idea, and prepared the way for its production in 1598. I Henry IV was acted in 1597, II Henry IV in 1598, Every Man out of His Humor in 1599, and Henry V in 1599. Thus the three historical plays coincide in time with the two humor plays of Jonson. The comedies, Merry Wives, Twelfth Night and All's Well, are dated between 1598 and 1602, when the humor idea was at the height of its novelty and popularity.

In Henry IV Falstaff and his followers are unlike any previous group of Shakespeare's characters. Touched as they are, humanized as they are, by Shakespeare's individual genius, yet humorous are they also in their conception and portrayal. Falstaff, himself a “trunk of humors,” forms the center of a group which, while the individual members change somewhat, remains a source of keen interest and enjoyment through Henry IV, Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry V. Falstaff, “not only witty in myself but the cause that wit is in other men,” “huge bombard of sack,” and “vanity in years,” believing “the better part of valor is discretion,” troubled with “the disease of not listening” when accusations are brought against him, and having “more flesh than another man and therefore more frailty,” is not only the possessor of humors but also the means of calling forth humors in others. Prince Henry, away from the court in association with Falstaff, declares: “I am now of all humors, that have showed themselves humors since the old days of goodman Adam to the pupilage of this present twelve o'clock at midnight.”⁵⁴

Poins and Peto, the Prince's attendants, Gadshill, and, above all, Bardolph with his big purple nose, “Knight of the burning lamp,” in I Henry IV take part in the escapades, sack festivities and wit combats of which Sir John is the leader. Ancient Pistol takes the place of Gadshill in II Henry IV, and here also are introduced Shallow, an old acquaintance of Sir John's earlier years and now a country justice whose humor is to prate of the wildness of his youth, and Shallow's cousin, the silent Silence. This cousin is replaced by another, Slender, the simple, self-conceited and yet fearful wooer of Anne Page, in Merry Wives of Windsor. Bardolph and Pistol reappear and Falstaff has a new follower in Corporal Nym. His humor is a humor and his comment on every possible occasion is “that's the humor of it,” “that's my humor,” or “I thank thee for that humor.” Sir Hugh Evans, the pedantic Welsh parson, and Dr. Caius, the hot-tempered French physician, are also humorists. Lieutenant Bardolph, Ancient Pistol and Corporal Nym survive to follow the King to the French Wars in Henry V. They still possess their individual humors, and of their old leader Falstaff, who has just died, they speak with regret and affection. Nym and Bardolph are hanged for thieving and Pistol alone returns from France, old, weary, and lonely without his former companions. Henry V has a new group of humorists in Fluellen, the pedantic but loyal Welshman, Macmorris, the valiant quick-tempered Irishman, and Jamy, the slow solid Scotchman, over all of whom is placed the practical Englishman, Captain Gower.

Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Malvolio of Twelfth Night are most successful examples of the use of humors in the creation of character. Sir Toby, with his weakness for quaffing and drinking and his superficial learning, has yet a keen wit and a shrewd insight into his fellow-sinners. Sir Andrew Aguecheek has studied fencing, dancing, and bear-baiting, and above all else, can “cut a caper”; but, impressed by Sir Toby's show of learning, he wishes he had studied the tongues and arts. His importance to Sir Toby lies in the fact that he has three thousand ducats a year and furnishes that impecunious, fun-loving old toper with opportunity to replenish his own empty purse and to have some sport by the way. Sir Andrew “besides that he's a fool, he's a great quarreler; and, but that he hath the gift of a coward to allay the gust he hath in quarreling, 'tis thought among the prudent he would quickly have the gift of a grave.”⁵⁵ Malvolio is “sick of self-love” and possessed by “the spirit of humors intimate.” Maria, a “noble gull-catcher,” sets out to “gull” him and “make him a common recreation.” As a result of her device, he appears in yellow stockings, cross-gartered, and with a wonderful smile such that “he does smile his face into more lines than are in the new map, with the augmentation of the Indies.”⁵⁶

In Parolles of All's Well that Ends Well we have a character very different from most of Shakespeare's personages and like many of Jonson's. He is “a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of no one good quality.”⁵⁷ Shakespeare intends his name to indicate his ruling characteristic. He is nothing but words, “there can be no kernel in this light nut, the soul of this man is his clothes.”⁵⁸ Parolles realizes that his tongue prattles him into all sorts of troubles, and as one of the other characters who hears him talking to himself says, “the wonder is that he should know what he is and be that he is.” A plot is made and effectively carried out by which his folly and falsehood are mercilessly exposed. The comic portrayal here is not sympathetic, as is usual with Shakespeare, but wholly satirical.

Shakespeare grasped the idea of humors and applied it, not rigidly and lifelessly, as did many of the later dramatists, but sympathetically and humanly, vitalizing the theory by the power of his own marvelous genius. He was not beguiled from his general realistic and romantic manner by Jonson's conception of comedy, but he did try in Henry IV, Henry V, Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night and All's Well that Ends Well the method of humor in the presentation of individual characters.

Two anonymous plays, The Fair Maid of the Exchange, and Every Woman in Her Humor, both, according to Fleay, acted in 1602, are best considered here before we take up the study of Beaumont and Fletcher. The title-page of The Fair Maid of the Exchange advertises the play as presenting “the Humors of the Cripple of Fanchurch”; and the father of the heroine is characterized in the dramatis personœ as “an humorous old man”; yet in reality the only personage created according to the method of humor or caricature is Bowdler, “an humorous gallant,” “an humorous blossom,” “a fond humorist, parenthesis of jests, whose humor like a needless cypher fills a room.” He puts on an “antick garment of ostentation,” takes especial pride in his “caper and turn o' the toe,” and pretends that all the maids he meets are prone to love him, when in truth he himself is afraid to speak to them and arouses their merry ridicule. The cripple of Fanchurch undertakes and effects his “purgation.”

Every Woman in Her Humor is an example of the height or depth of crude undiscerning imitation, and was written by some author who knew little of human character and less of dramatic construction. The title was plainly suggested by Jonson's first comedy of humors. The plot is slight, consisting of little more than a series of situations strung together on a slender thread of accidental connection, and lacking the underlying unity of the seemingly careless plots of Jonson's earlier plays. The scene is laid in Rome, perhaps, if the play was produced in 1602, in imitation of The Poetaster acted in 1601; but the stupid anachronisms bear evidence that the author possessed none of Jonson's regard for accuracy. Some of the characters are direct imitations of Jonsonian personages. Graccus and Acutus at the beginning of the play, like Asper and Macilente in Every Man out of His Humor, discuss “this impious world.” Acutus wears “a vizard of melancholy” and rails against prevailing follies and vices. This description of him by Tully recalls the praises of Crites in Cynthia's Revels:

                                                                                his spirit is free as air,
His temper temperate, if aught's uneven,
His spleen weighs down towards lenity; but how
Stirred by reproof! Ah, then he's bitter and like
His name Acute, vice to him is a foul eyesore,
And could he stifle it in bitterest words he would,
And whoso offends to him is parallel,
He will as soon reprove the cedar state
As the low shrub.(59)

Getica is even more foolishly concerned for her dog than is the like humorist Puntarvolo for his in Every Man out of His Humor, and Acutus longs to teach it “the trick of the rope.” The talkative, fussy, but honest Host is ever ready with the proverbial expression “dun's the mouse” or “the mouse shall be dun.” The Hostess constantly complains of her busy life, yet seems to be happy in it and finds recreation in a lively gossip. The citizen's wife, an Elizabethan Wife of Bath, who has buried six husbands and thinks there is good hope that she may have as many more, loudly resents the new statute which forbids a woman to marry again until two months after her husband's death. The portraiture of these vigorous lower-class personages is the best part of the play. In dramatic value, Every Woman in Her Humor ranks among the comedies of humors of some of Jonson's later followers rather than among those of his immediate contemporaries.

With Beaumont and Fletcher we must at the very beginning remember that they stand fundamentally as representatives of the romantic school. They were influenced in their work as a whole far more by preceding dramatists of that school than by the classical and conscious art of Jonson. However, they were first of all practical playwrights who aimed to please the public taste of the time and to make plays that would act; so they chose out from the methods of other writers what suited their purposes. Their own method was eclectic, and they found it possible in their earlier days to get valuable instruction from Jonson in matters of construction, humorous character-studies and versification. Especially is this true of Beaumont who began writing plays decidedly under the influence of Jonson.

Beaumont had gained the friendship of Ben Jonson as early as 1607, for in that year we find him addressing verses that show good critical judgment “To my Dear Friend, Master Ben Jonson, upon his Fox.” Again, in 1609 he wrote commendatory verses on The Silent Woman and in 1611 on Catiline. However improbable may seem Dryden's statement that “Beaumont was so accurate a judge of plays, that Ben Jonson, while he lived, submitted all his writings to his censure, and 'tis thought, used his judgment in correcting if not contriving all his plots,”⁶⁰ yet it is certainly based on a tradition of close relationship. Beaumont's Letter to Ben Jonson with its famous description of the gatherings at the Mermaid and high compliment to Jonson's wit, reveals clearly the younger man's admiration and enthusiasm for his older friend.⁶¹ He is ready there to

Protest it will my greatest comfort be
To acknowledge all I have to flow from thee.

