Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/779

Rh ; but in both plays the action is powerfully conducted, and the care bestowed by the dramatist upon the great variety of characters introduced cannot, as in some of his comedies, be said to distract the interest of the reader. Both these tragedies are noble works, though the relative popularity of the subject has perhaps secured the preference to Catiline. Yet this play and its predecessor were alike too manifestly intended by their author to court the good will of what he calls the "extraordinary" reader. It is difficult to imagine that (with the aid of judicious shortenings) either could altogether miss its effect on the stage; but, while Shakespeare causes us to forget, Jonson seems to wish us to remember, his authorities. The half is often greater than the whole; and Jonson, like all dramatists and, it might be said, all novelists in similar cases, has had to pay the penalty incurred by too obvious a desire to underline the learning of the author.

Perversity—or would-be originality—alone could declare Jonson's tragedy preferable to his comedy. Even if the revolution which he created in the latter branch of the drama had been mistaken in its principles or unsatisfactory in its results, it would be clear that the strength of his dramatic genius lay in the power of depicting a great variety of characters, and that in comedy alone he succeeded in finding a wide field for the exercise of this power. There may have been no very original or very profound discovery in the idea which he illustrated in Every Man in his Humour, and, as it were, technically elaborated in Every Man out of his Humour,—that in many men one quality is observable which so possesses them as to draw the whole of their individualities one way, and that this phenomenon "may be truly said to be a humour." But by refusing to apply this term to a mere peculiarity or affectation of manners, and restricting its use to actual or implied differences or distinctions of character, he broadened the whole basis of English comedy after his fashion, as at a later date did that of French after his. It does not of course follow that Jonson's disciples, the Bromes and the Cartwrights, always adequately reproduced the master's conception of "humorous" comedy. Jonson's wide and various reading helped him to diversify the application of his theory, while perhaps at times it led him into too remote illustrations of it. Still, Captain Bobadil and Captain Tucca, Macilente and Fungoso, Volpone and Mosca, and a goodly number of other characters commend themselves readily as well as distinctly enough to the memory of those who have once made their acquaintance. It is a very futile criticism to condemn Jonson's characters as a mere series of types of general ideas; on the other hand, it is a very sound criticism to object, as Barry Cornwall does, to the "multitude of characters who throw no light upon the story, and lend no interest to it, occupying space that had better have been bestowed upon the principal agents of the plot."

In the construction of plots, as in most other respects, Jonson's at once conscientious and vigorous mind led him in the direction of originality; he depended to a far less degree than the greater part of his contemporaries (Shakespeare with the rest) upon borrowed plots. But either his inventive character was occasionally at fault in this respect, or his devotion (so to speak) to his characters often diverted his attention from a brisk conduct of his plot. The writer just quoted has directed attention to the essential likeness in the plot of two of Jonson's best comedies, Volpone and The Alchemist, and another critic, unsurpassed in his delicate appreciation of the relations between the drama and the stage,—Mr W. Bodham Donne,—has dwelt on the difficulty which, in The Poetaster and elsewhere, Ben Jonson seems to experience in sustaining the promise of his actions. The Poetaster is, however, a play sui generis, in which the real business can hardly be said to begin till the last act.

Dryden, when criticizing Ben Jonson's comedies in a superfine vein, which (to do him justice) he very rarely indulged, thought fit, while allowing the old master humour and incontestable "pleasantness," to deny him wit and those ornaments thereof which Quintilian reckons up under the terms urbana, salsa, faceta, and so forth. Such wit as Dryden has in view is the mere outward fashion or style of the day, the euphuism or "sheerwit" or chic which is the creed of the Fastidious Brisks and of their crafty purveyors at any given moment. In this Ben Jonson was no doubt defective; for he was too accurate an observer of men and manners to be himself a man of fashion, literary or otherwise. But it would be an error to suppose him, as a comic dramatist, to have stood towards the world around him in the attitude of a philosopher, careless of mere transient externalisms. It is said that the scene of his Every Man in his Humour was originally laid near Florence; and his Volpone, which is perhaps the darkest social picture ever drawn by him, plays at Venice. But the atmosphere of his comedies, wherever they may be supposed to play, is familiar enough to any one fairly acquainted with the native surroundings amidst which they were produced; and Ben Jonson's times live for us in his men and women, his country gulls and town gulls, his alchemists and exorcists, his "skeldring" captains and whining Puritans, and the whole ragamuffin rout of his Bartholomew Fair, the comedy par excellence of Elizabethan low life. After he had described the pastimes, fashionable and unfashionable, of his age, its feeble superstitions and its flaunting naughtinesses, its vapouring affectations and its lying effronteries, with an odour as of "divine tabacco" pervading the whole, little might seem to be left to describe for his "sons" and successors. Enough, however, remained; only that his followers speedily again threw manners and "humours" into one undistinguishable medley.

The gift which both in his art and in his life Jonson lacked was that of exercising the influence or creating the effects which he wished to exercise or create without the appearance of consciousness. Instead of this, influenced no doubt by the example of the free relations between author and public permitted by Attic comedy, he resorted again and again, from Every Man out of his Humour to The Magnetic Lady, to sundry devices of inductions and commentatory intermezzos and appendices, which, though occasionally effective by the excellence of their execution, are to be regretted as introducing into his dramas an exotic and often vexatious element. A man of letters to the very core, he never quite understood that there is and ought to be a wide difference between the world of letters and the world of the theatre.

The richness and versatility of Jonson's genius will never be fully appreciated by those who fail to acquaint themselves with what is preserved to us of his "masks" and cognate entertainments. He was conscious enough of his success in this direction—"next himself," he said, "only Fletcher and Chapman could write a mask." He introduced, or at least established, the ingenious innovation of the anti-mask, which Schlegel has described as a species of "parody added by the poet to his device, and usually prefixed to the serious entry," and which accordingly supplies a grotesque antidote to the often extravagantly imaginative main conception. Jonson's learning, creative power, and humorous ingenuity—combined, it should not be forgotten, with a genuine lyrical gift—all found abundant opportunities for displaying themselves in these productions. Though a growth of foreign origin, the mask was by him thoroughly domesticated in the high places of English literature. He lived long enough to see the species produce its poetic