THE BEST PLAYS OF BEN JONSON.*

THE recent addition, by a new publisher, of a volume of Ben Jonson to the " Mermaid" series will have been a pleasant surprise to many who were grieving over what they supposed to be its abrupt and premature end. It is to be hoped that all the volumes long since so temptingly set forth by Mr.. Unwin's predecessor as "in preparation" will yet see the light, for if there be a more fascinating series of reprints, in an age when reprints abound, we know it not ; and if litera- ture at once cheap, excellent, and worthily printed and edited deserves success, that of the " Mermaid "dramatists should be pre-eminent. Though "rare "Ben Jonson's works are less rare than those of most of hie fel]ov, and the whole can be obtained at no great cost, no one would wish them to be excluded from such a series as the present one ; and, indeed, the admirable introduction to the selected plays and cdpious annotations would alone suffice to justify the right of existence of the volume before us.

The rich humour and caustic satire, the strong interest and abiding charm, the prodigious intellectual power, equable workmanship, and satisfying completeness of Jonson's greatest dramas considered, it has always been a matter of surprise to the present writer that their praises have been but coldly said by the majority of English critics of the present century; and that it should have been reserved for a foreign. writer to pronounce Volpone "sublime," and declare that Jonson, " whatever _hie faults, was never little or dull." Not many readers, we fear, would endorse either of these verdicts,. reasonable and well-considered as they are ; and neither Vol- pone nor The Alchemist is likely to find much favour with lovers of light rather than of solid literature, and of the modern hybrid rather than the older legitimate drama. Yet these two comedies hold almost as unique a position as the great tragedies of Shakespeare themselves, and, next to them,. —so far, at least, as our own dramatic poetry is concerned,— best deserve and will best repay attentive study. Just as surely as Congreve is the wittiest of English comic dramatists, so surely is Jonson the most purely humorous and satiric, and pro- bably no play has in its representation provoked in ore hearty and inextinguishable laughter, or exposed charlatanism and ignor- ant credulity to more merciless ridicule and contempt, than The Alchemist. And though it must be admitted that the art revealed in this and other masterpieces of it author is far leas high and profound than that of Shakespeare, it is indubitably superior to that of any other contemporary dramatist ; while for originality of plot Jonson stands alone among his fellows, and rivals Lope and Calderon themselves. It is not, however, to be denied that, apart from comedy pure and simple, his genius shows to far less advantage than that of many of his smaller brethren, and reveals some curious. and, for a tragic or semi-tragic poet, serious limitations,— such, too, as were somewhat unusual in that age of high and passionate thought and gorgeous or sombre imaginings.. Jonson has absolutely no command over the deeper rassions, his leftiest scenes exciting neither terror nor pity ; his imagery has nothing of the wild luxuriance and witching confusion so characteristic of the imagery of the most successful dramatic poetry of his period. There is no romance of incident or situation anywhere, except, perhaps, in the unfinished Sad The Best Plays of the Oh a Dramatists: Ben Jonson. Edited by Briuslev Nicholson. M.D., with au Introduction by C. K lierford. 3 vols. Vol, I.. Lender: : T. Fisher Unwin, Now York: Charles Scribner's Bons. Shepherd. The wayward beauty of diction, the abandon and subtle melodies Of conternporary playwrights, intellectually

so far below himself, are alikeloreign to his verse, even when gravest or most tender. He does not, like Webster, Tourneur, and others, confront with gaze sometimes sombre or despair- ing, sometimes angry, but always unquailing, "the cloud of mortal destiny." He is troubled by no "obstinate question. ings ; " and though he recognises that desert is seldom rewarded, and resents it bitterly enough, he evinces no desire to change the whole order of things ; nor does he—a prevalent fashion then as now—arraign Providence, but in humbler wise than many who called him "proud" and " arrogant," says, in the midst of penury and disappoint- ment,— " If Thou hadst not Been stern to me.

But left me free, I had forgot Myself and Thee."

Even his humour is not of that delicate kind which is so closely allied to pathos, but broad and boisterous like that of Fielding or Smollett; and, as with them, his best comic effects are not unfrequently produced by exaggeration and caricature. He is a master of the figurative language which belongs to humour rather than to poetry, his works abounding in humorous imagery and compound epithet, mirth-provoking always, and often coarse, though never lewd. He cannot be called a winsome writer, and will be likely to disappoint the lover of " purple patches," but his verse is remark- ably even, compact, and yet free from monotony. He is the most uniformly robust and masculine writer of a

singularly robust and masculine age. His strong common- sense closely allies him with Chaucer and Scott, and he succeeds at least as well in the delineation of well-balanced natures, shrewd and kindly men such as the Justice Clement of Every Man in his Humour, and the Love-wit of The Alchemist who can be tolerant of small rogueries on the part of their dependents or inferiors when any wit or ingenuity is mani- fested, as he is in the delineation of mere " whose idiosyncrasies or " humours " are popularly supposed to constitute the sole interest of his best-known pieces. His most successful characters cannot indeed be said to have the superabundant vitality and complexity of those of still greater masters than himself, and some of his personages,—those, for instance, in Every Man out of his Humour, Cynthia's Bevels, and the later plays,—are shadowy enough ; but others, and

