CHAPTER V.
PATRONAGE OF THE DRAMA BY CHARLES AND THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM--MASSINGER--BEN JONSON--THEIR CONNECTION WITH THE COURT, AND WITH THE DUKE.
CHAPTER V.
After considering the benefits conferred by Charles I. and his favourite on art, and detailing their patronage of eminent masters, one turns, naturally, to the literature of the day, and more especially--as subsidiary to music and painting--to the drama.
The accession of James I. opened fairer prospects to dramatists than they had enjoyed in the days of Elizabeth, who paid as grudgingly for her amusements as for the services of her statesmen. To her “Master of the bears and dogs” she assigned a salary of a farthing a day only.[[177]] Yet the office was sometimes held by a Knight; and, during the “princely pleasures of Kenilworth,” of which bear-baiting formed a prominent feature, by no less opulent a person than Edward Alleyn, the actor, and founder of Dulwich College. Little but honour, therefore, had accrued, in the time of Elizabeth, to poets and play-writers; and the struggling authors were obliged to have recourse to a more liberal patronage than that of the Court--until James I., somewhat “of a poet, but more of a scholar,” promoted, with an extravagant zeal, the diversions which his taste disposed him to enjoy. Plays, which his predecessor had deemed likely to draw her younger subjects from the manlier recreations of bear-baiting and hunting, were patronized in high quarters, and were henceforth the fashionable diversions notwithstanding the invectives of the Puritans, both of the Court, and in the provincial castles of the nobility at a distance from London.
Independently of the delights of the masque, which comprised both music, dancing, and poetry, there were pleasures to be found in the drama which accorded with the tendencies and failings of that period.
It was an age of personality, a disposition to which existed as strongly in the unrefined court of James, and even among his northern retainers, as in the brilliant galleries of Versailles, encouraged by Louis XIV., and led by the dangerous and witty St. Simon. “The great eye of the world,” says an able writer, “was not then, any more than now, so intent on things and principles as not to have a corner for the infirmities of individuals.”[[178]] Wilson, Weldon, Winwood, Osborne, Peyton, Sanderson, circulated what were in many instances fabrications about the higher classes; whilst the crimes and absurdities of the lower orders were celebrated by the ballad-mongers, or dramatized for the stage. Many of those ballads transmitted to us, which were exempted from the fate of “damn’d ditties,” were founded on authentic domestic tragedies, the actors in which have long since passed into oblivion. The ballad, which afforded the multitude a pleasing insight into the fact that their superiors were no better than themselves, was the most popular literature of the day. Sung to doleful tunes, with a nasal twang, they called forth the satire of the dramatist, who aimed at a higher species of personality, and who deprecated these, often scurrilous, productions; which were, at length, checked in the time of Swift by the imposition of a penny stamp on every loose sheet. The ballad was a source of dread to the tavern bully, whose iniquities it exposed.
“If I have not ballads made of you all, and sung to filthy tunes, may this cup of sack be my poison,” says Falstaff.
“Now shall have we damnable ballads out against us,
Most wicked madrigals.”
Humorous Lieutenant.
Whilst the attention of society was not altogether fixed on exalted members only, it was found difficult to restrain satire, and even calumny, from introducing living characters on the stage, and from depicting them with hateful qualities, and in invidious situations.
In vain did the Master of the Revels, who was under the peculiar influence of the Court, endeavour to control the disposition to personality which characterized even many of the plays acted before James I. and his son. In these compositions the public acquired that insight into conduct and peculiarities which is now derived from periodical papers, or from diaries, letters, and autobiographies, in which our age is especially fertile.
Amongst the dramatists of James and Charles’s reigns, we may take, as the most remarkable, Philip Massinger, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and John Ford, the greater part of whose works were produced during the life of King James and of Charles I. and II.
The biography of each of these celebrated men elucidates much of the manners and temper of the times, and their history comprises that of this species of literature during the commencement and middle of the seventeenth century.
Philip Massinger was the son of Arthur Massinger, a retainer in the household of the Earl of Pembroke. A retainer was often a gentleman of good birth but small means, and this was probably the condition of Arthur Massinger, who, from his carrying letters from his master, the Earl, to Queen Elizabeth, could not have been a man of low origin, else he would not have been admitted to the honour of conveying any dispatch to one who placed so much importance on lineage in those who entered her presence. That custom was still in force, which surrounded a nobleman, not with menials, but with a middle-class of bondmen, who thought service no degradation. It was esteemed a turn of fortune when a youth of gentle birth could be introduced into some noble house, to learn therein politeness, chivalrous attention to ladies, and to imbibe, from example and precept, that loyalty which was then considered a sort of virtue. The education and training of a page is now confined to royal courts; but there were, in England, in those days of the Tudors and Stuarts, many minor courts, which exacted, in miniature, the duties and service that existed in the palaces of the monarch. And of those stately and wealthy patrons, none were more respected than the Herberts, Earls of Pembroke, to whom Arthur Massinger wrote himself “Bondman.”
That wholesome discipline which it is difficult in our own time for a parent to preserve over his family was maintained to the advantage of a page who rose from a lowly to a confidential situation. Massinger’s lines in the “New Way to Pay Old Debts” refer to the subjection under which the youth groaned, but to which the matured actors on this world’s stage looked back with gratitude:--
“Art thou scarce manumised from the porter’s lodge,
And now sworn servant to the pantofle,
And darest thou dream of marriage?”
New Way to Pay Old Debts.
Yet in this servitude the father of Philip Massinger lived and died. These grand establishments, in which the noble head saw around him none but persons of gentle blood and breeding, would long since have ceased to be congenial, even if they still existed, to the English notions of independence, by which servitude is confounded with slavery. But they had this advantage--the son of a retainer was supposed to have a claim on the illustrious noble, who estimated his father’s fidelity and offices; and that this was the case with Philip Massinger, might seem probable from the advantages of education which he was enabled to derive; and the value of which he had learned to appreciate, in the proximity to the really noble and intellectual family of Herbert. It appears from Philip Massinger’s dedication of the “Bondman,” that he never had any personal communication with Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery; but that is no proof that he may not have been indebted for the advantage of a university education to the far more intellectual and estimable Henry, Earl of Pembroke, his father’s patron, as appears from the following passage in the dedication of the “Bondman” to the Earl of Montgomery:--
“However, I could never arrive at the happiness to be made known to your lordship; yet a desire born with me, to make a tender of all duties and service to the noble family of the Herberts, descended to me as an inheritance from my dead father, Arthur Massinger. Many years he happily spent in the service of your honourable house, and died a servant in it, leaving his to be ever most glad and ready to be at the command of all such as derive themselves from his most honoured master, your lordship’s most honoured father.”[[179]]
It would be agreeable to reflect that Massinger had passed his childhood and youth, partly at all events, in the classical region of Wilton Castle, which Sir Philip Sidney had almost sanctified to the Muses by his presence, and whence he had issued forth on that expedition in which he died a hero’s death. But those were not the days in which the childhood and youth of celebrated men were recorded, and of Massinger’s not a trace remained. We only guess at the early influences which formed his imaginative, yet vigorous mind. We only conjecture that his taste was directed to poetry by the taste of those whom he must have learned first to respect. We are not sure, yet we are glad to believe, that whilst his mind took on afterwards the impressions of the age in which he lived, it was in earliest youth incited by the author of the “Arcadia,” and by the acquirements of her to whom that poem was dedicated, to culture and exercise, until circumstances brought its powers into full activity.
The dedication of the “Bondman” was written in 1624; and whilst it shews that the poet had never seen Philip, Earl of Montgomery, it does not follow, as has been stated, that he was not reared at Wilton during the life-time of Henry, Earl of Pembroke, the “noble father” of Philip, who, as a younger son, was created Earl of Montgomery, and long known by that title only. Henry, who was succeeded by his eldest son, the second Earl of Pembroke, died in 1600; and since Massinger was born in 1584, it is extremely probable that he passed his childhood at Wilton, although, in compliance with the custom of the age, he was probably sent out to nurse. Even the name of his mother is unknown. Few authors of so much merit as Massinger have been, as Hartley Coleridge observes, “so little noticed by contemporaries;” and none so soon forgotten by succeeding times.
There can, however, be but little doubt that Philip Massinger imbibed at Wilton that value for letters which is so soon caught by children from the society of the intellectual; and that a gentler influence than that of Earl Henry stimulated the natural inclinations of his mind. A learned education for women of rank was in vogue for nearly a century after the Reformation: with Protestantism came in the notion that the female understanding was worthy of high cultivation; and our earliest and most superior women, in those times, were prepared for their important part in life by a sound and almost masculine training. Witness the learning of Lady Jane Grey, of Queen Elizabeth, of Joanna, Lady Abergavenny, whom Walpole believes to have been the “foundress of that noble school of female learning, of which (with herself) there were,” he says, “no less than four authoresses in the three descents.”[[180]] Among the learned and the virtuous none was more esteemed in her time than Mary, the sister of Sir Philip Sidney, and the third wife of Henry, Earl of Pembroke, the son of Arthur Massinger’s patron. She was one of those ornaments of her age who added lustre to her station without forfeiting one feminine attribute. What was then called a “polite education” comprised not only the acquisition of light literature, but that also of classical learning. From her mother, Lady Mary Dudley, this admirable woman inherited a noble and congenial spirit; from her father, Sir Henry Sidney, surpassing abilities, moral excellencies, enlarged views, generous motives. That father, superior to the venal courtiers of his time, spent his whole fortune in his endeavours to benefit Ireland and Wales, of the affairs of which he held the administration. In her brother, Sir Philip Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke found a companion in all her pursuits, as well as in affection. Hence, as Spenser wrote, their minds grew in unison:--
“The gentlest shepherdess that liv’d that day,
And most resembling, both in shape and spirit,
Her brother dear.”