The short poem in which Jonson makes answer to this letter is full of cordial appreciation and affectionate regard:

How I do love thee, Beaumont, and thy muse
That unto me dost such religion use!
How I do fear myself, that am not worth
The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth!
At once thou mak'st me happy and unmak'st;
And giving largely to me, more thou tak'st!
What fate is mine, that so itself bereaves?
What art is thine, that so thy friend deceives?
When even there, where most thou praisest me,
For writing better, I must envy thee.(62)

Jonson's remark to Drummond “that Francis Beaumont loved too much himself and his own verses” is not at all destructive of the above evidence of warm friendship and mutual admiration.

Pleasant personal relations also existed between Jonson and Fletcher, and expressions of good-will were exchanged. Fletcher wrote verses on The Fox in 1607 and on Catiline in 1611, Jonson being called in the latter, “dear friend.” Brome says that Jonson was proud to call Fletcher “son” and

                              Swore he had outdone
His very self.(63)

When Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess failed to receive the recognition and praise it deserved, Jonson wrote some lines of warm admiration, prophesying for his friend that his poem

                                                                                shall rise
A glorified work to time, when fire
Or moths shall eat what all these fools admire.(64)

Later, he told Drummond “that next himself, only Fletcher and Chapman could make a mask.” Dyce suggests that Beaumont and Fletcher were perhaps first brought together by Jonson.⁶⁵

As playwrights, Beaumont and Fletcher learned most from Jonson in ideals of constructive excellence. In management of detail with constant reference to the entire plot and regard for complete unity of impression, in careful preparation for important characters before their entrance, in clever invention of tricks and skillful conduct of intrigue, they show that they were his quick and intelligent pupils. Such plays as The Woman Hater, The Scornful Lady, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, The Tamer Tamed, or The Humorous Lieutenant, include in their plots tricks equal in wit and ingenuity to those invented by Jonson and probably for conception and management in part due to his teaching. In The Scornful Lady, it is of interest to note the knowledge of Plautus and Terence shown in a quotation from the former and a situation from the latter. The Four Triumphs and The Knight of the Burning Pestle have inductions, and the latter has also a running comment in dialogue form within the play. Such description as that which prepares us for the entrance of Lazarillo and Lucio in The Woman Hater is frequently found in Jonson. The censor and satirical commentator on personage and action we find also in The Woman Hater—probably written by Beaumont and showing more than any other play direct Jonsonian influence.

There are characters of humors in a number of plays. In The Woman Hater Lazarillo, “the hungry courtier,” is in pursuit of a fish's head famed as most rare and delicate; Gondarino is almost a monomaniac in his hatred of womankind; Lucio, a simple lord, is possessed with the idea that he has great powers of statesmanship; a mercer is moved by an overwhelming desire to ape scholars. The Scornful Lady portrays the humor of “the scornful lady” as an attitude of scorn toward all men; that of her waiting-woman, the pursuit of young lovers; and that of a widow, the acquisition of a knight. Merrythought in The Knight of the Burning Pestle is forever merry in the midst of all sorts of trials and perplexities; Humphrey is an ordinary simple gull; and Ralph, who of course owed his creation to Don Quixote, has, we are told, the “humor” of going on adventures. Bessus,⁶⁶ the braggart coward in A King and No King, may have been suggested in part by Bobadil, but certainly lacks the individuality and personal eccentricity that make that personage amusing and interesting throughout. The character of the lawyer in The Little French Lawyer is conceived in Jonson's spirit. La Writ having been forced by a stranger to take part as a second in a duel and having won a victory, becomes so possessed with the love of fighting that he deserts his business and sets up as a regular duelist, being cured of his whimsical humor at length by means of a trick played on him. The person who gives title to The Humorous Lieutenant passed rapidly from the humor for fighting when he was sick to the humor of cowardice when he was well. Various tricks are devised and carried through to purge him of his humor.

Beaumont and Fletcher sometimes give names to indicate the reigning quality of character as “the scornful lady” and Merrythought or Lady Heartwell, Lovegood and Harebrain in Wit Without Money. This method of course goes back to the allegorical element in the miracle plays and moralities, but it was given new impetus by Jonson. There is, however, a marked difference in the treatment of types by Jonson and by Beaumont and Fletcher. While he seeks to emphasize the individuality of his representation of the type, they dwell almost always upon the class qualities.

The spirit of satire and the definite purpose of ridiculing folly we find only in the earlier plays, The Woman Hater, The Scornful Lady and The Knight of the Burning Pestle, all ascribed in large part to Beaumont. In the first of these we are plainly told that the desire is to see the woman hater “purged” and a “cure” wrought upon him. The description of court-life and of theater-going in this same play contains keen and effective satire of contemporary conditions.⁶⁷The Scornful Lady shows how the scornful lady and also a usurer were turned from their follies. The Knight of the Burning Pestle is throughout a satire on the city and on the extravagances of the earlier stage. The dialogue between the citizen and his wife has all Jonson's vivid realism.

Koeppel remarks the transformation of Leon in Rule a Wife and Have a Wife from a meek silent creature before marriage to a masterful lord immediately afterward, able to talk and act boldly, as similar to that of Epicœne in The Silent Woman.⁶⁸ The same writer notes further that the astonishment of the husband over the sudden independence and self-assertion of his newly married wife in The Tamer Tamed seems a reminiscence of the perplexity and amazement of Morose.⁶⁹ He does not call attention to the fact that the name of the rich old man in this same play who is seeking a young wife is Moroso. Fletcher's verse is essentially different from Jonson's, but Beaumont's, as has been often remarked, shows many of the same characteristics. Beaumont adheres strictly to the metrical scheme of regular decasyllabic lines, uses largely the masculine internal caesura, has free dignified phrasing with many run on lines. In his blank verse Beaumont certainly followed Jonson as master and teacher.

What are the conclusions as to the influence of Jonson on Beaumont and Fletcher? That both were influenced to a considerable degree in dramatic construction, and to a limited extent in conception of characters; that Beaumont was more deeply impressed than Fletcher, really began his work under the tutelage of Jonson, caught from him the spirit of dramatic satire, and learned much in the art of writing blank verse.

There is no direct evidence that Massinger knew Jonson or was personally associated with him, but it is altogether likely, from Massinger's relation of friendship and co-authorship with Fletcher and from his prominence among the London playwrights of Jonson's later life, that he was sometimes present at the meetings of the Apollo Club, and that he was impressed by the forceful seriousness of Jonson's attitude to life as well as by the excellence of his art. Massinger went up to London in 1606 or 1607, and although we have no mention of his name as a dramatist until 1621, we know that during this interval of time he was writing plays and learning the business of the stage. That in some matters he was a pupil of Jonson, a study of his plays clearly shows. Like Beaumont and Fletcher, he was by no means a plagiarist or imitator, but he understood his art and with ready ease and remarkable facility could learn from many sources and adapt what he learned to the making of plays that would act.

He seems to have been affected most by Jonson in construction and moral satire, but also to have felt his influence in the portrayal of contemporary life and in the conception of character. Of course we must certainly remember that Middleton's influence as well as Jonson's was decidedly at work in picturing contemporary life, drawing character, portraying manners, and it is impossible to determine absolutely the exact limits of the influence of each on the younger dramatists. The plays that relate Massinger's art most definitely with Jonson's are The City Madam and A New Way to Pay Old Debts, produced according to Fleay, about 1619 and 1621,⁷⁰ and ranking high among English comedies of manners. In both we find great ingenuity and skill in weaving and then untangling the intricacies of the intrigues. Each single incident, each separate trick, is made to take its place in preparing with sureness for the final outcome. Each detail of description or action serves its part in unfolding and developing the characters. In his mastery of construction and sense of artistic logic, Massinger undoubtedly received valuable instruction from Ben Jonson.

The City Madam and A New Way to Pay Old Debts present realistic transcripts from contemporary life and aim to exhibit and satirize the follies and vanities of the day. Massinger here, like Jonson, assumed an attitude of censorship toward society. In his wealth of observation of both London and provincial life, and in his keen and telling satire of social abuses, he fell not greatly below his master. He would

                                                  scourge a general vice,
And raise up a new satirist.(71)

Not only in general didactic tone, but also in direct moral utterances, generalizations, maxims and proverbs, he proves himself always a strict and conscientious moralist and never makes us feel, as Beaumont and Fletcher sometimes do, that all moral principles are in a state of uncertain solution.

