Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/775

Rh upwards of 35,000,000 boxes, of the value of £11,390, while in 1874 the value reached the sum of £150,000. It also contains snuff and cigar factories, an asphalt factory, dye-works, damask factories, and a variety of minor establishments. The population, which has been steadily in creasing, numbered 15,037 in 1878.

Jönköping is mentioned as early as 1284 or 1288, and the castle in 1263, when Waldemar Birgersson married the Danish princess Sophia. It was afterwards the scene of many events of moment in Scandinavian history:—the parliaments of 1357, 1439, and 1599; the meeting of the Danish and Swedish plenipotentiaries in 1448; and the death of Sten Stura, the elder, in 1503. In 1612 Gustavus Adolphus caused the inhabitants to destroy their town lest it should fall into the hands of the Danes; but it was rebuilt soon after, and in 1620 received special privileges from the king. It was from the Dutch and German workmen, introduced at this time, that the quarter Tyska Mad received its name. In 1809 the plenipotentiaries of Sweden and Denmark concluded peace in the town.

JONSON, (for thus his Christian name was usually abbreviated by himself and his contemporaries, and thus, in accordance with his famous epitaph, it will always continue to be abbreviated by posterity), was born about the beginning (N. S.) of the year 1573. By the poet's account his grandfather had been a gentleman who "came from" Carlisle, and originally, the grandson thought, from Annandale, where Johnstons or Johnstones appear to have abounded, and where indeed at least one resident of that name is noticed in the reminiscences of a later native of the border district resembling Ben himself in the quickness of his temper and in his impatience of pretences and pretenders,—the late Thomas Carlyle. Ben Jonson further related that he was born a month after the death of his father, who, after suffering in estate and person under Queen Mary, had in the end "turned minister." Two years after the birth of her son the widow married again; she may be supposed to have loved him in a passionate way peculiar to herself, since on one occasion we shall find her revealing an almost ferocious determination to save his honour at the cost of both his life and her own. Jonson's stepfather was a master bricklayer in or near Westminster, who—whether or not he afterwards constrained his stepson, while acquainting himself with the business into which he had been admitted, to undergo the degradation of laying a few bricks with his own trowel—certainly allowed him to lay for himself the foundations of a good education. After attending a private school in the neighbourhood, he was sent to Westminster school,—nor is it at all obvious why the master bricklayer should have been denied the credit of having sent him there. Jonson's gratitude, however, for an education to which in truth he owed an almost inestimable debt, concentrated itself upon the "most reverend head" of the illustrious Camden, then second and afterwards head master of the famous school, and the firm friend of his pupil in later life.

After reaching the highest form at Westminster, Jonson is stated, but on unsatisfactory evidence, to have proceeded to the university of Cambridge; but at the utmost he can only have made a transitory appearance in a scene of which as a painter of men and manners he nowhere reproduces a single feature. And doubtless he felt that neither his crop of learning and experience nor his wild oats were yet fully sown, when, goose quill or other implement in hand, he had to apply himself to the family business. He soon had enough of it, and was soldiering in the Netherlands, much to his own subsequent satisfaction when the days of self-conscious retrospect arrived, but to no further purpose beyond that of seeing something of the world. By the middle of 1597 we at last come across documentary evidence of him at home in London, in the shape of an entry in Henslowe's diary on July 28th of 3s. 6d. "received of Bengemenes Johnsones share." He was therefore by this time, when Shakespeare, his senior by nearly nine years, was already in prosperous circumstances and good esteem, at least a regular member of the profession, with a fixed engagement in the Lord Admiral's company, then performing under the experienced Henslowe's management at the Rose. The traditions may very possibly be true according to which he had previously acted at the Curtain (a former house of the Lord Admiral's men), and "taken mad Jeronimo's part" as a stroller. This latter appearance would in that case have probably been in The Spanish Tragedy, since in The First Part of Jeronimo Jonson would have had to dwell on the "smallness" of his "bulk." He was at a subsequent date (1601) employed by Henslowe to write up The Spanish Tragedy, in pursuance of a fashion differing from that of later times, when old plays have more usually been written down to the taste of modern audiences. Jonson's additions, which were not the first changes made in the play, are usually supposed to be those printed with The Spanish Tragedy in the edition of 1602; doubts on the subject are an instance of that subjective kind of criticism in which it is unsafe to put absolute trust.

Ben Jonson may be supposed to have married two or three years before the date of Henslowe's first entry of his name. Of his wife he afterwards spoke with scant enthusiasm, and for one (undated) interval of five years he preferred to live without her. Long burnings of "oil" among his books, and long spells of recreation at the tavern, such as Jonson loved, are not the most favoured accompaniments of family life. But Jonson was no stranger to the tenderest of affections: two at least of the several children whom his wife bore to him he commemorated in touching little tributes of verse; nor in speaking of his lost eldest daughter did he forget "her mother's tears."

Within a year's time, or little more, from the date at which we first find Ben Jonson in well-authenticated connexion with the English stage, he had produced one of the most memorable plays in its history. Every Man in his Humour, the original example of a species of English comedy which cannot be said to have become altogether extinct even with the Restoration, was first acted in 1598—probably in the earlier part of September—by the Lord Chamberlain's company, which was then still performing at the so-called Theatre, and in which Shakespeare was just on the eve of acquiring one or more shares. He certainly was one of the actors in Jonson's comedy, and it is in the character of Old Knowell in this very play that, according to a bold but ingenious guess, Shakespeare is represented in the half-length portrait of him in the folio of 1623, beneath which were printed Jonson's lines concerning the picture. Every Man in his Humour was probably followed by The Case is Altered, which was certainly acted by 1599, and which contains a satirical attack upon the pageant poet. Inasmuch as the earlier of these two comedies was indisputably successful, and as Jonson's reputation was already sufficient to ensure him a mention in the Palladis Tamia of Francis Meres, published in the same year, 1598, as one of the chief writers in tragedy (on the strength of what play or plays is unknown), it was an awkward fatality that before the year was out he should have found himself in prison and in danger of the gallows. He had had the misfortune of killing in a duel, fought in Hogsden Fields, for some cause unknown, an actor of Henslowe's company named Gabriel Spenser; possibly Henslowe's uncourteous designation of Jonson as a "bricklayer" may imply that the success of the new comedy at the other house had not been a subject of congratulation at that to which its author had formerly belonged. In prison Jonson was visited by a