In conjunction with him, this gifted woman is said to have translated the Psalms;[[181]] of which effort Daniel says:--
“Those hymns which thou dost consecrate to Heaven,
Which Israel’s singer to his God did frame,
Unto thy voyage eternity hath given,
And makes thee dear to Him from whence they came.”
Several of these are extant; one of them was published in the Guardian;[[182]] and it corresponds with a Psalm printed in the “Nugæ Antiquæ” as the Countess of Pembroke’s.[[183]] It has been regretted that these productions are not authorized to be sung in churches; for the present version, Mr. Hartley Coleridge remarks, “is a disgrace and a mischief to the establishment.” These translations are preserved in the library at Wilton.
The Countess was residing there when the “Discourse of Life and Death,” by Mornay, which she translated from the French, was printed. This was in 1590, when Philip Massinger was six years of age. She survived until 1621; and, since she extended her patronage both to arts and letters, it is probable that she not only befriended Ben Jonson, but that she encouraged and assisted the struggling dramatist, whose father had been so favoured or retained in her husband’s house. Ben Jonson’s well-known lines on her tomb have challenged various criticisms. Whilst by some they are deemed a tribute “which have never been exceeded in the records of monumental praise,”[[184]] by another critic they are considered “too hyperbolical, too clever, and too conceited to be inscribed on a Christian’s tomb.”[[185]]
“Underneath this marble hearse
Lies the subject of all verse--
Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother;
Death, ere thou canst find another,
Learned, and fair, and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.”
At all events, Massinger imbibed from his father’s connection with the Herbert family, one taste--that for theatricals. Amongst the retinue of the great peer, was a company of itinerant performers, “the Earl of Pembroke’s players;” and though the childhood of Massinger is indeed a blank, it maybe inferred that the attractions of the theatre, or rather of the hall, in which that portion of the Earl’s household must have been frequently occupied, were such as to fascinate a boy of an imaginative turn of mind. He is stated to have been shy, melancholy, retiring, and studious; that he received a classical education, as a boy, is also stated; but when that education was received, who directed that thoughtful and dreamy mind to poetry, or how he, who was evidently designed for a scholastic career, should have devoted himself to the profession of a play-writer, does not appear to have been ascertained, even by the indefatigable Gilford.
But it was an age of great mental energy, and there was sufficient in the rich harvest won by Shakspeare, or in the rare delights afforded by his works, to account for the direction of young Massinger’s genius.
It has been conjectured, also, that he acted occasionally in those plays the parts of which were then usually sustained by boys: of this there remains not a single proof, and nothing is certain, in so far as the events of his youth are concerned, except that he was entered at St. Alban’s Hall, Oxford, in 1601-2.
It must not be supposed that this fact at all implied what in the present day it might appear to indicate. It did not follow that Massinger was to enter one of the learned professions, because he became a commoner in that small, ancient society of St. Alban’s Hall; nor was it a proof that the young man had parents who were in affluent circumstances, as a University career now seems to imply. Oxford was then a place for cheap education, and many of the “poor scholars” at the various colleges underwent, as Strype shews us, great hardships. On the other hand, it was not uncommon for the profession of letters to be in those days a man’s only calling; and an academical training was his best commencement in that arduous course, since a certain display of erudition was undoubtedly one of the characteristics of the period.
The exhibition to college was, according to Anthony Wood, given to Massinger by the Earl of Pembroke; but others allege that Massinger derived the means of subsistence at Oxford from his father.
In those schools, where a man for the first, and perhaps for the only, time in his existence, frames his own success, independently of the patronage of others--in those schools, famed for strict impartiality, and where the battle is really to the strong--Massinger, nevertheless, did not appear. He left Oxford without taking his degree; for he had made the mistake, fatal to a poor man, who has to rest upon the endowments of that grand old university for his support, of not adopting the studies which the university prescribes to the exclusion of others. It was, indeed, a sin in the eyes of that zealous antiquary, whose tomb, in a corner of the anti-chapel of Merton College, is so often overlooked, save by those who honour his labours, and who view his merits, thus enshrined, with regretful reverence--that he gave his mind, as Anthony Wood tells us, “more to poetry or romance, for about four years or more, than to logic and philosophy, which he ought to have done, as he was patronized to that end.”
He adds, without further comment than this, “that, being sufficiently famed for several specimens of wit, he betook himself to writing plays.” Massinger left Oxford in 1606--he was then twenty-two years of age.
For some time his history is again a blank, and his exertions and struggles, whatever they may have been, fell upon a serious, religious, thoughtful temperament, devoid of the elasticity with which Shakespeare fought and conquered the trials of fate. Play-writing was, at that time, almost the only means by which ready money could be obtained, and had the patronage of the Court in full activity, when Massinger cast himself into his future and only career. James I., soon after his accession, licensed the company of players who had hitherto been styled the “Lord Chamberlain’s,” but who were henceforth to be called "the King’s servants"--amongst whom were Shakspeare, Burbage, Heminge, and others. Queen Anne adopted the “Earl of Worcester’s company,” and Prince Henry that of the Earl of Nottingham, the hero of the “Armada.” The Court, and even provincial nobles and gentry, although Protestantized, kept, with as scrupulous attention as ever, the great feasts of the Church; and on these, as in former times a mystery or morality was given, so now a play was often performed. “The stage,” says Hartley Coleridge, “was evoking and realizing the finest imaginations of the strongest intellects.”
Whether Massinger ever acted or not, is as doubtful as every other incident of his early life. It was not until 1614 that a glimmering of his actual condition in life is seen through the darkness, and the disclosure is melancholy and discouraging. There is something touching, as well as dreary, in the gloom that one can only diversify with scenes of penury and imprisonment for debt. At last the light breaks out; and, in the words of the following appeal, the history of some years of disappointment is disclosed:--[[186]]
"To our most loving friend, Mr. Philip Hinchlow, Esquire, these,--
“Mr. Hinchlow--You understand our unfortunate extremitye, and I doe not thinke you so void of cristianitee but that you would throw so much money into the Thames as wee request now of you, rather than endanger so many innocent lives. You know there is Xl. more at least to be receaved of you for the play. We desire you to lend us Vl. of that; which shall be allowed to you, without which we cannot be bayled nor I play any more till this be dispatch’d. It will lose you XXl. ere the end of the next weeke, besides the hindrance of the next new play. Pray, sir, consider our cases with humanity, and now give us cause to acknowledge you our true friend in time of neede. Wee have entreated Mr. Davison to deliver this note, as well as witness your love as our promises and always acknowledgement to be ever your most thankful and loving friends,[[187]]
”Philip Massinger.
“R. Davison.
”Nat. Field."
This letter is the only one with the signature of Philip Massinger extant. It was addressed to a pawnbroker--such was Philip Hinchlow, who, besides exercising that ancient profession, was also engaged in theatrical speculations, his advances being chiefly made upon the wearing apparel and properties, of which he acquired a large portion in this way. “A comfortable sort of person,” remarks Hartley Coleridge, “for three poets to be obliged to.” Especially when they, as it were, pledged to him the labour of their brains; and that when they were either already in prison, or afraid of that crisis in their miserable destiny. Nathaniel Field, the writer of this letter, was Massinger’s partner in the production of the “Fatal Dowry;” he had a share in the Globe and Blackfriar’s Theatres, in conjunction with Burbage, the original Richard III., Hamlet, and Othello; and with Lowin, the original Falstaff. Field was also an actor, and he performed in Ben Jonson’s masque, “Cynthia’s Revels,” in 1600, when he appeared as one of the children of the Queen’s chapel. Robert Daborne was a man of good descent, a scholar and a clergyman, although the author of several plays; nor was he the only clerical dramatist in an age which was, indeed, "not an innocent one"--for Cartwright, also a play-writer, was a divine, and, as Fuller states, “a florid and seraphical preacher.”[[188]]
It has been remarked that the “Fatal Dowry” was like the production of a man in debt. Massinger might refer to his own case when he wrote:--
“I will not take
One single piece of this great heap. Why should I
Borrow that I have no means to pay; nay, am
A very bankrupt, even in flattering hope,
Of ever raising any.”