Massinger follows the example set by both Jonson and Middleton of giving names descriptive of their owners, in The City Madam and A New Way to Pay Old Debts. In the former, we have Sir John Frugal, the economical merchant; Mr. Plenty, the wealthy country gentleman; Stargaze, the astrologer; Holdfast, the penurious steward; Goldwire and Tradewell, the middle class tradesmen. The same method is used in A New Way to Pay Old Debts with Justice Greedy, whose one aim in life is to satisfy his passion for eating; Marrall, who, we are told, “marred all”; Sir Giles Overreach, whose previous career has been one of unbroken success in overreaching; Furnace, the cook; Watchall, the porter; Wellborn, a young man of good birth (a name used by Jonson in Bartholomew Fair); Amble, the usher (Ambler is the usher in The Devil Is an Ass); and Order, the steward. The characters are built up on the basis of one predominant quality, and like Jonson's comic types are subject to the faults of exaggeration and caricature. However, there is a difference of treatment in that Massinger dwells with Beaumont and Fletcher upon the common characteristics of the type, instead of seeking with Jonson the subtle individual quality of the particular representative of the type. A comparison of the two gluttons, Justice Greedy and Zeal-of-the-land Busy, makes manifest this difference.

James Shirley, although born in the last years of the sixteenth century and considerably younger than the preceding dramatists, yet belongs in the same group on account of his personal connections and the character of his work. He collaborated with Chapman and Fletcher in writing plays during the latter parts of their careers, prepared the prefatory matter for the Beaumont and Fletcher folio, worked side by side with Massinger in developing the later comedy of manners based on the combined methods of Jonson and Middleton, and was addressed as “judicious and learned friend” by Massinger who also called himself “a modest votary at the altar of thy muse.” In Shirley's plays, as in Beaumont's and Fletcher's and Massinger's, the romantic element is in the ascendancy, but in the eclecticism of all these playwrights there was a place for the comedy of manners and of humors. Shirley, like Massinger, was a pupil of both Jonson and Middleton in comedy of manners. Here we are especially concerned with evidences of Jonson's influence.

Shirley, too, must have known and enjoyed part in the gatherings at the Devil Tavern. In one of his plays a servant is told to “run to the Devil” for wine.⁷² As a young student of playwriting, he must have been impressed by the originality and force of Jonson's work, and in his own first attempt, Love Tricks, shows unmistakably who was one of his teachers. In the dedication of The Grateful Servant, he speaks with honor and admiration of “our acknowledged master, learned Jonson.” William Habington, in commendatory verses to Shirley, associates his name with Jonson's:

                              and when his muse expires,
Whose English stains the Greek and Latin lyres,
Divinest Jonson, live to make us see
The glory of the stage reviv'd in thee.

In the writing of masques as well as comedies of manners Shirley was influenced, and in court entertainments succeeded largely to Jonson's popularity and success, producing The Triumph of Peace, one of the greatest masques of the time. In this, the antimasque especially recalls Jonson, in the presentation of six projectors, such as he so effectively satirized in The Devil Is an Ass, and of the dotterels whose foolish bent for imitation appealed to him and gave name to the gulled Fitzdotterel in the same play. The talk of the citizens in The Triumph of Peace resembles that in The Masque of Augurs or Neptune's Triumph.

Such influence as we find in this masque, in character that of reminiscence and general recollection, is exerted also in the comedies. Shirley is a happy and original combination of what had gone before him and he certainly learned somewhat from Jonson. In originality and variety of plots Shirley excelled, and here he followed the example of Jonson in turning from the use of old plays and novels to invent new situations. Further, his plots are closely knit, unified, and in regard for constructive detail, directly or indirectly he had benefited by Jonson's work.

The pictures of London life given in such plays as Love Tricks, Hyde Park, The Lady of Pleasure, The Ball, The Gamester, The Example, The Witty Fair One or The Wedding, are more attractively realistic than those we get from Middleton's plays. They show a deeper insight into the human significance of a conversation, situation and action, a more thoughtful and understanding grasp of underlying meaning. Much of the difference is due to Shirley's own temperament, but perhaps in some part also to Jonson's attitude. Shirley yields neither to the absolute realism of Middleton nor the didactic satire of Jonson, but learning from both, gives pictures in some ways truer than those we get from either of the others. There is in Shirley a moral sanity and ethical sense that we oftentimes find lacking in Middleton, and while here again we must ascribe much to Shirley's own well-balanced nature, yet perhaps some influence was exerted also by Jonson's strong ethical bent.

Several prologues are written in a Jonsonian tone of independence and even arrogance toward the public. Compare this from the prologue to The Example:

Nay, he that in the parish never was
Thought fit to be o' the jury, has a place
Here, on the bench, for sixpence; and dares sit,
And boast himself commissioner of wit:
Which though he want, he can condemn with oaths,
As much as they that wear the purple clothes,
Robes, I should say, on whom, i' the Roman state,
Some ill-look'd stage-keepers, like lictors wait,
With pipes for fasces, while another bears
Three-footed stools instead of ivory chairs,(73)

with this from the prologue to The Staple of News:

(the maker) “prays you'll not prejudge his play for ill,
Because you mark it not, and sit not still;
But have a longing to salute, or talk
With such a female, and from her to walk
With your discourse, to what is done, and where,
How, and by whom, in all the town but here.
…
If that not like you that he send to-night,
'Tis you have left to judge, not he to write.”(74)

Again, in the prologue to The Duke's Mistress, we meet with just such an utterance as we have become familiar with in Jonson:

We do observe the general guests to plays
Meet in opinion of two strains that please,
Satire and wantonness; the last of these,
Though old, if in new dressing it appear,
Will move a smile from all,—but shall not here.
Our author hath no guilt of scurril scenes.
For satire, they do know best what it means,
That dare apply; and if a poet's pen
Aiming at general errors, note the men,
'Tis not his fault: the safest cure is, they
That purge their bosoms, may see any play.(75)

Several plays have situations or devices that recall Jonson. In Love Tricks, the mock duel, described so boastfully by Bubulcus, has a marked resemblance to the account given by Fastidious Brisk of his supposed victory in Every Man out of His Humor.⁷⁶ The passage from Love Tricks is worth quoting, so much is it in Jonson's manner:

BUBULCUS.
We threw our doublets off, to shew we had no coat of mail, or privy shirt upon us, against the laws of dueling: in fine, I bid him say his prayers.
ANTONIO.
'Twas well thought upon; and what did you?
BUB.
I let them alone, for I knew I should kill him, and have time enough to say them afterwards at my leisure.
HILARIA.
When he had prayed, what then?
BUB.
When he had said his prayers, he thought upon it, and let fall words tending to reconcilement. On my conscience, he would have asked my forgiveness, but I stood upon my honor, and would fight with him, and so we stood upon our guard—but not a word of fighting, if you love me.
ANT.
Oh, by no means: but when did you fight?
BUB.
I'll tell you; Antonio, when he saw no remedy, but that I would needs fight with him, and so consequently kill him, made a desperate blow at my head, which I warded with my dagger, better than he looked for, and in return, I cut off his left hand; whereat amazed, and fainting, I nimbly seconded it, as you know I am very nimble, and run my rapier into his right thigh, two yards.
HIL.
Then you were on both sides of him?
ANT.
Your rapier? Did you not say your weapons were long swords?
BUB.
But mine was both a sword and rapier, there 'tis—but not a word of fighting, as you love me. Well, not to weary you with the narration of the innumerable wounds I gave him, I cut off every joint from his toe upwards, to his middle; by these hilts, now, you may believe me; there ended Antonio, my rival. Judge, judge now, whether Bubulcus be valiant or not—but not a word of fighting, as you love me; let it die.
ANT.
'Twas very valiantly done.(77)

The School of Compliment in this same play brings together a group of humorous characters such as Jonson assembled in the Ladies Collegiate of The Silent Woman, the news-collecting agency of The Staple of News, or the school of cosmetics and behavior in The Devil is an Ass. The situation of the old man Rufuldo married to a man disguised as a woman, and, finding himself tied to a masterful shrew, in the end thoroughly glad to be freed from his burden, may perhaps be a reminiscence of The Silent Woman. The likeness of the passage in The Young Admiral where the foolish Pazzarello is introduced to the supposed enchantress who is to make him invulnerable in battle, to that in The Alchemist where Dapper is taken into the presence of the “fairy” whose favorite he has been assured he is, has been noticed by Gifford.⁷⁸

When we turn to characters, we find a number created on the basis of humors or seemingly reminiscences of Jonson. In Love Tricks, Bubulcus, an “exact piece of stolidity” comes to the school of compliment to “have a delicate speech” for his lady-love, and “a powdering speech” for his rival, whom he would kill without danger of the law, and so with words. He gives boastful account of his prowess in dueling and like Shift with his thefts in Every Man out of His Humor later confesses to base cowardice and lying with “thinking to have got himself some credit,” as Shift “to get” himself “a name.” Orlando Furioso, who comes to learn to “roar” and quarrel, recalls Kastrill, the angry boy in The Alchemist. Shirley makes many references to the roarers of the time, satirized by Jonson not only in The Alchemist but also in The Silent Woman as the “terrible boys” and in The Staple of News as the “canters.” Sir Valentine Wantbrain, who has been newly put into commission for the peace and comes to the School of Compliment to have drawn up his first charge to the jury; the countryman who brings his son Oaf to be made a scholar and a courtier; and Ingeniolo, the justice's clerk, who wishes to be taught to speak his passion of love in blank verse—these are “humorous” conceptions, though slightly developed.

