Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 30.djvu/188

 seven. Another son, also named Benjamin, for whom he obtained in 1635 the reversion of the office of master of the revels, died on 20 Nov. of that year.

Jonson began, probably not later than 1595, to work for the stage. In 1597 he appears both as a ‘player’ and as a playwright to the ‘admiral's men’ (, 22 July, 3 Dec.); in 1598 as writing a ‘tragedy’ for them (ib. 23 Oct.); and in the latter year Meres expressly mentions him among the chief English writers of tragedy. Dryden's vague assertion that he had written ‘several plays very unsuccessfully before’ this date is of little weight, but may be true. Two events of 1598 added, in different ways, to his fame. On 22 Sept. he fought what he later described as ‘a duel’ with one Gabriel Spencer, a fellow-actor, and killed him. Arrested on a charge of felony, he, according to the official record, pleaded guilty (Middlesex Sessions Rolls, quoted in Athenæum, 6 March 1886). He escaped the gallows by benefit of clergy, but underwent a brief imprisonment, in the course of which he adopted ‘on trust’ the catholic faith, to abjure it, on conviction, twelve years later. His own account to Drummond of the charge of murder ignores the confession of guilt, and hints that efforts were made to implicate him in still graver offences. The whole transaction remains obscure, but it is clear from the silence of his enemies, and from his own complacent language, that it was not thought to tell against him. It caused, however, a temporary breach with the admiral's company, whose manager, Henslowe, records the event with illiterate indignation. In October Henslowe seems, according to a somewhat obscure entry, to have handed over a ‘plot’ left in his hands by ‘Benjamin’ to Chapman for completion. The immediate consequence of the breach was the offer of Jonson's first extant comedy, ‘Every Man in his Humour,’ to the rival company, the ‘lord chamberlain's servants,’ by whom it was accepted—a late tradition recorded by Rowe says on the recommendation of Shakespeare—and it was successfully performed at the Globe in 1598, Shakespeare himself taking a part. Jonson thenceforth ranked among the foremost dramatists of the day. Henslowe, before August 1599, had once more sought his services, and from this date until 1602 he continued to write for Henslowe's company, for the most part in collaboration, but he included none of these plays among his works, and they have all, with one exception, perished. In the meantime he was throwing all the force of his genius into the three ‘comical satires,’ ‘Every Man out of his Humour,’ ‘Cynthia's Revels,’ and ‘Poetaster,’ of which the first was performed by the lord chamberlain's company, the others by the children of the queen's chapel. They are in part devoted to a somewhat petty quarrel with his associate, Thomas Dekker [q. v.], and with the probably somewhat younger dramatist, John Marston [q. v.] Jonson subsequently ascribed his dispute with the latter (in the course of which he ‘beat him and took his pistol from him’) to Marston's having ‘represented him on the stage in his youth given to venery.’ Such a representation has been detected in the Tubrio of the ‘Scourge of Villany’ (1598); and a retaliatory portrait of Marston has been variously detected in both the Clove (Simpson, Nicholson) and Buffone of Jonson's next play, ‘Every Man out of his Humour.’ It is doubtful whether Dekker was also attacked in that piece, since in September 1599 we find him still collaborating with Jonson for Henslowe. But it is certain that both Dekker and Marston were portrayed in the Hedon and Anaides of ‘Cynthia's Revels’ (1600). Marston's ‘Jack Drum's Entertainment’ in the same year contained a caricature of Jonson, and he and Dekker were engaged upon a more serious joint-attack, the ‘Satiromastix,’ when Jonson forestalled them with the ‘Poetaster’ (1601), the work of fifteen weeks. In addition to its elaborate ridicule of the two hostile playwrights, this satire contained matter highly irritating to lawyers, soldiers, and actors. To these he addressed an ‘Apologetic Dialogue,’ which atoned for the offence in so characteristic a way that after one hearing it was prohibited. At its close, however, he had hinted his intention, ‘since the Comic Muse hath proved so ominous to me,’ of turning to tragedy. Earnests of this design are probably to be found in the (lost) ‘Richard Crookback’ and the additions to Kyd's ‘Jeronymo,’ which Jonson executed for the placable Henslowe (the Histrio of the ‘Poetaster’) in June 1602, receiving for the former the unusually high sum of 10l. But his first extant tragedy, in which he was perhaps aided by Chapman, was ‘Sejanus,’ performed at the Globe in 1603 by Shakespeare's company. It was ill received by the audience at large, but greatly admired by cultivated persons. Among these was Esme Stuart, lord D'Aubigny [q. v.], as whose guest Jonson lived for five years, which covered the period of the first production of ‘Sejanus.’ In February 1602 also, when he was said to have left his wife, a contemporary notice states that ‘Johnson, the poet, now lives upon one Townesend and scornes the world.’ To D'Aubigny Jonson in 1616 dedicated the tragedy in grateful terms.