In addition to his poverty, to hard work, and the degradation of debt, Massinger was fully conscious that he had not, in giving up the certainty of a profession, attained a position in society. The dramatist’s occupation was scarcely, in those times, considered a creditable employment.[[189]] By the Puritans it was deemed sinful--by learned men, idle and trifling; and although lawyers and academicians, courtiers and ladies, and even the Queen and Princes of the blood, took the conspicuous parts, there was still a certain disrepute attached to the very instruments by means of which the stage was brought into what is justly called its “palmiest state.”
There were perhaps various reasons for the slow success of Massinger as a dramatist, and for that adverse fate the bitterness of which breaks forth in all his works. The age was Puritan; and he was supposed to have exchanged the Protestant principles with which he had entered Oxford for Romanist opinions--or rather, what we should now term Tractarian. That he may have been, as Mr. Gifford infers, from his leaving Oxford without a degree, a Roman Catholic, is borne out by no fact, although seemingly attested by the subjects of his plays--the “Virgin Martyr,” the “Renegade,” and the “Maid of Honour,” and from some passages in his other dramas. The bare suspicion was enough to make an author unfashionable at the time when the religion of the poet’s ancestors was the object of hatred and terror, and the laws against recusants were in all their hateful force. The plots of Massinger’s plays were, however, almost invariably taken from French or Italian novels, or from old legends, which embodied Romanism, and must, if Protestantized, have assumed the form of satire. Another drawback to Massinger’s popularity was the strong Whiggism which manifested itself in his plays, and which was so greatly at variance with the tone of the Court and of the higher classes during the early part of the reign of James I. He had not the reverence for constituted authority which marked the sentiments of Shakspeare, whilst his devotion to birth (not to rank alone) savoured of the son of the retainer in a great house, where the servant generally is a far greater worshipper of the old descent than the real possessor of the ancient pedigree.[[190]] Thus, whilst this ill-fated man, full of genius, full of virtue, and of a deep sense of religion, was always tempting the slings and arrows of fortune, he was distrusted by the Puritans as a favourer of the Romish faith; he was avoided by the loyal as an enemy to passive obedience; and he must have been regarded with disgust by the rich city merchants and traders, for his contempt for newly-acquired wealth, and his merciless exposition of their assumption, in his dramas.
Massinger, therefore, lived and died in poverty. The language of complaint became habitual to him; he spoke of his despised state with agony--yet his patrons were many and honourable; but he addressed each successively in dedications which were masterpieces of pure English, as his last hope--his dependence on whom “ate into his very soul.” To Sir Robert Wiseman, of Thorrell’s Hall, in Essex, he “freely, and with a zealous thankfulness, acknowledges that for many years he had but faintly subsisted, had he not often tasted of his great bounty.”[[191]] In his dedication of “The Picture” to the noble Society of the Inner Temple, he thanks them, “his honoured and selected friends,” for their “frequent bounties.” He lived upon presents; and of the comforts of a certain income he had not, probably, even one year’s experience. It is impossible to think of such a career without pain--starving one day, repulsed with condescension from the halls of the rich, another. He has depicted feelingly, indeed, the gentleman reduced to penury, in the “New Way to Pay Old Debts,” and the insults heaped on him by over-fed sycophants.
“Overreach (to Wellborn)--
Avaunt, thou beggar!
If ever thou presume to own me more,
I’ll have thee caged and whipp’d.
“Amble (to Wellborn)--
Cannot you stay, to be serv’d among your fellows
From the basket, but you must press into the hall?”
The “basket” contained broken meat, which was placed in the porter’s lodge of great houses, to be distributed to the poor.
So, in the “Fatal Dowry,” Pontalier says to Liladum:--
“Go to the basket, and repent.”
It is with true feeling that Massinger put into the mouth of Wellborn these pleading lines:--
“Scorn me not, good lady!
But, as in form you are angelical,
Imitate the heavenly natures, and vouchsafe
At the least awhile to hear me. You will grant
The blood that runs in this arm is as noble
As that which fills your veins; those costly jewels
And those rich clothes you wear, your men’s observance
And women’s flattery, are in you no virtues;
Nor these rags, with my poverty, in me vices.”
His life, however, was not without its solace. Happily for the literary men of the age, Ralegh had comprehended what is most essential both to mind and body, and in founding the meetings at the Mermaid had provided for the dramatist, poet, and philosopher, suitable relaxation. The place of meeting was at the Mermaid, in Bread Street, Cheapside. Here Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, and many others, enjoyed the rare companionship of Ralegh, during the brief intervals in which he was not either engaged at the Court, or in distant expeditions. Here wit was the current coin of the company; toil was cast aside; “away with melancholy,” was the burden of the guests, who had probably many a care hidden in the core of their hearts. To Shakspeare’s joyous nature, and to the sanguine and then unbroken spirit of Ralegh, the sorrows of the past, the terrors of the future, might easily be forgotten, or suspended over a cup of rich Canary; or, as night drew on, after a beaker of sack-posset. But one may picture to oneself the diffident, yet proud Philip Massinger, in his black doublet and plain white linen collar, with shabby tassels hanging from it, feasting, perhaps, at another man’s expense--trying to shine in these "wit-combats"--trying to forget “the basket,” and to seem prosperous; but, with the remembrance of the five pounds borrowed upon the security of his capital of brains, with a heavy sigh, as the delightful bard of Avon talked of retiring, on his fortune of two hundred a-year, to the quaint old town, his birth-place.
It must, however, have been a delicious opportunity of looking into minds as various as they were original. Beaumont has described the surface:--
“What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid!--heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life ...
... and when that was gone,
We left an air behind us, which alone
Was able to make the two next companies
(Right witty, though but downright fools) more wise.”
A modern writer has compared these meetings to the “Noctes Ambrosianæ.” Happier far the wits of modern days, than the gifted men who, in the time of the Stuarts, were fain to cringe to patrons for their subsistence. None but unsuccessful authors will rail at modern publishers, when they remember the infinite miseries, with few signal exceptions, of those who were unhappy enough to depend on individuals and not on the public, whose will and taste the publisher alone studies.
Intemperance was, in those days, not only the sin of the middle-classes, but that of the Court; and both James and his Queen are said to have indulged in it. Massinger seems to have held what were rare opinions in his time, and to have been an advocate for total abstinence:--
"O take care of wine!
Cold water is far better for your healths,
Of which I am very tender."--The Picture.
He wrote rapidly, and his pen was never idle; yet he lived in miserable poverty. There is no record either that he was married--no indication that, like every other poet, he had an unfortunate or unrequited attachment. His pilgrimage had one solace, that of a fervent religion; which had, probably, much of the superstitions which were mingled, in those early days of Protestantism, with the reformed faith. The Church of England was then “an untrimmed vessel, lurching now towards Rome, and now towards Geneva;” it is therefore no wonder if many of the young, the impassioned, the imaginative, inclined to that form of faith and of worship which wore at least the semblance of venerable seniority.[[192]]
There is not a line in Massinger’s works that can either convict him of Romanism, or stamp him as a Protestant. Like many of his contemporaries, his romantic fancy was captivated by the picturesque ceremonial, the saintly observances, the dramatic services of the Romish Church; and to this was probably added a disgust to that puritanic fervour by which not only the drama--to which there were, in fact, many just exceptions to be made--but all that was enchanting in life, poetry, secular music, revelry (not necessarily corrupting), was condemned as sinful, and all intellectual luxury prohibited and anathematized.
The Herbert family continued to be friends to Massinger--at all events, to lend him the support of their name. He dedicated “The New Way to Pay Old Debts,” the most celebrated of his plays, to Robert, Earl of Carnarvon. “I was born,” he says, “a most devoted servant to the thrice noble family of your incomparable lady, and am most ambitious, though at a proper distance, to be known to your lordship.” Robert, Earl of Carnarvon, who had married the Lady Katherine Herbert, although a friend and favourer of the Muses, and also Grand Falconer of England, is long since forgotten--whilst the poet, who addressed him “at a proper distance,” is remembered with pride and interest.
There was so close an intimacy at one time between the Earl of Pembroke’s family and that of the Duke of Buckingham, that it seems strange that no trace of Massinger’s having been patronized by him are to be discovered. In fact, the annals of Massinger’s life present little except the dates of his works. The eldest son of the unworthy Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, the poet’s chief patron, was married in 1634 to Lady Mary Villiers, then a mere girl. It is true that this alliance was formed six years after Buckingham’s death; but it was probably concerted before that event, after the fashion of the day, in which the infant in the cradle was often affianced by ambitious parents, and the nuptials solemnized at ten or twelve years of age. Charles, Lord Herbert set out on his travels directly after he had married his young wife, and died of small-pox at Florence in 1636. Massinger wrote a poem on his loss, among others, to his little bride:--
“True sorrow fell
With showers of tears--still bathe the widowed bed
Of his dear spouse.”
The elegy, as it has been observed, had better not have been written; and his “dear spouse” very likely at that time preferred balls and revelries to her husband.
It was, however, not impossible that Villiers, to please the Herbert family, may have been the means of introducing Massinger to Charles I., who justly estimated his great merits, and proved a more generous as well as a worthier patron than the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery.