Brains in The Wedding, whose pride it is that he has never been overreached in any action, whose “nourishment runs upward into brains” and who boasts that he “was never yet cozened,” seems to be a reminiscence of Brainworm. Sir Solitary Plot in The Example, pointed out by Dyce as an imitation of Jonson,⁷⁹ believes “the world is full of plots” and spends most of his time in solitude, planning methods of precaution. The suggestion for Jack Freshwater in The Ball, Gifford thinks was furnished by Puntarvolo in Every Man out of His Humor.⁸⁰ The likeness between Freshwater's account of marvelous experiences on his supposed return from travel and Puntarvolo's fantastic preparations for a journey is certainly not very evident; but the conception of the character probably developed in Shirley's mind under the influence of Jonson's personages. Pazzarello in The Young Admiral, who, duped to believe that he has been made invulnerable, waxes exceedingly valiant; Caperwit, the poetaster in Love in a Maze, and Sir Gervase Simple of the same play—

                                                            one that has
But newly cast his country skin, come up
To see the fashions of the town, has crept
Into a knighthood, which he paid for heartily
And in his best clothes, is suspected for
A gentleman;(81)

and Orseolo, who gives name to The Humorous Courtier and whose humor is to rail against women,—all are conceived in Jonson's manner. The influence of Jonson is manifested in the fundamental idea of a prevailing humor or bias much more than in the method of development. Shirley does not, as Jonson, take the trouble to present the humor under many different aspects and in many relations so as to produce a many-sided study.

Here, as with the other dramatists of the group studied, it is impossible to state definitely the exact limits of Jonson's influence. Shirley's first play was plainly modeled in plot, characters, satirical pictures of contemporary life and vocabulary on Jonson's comedy. In later plays, careful logical construction manifests a permanent effect of the teaching Shirley had had. Now and then appears a character conceived according to the theory of humors. Several prologues are Jonsonian in tone. An occasional situation, device or expression, seems reminiscent of Jonson's plays. Shirley was no imitator, no slavish follower, but an original and inventive playwright who could take lessons from a master and then apply them with independence and power.

NATHANIEL FIELD AND RICHARD BROME IN RELATION TO JONSON

We turn now to the younger dramatists who were distinctively “Sons of Ben,” who consciously and definitely took the attitude of disciples toward the master of the comedy of humors, fully acknowledged his authority and sought to follow closely in the paths marked out by him. In this group we shall study the comedies of Nathaniel Field, Richard Brome, Thomas May, Robert Davenport, Thomas Randolph, Shakerley Marmion, William Cartwright, Jasper Mayne, Henry Glapthorne, Thomas Nabbes, Sir Aston Cockayne, William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle, and Sir William Davenant. First of all, we shall consider Field and Brome, to whom Jonson stood in the direct relation of teacher to pupils. These had especially close personal associations with him and gained the advantage of being personally instructed by him in the art of making plays, of learning their craft under his immediate supervision.

Nathaniel Field was an “actor playwright” and began his connection with the stage as a member of one of the boy companies prominent about 1600, the Children of the Chapel, known in the reign of King James as the Queen's Revels. He was chief actor in three of Jonson's plays acted at Blackfriars by the Chapel Children: Cynthia's Revels in 1600, Poetaster in 1601, Epicœne in 1609. Again, in 1614 he was chief actor in Bartholomew Fair produced at the Hope by the Lady Elizabeth's Men.⁸² It is in the last play that Jonson pays him the high compliment of associating his name with that of Burbage, and praises him as the best actor in his company:

COKES.
Which is your Burbage now?
LEATHERHEAD.
What mean you by that, sir?
COKES.
Your best actor, your Field?(83)

We can imagine that an additional appeal was made to Jonson's sympathies by the fact that Field was one of the boys kidnaped by Nathaniel Giles, Master of her Majesty's Chapel, in abuse of his privilege of taking young boys to sing in the royal chapels, and pressed into enforced service as an actor in the company of which Giles had the management, the Children of the Chapel.⁸⁴ When carried off, Field was a pupil at Westminster School, and only thirteen years old at the time he took the chief part in Cynthia's Revels.⁸⁵ Evidently Jonson pitied the boy so early snatched away from his books, and gave him lessons; for we learn from the Conversations that “Nat. Field was his scholar, and that he had read to him the Satires of Horace and some Epigrams of Martial.”⁸⁶ Field quotes Latin in the address to the reader before A Woman is a Weathercock, and in the dedication points out the fact that he ends his epistle without a Latin sentence, as if priding himself that he could do so if he wished.⁸⁷ During the hours of study and of rehearsal, he had abundant opportunity to learn the playwright's craft from Jonson himself. The admiration Field felt for his teacher is directly expressed in the verses he wrote in 1611 to his “worthy and beloved friend, Master Ben Jonson, on his Catiline.”

But two of Field's comedies survive, A Woman is a Weathercock, and Amends for Ladies. We know that he did considerable work of revision and collaboration, but that need not concern us here. The above comedies do credit to the instruction that Field had received, show practical knowledge of the requirements of the stage and intelligent grasp of the fundamental ideas of Jonsonian comedy. The satirical tone adopted reveals at once the source whence Field obtained his attitude in viewing life. His first play, A Woman is a Weathercock, is a satire on the inconstancy of women, and is dedicated “to any woman that hath been no weathercock.” In this play the indiscriminate creation of knights by James I is ridiculed:

COUNT Frederick.
Young Master Abraham! Cry ye mercy, sir.
ABRAHAM Ninny.
Your lordship's poor friend and Sir Abraham Ninny.
The dub-a-dub of honor, piping hot,
Doth lie upon my worship's shoulder-blade.
SIR Innocent Ninny.
Indeed, my lord, with much cost and labor we have got him knighted; and being under favor, my lord, let me tell ye he'll prove a sore knight, as e'er run at ring. He is the one and only Ninny of our house.(88)

Again, the prevailing injustice in matters of law is bitterly satirized:

                                                                      it will be thought
Your greatness and our money carries it:
For some say some men on the back of law
May ride and rule it like a patient ass,
And with a golden bridle in the mouth
Direct it unto anything they please.
Others report it is a spider's web,
Made to entangle the poor helpless flies,
Whilst the great spiders that did make it first,
And rule it, sit i' th' midst secure and laugh.(89)
…
He has the advantage of you, being a lord;
For should you kill him, you are sure to die,
And by some lawyer with a golden tongue,
That cries for right (ten angels on his side),
Your daring meet him called presumption:
But kill he you, he and his noble friends
Have such a golden snaffle for the jaws
Of man-devouring Pythagorean law,
They'll reign her stubborn chops even to her tail:
And (though she have iron teeth to meaner men),
So master her, that, who displeased her most,
She shall lie under like a tired jade.(90)

Both A Woman is a Weathercock and Amends for Ladies present vivid and realistic pictures of contemporary life. The scene of the former is laid in the neighborhood of London and of the latter within the city. Both are full of local allusions to such places as the theater at Newington Butts, the Fortune theater in Cripplegate, the cooks' shops of Pie corner in Smithfield, the ducking-ponds at Islington, Moorfields—a noted resort of outcasts, Turnmill Street—a haunt of thieves, or Bear Tavern below London Bridge. Thus Field produces the effect of actuality that Jonson obtains by similar means in The Alchemist or Bartholomew Fair. Effective and realistic, if coarse, presentation of every-day London life we get in such a scene as that inside a tavern, in Amends for Ladies, where Lord Feesimple is introduced among a group of “roaring boys,” and by way of drinking a large number of healths is temporarily inspired with the courage of a roarer.⁹¹

A number of the characters are conceived and executed on the basis of humors, and given names to indicate the ruling quality. In A Woman is a Weathercock we have Pendant, a sycophant who lives “upon commending” Count Frederick, and whom men call his lord's “commendations”; Sir John Worldly, whose one great desire is for money and who assures us “Worldly's my name, worldly must be my deeds”; Pouts, the irascible and vindictive captain; and above all, the Ninnies, Sir Innocent Ninny, Lady Ninny and Sir Abraham Ninny. Count Frederick asks: “What countrymen were your ancestors, Sir Abraham?” and that brainless youth replies: “Countrymen! they were no countrymen: I scorn it. They were gentlemen all: my father is a Ninny and my mother was a Hammer.”⁹² Like Jonson's Matthew, Sir Abraham prides himself on his verses of passionate love, but to unprejudiced critics he is “like a hard-bound poet whose brains had a frost in 'em.” Amends for Ladies gives us Well-tried, the trusty friend; Bold, of unlimited daring; Lord Proudly, Sir John Loveall, Subtle, Ingen, Ladies Honor, Perfect, and Bright, all sufficiently described by their names; the group of roarers, such as Tearchaps and Spillblood; and the chief humorous character, Lord Feesimple, whose humor is that he grows faint at sight of a naked sword, and who longs, like Jonson's Kastrill, to be taught to quarrel and become a roarer.

