Rome -- History -- Tiberius, 14-37 -- Drama; Sejanus, Lucius Aelius, -31 -- Drama; Tragedies (Drama)
Jonson died, August 6, 1637, and a second folio of his works, which he
had been some time gathering, was printed in 1640, bearing in its
various parts dates ranging from 1630 to 1642. It included all the
plays mentioned in the foregoing paragraphs, excepting “The Case is
Altered;” the masques, some fifteen, that date between 1617 and 1630;
another collection of lyrics and occasional poetry called “Underwoods,
including some further entertainments; a translation of “Horace’s Art
of Poetry” (also published in a vicesimo quarto in 1640), and certain
fragments and ingatherings which the poet would hardly have included
himself. These last comprise the fragment (less than seventy lines) of
a tragedy called “Mortimer his Fall,” and three acts of a pastoral
drama of much beauty and poetic spirit, “The Sad Shepherd.” There is
also the exceedingly interesting ‘English Grammar’ “made by Ben Jonson
for the benefit of all strangers out of his observation of the English
language now spoken and in use,” in Latin and English; and ‘Timber, or
discoveries’ “made upon men and matter as they have flowed out of his
daily reading, or had their reflux to his peculiar notion of the
times.” The ‘Discoveries’, as it is usually called, is a commonplace
book such as many literary men have kept, in which their reading was
chronicled, passages that took their fancy translated or transcribed,
and their passing opinions noted. Many passage of Jonson’s
‘Discoveries’ are literal translations from the authors he chanced to
be reading, with the reference, noted or not, as the accident of the
moment prescribed. At times he follows the line of Macchiavelli’s
argument as to the nature and conduct of princes; at others he
clarifies his own conception of poetry and poets by recourse to
Aristotle. He finds a choice paragraph on eloquence in Seneca the elder
and applies it to his own recollection of Bacon’s power as an orator;
and another on facile and ready genius, and translates it, adapting it
to his recollection of his fellow-playwright, Shakespeare. To call such
passages—which Jonson never intended for publication—plagiarism, is to
obscure the significance of words. To disparage his memory by citing
them is a preposterous use of scholarship. Jonson’s prose, both in his
dramas, in the descriptive comments of his masques, and in the
‘Discoveries’, is characterised by clarity and vigorous directness, nor
is it wanting in a fine sense of form or in the subtler graces of
diction.
When Jonson died there was a project for a handsome monument to his
memory. But the Civil War was at hand, and the project failed. A
memorial, not insufficient, was carved on the stone covering his grave
in one of the aisles of Westminster Abbey:
“O rare Ben Jonson.”
FELIX E. SCHELLING.
THE COLLEGE, PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.
COMPLETE LIST OF HIS PUBLISHED WORKS:—
DRAMAS. —
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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