The political tenets of Massinger brought him on one occasion into considerable danger. They were, nevertheless, such as we should now term moderate; but they were irrelevantly introduced into his dramas, at a time when liberalism was almost regarded as next to treason. In 1631, Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, refused to receive a play of Massinger’s because it contained what that functionary called “dangerous matters,” as to the deposing of Sebastian, King of Portugal, and “thereby reflected upon Spain.” Even the name of that piece is unknown, although the Master of the Revels took care that the fee of twenty shillings for reading it over was paid to him. In 1638, when the question of the Ship-money was dividing the nation from the Court, Massinger, unable to control his indignation at the oppressive measures of Charles I., produced another play, called “The King and the Subject,” founded on the history of Don Pedro the Cruel. It contained, amongst other free and bold passages, these lines:--
“Monies? We’ll raise supplies which way we please,
And force you to subscribe to blanks, in which
We’ll mulct you as we shall think fit. The Cæsars
In Rome were wise, acknowledging no laws
But what their swords did ratify--the wives
And daughters of the senators bowing to
Their will as deities----”
It was evident to all who had occasion to peruse the play in manuscript, that Don Pedro was intended for the King. It was submitted, however, to Charles, who was at Newmarket; he read it, and then, in his own hand, marked the objectionable passage, and wrote underneath these words, “This is too insolent; note that the poet make it the speech of a King, Don Pedro, to his subjects.” This is one instance of the kind nature of the often mistaken King, who avoided condemning the play to oblivion.[[193]] That he encouraged Massinger--that he perceived, beneath the bitterness of a struggling man, a noble independence of character, is evident from Massinger’s plays being, in the commencement of that reign, the fashionable representations at Court. A bespeak at Court was the most signal proof of success, and was all that could be desired by an author; and Charles took an opportunity of conferring this benefit on Massinger, when the poet’s feelings had been grievously wounded by the opposition made to “The Emperor of the East,” on its first performance by bespeaking that play.
Massinger recorded his gratitude for the bespeak in a prologue, in which he affirms his chief aim had been to please the King, and the fair Henrietta Maria, in this production:--
“What we now present,
When first conceived in his vote and intent,
Was sacred to your pleasure; in each part
With his best of fancy, judgment, language, art,
Fashioned and formed so as might well, and may,
Deserve a welcome, and no vulgar way.
He durst not, sir, at such a solemn feast,
Lard his grave matter with one scurrilous jest,
But laboured that no passage might appear
But what the Queen, without a blush, might hear.”
In 1633, just after the appearance of Prynne’s “Histriomastix,” Charles ordered the representation of Massinger’s “Guardian” at Whitehall, on Sunday--an unwise act, in the eyes of all; a wrong one in those of most persons, who, without undue prejudice, view the Sabbath not only as a day of holy rest, but as one in which the thoughts and actions should be eminently pure, serene, and devout. We cannot but allow that the Puritans had much reason on their side in condemning this profanation, which was, one can scarcely doubt, instigated by Queen Henrietta, or intended to please her. The plays of Massinger were peculiarly unsuited to the Sabbath, from their grossness.
It is not easy to say what amount of indelicacy the ladies of that period could listen to “without a blush.” Their confusion was, indeed, hidden beneath a black velvet mask. Even eighty or ninety years afterwards, the incomparable Queen Mary, the consort of William III., and her maids of honour, listened, under that protection, to the comedies of an age, perhaps, if possible, still more licentious in its plays than that in which Massinger wrote. Nor was it until the mask was abolished by law that the presence of women was recognized as controlling impropriety. In the reign of Anne, influenced by the correctness of the Court, as well as by the presence of ladies, unexceptionable plays, of loftier tone, by Steele and Addison, were placed on the stage. It is to be hoped that Queen Henrietta scarcely comprehended what she heard in a language of which she knew but little before her arrival in England; or perhaps, with the French notions, that a married woman, however young, may go everywhere and hear everything, even if only just emancipated from a convent or the nursery, she may not have thought herself and her attendants degraded by what they heard.
The Queen’s partiality for Massinger was soon known by another demonstration on her part. On the site of the old Monastery of Blackfriars, which had been signalized by the sitting of the Black Parliament, in the reign of Henry VIII., by the trial of Katharine of Arragon in its hall, and by the condemnation of Wolsey, James Burbage, and his company, known as the Earl of Leicester’s players, had erected a theatre. It was within the precincts, but not the jurisdiction, of the City; and the Lord Mayor, after ejecting Burbage from the City, tried in vain to drive them out of Blackfriars. The Puritan inhabitants of the precincts were also inimical to the playhouse, and petitioned the Lords and Council against its continuance there.[[194]] Nevertheless, Queen Henrietta bespoke “Cleander,” a lost play of Massinger’s, and went to see it acted at Blackfriars. She was justly censured for this imprudence--not, indeed, for her inconsistent patronage of dramas unfit for women to hear or read--a sin which that age perceived not--but for a public attendance at a theatre, on the stage of which the young gallants of the time chose to sit, perched on stools, with tobacco pipes in their mouths--or congregated in twopenny refreshment-rooms, where ale and tobacco were sold.
It does not appear that the patronage of the Court gave permanent independence to Massinger. After the production of his last drama, “The Fair Anchoress of Pausilippo,” his career was over. He latterly lived at the Bankside, a residence probably chosen by him from its vicinity to various theatres--to Blackfriars, from its proximity to Blackfriars Road; to the Globe Theatre, in which Shakespeare[Shakespeare] had a share; to Paris Garden, to the Rose, to the Hope, and the Swan. The Chirk, near the Church of St. Saviour’s, even in the time of Charles I., was the seat of all manner of low dissipation--bear-baiting, among the rest--and consequently of misery and vice. The district was not sanctified even by the holy edifice of St. Saviour’s; that noble church, the finest specimen of the early English style in London, the crypt of which is one of the un-seen sights of the metropolis, having, happily, escaped the restoring hand of some reprehensible churchwardens, who have done their best to spoil the nave, and to reduce it to the level of their own ideas. To his obscure home, near St. Saviour’s, Philip Massinger retired on the evening of the 16th of March, 1639-40, to rest, in his usual health. He was found dead in the morning in his bed. No friendly hand closed his eyes--no kind voice whispered into his ear words of hope and peace in Heaven, of which he had known so little on earth: no record of the mortal disease which thus struck him down--what would be called, in our time, prematurely--has been found. His death was, like his life, a blank. The parish register tells us all that can be told: “March 16, 1639-40.--Buried Philip Massinger, a stranger.” He was followed to the grave by actors, and buried in the churchyard of St. Saviour’s, then called St. Mary Overie, from an old suppressed priory. No stone marked his grave. His funeral was too poor for his remains to be interred within the church, where Lancelot Andrews and Henry Sacheverell preached, and where their bones repose; and where the poet Gower founded a chantry, and erected a tomb. Massinger was interred among the poor and the humble; perhaps his old companions of the playhouse, in after-days, slept, also, near his nameless grave.
His burial cost 2l.--a sum large enough, in those days, to ensure it, in Mr. Gifford’s eyes, a considerable amount of state and ceremony; and the word “stranger,” which grates so painfully on the feelings of those who reverence genius, is said by that authority to be usually affixed to the name of any one not belonging to the parish of St. Saviour. Yet, that his contemporaries put no epitaph on his tomb, that there was nothing but the sod over the cold clay, that no tradition even exists to show where he once lay, seems to prove that the Puritans were in the ascendancy on that sad day when the “stranger” was conveyed to his last home; and that they were meet ancestors of those who have since “restored” the old church, and have cleverly concealed the beauties of its interior.
Massinger had great qualities. He was religious, and of rare honesty and independence; yet his religion did not purify his thoughts, nor tend, consequently, to chasten his productions--and his circumstances wore away his real independence, as his dedications testify. His conceptions of what was noble, of what was virtuous, are beautifully expressed in those plays, which are yet so full of coarseness as to be unpresentable; and whilst he never loses any opportunity of exalting virtue, he seizes every occasion of depraving the taste, if not the mind. In this respect he is far more culpable than Shakspeare; the age had deteriorated: James I. was coarse, and liked coarseness in others; his Court and his amusements all partook of that characteristic, which increased after the old chivalric style had declined. The elegance and purity in the works of Sir Philip Sidney and Spenser were succeeded by coarseness in those of Massinger, Ford, and Ben Jonson. When Massinger ceased to write freely--and, in so doing, to indulge every fancy, fair or foul--he wrote feebly. Of this “The Roman Actor,” to play which he “held to be the most perfect birth of his Minerva,” affords an example. It is free from indelicacy, but presents few of Massinger’s striking excellencies. The plot is bad; the scene in which the character of Paris might have been so powerfully developed, when tempted by Domitian, is poor. The tortures of the senators on the stage, and the appearance of their ghosts afterwards, savours of the love which Massinger had for the horrible--with the delineation of which he seems to have consoled himself for his forbearance in other points. Nevertheless, whilst the secondary characters in “The Roman Actor” are poor and indistinct--whilst those of the primary actors are striking and truthful--the timid tyranny of Domitian, and the ambition of Donitia, are admirably worked out.