Again, in the ready invention and admirable execution of his plots, Field proves that he possessed a practical knowledge of the stage and that he made good use of Jonson's precept and example in the way of careful construction. At the close of A Woman is a Weathercock he takes pains to inform us that the action of the play is included within twelve hours:

“Ne'er was so much (what cannot heavenly powers?) Done and undone and done in twelve short hours.”

He was a skillful playwright, and while the intrigue of the two comedies is intricate and complicated, it is effectively conducted and untangled. The tricks in A Woman is a Weathercock by which Sir Abraham Ninny is gulled into marrying Mistress Wagtail (the waiting-woman), Captain Pouts is punished by Master Strange for slandering his wife, and Bellafront is kept by Nevill from a valid marriage with Count Frederick and so saved for his friend, are clever and interesting. That a masque is used as an organic part of the plot of A Woman is a Weathercock is probably another evidence of Jonson's influence. Though both comedies were written about the same time and there seems no manifest reason for the difference, it is of interest to note that the Amends for Ladies has four or five times as many of the words we found constantly reappearing in Jonson's comedy as occur in the earlier play.

This study of Field's two extant comedies shows unmistakable traces of Jonson's influence in satirical attitude, realistic pictures of London life, construction of plots, and humorous characters.

Among the “Sons of Ben,” Richard Brome must be given precedence as having had the best opportunity to gain accurate knowledge of Jonson's methods and spirit in writing comedy, and as having produced the largest number of plays possessing the fundamental characteristics of the comedy of humors. The first reference to Brome that we find is in the induction to Bartholomew Fair where the stagekeeper says: “I am looking lest the poet hear me, or his man, Master Brome, behind the arras”;⁹³ so that at least from 1614, when this play was written, he was servant to Ben Jonson. As far as we know, he so remained until the master's death in 1637. When The Northern Lass was published in 1632, Jonson stood as sponsor for it and wrote commendatory verses “to my old faithful servant, and (by his continued virtue) my loving friend, Mr. Richard Brome.” Not only as a servant and friend does Jonson praise him, but also as a follower of the comic laws he himself had taught:

I had you for a servant once, Dick Brome,
And you performed a servant's faithful parts;
Now you are got into a nearer room
Of fellowship, professing my old arts.
And you do them well, with good applause,
Which you have justly gained from the stage,
By observation of those comic laws
Which I, your master, first did teach the age.
You learned it well, and for it served your time,
A prenticeship, which few do nowadays.(94)

That Brome had the advantage of daily association with Jonson during years is a fact of great significance and he must have learned much and gained much. It was also in collaboration with Jonson's son that he began his dramatic career with a non-extant play, A Fault in Friendship, licensed in 1623 as “by Brome and young Jonson.”

Brome himself refers with pride to Jonson as his teacher and master. In verses prefixed to the Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647, he writes of him

That was the master of his art and me,
Most knowing Jonson.(95)

The prologue to The City Wit tells us the play

                                                                      was written, when
It bore just judgment, and the seal of Ben.(96)

In the epilogue to The Court Beggar, the author seems to refer to Jonson in writing of him “by whose care and directions this stage is governed, who has for many years … directed poets to write and players to speak till he trained up these youths here to what they are now.”⁹⁷ Many a time Brome must have gone with Jonson to the Devil Tavern and heard given the order embodied in The English Moor to “draw a quart of the best Canary into the Apollo.”⁹⁸

According to the testimony of the commendatory verses prefixed to his plays, Brome seems to have been on good terms with many other dramatists and poets of the time, and these generally show that they considered him frankly as an imitator and follower of Jonson. Thomas Dekker, John Ford, James Shirley, John Tatham, Sir Aston Cockayne, John Hall, and Alexander Brome, wrote in warm praise of his work. A number of these connect directly the names of Brome and Jonson. Prefixed to The Antipodes are some lines by C. G. beginning:

Jonson's alive! the world admiring stands,

and ending

Therefore repair to him, and praise each line
Of his Volpone, Sejanus, Catiline.
But stay, and let me tell you where he is,
He sojourns in his Brome's Antipodes!(99)

John Hall writes concerning A Jovial Crew:

                                                            You do not invade,
But by great Jonson were made free o' th' trade,
So that we must, in this your labor find
Some image and fair relique of his mind.(100)

With regard to the same play, John Tatham hopes the audience

May be conformable to Ben's influence;
And finding here nature and art agree
May swear, thou liv'st in him and he in thee.(101)

The ode by Thomas Randolph in answer to Jonson's Ode to Himself after the failure of The New Inn in 1629, makes uncomplimentary reference to “what Brome swept from thee.”¹⁰² On the title-page of The Weeding of Covent Garden as published in 1658, the author is described as “an ingenious servant and imitator of his master, that famously renowned poet, Ben Jonson.” We have, then, full and complete evidence that Brome was regarded by his master, by his contemporaries, and by himself as a follower of Ben Jonson in English comedy, and the plays themselves confirm the judgment.

Fifteen independently written plays are extant. Of these, three are distinctively romantic tragi-comedies: The Lovesick Court, The Queen's Exchange, The Queen and the Concubine; two more have large romantic elements: The Novella and The English Moor; and the remaining ten are pure comedies of manners and of humors based on the every-day life of London. From the last group chiefly do we get the material for a study of Jonson's influence on Brome. In the romances Ward finds traces of the influence of Shakespeare, Fletcher and Massinger.¹⁰³ Koeppel discovers parallels between A Mad Couple Well-Matched, The City Wit, The Court Beggar, The Antipodes, The English Moor, The Lovesick Court, The Queen's Exchange, The Queen and the Concubine, and various Shakespearian plays.¹⁰⁴ We must remember that Jonson himself yielded in part to the allurement of the romantic method in his early The Case is Altered and his late The New Inn.

Let us see, first of all, what is the evidence of the prologues and epilogues regarding the extent to which Brome had absorbed Jonson's theories of comedy. In the epilogue to The English Moor he expresses his wish that

You judge but by the ancient comic laws.
Not by their course who in this latter age
Have sown such pleasing errors on the stage,
Which he no more will choose to imitate.(105)

Again, in the prologue to The Novella:

He'll bide his trial, and submits his cause
To you the jury, so you'll judge by laws.(106)

He proceeds in this same prologue to ask judgment only from the judicious and to address his audience quite in Jonson's tone of independence:

If pride or ignorance should rule, he fears
An unfair trial, 'cause not tried by's peers.
Faith, be yourselves a while, and pass your vote
On what you understand, and do not dote
On things 'bove nature or intelligence;
All we pretend to is but mirth and sense.

The prologue to The Sparagus Garden again repeats that the author never did

                                                                                                                        strive
By arrogance or ambition to achieve
More praise unto himself, or more applause
Unto his scenes, than such, as know the laws
Of comedy do give; he only those
Now prays may scan his verse and weigh his prose.(107)

Brome would, like Jonson, appeal to the intellect rather than the heart, and he intends that

No handsome love-toy shall your time beguile,
Forcing your pity to a sigh or smile.(108)

Nevertheless, a love-story does run through every one of his comedies, and while the love-motive is not always the predominant one, yet it is used much more freely and fully than by Jonson. The master's preference for “deeds and language such as men do use” has affected the disciple and he condemns those

That count all slight that's under us or nigh;
And only those for worthy subjects deem,
Fetched or reached at (at least) from far or high;
When low and home-bred subjects have their use,
As well as those fetched from on high or far.(109)

The prologues are marked by a decided self-consciousness but it is not masterful and confident as was that of Jonson. A strange mixture of self-praise and self-depreciation appears in such prologues as those to The Northern Lass, The Demoiselle or The Queen's Exchange. In the last we find this:

The writer of this play who ever uses
To usher with his modesty the muses
Unto the stage, he that scarce ever durst
Of poets rank himself above the worst,
Though most that he has wit has passed the rest,
And found good approbation of the best;
He, as he never knew to bow, he says,
As little fears the fortune of his plays.(110)

From the prologues we learn that Brome aimed to regard the laws of Roman comedy, to value the criticism of the judicious only, make chief appeal to the intellect and present chiefly “low and homebred subjects”; and that, furthermore, as a playwright he was a thoroughly self-conscious workman. We should note, on the other hand, the absence of the assertion of didacticism, the reminder that we are to have profit mixed with our delight, constantly found in Jonson's prologues.

