But yet proved constant to the black-thumb'd maid, And chosen city-captain at Mile End, With hat and feather, and with leading staff, And train'd my men, and brought them all off clear.* Then coming home, and sitting in my shop Could take the bottle down, and fill a taste, And in an instant vanished away. Cit. 'Tis a pretty fiction, i'faith!" Ralph. Then took I up my bow and shaft in hand, And walked into Moorfields to cool myself; But there grim cruel Death met me again, And shot this forked arrow through my head; Farewell, all you good boys in merry London !* I die! fly, fly, my soul, to Grocers' Hall! Oh, oh, oh, &c. "Wife. Well said, Ralph! Do your obeisance to the gentlemen, and go your ways. Well said, Ralph!” [Exit RALPH. Mer. Methinks all we, thus kindly and unexpectedly reconciled, should not depart without a song. Vent. A good motion. 1i.e. To bargain for. "Cit. Come, Nell, shall we go? the play's done. Wife. Nay, by my faith, George, I have more manners than so; I'll speak to these gentlemen first. I thank you all, gentlemen, for your patience and countenance to Ralph, a poor fatherless child! and if I might see you at my house, it should go hard but I would have a pottle of wine and a pipe of tobacco for you; for truly I hope you do like the youth; but I would be glad to know the truth: I refer it to your own discretions whether you will applaud him or no; for I will wink, and, whilst, you shall do what you will.-I thank you, with all my heart. God give you good night !-Come, George." [Exeunt. INTRODUCTION ΤΟ EPICIENE; OR, THE SILENT WOMAN. BEN JONSON. BENJAMIN (or, as he himself abbreviated his name, Ben) JONSON was born in 1572-3, the posthumous son of a clergyman of Scottish descent. He received his education first at a private school near Charing Cross, and afterwards at Westminster School, at the expense of the antiquary Camden, who was a master there. He is next reported to have entered St. John's College, Cambridge, but although he afterwards became an M.A. of both Universities, he appears to have remained there but a few weeks. His mother had, meanwhile, married a second time, a master-bricklayer, and for a while Jonson appears to have followed his step-father's trade, which would explain contemporary and hostile allusions to him as the "lime and mortar poet." Abandoning the hod for the sword, he served with considerable bravery in the army in the Low Countries, where doubtless he met with the prototypes of Captain Bobadil and his other military characters. On his return, about 1592, he married, and soon after began to turn his attention to the stage at first as an actor at the Curtain Theatre. Having killed a brother-actor named Spencer, he was imprisoned in 1598, and narrowly escaped hanging. Whilst in prison he became a convert to Roman Catholicism, which faith he embraced for twelve years and then recanted. In 1605 Jonson voluntarily suffered a second imprisonment, along with Chapman and Marston, for his (trivial) share in Eastward Hoe, a play containing some passages reflecting on the Scotch, and causing umbrage to King James. Jonson was of a singularly combative temperament, and amongst the most marked incidents of his life were his quarrels with Inigo Jones, and with several of his brother-dramatists. Marston, in his Satires, had ridiculed Jonson as "Tubrio" and "Jack of Paris Garden," and the latter replied in Cynthia's Revels (1600), and in his comical satire The Poetaster (1601), wherein Dekker and Marston figure under the names of Demetrius and Crespinus respectively. Next year appeared Dekker's answer, entitled Satiromastix; or, the Untrussing of the Humerous Poet; after which Jonson published an Apologetic Dialogue, and put an end to his share of the quarrel. In 1513 Jonson went to France as governor of a son of Sir Walter Raleigh. Three years later he was created poet-laureate, and a pension of 100 marks was conferred upon him, subsequently increased to £100 and a tierce of canary wine. He took a walking-tour to Scotland in 1618, where he was the guest of the Scottish poet, William Drummond of Hawthornden, who in his well-known but somewhat bitter Conversations has preserved for us many interesting particulars concerning Jonson. In the year 1625 he was attacked by disease in a double shape, palsy and dropsy. He lingered on, however, till August 6th, 1637. His tombstone in Westminster Abbey bears the simple inscription, "O rare Ben Jonson." His wife had died years before, and he left no family surviving him. Jonson, as Minto says, "bodily as well as mentally, belonged to the race of Anak." He was scorbutic and corpulent, possessing "a mountain belly and a rocky face." Rough in manner, and of a decidedly convivial turn, he took great delight in the famous "wit-combats" at the Mermaid Tavern in Bread Street, Cheapside, a celebrated meeting-place for the authors of the day, and frequented by Shakspere himself. Here the high colloquial powers of the veteran chief of English letters shone their brightest. Fleay divides Jonson's life into four periods:—(1) Growth, 1597-1603; (2) Manhood, 1603-1612; (3) Middle Age, 1612–1626; (4) Decadence, 1626–1637. Exclusive of his numerous Masques written as Court entertainments, his dramatic works comprise two complete historical tragedies, The Fall of Sejanus (1603) and Cataline his Conspiracy (1611), and a fragment of a third, The Fall of Mortimer (his first play, says Fleay); fifteen comedies, and one unfinished pastoral drama, The Sad Shepherd (his last work, but which Fleay considers to have been begun in 1617 under the title of The May Lord). His nondramatic works include several collections of small poems, epigrams, and some translations from the Classics, an English Grammar, and a kind of prose common-place book entitled Discoveries. Notwithstanding Hazlitt's opinion to the contrary, Jonson's comedies are his principal productions. The best are Every Man in his Humour (1598), his first play, Epicone (1609), considered by Campbell his best comedy, The Alchemist (1610), and Volpone (1605). Jonson founded a distinct school of English comedy. Amongst his many characteristics, the most strongly marked is his frequently coarse humour. His power of comic characterization, especially of dupes and cheats, has seldom been approached. Possessed of a searching power of observation and a varied experience, his knowledge of human life in every phase from highest to lowest was very extensive. He reflects the manners of the time, with all its eccentricities and peculiarities of character, to the life. Still it must be confessed that he drew characteristics rather than characters. He was one of the most learned men of his day, and, gifted with a powerful memory, he has made ample-perhaps too ample-use of it in his plays. His laborious filling in of technical details |