The inordinate taste for revolting incidents on the stage was a great feature of the times; the contemporaries of Somerset and his wife were habituated to the excitement of fearful mysteries, of crimes, and sins half-disclosed, yet awful in the dimness of partial discovery. The frequent occurrence of murders, sometimes designedly, “but more often in hasty broils,” in that day, presented subjects which, to us, seem extravagant, but which were highly acceptable to the bravadoes, who, smoking on the stage, brandished their rapiers, and were ready to avenge a quarrel at the sword’s point. In nothing is the difference of manners so marked between those days and these as in the matter of honour. In those times, honour was perpetually in every man’s mouth--personal courage was prominently brought forward; and hence, every play had its braggart or its coward; and, as we see in the works of Beaumont and Fletcher,[[195]] honour had its code, its professional counsel, and its practical paid supporters. But, with this code, this practice, moral courage had little to do; the code of honour drew the main limit of caste, and the burgher and the tradesman were beneath it. So important was it, however, to observe the new code aux ongles, that a manual or grammar of its rules was applied to satisfy the captious on nice points. Thus, when Adorio, in Massinger’s “Maid of Honour,” laments that his honour and reputation should suffer from having taken a blow in public from Caldoro, accompanied with the infamous “mark of coward,” he is referred by Camillo, to whom he pours forth his vexation, to Caranza’s “Grammar” for directions, in much the same manner as a lawyer would quote Lord St. Leonards on a point of law--or travellers call on Murray as their authority.
When Adorio talks of what he “would do” in the matter, Camillo answers:--
“Never think on’t,
Till fitter time and place invite you to it.
I have read Caranza, and find not in his Grammar
Of quarrels that the injured man be bound
To seek for reparation at an hour;
But may, and without loss, till he hath settl’d
More serious occasions that import him.
For a day or two defer it.
Adorio.--You’ll subscribe
Your hand to this?
Camillo.--And justify’t with my life.
Presume upon’t.
Adorio.--On then; you shall o’errule me.”
Women were not let off so easily; happily for them, more was expected from them than from men. Without referring to Caranza, their honour consisted not only in chastity, but in constancy to vows, and resistance to the temptations of wealth; and these attributes were sufficiently rare to make the “Maid of Honour” an exceptional character.[[196]] Massinger, however, assures us that English women, even in those days, asserted a superiority in intellect and character: it is true, they had no opportunity of travelling, and stayed at home; but they learned from their lovers and brothers the customs of those foreign countries which it was then dangerous to traverse.
Most men of rank or fortune, nevertheless, made the “grand tour” before marrying; or left their young betrothed mistresses in their native counties. In the “Guardian,” Calipso says:--
“Why, sir, do gallants travel?
Answer that question; but at their return
With wonder to the hearers to discourse of
The garb and difference in foreign females--
As the lusty girl of France, the sober German,
The plump Dutch frow, the stately dame of Spain.”
It has been asked whether Massinger and Shakspeare ever met?--whether, as Hartley Coleridge inquires, they ever “took a cup of sack together at the Mitre or the Mermaid;” and whether Massinger was ever umpire or bottle-holder in the “wit-combats” described by Fuller? But upon this, as well as on many other points, there is no light. We know not whom Massinger loved, nor whom he hated; we would fain believe, with Coleridge, that his life was not passed without some true affection--a link between passion and virtue; we would willingly believe that, like Tasso, he loved one above him in rank--or one below him--rather than that he had never loved at all. But his works repel the surmise. True love is vehement--but it is delicate; and it would have elevated his thoughts, and purified his expressions. Massinger may have done justice to the intellect and companionship of his countrywomen, but he had no reverence for the most beautiful part of their nature; and in this, as in other respects, is far below Shakspeare.
The obscurity which overshadowed all Massinger’s career has rendered any communication, as we have seen, between him and Buckingham, doubtful; but it was far otherwise in respect to Ben Jonson--whose works are so replete with allusions to the Villiers family, and to their attributes, amusements, and bounties, that no biography of George Villiers can be complete without a more copious reference to the works of this dramatist than can be conveyed in the passing notices which have been given of his masques, in the course of the preceding narrative.[[197]] Ben Jonson was ten years older than Massinger; and was born in 1574. Whether from his surname, or his Christian name, or from his after-life, it is not easy to say, but one generally looks upon Ben Jonson as a man of low birth. But such was not the fact. His grandfather, a man of some family and fortune, was a gentleman in the service of Henry VIII.; his father was in holy orders, “a grave minister of the Gospel.”[[198]]
The family had originally settled at Annandale, in Scotland; but Ben Jonson was born in Westminster. He had the misfortune to come into the world a month after his father’s death. It was, perhaps, a less adverse circumstance that his mother, two years afterwards, married again. Her views were not exalted, and she took for her second husband--tired, it might seem, of the genteel poverty of the cloth--a master-bricklayer. Not even has Fuller, not even has Gifford, been able to ascertain in what part of the suburb of Westminster “Ben” was born. Fuller, however, consoles us; he could not trace the poet in his cradle, but he could “fetch him,” as he observes, in his “short coats.” About two years old, Ben was discovered--that is to say, the haunts of his infancy were--“a little child in Hartshorn Lane, near Charing Cross.”
This neighbourhood was as poor as that of Westminster Abbey; and the parish of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, which then extended to Whitehall on the south, to Marylebone on the north, to the Savoy on the east, and to Chelsea and Kensington on the west, when first rated to the poor in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, contained only two hundred persons sufficiently wealthy to pay those rates.[[199]] It afterwards became the greatest cure in England, until several of its parishes were separated from the patron saint, St. Martin’s.
Here, however, Ben Jonson was brought up--getting such education as he might from a school in the church of St Martin’s. It is stated, however, by Gifford, to have been a “private school.” He might possibly have been one of the private pupils on a foundation school. Some unknown benefactor, however, removed the future poet from St Martin’s, and placed him at St. Peter’s College, Westminster, which was founded by Queen Elizabeth, in 1660--“a public school for grammar, rhetorick,--poetry (which the maiden Queen was too wise to despise) and for the Latin and Greek languages.”
This removal was the visible cause of all Ben Jonson’s eminence. Camden, the historian, was then one of the masters of that school, from whose ranks issued Cowley, George Herbert, Dryden, Churchill, Cowper, Southey, and many others less celebrated. Ben Jonson always retained an affectionate remembrance of Camden’s instructions:--
“Camden, most reverend head, to whom I owe
All that in wits I am, and all I know.”
He dedicated his best play, “Every Man in his Humour,” to Master Camden, “Clarencieux,” ending his dedication thus:--
“Now, I pray you to accept this; such wherein neither the confession of my manners shall make you blush--nor of my studies repent you to have been the instructor; and for the profession of any thankfulness, I am sure it will, with good men, find either praise or excuse, from your true lover, Ben Jonson.”[[200]]
From Westminster, Jonson went to Cambridge, probably to St. John’s; but even of this important fact no certainty exists, for the university register is imperfect, and from 1600 to 1602 there is an hiatus. It is merely conjectured, from there being several books containing the name of Ben Jonson in the library of St. John’s, that he entered that College. Here, however, he only stayed, according to Fuller, some weeks; funds were wanting for his support--a circumstance which seems to shew that he was not sent up to Trinity College on the foundation, as otherwise he would have had an exhibition at Westminster. His parents were unable to supply means; and the young student, thirsting for distinction, was obliged to return and follow his step-father’s calling. Never was there a situation so pitiable, and the condition of this aspiring scholar was compassionated by other scholars of happier fortunes than himself. Camden generously relieved him; Thomas Sutton, who, having bought the Charter House from Lord Suffolk, nobly devoted it to an hospital and school, “the master-piece of Protestant charity,” as Lord Bacon styled it,--also, according to some accounts, consoled, and compassionated, and assisted Jonson. It has even been said that “Ben” was engaged to attend the eldest son of Sir Walter Ralegh, as a tutor; but of this no certainty exists. All that is absolutely known is, that he was sick of the trowel and the hod, whilst his mind was running on Horace and Virgil; and that to escape what he deemed degradation, he enlisted, went off to the Low Countries, and served a campaign in that scene of war, which was a sort of school to the young English soldier.
His heart went, to a certain extent, along with this new profession. “Let not those blush that have, but those that have not, a lawful calling,” says Fuller,--and Jonson seems to have thought so likewise. He returned, however, at nineteen, poor as ever, with the same scholastic tastes; and the master-bricklayer being dead, he repaired to his mother’s house.