While Brome was not primarily concerned with scourging vices and follies, yet again and again within the plays he asserted the purpose of purging or curing individuals, groups of persons, or places. However, the moral and ethical attitude taken by him seems often assumed, put on from the outside, and not deeply ingrained in the whole philosophy of life as with Jonson. He usually accepted conventional moral standards, but never attained to a really vital grasp of the spirit of morality. Brome sometimes, as in A Mad Couple Well Matched, lost a true sense of moral values; Jonson never was guilty of such offense. We are definitely told that the aim is to “purge” and “cure” certain personages of the comedies, as, Sir Swithin Whimbly, the Crying Knight, and Camelion, the uxorious citizen, in The New Academy; Pyannet, the scold, in The City Wit; Joyless, the jealous old husband of a young wife, and Peregrine, a monomaniac on the subject of traveling, in The Antipodes; or in The Court Beggar, Citwit, whose habit is to abuse everybody and never stand by anything he has said. The object in The Sparagus Garden, we are told, is to “run jealousy out of breath” and to “purge the place of all foul purposes.” Here are of interest some lines written by C. G. on this play:

                                                                      It is no common play.
Within thy plot of ground, no weed doth spring
To hurt the growth of any underling;
Nor is thy labyrinth confus'd, but we
In that disorder may perfection see.
Thy herbs are physical and do more good
In purging humors than some's letting blood.(111)

The plays are full of satirical pictures of conditions and classes of every day London life. We find the realism not only of definite localization but of direct portrayal of life seen “from below stairs,”¹¹² sometimes gross and repulsive, but showing keenness and variety of satirical observation. Brome knew and knew well “the coarse and gross and seamy side of life,” and no finer sensibilities kept him from picturing it often with “prosaic ruthlessness.”¹¹³ Usually, he did have an honest purpose to further the cause of morality. The Weeding of Covent Garden is a direct attempt to promote a definite social reform in a certain neighborhood. In the second prologue, written after the play had accomplished the desired practical results, the audience is urged to

                                                                      take the same survey,
Into your fancy, as our poet took
Of Covent Garden, when he wrote his book
Some ten years since, when it was grown with weeds,
Nor set, as now it is, with noble seeds
Which make the garden glorious;

and to remember how

                                                                                happily his pen
Foretold its fair improvement, and that men
Of worth and honor should renown the place.(114)

Projects or speculations in monopolies, one of the greatest abuses of the time, and most effectively ridiculed in The Devil is an Ass, Brome satirizes again and again, in The Demoiselle, The Weeding of Covent Garden, The Sparagus Garden, The Antipodes, and The Queen's Exchange, while The Court Beggar finds here its chief theme. In the last play, most of the characters in jest or earnest put forth some project. Here are two of interest:

My project is that no plays may be admitted to the stage but of their making who profess or endeavor to live by the quality; that no courtiers, divines, students at law, lawyers' clerks, tradesmen or prentices, be allowed to write 'em, nor the works of any poet whatsoever to be received to the stage, though freely given unto the actors; nay, though any such poet should give a sum of money with his play, as with an apprentice, unless the author do also become bound that it shall do true and faithful service for a whole term;¹¹⁵

                                                                                                    a new project
For building a new theater or play-house
Upon the Thames on barges or flat boats,
To help the watermen out of the loss
They've suffer'd by sedans.(116)

A passage on the same subject in The Antipodes is worth quoting for the utter absurdity of the schemes:

Your projects are all good. I like them well,
Especially these two: this for th' increase of wool;
And this for the destroying of mice: they're good,
And grounded on great reason. As for yours,
For putting down the infinite use of jacks,
Whereby the education of young children
In turning spits is greatly hindered,
It may be looked into. And yours against
The multiplicity of pocket watches,
Whereby much neighborly familiarity
By asking, what d'ye guess it is a clock?
Is lost, when every puny clerk can carry
The time o' the day in's breeches. This and these
Hereafter may be looked into. For present,
This for the increase of wool, that is to say,
By flaying of live horses and new covering them
With sheep-skins, I do like exceedingly.
And this for keeping tame owls in cities
To kill up rats and mice, whereby all cats
May be destroyed, as an especial means
To prevent witchcraft and contagion.(117)

The “roarers” with whom we became familiar in the comedies of Jonson and his immediate contemporaries, and whom we met again in Field's plays, are satirized by Brome both as “roarers” or members of the “roaring brotherhood” and as “blades,” in The Demoiselle, The Weeding of Covent Garden, and The Northern Lass. Throughout The Weeding of Covent Garden, Brome attacks the Puritans in the character of Gabriel. The following shows clearly direct relation to Jonson's satire in The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair:

GABRIEL.
It is nevertheless a tavern, brother Mihil, and you promised and covenanted with me at the last house of noise and noisomeness, that you would not lead me to any more taverns.
MIHIL.
Lead you, brother? Men use to be led from taverns sometimes. You saw I did not lead you nor bring you to any that was more a tavern than the last, nor so much neither; for here is no bush, you saw.
GAB.
'Twas that betrayed and entrapped me; but let us yet forsake it.
MIH.
Pray, let us drink first, brother. By your leave, here's to you.
GAB.
One glassful more is the most that I can bear. My head is very full, and laboreth with that I have had already.
MIH.
There, sir, I'll undertake one good fellow, that has but just as much religion as will serve an honest man's turn, will bear more wine than ten of these giddy-brained Puritans; their heads are so full of whimsies.
GAB.
'Tis mighty heady, mighty heady, and truly I cannot but think that the over-much abuse of these outlandish liquors have bred so many errors in the Romish Church.
MIH.
Indeed, brother, there is too much abuse made of such good creatures. Wine in itself is good, you will grant, though the excess be naught; and taverns are not contemptible, so the company be good.
GAB.
It is most true, we find that holy men have gone to taverns, and made good use of 'em upon their peregrinations.
MIH.
And cannot men be content to take now and then a cup, and discourse of good things by the way? As thus, brother, here's a remembrance, if she be living and have not lost her honor, to our cousin Dorcas.
GAB.
O that kinswoman of ours! She was the dearest loss that e'er fell from our house.
MIH.
Pledge her, good brother.
GAB.
I do—
MIH.
I hope 'twill maudlinize him.
GAB.
But have you never seen that miscreant that wronged her, since he did that same? They say you knew him.
MIH.
Alas, suppose I had, what could be done? She's lost, we see. What good could she receive by any course against him?
GAB.
It had been good to have humbled him, though, into the knowledge of his transgression. And of himself, for his soul's good either by course of law, or else in case of necessity, where the law promiseth no release, by your own right hand you might have smote him, smote him with great force, yea, smote him unto the earth, until he had prayed that the evil might be taken from him.
MIH.
This is their way of loving enemies, to beat 'em into goodness. Well, brother, I may meet with him again, and then I know what to do.(118)

From his master Brome had imbibed a thorough-going dislike for gentlemen of fashion, and he ridicules them with as strong feeling as Jonson, if not with as telling satire. In The City Wit the question is asked: “Dost thou know what a gallant of fashion is?” and the answer given: “I'll tell thee. It is a thing that but once in three months has money in his purse, a creature made up of promise and protestation, a thing that … flatters all he fears, contemns all he needs not, starves all that serve him, and undoes all that trust him.”¹¹⁹ The rules for being a courtier are: “Speak nothing that you mean, perform nothing that you promise, pay nothing that you owe, flatter all above you, scorn all beneath you, deprave all in private, praise all in public, keep no truth in your mouth, no faith in your heart, no health in your bones, no friendship in your mind, no modesty in your eyes, no religion in your conscience, but especially no money in your purse.”¹²⁰

Occasionally the citizens get their turn: “A good man i' the city is not called after his good deeds but the known weight of his purse”;¹²¹ and Pyannet in The City Wit scoffs at the idea of an honest citizen: “Honest man! who the devil wished thee to be an honest man? Here's my worshipful husband, Mr. Sneakup, that from a grazier is come to be a justice of peace, and what, as an honest man? He grew to be able to give nine hundred pound with my daughter; and what, by honesty? Mr. Sneakup and I are come up to live i' the city, and here we have lain these three years, and what, for honesty? Honesty! What should the city do with honesty when 'tis enough to undo a whole corporation? Why are your wares gummed; your shops dark; your prizes writ in strange characters; what, for honesty? Honesty! Why is hard wax called merchants' wax, and is said seldom or never to be ripped off but it plucks the skin of a lordship with it? What, for honesty?”¹²²

In the construction of his plots, as we have seen, Brome purposed to follow the classic rules, and we do find comparative regularity. He was a skilled and trained workman, a clever playwright who had learned his craft from Jonson and knew well the requirements of the stage. He was ingenious and inventive, and some of the plays, as The Northern Lass, A Jovial Crew, The Antipodes, and The City Wit, have original situations that remain distinctively in mind. As in Jonson's plays, we have complicated intrigue, trickery and roguery of all kinds, usually skillfully managed. Sometimes Brome fell into the error, from which Jonson was by no means always free, of crowding the stage with figures and entangling the action with schemes so many and varied that confusion and bewilderment result. Throughout, the method of Jonson is clearly discernible in the construction of the plays.