those not a few, strike us, in spite of what has been said to the contrary, as being very real indeed, though it may be true

that they are known to us chiefly by their oddities or " humours," for these humours are certainly clothed in as substantial flesh and blood as are the abstract qualities of character so vividly and dramatically presented to us in The Pilgrim's Progress. Not many of those whom we meet in daily life seem more real to us than Downright and Kitely, Captain Bobadil and Master Stephen, Volpone, Mosca, Corbaccio and Morose, Subtle, Face, and Dol Common, Dapper, Surly, and Kastrill, Humphrey Waspe, Overdo, Troubleall, and Dame Ursula, or others that might be named, characters all of them "kept so skilfully apart" (to adopt the language of Steele, the best critic of his age, in writing of The Fox), "every sentiment being peculiar to him [or her] who utters it, that it seems prodigious their discourses should rise from the invention of the same author."

Though Jonson's great comedies have long been banished from our stage, there is abundant evidence that they were in

their day,—and that no brief one,—aa effective acting plays as any produced by his rivals. In the age we call" Eliza- bethan," their popularity never waned, and they were revived with great success at the Restoration. Pepys, whose Diary, no doubt, faithfully reflects the views of the average playgoer of the latter period, writes, after witnessing a performance of Bartholomew Fair, "The best comedy in the world, I believe ;" and subsequently of Volpone, "A most excellent play ; the best I think J. ever saw, and well acted." Steele, writing at a much later date, is no less enthusiastic, expressing "wonder that the modern writers do not use their interest in the house to suppress the representation of The Fox," adding, as a reason, that "a man that has been at this will hardly like any other play during the season." The revival of The Alchemist is similarly welcomed, Steele declaring that "the scene in the fourth ad, where all the cheated people oppose the man that would open their eyes, has something in it so inimitably excellent that it is certainly as great a masterpiece as has ever appeared by any hand." During the latter half of the eighteenth century, and the earlier portion of the nineteenth, the performances were less frequent, and the plays were only presented in a mutilated form ; even The Alchemist, the most perfect of them, being degraded into The Tobacconist, and very soon,—for such mutilation is 'usually followed by complete

suppression,—our boards knew no more either this or any other comedy of Jonson.

A writer so free from inequalities of composition as " rare Ben" is not well represented by quotation or selection, and those who cannot be persuaded to read a complete play will never know his charm. A not unfavourable example, however,. of his keenly-satirical power and the character of his blank verse may be found in the speech of the pastor, Tribulation Wholesome, apologising for Subtle's eccentricities of temper, in the opening of the third act of The Alchemist :— "The children of perdition are of ttimes Made instruments even of the greatest works : Besides, we should give somewhat to man's nature, The place he lives in, still about the fire, And fume of metals, that intoxicate

The brain of man, and make him prone to passion. Where have you greater atheists than your cooks? Or more profane or choleric than your glass-men? More anti-Christian than your bell-founders? What makes the devil so devilish, I would ask you, Sather', our common enemy, but his being Perpetually about the fire, and boiling

Brimstone and arsenic? We must give, I say, Unto the motives, and the stirrers-up

Of humours in the blood. It may be so, When as the work is done, the stone is made, This heat of his may turn into a zeal,

And stand up for the beauteous discipline, Against the menstruous cloth and rag of liome. We must await his calling, and the coming Of the good spirit."

Pathos, as we have hinted, was not our author's forte, being no element in his most telling scenes, yet he has more than such writers as Massinger or Dryden, and there is un- questionably something of the pathetic in the situation and character of Celia in The Fox, and still more in those of Pennyboy Canter in that fine and striking play, The Staple of ' News. Among the most moving of Jonson's lines are cer- tainly those in the first scene of the fourth act of that play, in which poor old Pennyboy says of himself :—

"Nothing. I sir, I am a wretch, a beggar. She the fortunate

Can want no kindred; we the poor know none."

The excellence of Jonson's prose, both in his dramas and his Discoveries, is, at least, as remarkable as his other gifts, and he is easily first among the critics of his age. His well- known poetic eulogy of his dead friend Shakespeare still remains, to our thinking, the best and most complete of all panegyrics, contrasting strangely with the cold and inade- quate praises of our greatest bard by his friend Drayton, and his disciple Webster, from whom we might have expected a greater degree of insight ; and equally so with the language- of a well-approved master of finished commonplace of our own century, who, as though the sprat should own Leviathan to be no inconsiderable fish, condescendingly remarks that Shakespeare was un barbaro che non era privo d'ingegno.

The present volume contains three plays, Every Man in Rig, Humour, Every Man out of His Humour, and The Poetaster. The first and last certainly rank among Jonson's successes,. but the very greatest of his plays have yet to appear.