He next tried the stage. It has been, in all times, the refuge of the unthrifty. But Jonson’s appearance was unfavourable to that attempt. His very ugliness, one would have thought, might have been an advantage. Mr. Gifford repels with fury the imputation on Jonson, that his hero was frightful; yet the description he gives himself of Ben Jonson is by no means attractive. His complexion, which had been clear and smooth in boyhood, was disfigured by a scorbutic humour, and ultimately by scars, from what the Germans are pleased to call the “Englische Krankheit.” His features are said not to have been irregular or unpleasing, but appear in his portraits to be large and coarse. One eye looked askance; his forehead was, however, noble; his person was broad and corpulent--after forty it became unwieldy; and his gait, he himself owned, “ungracious.” In early youth his worst points were not, probably, prominent; he had a delightful voice and emphasis. “I never,” said the Duchess of Newcastle, "heard any man read well but my husband; and I have heard him say, 'he never heard any man read well but Ben Jonson, and yet he hath heard many in his time.’"[[201]]
Nevertheless, “Ben” was not a good actor. Critics differ as to the nature and duration of his theatrical employ. And Gifford, who takes every question relative to his hero as a personal matter, is indignant at the statement that he was a strolling player, or ambled by the side of a waggon, and took mad Jeronymo’s part; but, as most companies were then itinerant, and, as even now, first-rate actors and actresses make provincial tours, there seems little call for the venom and wrath poured out by the indefatigable biographer, who points, with satisfaction, to the bulky figure of Jonson, and asks how he could possibly act “little Jeronymo,” that "inch of Spain"?[[202]]
Whatever was his position--whether, as Anthony Wood says, “he did recede to a nursery or obscure playhouse, called the Green Curtain,” in Shoreditch; or whether, as Gifford declares, that statement is a mere fable, and that his aims were higher--seemed now of little moment, perhaps, to Jonson himself; for his efforts were interrupted by a duel. His antagonist is supposed to have been a brother-player, who brought to the field a sword ten inches longer than poor Ben’s. They fought, and Ben killed the gentleman with the long sword, but was himself severely wounded in the arm; he was sent to prison, and brought, as he described it, “near to the gallows.”
Poor Ben was now, probably, fain to cry out with Antonio in the “Maid of Honour”:--
“But redeem me
From this captivity, and I’ll vow
Never to draw a sword, or cut my meat hereafter
With a knife that has an edge or point; I’ll starve first.”[[203]]
This imprisonment had a signal effect on Jonson’s destiny; he fell into melancholy, and was visited in his despondency by a Romanist priest, who applied himself to his consolation first, and to his conversion afterwards. Jonson had been religiously brought up, and it was not from indifference that he renounced the faith of his parents and entered the Romish Church. Such conversions were frequent in the early days of the Reformation. Jonson was no controversialist; wiser men than he fell into the same error, and, like such, atoned for it. The great light of our Church, Jeremy Taylor, became for some time a Romanist, but returned to the Anglican faith; Chillingworth and others wandered also, and also returned. The readiest converts are often those of deep and earnest feelings, which act on excitable minds, only superficially informed on the great doctrines of Scripture.[[204]] Jonson’s imprisonment was aggravated in its misery by a system of espionage which the necessities of the times induced. The plots against Elizabeth’s life usually originated in the seminaries of the priests. Jonson was warned by his gaoler that he was watched.
He was eventually released, but by what agency does not appear.
He quitted prison, and married a young woman of his new persuasion; and there appears to have been no great reason to repent his choice. His wife was shrewish, but respectable; and the poet’s prosperity commenced with his marriage.
From this time until the period when the Court festivities brought him into frequent collision with Villiers, Jonson’s productions were successive occasions of triumph. Nevertheless, money did not flow into his coffers; and he was continually obliged to pledge, as Massinger did, the labour of his brain--two sums of four pounds, and twenty shillings, being advanced to him by Henslowe, the father-in-law of Alleyn, the player, upon the plots of two plays being presented and approved. Still poor Jonson had his enemies and traducers. The scene of “Every Man in his Humour” was originally laid in Thrace; the names were Italian, but wishing still further to ensure its success, Jonson changed them, and brought the scenes to London. Nevertheless, he was still attacked about his Italian story. There seems, then, to have been as great an objection to works of imagination based on foreign plots as in the present day. In “Volpone,” Jonson carefully avoided introducing any material not purely English.
He was still a struggling author, with few friends except players and playwrights, and with many enemies, owing to his vehemence of temper and imprudence of speech. But of his animosity to Shakspeare, and of the poet’s alienation from him, there seems no proof; and indeed Shakspeare is reported to have stood godfather to one of his children--although the improbable anecdote connected with that act is discredited by Gifford.
Jonson’s acquaintance with Shakspeare is stated by Rowe to have begun with “a remarkable piece of humanity and good-nature on the part of the immortal bard.” Jonson, who was then, as Rowe observes, “entirely unknown to the world,” had offered “Every Man in his Humour” for representation; it was carelessly looked over, and returned in a supercilious manner by the person who had read it, with the uncourteous answer “that it would be of no use to the company.” Happily, however, Shakspeare chanced to cast his eyes on the manuscript, and found in the play something that powerfully engaged his attention. Generous, as well as gifted, he recommended both Jonson and his drama to the attention of the actors, and to that of the public also.[[205]]
The old play, with the Italian names, the scene laid at Florence, had been first brought out at the Rose Theatre; and it was, apparently, the amended drama, which, from the numerous alterations, had become again Jonson’s property, according to the custom of the time, that attracted the notice of Shakspeare.[[206]] Be that as it may, “Every Man in his Humour” was acted at Blackfriars in 1598, and Shakspeare’s name appears at the head of it as one of the performers. This was about sixteen years before the Bard of Avon sought for repose on the banks of his beloved river, and in his native town.
Henceforth the literary world was divided by the factions which penetrate even into the studies of the lettered; and a sort of rivalship was set up, in which, it appears, the partisans of the two great dramatists were far more rife than the parties concerned.
The contending critics endeavoured to exalt the one at the expense of the other. Pope observes, “It is ever the nature of parties to be in extremes; and nothing is so probable as that, because Ben Jonson had much the more learning, it was said on the one hand that Shakspeare had none at all; and because Shakspeare had much the most wit and fancy, it was retorted on the other that Jonson wanted both; because Shakspeare borrowed nothing, it was said that Ben Jonson borrowed everything; because Jonson did not write extempore, he was reproached with being a year about every piece; and because Shakspeare wrote with ease and facility, they cry’d he never once made a blot.”[[207]]
Yet, without attempting to enter into a controversy long since passed away, and doubtful in origin and extent, it is satisfactory to find Jonson’s vindication from unworthy motives in his famous lines, “To the Memory of my Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespere, and what he hath left us:” in which he truly calls him the “Soul of the Age.”
Jonson’s “Every Man in his Humour” was honoured, after it had been played several times, by the presence of Queen Elizabeth, who was one of Jonson’s earliest patrons. Nevertheless, in “Cynthia’s Revels,” which was brought out during the following year, the poet satirized the formal and affected manners of the Court.
Whitehall was never gay after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots; the joyousness of Elizabeth’s nature, which she had inherited from her father, was gone.
When mirth went out, pedantry came in. Euphüism was for a time in vogue; the Queen, pensive one hour, fretful the next, looked passively on the change; but to her courtiers--among whom Jonson now began to mix--the satire in “Cynthia’s Revels” was, probably, highly acceptable. Among the most reprehensible usages of the day was that of bringing up children to perform on the public stage, as well as in the Court. In 1609 authority was given to “William Shakespeare, Robert Daborne, Nathaniel Field, and Robert Kirkham,” to provide and instruct a certain number of children to perform in tragedies, comedies, or masques, within the Blackfriars, or in “the realm of England.” Shakspeare, who soon withdrew from the superintendence of this juvenile company, has referred to them in “Hamlet,” thus marking his disapprobation of the system.[[208]]
“But there is, sir, an aviary of children, little eyases that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapp’d for it. These are now the fashion, and so besottle the common stages (so they call them) that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and scarce dare come thither.”
These children were, in some respects, well cared for. They were selected from the young choristers in the Royal Chapel, and, by an order, so early as the reign of Edward IV., they were to be sent to Oxford or Cambridge, on the King’s foundation, at the age of eighteen, should their voices be changed, or the number of choristers be over-full. “Many good people,” observes Hartley Coleridge,[[209]] “who are scandalized at the Latin plays of Westminster, will be surprised that in the pious days of England, in the glorious morning of the Reformation, in ‘great Eliza’s golden time,’ under Kings and Queens that were the nursing fathers and nursing mothers, the public acting of plays should be, not the permitted recreation, but the compulsory employment of children devoted to sing the praises of God--of plays too, the best of which children may now only read in a ‘family’ edition of some, whose very titles a modern father would scruple to pronounce before a woman or a child.”
These children were first impressed from the cathedrals by Richard III.; and even Queen Elizabeth issued a warrant, under the sign-manual, “authorizing Thomas Gyles,”[Gyles,”] the master of the children of Paul’s, “to bring up any boys in cathedrals or collegiate churches, in order to be instructed for the entertainment of the Court.” The children of the Queen’s Chapel must, therefore, henceforth form a principal feature in the representations of Ben Jonson’s masques, as we picture them to our minds, either in Whitehall--consumed by fire long since--or at Althorpe, or at Burleigh-on-the-Hill, or in the stately Castle of Belvoir. Under those vaulted roofs their young voices warbled the exquisite poetry of Jonson to the music of Lawes, or--be it not recorded without shame, nevertheless--were obliged to utter words of raillery, bitterness, and indelicacy, which were usually, as Heywood in his apology for actors confesses, allotted to the unconscious children to deliver.