There are situations that directly or indirectly recall Jonson's comedies. The Weeding of Covent Garden is modeled on Bartholomew Fair, and the debt frankly acknowledged. Cockbrain, like Justice Overdo, zealously disguises himself and goes among the roisterers and law-breakers of Covent Garden, only to meet with experiences similar to those of his worthy predecessor when he went to Bartholomew Fair. As Cockbrain girds up his courage for investigation and reform, he says: “And so, as my reverend ancestor, Justice Overdo, was wont to say, ‘In heaven's name and the King's, and for the good of the commonwealth, I will go about it.’”¹²³ Gabriel, with his cant phrases and assumed piety, goes to Covent Garden as Zeal-of-the-land Busy to Bartholomew Fair; and Clotpoll, the foolish gull with plenty of money to spend, is closely related to Bartholomew Cokes in folly and resulting mishaps.

In The Court Beggar, the group of projectors working upon Sir Andrew Mendicant and persuading him they can make him a rich lord, recall the gulling of Fitzdotterel in The Devil is an Ass. Swinburne thinks that the influence of Volpone is evident in The Novella.¹²⁴ There may be a slight reminiscence of Volpone and Mosca in the manner in which Victoria, the Novella, and her servant Paulo set up an establishment and seek to draw men of all kinds to them, but the purpose, methods and characters are entirely different. The plot of The City Wit is decidedly Jonsonian in its processes of gulling and tricking a large group of persons by a small group. Crazy, a young citizen who has lost his money and whose friends have turned against him, Jeremy his boy servant, and Crack, another boy, make covenant together, “like Subtle, Doll and Face,”¹²⁵ to cozen the other characters, and they succeed admirably. The influence of The Alchemist is manifest in the situations that follow. Further, the boy Jeremy is dressed as a woman and marries, as the boy in Epicœne. The School of Compliment in The New Academy takes us back again to The Devil is an Ass and Epicœne with their expositions of fashion and compliment. The suggestion for The Antipodes, Ward thinks, may have been taken from Jonson's masque The World in the Moon.¹²⁶

Brome in The Sparagus tells us what he thinks of humors: “For as in every instrument are all tunes to him that has the skill to find out the stops, so in every man are all humors to him that can find their faucets, and draw 'em out to his purpose.”¹²⁷ In choice and execution of comic types Brome shows constantly strong evidence of Jonson's influence. Often we do get tricks and humors rather than persons, but that is true also of Jonson, and some of Brome's humorous characters are original, interesting and distinctive. The finer powers of Jonson in bringing out the subtle individuality of the representative of a type Brome does not possess. He lacks the true artistic sense that hides bare fundamental conception, and he is often too conscientiously concerned that his idea shall be fully grasped. This is evident in the way he sometimes points out the applicability of a name, as that of Touchwood in The Sparagus Garden: “He has not his name for nothing, old Touchwood! He is all fire if he be incensed; but so soft and gentle that you may wind him about your finger or carry him in your bosom if you handle him rightly; but still, be wary, for the least spark kindles him.”¹²⁸ Brome follows closely Jonson's custom of naming characters so as to indicate ruling quality or humor. Frequently he identifies his persons by means of catch phrases or sayings, “tags,” and sometimes falls into mere caricature. Striker in The Sparagus Garden constantly reiterates, “there I am wi' ye,” and Hearty in A Jovial Crew, “there's a whim now”; Geron of The Love-Sick Court is forever comparing everything to “as whilom said” or “as whilom did” someone sometime; Saleware in A Mad Couple Well Matched quotes on every possible occasion, “Sapientia mea mihi, stultitia tua tibi.”

The personages that stand out most clearly in the comedies are with few exceptions characters created according to the theory of humors. Justice Bumpsey of The Demoiselle, one of Brome's most original creations, by his humor of spending recklessly an equal amount of money in a like manner, cures his son-in-law of useless extravagance. The humor of his “fashion-sick” wife is to “learn and practice carriage.” Pyannet who has “the tongue-ague,” Sarpego, the wearisome pedant, and Linsy-Wolsey, the miserly citizen, in The City Wit, are Jonsonian types. So also are Sir Andrew Mendicant, of The Court Beggar, who sells his country estate to purchase wit at court and is duped into believing he may obtain a lordship by means of wild projects; Lady Strangelove, “the humorous widow that loves to be courted;” Sir Raphael Winterplum, “who has licked up a living with his tongue, makes all great tables his own, and eats for his talk;” and Citwit, whose humor is to answer all questions asked, whether addressed to him or not, abuse everybody spoken of, and, when called to account, excuse himself from a quarrel by declaring he spoke only “comparatively.” In The Weeding of Covent Garden, Cockbrain, the reforming justice, and Gabriel, the supposed saintly Puritan, as we have seen above, bear direct likeness to Justice Overdo and Zeal-of-the-land Busy in Bartholomew Fair; Clotpoll is another country gull who has come to town with money and is anxious to learn to roar and be a gentleman; and Crosswill objects to everything proposed and crosses his children in all they ask, so that they must get what they want by seeming to seek the very opposite.

Mrs. Crostill, the humorous widow of A Mad Couple Well Matched, is also moved by a spirit of contradiction, and is won by the suitor that slights her most. Saleware of this same play is foolishly proud of his courtly wife and refuses to be made jealous, considering every plain piece of evidence of her unfaithfulness but a plot to make him jealous. Rafe Camelion in The New Academy is another doting husband, as blind as Deliro in Every Man out of His Humor and as effectively disillusioned. Sir Swithin Whimbly, “the crying knight,” always weeps at the mention of his dead wife, is “inspired with the infection of poetry” whenever he thinks of her, and is cured by one of the other characters who sets out to “turn the tide of's tears.” Matchill marries his maid to spite his daughter and kindred, thinking to get “a rare piece of obedience,” but finds himself sadly mistaken. Justice Clark of A Jovial Crew, in trying cases, does all the talking and testifying himself; for “if we both speak together, how shall we hear one another?” He tells a witness: “I can inform myself, sir, by your looks. I have taken a hundred examinations i' my days, of felons and other offenders, out of their very countenances, and wrote 'em down verbatin to what they would have said. I am sure it has served to hang some of 'em and whip the rest.”¹²⁹

There are several characters of humors in The Northern Lass: Widgine, a silly verse-maker who continually quotes his sister, takes pride in his tutor's wit, and is a weaker combination of Stephen and Matthew in Every Man in His Humor; Captain Anville, a braggart and faint shadow of Bobadil; Sir Solomon Nonsense, a Cornish countryman and “a parrot or a popinjay”; and Howdee, who aspires to the position of a gentleman usher and diligently cons “the ushers' grammar.” Buzzard in The English Moor, as Ward points out,¹³⁰ is evidently a relation to Jonson's Sir Amorous La-Foole. “The Buzzards,” he tells us, “are all gentlemen. We came in with the Conqueror. Our name (as the French has it) is Beau-Desert, which signifies—Friends, what does it signify?”¹³¹ Geron, the pedant of The Lovesick Court, has a humor of whiloming so persistently that even his doting old mother exclaims impatiently, “Forbear your whiloms and your old said saws,” while the lady whom he courts, when told that he loves her, declares:

“That's more than I e'er knew or read by all
He speaks or writes of me. He clothes his words
In furs and hoods, so that I cannot find
The naked meaning of his business.”(132)

His old mother, Garrula, bears out her name and for very talking cannot tell the news she comes to bring.

The comedies contain many other characters of humors, but these suffice to show the types presented. A certain rigidity and artificiality we do find, but some of the personages are original and interesting and show that Brome had a broad sense of humor and a real knowledge of the foibles and follies of human nature. The influence of Jonson is constantly evident in conception and in method of portrayal. However, Brome produced, on the whole, few direct imitations of Jonson's characters. It was the general theory that he learned thoroughly and applied faithfully.

Brome appears to have acquired a certain amount of learning and makes some show of classical knowledge. In several plays he attempts to give the impression of such a background, but in general he was neither supported nor weighed down by Jonsonian learning. We find an abundance of Latin quotations in The City Wit and The Queen and the Concubine, and in some of the plays, as The City Wit, The Lovesick Court and The Court Beggar, allusions to classical writers are frequent. It is worth noting, too, that these plays are all among Brome's earliest productions. He occasionally makes a display of out of the way learning, as in the enumeration of dances in The New Academy, the military terms of The Weeding of Covent Garden, or the beggar's peculiar dialect in A Jovial Crew.