Greatly as Ben Jonson hailed the accession of James I., he had soon reason to regret the wise though parsimonious Queen Elizabeth. In conjunction with Chapman and Marston, he had written a play called "Eastward Hoe." It was well received; but there was a passage in it reflecting on the Scotch. The two authors were arrested; Jonson had not any share in writing the piece, but, being accessory to its production, he honourably and “voluntarily” accompanied his two friends to prison, thus surrendering himself to justice. No very severe punishment was ever contemplated, but a report prevailed that the three delinquents were to have their ears and noses cut. Jonson is said to have been released owing to the intercession of Camden and Selden; and they are declared to have been present when, after his liberation, he gave an entertainment. On that occasion his mother “drank to him, and showed him a paper which she designed, if the sentence had taken effect, to have been mixed with his drink, and it was a strong and hasty poison.” To show “that she was no churl,” Jonson, in relating this story, added, “she designed to have first drank of it herself.[herself.]”
He escaped from some other personal attack which, in common with Chapman, he made on some individual, with only a second and also temporary imprisonment;[[210]] and from this time was in such constant requisition by the Court, that his imprudence went unnoticed. The “Masque of Darkness” was composed by the express command of Anne of Denmark, who appeared in it as a negress, surrounded with the dark beauties of her supposed African Court. The Queen, and the “Daughters of Night,” as the noble dames who acted in that pageant were called, were placed in a concave shell, seated one above another in tiers; from the top of the shell, which represented mother-of-pearl, hung a cheveron of light, which cast a bright beam on these ladies; the shell was moving up and down upon the sea, and in the billows appeared varied forms of sea-monsters, twelve in number, each bearing a torch on his back. The Queen was attired in azure and silver, with a curious head-dress of feathers, fastened with ropes of pearl, which showed well as the loops fell on the blackened throats of the masquers, who also wore ropes of pearl on their arms and wrists. Inigo Jones is conjectured to have written the directions for the costume of this masque.[[211]] Jonson now received periodical sums, not only from the Court, but from public bodies and private patrons. A year seldom passed without a Royal progress; and we have seen how essential the poet had become to the often impromptu revelries in which James I. continually indulged. Yet Jonson wrote his plays and masques slowly. The “Fox” took him a year to complete. His notion was that “a good poet’s made as well as born.”[[212]] He worked out his own success, and his labours were incessant. He had a practice of committing to his commonplace book remarkable passages that struck him. Lord Falkland, one of the most accomplished of the cavaliers, expressed his astonishment at the variety and extreme copiousness of Jonson’s knowledge. If a pedantic display of learning be imputed to Jonson, it must be remembered that it was, probably, in compliance with the taste of his royal patron, James, who delighted in exhibiting his classical proficiency; and who, even on his death-bed, as we have seen, answered the learned Prelate near him in Latin. It was during the first years of King James’s reign that Jonson justified these classic allusions in his “Masque and Barriers,” at the nuptials of the Earl of Essex to the faithless bride, also married afterwards to Somerset. “Some,” he says, “may squeamishly cry out, that all endeavours of learning and sharpness in these transitory devises, where it steps beyond their little (or let me not wrong them) no brain at all, is superfluous. I am contented these fastidious stomachs should leave my full tables, and enjoy at home their clean empty trenchers, fitted for such airy tastes, where perhaps a few Italian herbs, picked up, and made into a sallad, may find sweeter acceptance than all the sound meat of the world.”
These beautiful masques had the great advantage of being set to music by Henry Lawes, the composer who secured immortality to his name by the music of “Comus,” composed by him. Lawes was beginning his career of fame when Buckingham first entered the Court. The son of a vicar choral in Salisbury Cathedral, he rose to be first a gentleman of the Chapel Royal, and afterwards Clerk of the Chapel, and conductor of the private music of Charles I. Henry Lawes sometimes took a part in the masques which he composed; and acted the attendant spirit in “Comus.” His “ayres” and dialogues have disappointed posterity. Yet he appears to have been almost the father of English vocal music; and, as Milton declares--
“Taught our English music how to space
Word with just note and accent.”
Music, like all the other delights of peace, languished during the troublous times of the Rebellion, or flourished only on the battle-field. Lawes was obliged to teach singing during that period; but he lived to compose the coronation anthem for Charles II., and to have a place of interment assigned to him in Westminster Abbey. His brother, less happy, though a skilful musician also, and often employed in conjunction with Henry Lawes, took up arms for Charles I., in whose service he also lived, and to whom he was devoted, and fell, fighting for his sovereign, at the siege of Chester.
It was then the custom for certain great families to receive musicians, as well as men of letters, in their houses, and to employ them in their especial line--sometimes in hymeneal festivities, sometimes in composing requiems. Thus the arts and sciences, poetry, music, painting, and scenic decoration, were united, during the life-time of George Villiers, in a degree never before or since known in this country. Massinger, Ben Jonson, Lawes, Inigo Jones, were at the service of the rich and noble, and awaited their bidding. Shakspeare died just after George Villiers had received the first public proof of Royal favour--the honour of knighthood;[[213]] and the era of masques and revels began. Still, “a craving for mental enjoyment,”[[214]] as well as that derived from the senses, was diffused.
The religious changes and controversies in the preceding reigns had improved the intellect of the higher orders in England, by making some portion of learning necessary to those either engaged in polemical disputes, or who, conscientious, though unassuming, wished to form their own opinions. There was an earnestness in the awakened minds of that period. “It was a time of much vice, much folly, much trouble--but it was an age of much energy.”[[215]] When, after the middle of Elizabeth’s reign, the thirst for controversy abated, the desire for cultivation, the love of poetry, and the taste for art remained, took another direction, and tended to the improvement and enlightenment of social life. The higher classes did much to exalt these dawning predilections, until the rebellion came; after that fearful convulsion, the diversions of the great were henceforth debased in character, and their minds in taste.
Mary Countess of Pembroke was one of the earliest and most admired of Ben Jonson’s friends. To her son William, the early adviser of the Duke of Buckingham, Ben Jonson dedicated his “Book of Epigrams.” It is therefore almost certain that, before Jonson had appeared in public, as the composer of masques for the express entertainment of the great favourite at Burleigh, he had met Villiers at Wilton, in the society of their common friend, Lord Pembroke--“a man,” Lord Clarendon writes, “very well-bred, and of excellent parts, and a graceful speaker upon any subject, having a good proportion of learning, and a ready wit to apply and enlarge upon it.” When we add to this that the Earl was no cold, haughty, and pompous host, but facetious, affable, generous, magnificent, as disinterested and independent with the rich and great as he was unaffected and courteous to the humble; when we remember what Wilton even then was--the pride of the nation; when we reflect what and who were the men who were welcomed to its hospitality--men, as Clarendon observes, “of the most pregnant parts and understanding;” when we think of Ben Jonson there--probably received as a guest--whilst Massinger was still only the son of a retainer; when we picture Inigo Jones with his pencil--the sketches which he drew, praised by Vandyck; or hear the voices of the two brothers Henry and William Lawes, singing to soft airs the verses of Ben Jonson--we must believe that George Villiers had in such scenes, before he lost the friendship of Pembroke, many delights greater than the wearisome partiality of James, or even a communion with the then unformed mind of Charles.
A Platonic admiration for Christian, Countess of Devonshire, called forth in verses the romantic gallantry of the Earl of Pembroke. One cannot help rejoicing that Lawes set to music what Pembroke wrote:--
"Wrong not, dear Empress of my heart,
The merits of true passion,
With thinking that he feels no smart
Who sues for no compassion.
. . . . . . Silence in love betrays more woe
Than words, though ne’er so witty.
The beggar that is dumb, you know,
May challenge double pity."[[216]]
From the society of Wilton, Villiers went forth imbued with those tastes which never yielded wholly to the grosser diversions in which his Royal patron indulged. Whilst he retained the friendship of Lord Pembroke, Villiers was, in all probability, learning to estimate the conversation and works of Ben Jonson; and henceforth, the efforts of the dramatist must, to a certain degree, be associated with the influence and protection of the favourite.