The vocabulary used in the plays shows, on the whole, much less likeness to Jonson's than might have been expected, not nearly so much as that of some of the playwrights studied in the preceding chapter. The largest number of words we find in The City Wit, The Demoiselle, The Court Beggar, The Weeding of Covent Garden and The Sparagus Garden. These plays present Brome's most realistic and direct pictures of contemporary life, and so use the words of common street and tavern talk most frequently. Verse and prose are used in varying proportions. Brome was not a poet, and his rough, halting verse, though aiming at regularity, can hardly be said to show Jonson's influence.

A study of Brome's plays bears out fully the testimony of Jonson and of contemporaries, as well as the claim of Brome himself, that he was a “Son of Ben.” In conscious theory and in practical application he followed after his master, however afar off when judged as to intellectual mastery and literary genius. His realistic pictures of contemporary life, moral satire, plots of complicated intrigue, and characters of humors, testify clearly who was his teacher in the art of writing comedy.

Notes

1. Jonson, Works, ed. by Gifford, 3 vols., III, 364, 365.

2. Lowell, Works, Riverside ed., III, 38.

3. Jonson, Works, I, 65; Induction.

4. Ibid., I, 67.

5. Ibid., I, 336.

6. Jonson, Works, II, 4.

7. Ibid., III, 45.

8. Symonds, Ben Jonson, 52.

9. Symonds, Ben Jonson, 198.

10. Jonson, Works, I, 148.

11. Ibid., II, 278.

12. Ibid., III, 262.

13. Jonson, Works, II, 4.

14. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, I, p. XXXII.

15. Woodbridge, Studies in Jonson's Comedy, 42.

16. Dryden, Essays, ed. by Ker, I, 85, 86.

17. Jonson, Works, I, 67; Induction.

18. Woodbridge, Studies in Jonson's Comedy, 33.

19. Woodbridge, Studies in Jonson's Comedy, 42.

20. Ibid., 54.

21. Schelling, Eastward Hoe and The Alchemist, Belles-Lettres Series, p. XXIX.

22. Schelling, Eastward Hoe and The Alchemist, Belles-Lettres Series, p. XXVII.

23. Originally prefixed to Chapman's Translation of Hesiod's Works and Days, 1618.

24. Henslowe's Diary, ed. by W. W. Greg, II, 188, 199.

25. Printed 1598. Fleay gives date of first production, 1596, I, 55.

26. Printed 1605; Fleay considers The World Run on Wheels of 1599 the same play as All Fools, I, 57. Henslowe, II, 200, 203.

27. Ward, II, 434.

28. Chapman, Works, ed. by R. H. Shepherd, 60; All Fools, II, 1.

29. Chapman, Works, 72; All Fools, V, 1.

30. Chapman, Works, 123, 124; Monsieur D'Olive, II, 1.

31. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, I, pp. XXXII, XXXV.

32. Schelling, I, 475-491; and Penniman, The War of the Theaters.

33. Jonson, Works, III, 479.

34. Marston, Works, I, 197.

35. Fleay, II, 79.

36. That to The Malcontent was added in the second edition and was perhaps written by John Marston.

37. Fleay, II, 76, 77.

38. Marston, Works, II, 204; The Fawn, IV, 1.

39. Ibid., I, 292; The Malcontent, IV, 2.

40. Ibid., I, 310; The Malcontent, V, 3.

41. Marston, Works, II, 363-364; What You Will, II, 2.

42. Ibid., II, 346-347; What You Will, II, 1.

43. Ibid., II, 46-47; The Dutch Courtesan, III, 1.

44. Ibid., II, 42-43; The Dutch Courtesan, II, 3.

45. Ibid., II, 62; The Dutch Courtesan, III, 3.

46. Printed 1606, acted, according to Fleay, 1604; Chronicle, II, 79.

47. Printed 1607, acted, according to Fleay, 1601; Chronicle II, 76.

48. Fleay, Chronicle History of the London Stage, 157-160.

49. Fleay, Shakespeare, 50.

50. Halliwell-Phillips, Outlines, 1898, II, 70.

51. Koeppel, Quellen Studien, 2, 5-6, 11-12.

52. Henry, Aurelia: Epicœne, Yale Studies in English, XXXI, 1906; Introduction, XXXV-XL.

53. Schelling, I, 540.

54. I Henry IV, II, 4.

55. Twelfth Night, I, 3.

56. Twelfth Night, III, 3.

57. All's Well That Ends Well, III, 6.

58. All's Well That Ends Well, II, 5.

59. Bullen's Old Plays, vol. IV, 372; Every Woman in Her Humor, V, 1.

60. Dryden, Essays, ed. by W. P. Ker, I, 80.

61. Jonson, Works, I, CXIV-CXV.

62. Jonson, Works, III, 235.

63. Beaumont and Fletcher, Works, I, 92.

64. Jonson, Works, III, 291.

65. Beaumont and Fletcher, Works, ed. by Alex. Dyce, I, 12.

66. Koeppel compares Bessus to Falstaff, Quellen-Studien, 44, 45.

67. Beaumont and Fletcher, Works, I, 99; The Woman Hater, I, 3.

68. Koeppel, Quellen-Studien, 116.

69. Ibid., 90.

70. Fleay, Chronicle, I, 214, 225.

71. Massinger, Best Plays, I, 475; The City Madam, IV, 4.

72. Shirley, Works, ed. by Alex. Dyce, I, 383, The Wedding, II, 1.

73. Shirley, Works, III, 282.

74. Jonson, Works, II, 277.

75. Shirley, Works, IV, 191.

76. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, II, 287. Compare with Jonson, Works, I, 119-120, Every Man Out of His Humor, IV, 4.

77. Shirley, Works, I, 74-75; Love Tricks, IV, 6.

78. Ibid., III, 145; The Young Admiral, IV, 1.

79. Shirley, Works, I, Introduction, XXX.

80. Ibid., III, 3.

81. Shirley, Works, II, 277; Love in a Maze, I, 1.

82. Fleay, Eng. Stud., XIII, 1889.

83. Jonson, Works, II, 199; Bartholomew Fair, V, 3.

84. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, I, 472-473.

85. Knight, Article in D. N. B. XVIII, 1889.

86. Jonson, Works, III, 477.

87. Nero and Other Plays, Mermaid Series, 338-339.

88. Nero and Other Plays, 352; A Woman is a Weathercock, I, 2.

89. Nero and Other Plays, 369; A Woman is a Weathercock, II, 1.

90. Nero and Other Plays, 472; Amends for Ladies, IV, 3.

91. Ibid., 456-460; Amends for Ladies, III, 4.

92. Nero and Other Plays, 353; A Woman is a Weathercock, I, 2.

93. Jonson, Works, II, 143.

94. Brome, Works, III, p. IX.

95. Beaumont and Fletcher, Works, I, 92.

96. Brome, Works, I, 276.

97. Brome, Works, I, 272.

98. Ibid., II, 41, The English Moor, III, 2.

99. Ibid., III, 229.

100. Ibid., III, 345.

101. Brome, Works, III, 348.

102. Jonson, Works, II, 387.

103. Ward, III, 129-131.

104. Koeppel, Studien uber Shakespeare's Wirkung, 42-47.

105. Brome, Works, II, 86.

106. Ibid., I, 104.

107. Ibid., III, 115.

108. Brome, Works, I, 184.

109. Ibid., III, 230.

110. Ibid., III, 456.

111. Brome, Works, III, 113.

112. Schelling, II, 336.

113. Symonds, The Academy, March, 1874.

114. Brome, Works, II, 178.

115. Brome, Works, I, 215; The Court Beggar, II, 1.

116. Ibid., I, 194; The Court Beggar, I, 1.

117. Brome, Works, III, 308; The Antipodes, IV, 9.

118. Brome, Works, II, 61-62; The Weeding of Covent Garden, IV, 1.

119. Ibid., I, 292; The City Wit, I, 2.

120. Ibid., I, 306; The City Wit, II, 3.

121. Ibid., III, 23; The Northern Lass, II, 1.

122. Brome, Works, I, 284-285; The City Wit, I, 1.

123. Brome, Works, II, 2; The Weeding of Covent Garden, I, 1.

124. Fortnightly Review, LVII, 1892.

125. Brome, Works, I, 318; The City Wit, III, 1.

126. Ward, III, 130.

127. Brome, Works, III, 160; The Sparagus Garden, III, 4.

128. Ibid., III, 117-118; The Sparagus Garden, I, 1.

129. Brome, Works, III, 435; A Jovial Crew, IV, 2.

130. Ward, III, 129².

131. Brome, Works, II, 43; The English Moor, III, 2.

132. Ibid., II, 123; The Lovesick Court, III, 1.

Bibliography

Beaumont and Fletcher: Works, with notes and a bibliographical memoir by Alexander Dyce, 2 vols. Boston and New York, 1854.

Brome, Richard: Dramatic Works, 3 vols. London, 1873.

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