London, in spite of the repeated proclamations of King James, tending to restrain its extent, and to keep the provincial gentry in their homes, was now generally crowded at certain seasons. A number of small theatres were erected in various parts of the city, in order to supply entertainments to those who would have turned with disgust, since a finer taste had been introduced by the Reformation, from the old moralities. Shakspeare, happily, formed an engagement to produce his pieces at one theatre, but Jonson was obliged to carry his productions to various minor houses, until the success of his masques enabled him to form a higher estimate of the value of his powers. His lighter pieces are marked by grace and sweetness; but these characteristics he “laid aside,” says Mr. Gifford, “whenever he approached the stage, and put on the censor with the sock.”[[217]] The excellence of the masque in Ben Jonson’s time, the great and gifted actors by whom it was performed, the fancy which was suffered to expand itself in these pieces, the scenic effect to which so vast an expense was devoted, incline us to think, with Gifford, “that all our ‘most splendid shows are at best but beggarly parodies,’ in comparison with those in which the Cliffords and Arundels, the Stanleys, the Russells, the Veres, and the Wroths; ‘danced in the fairy rings, in the gay and gallant circles of those enchanting devices.’”[[218]]
After the death of Shakspeare, Jonson received, by patent, a pension of a hundred marks a-year from James. It is supposed that the honour of the laureateship chiefly or solely belonged to him. Hitherto the title seems to have been merely honorary, adopted at pleasure by any poet who was appointed to write for the Court. It had been borne by Daniel in the time of Elizabeth. It was on this occasion that Jonson applied to Selden for information concerning the origin of the title of laureate; and that Selden drew up expressly, and introduced into the second part of his “Titles of Honours,” a long chapter on the custom of giving crowns of laurel to poets; at the conclusion of which he says, “Thus have I, by no unseasonable digression, performed a promise to you, my beloved Ben Jonson--your curious learning and judgment may correct where I have erred;” and adds, “where my notes and memory have left me short.” A graceful and enviable compliment from such a man.
The triumphs of Jonson’s genius were interrupted by his journey to Edinburgh in 1618--a journey which he performed on foot. Here he was the guest of Drummond, the poet of Hawthornden--under whose roof he passed the April of 1619. This journey was regarded as the greatest misfortune of Jonson’s life; not only because during his stay in Scotland his wife died, but because Drummond, amongst other injuries, gave the following character of Ben Jonson to the world:--[[219]]
“For,” he says, “Ben Jonson was a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others, given rather to lose a friend than a jest, jealous of every word and action of those about him, especially after drink, which is one of the elements in which he lived; a dissembler of the parts which reigned in him, a bragger of some good that he wanted, thinketh nothing well done but what either he himself or some of his friends have said or done. He is passionately kind or angry, careless either to gain or keep; vindictive, if he be well answered as himself; interprets best sayings and deeds often to the worst. He was for any religion, as being versed in both.”
The conduct of Drummond, styled by Mr. Gifford, “a cankered hypocrite,”[[220]] has been justified by others; his very hospitality to Jonson is termed by the infuriated biographer, “decoying him into his house.” Drummond acted, in a very slight degree, in the same capacity to Jonson as that which Boswell, a century and a half afterwards, undertook in regard to the more fortunate Samuel Johnson, who found in his listener an admirer, and not a foe. Both these great men had the calamity of having every idle expression set down for the curiosity of an after-age; and “old Ben,” as his contemporaries called him in their jovial meetings at the Mermaid, did not stand the test so well as “Old Samuel.” We cannot, however, regard the visit to Scotland as the great misfortune of Ben Jonson’s life, as the impassioned Gifford pronounces it.[[221]]
Jonson, however, returned to London, unconscious of all that after his death so agitated the literary world in the eighteenth century on his account. He met, as he wrote to Drummond, with a “most Catholic welcome from King James,” who was then, like Jonson, a not disconsolate widower. The poet was writing a poem for the funeral of Queen Anne, who had just died, but was unburied. He was very keenly engaged in beginning the “Discovery,” which was to contain a description of Scotland; and he signed himself Drummond’s “true friend and lover.” He received, in return, two letters full of kindness and compliment from Drummond, whom Gifford himself, incapable of an act of insincerity, styles thereupon, “hypocrite to the last.”
Ben Jonson was now invited by Bishop Corbet to Christ Church, Oxford, where he was created Master of Arts. Thence he passed to Burleigh-on-the-Hill and to Windsor, to see the performance of his "Gypsies Metamorphosed"--and to introduce little compliments in each piece, as the dramatis personnæ were varied or augmented by the accession of fresh actors and actresses. About this time he wrote his poem on the “Ladies of England.” It was lost--a mischance which, in the weakness of one’s nature, one is apt to regret more than the destruction of a vast body of philological notes, the fruit of twenty years’ labour, for which Mr. Gifford calls for especial sympathy.
Jonson was now made “Master of the Revells,” and was nearly being knighted. He passed his time in going from one country seat to another; every Twelfth-day he was ordered to produce, or to repeat a masque. Charles I. was now rising to maturity, and, like his deceased brother, Henry, he loved the poetry of Jonson, and the fancy of Inigo Jones. The match-making propensities of King James were as yet undeveloped, and had neither troubled his repose nor maddened the nation into a dread of his mistakes. Villiers was young, gay, and unmarried; and the world was at peace. Those were happy and busy days for Jonson--yet, amid all his labours, he found time to collect an excellent library. He was not only a collector, but a lender of his books--an unusual combination; a man must be generous, indeed, to unite the two characters; nay, he gave them also, liberally, to those qualified to value the rare editions which he bought. “I am fully warranted in saying,” Mr. Gifford writes, “that more valuable books given to individuals by Jonson are yet to be met with than by any person of that age. Scores of them have fallen under my own observation, and I have heard of abundance of others.”[[222]] This is rare praise. Nevertheless, since brilliant success always has its alloy, it was the lot of Jonson to suffer from the ingratitude of his coadjutor, Inigo Jones; and the excuse, perhaps, of Inigo was, that he was tried and tempted by the temper and irony of Jonson. Their quarrel was inconvenient, and must have caused some trouble in the representation of those masques and revels over which Jonson presided.
“Whoever was the aggressor,” says Horace Walpole, “the turbulence and brutality of Jonson was sure to place him most in the wrong.” This is a hard judgment. Let it be remembered that the circumstances of the two men were different. Jonson was poor, diseased, and in that miserable plight when a generous temper is continually checked by pecuniary difficulties. Inigo Jones had realized a handsome fortune, and was then in the full enjoyment of wealth and reputation. Unfortunately he was a poet; some of the masques printed had their joint names as the composers. Jealousies arose, which ought to have soon subsided, had either of these celebrated men known how to curb his wrath. In Jonson’s case, his temper was his worst enemy; but for this defect he had an excuse which might have pleaded for him even with Inigo. In 1625, Jonson composed for King James “Pan’s Anniversary,” the last piece that he presented to that monarch; towards the end of that year he was attacked with palsy, and a threatening of dropsy added to his accumulated trials. Poverty and ill-health are pleas for indulgence. For the first evil, Jonson’s improvidence, his hospitality, his utter want of prudence in his affairs, may justly be blamed. The last was also partially his own fault, for his habits were intemperate--and partly ascribable to an hereditarily diseased constitution. Nature, which had endowed him with that wonderful intellect, that indomitable energy, had modified her gift by the infliction of a cruel malady, which, being in the blood, was aggravated by the weakness of approaching age. The suppers at the Mermaid were now finally abandoned; and the club at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, was no longer enlivened by his wit. His intellect was affected to some extent, but he recovered sufficiently to write the anti-masque of “Jophiel” for the Court; after which, none of his productions were commanded by the King during the space of three years. In his necessities, unable to leave his room, or to move without assistance, the poor invalid turned to the theatre as a source of revenue, and produced “The New Inn.” It was hissed from the stage; and, notwithstanding the dramatist’s plea in his epilogue that he was “sick and sad,” he was persecuted with contemptuous verses, and pursued with remorseless cruelty by the many enemies that his rough manners had excited--among them, Inigo was the most inveterate.
There was, however, one kind heart that pitied him--that of Charles I. The monarch was touched by the lines which the hard critics in the theatre could hear without compassion:--
“If you expect more than you had to-night,
The Maker is sick and sad; he sent things fit
In all the numbers both of verse and wit,
If they have not miscarried: if they have,
All that his faint and faltering tongue doth crave
Is, that you not impute it to his brain--
That’s yet unhurt, although set round with pain.
It cannot long hold out: all strength must yield;
Yet judgment would the last be in the field
With the true poet.”
Charles sent him a hundred pounds: the poet, in the fulness of gratitude, wrote "A petition from poor Ben to the best of monarchs, masters, and men"--full of gaiety and good-humour, yet touching, even in its sparkling wit. The petition prayed that His Majesty would make his father’s “hundred marks a hundred pounds,” alluding to the pension granted by King James. The petition was granted, and in the patent by which the annuity was confirmed, it was said, “especially to encourage Jonson to proceed in those services of his wit and penn, which we have enjoined unto him.”
A tierce of Canary accompanied this act of bounty. It was Jonson’s favourite wine, and the King, from his private bounty, sent it to the sick poet. It was to be a yearly gift, not only to Jonson, but to his successors; and the wine--Spanish Canary--was to be taken from his Majesty’s cellars at Whitehall, out of the stores of wine “remaining therein.” Charles little anticipated that even his love of the drama should be made a cause of reproach to him at his trial. “Had the King but studied Scripture half as much as he studied Ben Jonson or Shakspeare!” was the cry of the Puritans.
Jonson might now have been tolerably happy, had not his former coadjutor, Inigo, still borne him enmity for having, during the preceding year, placed his own name before that of the royal architect. The conduct of Jones in this respect has been placed in its true light by a letter from a Mr. Perry to Sir Thomas Pickering.[[223]] In that letter it is stated that Inigo used his “predominant power” at Court to injure Jonson, then bed-ridden and impoverished, as the poet was. Henceforth, Aurelian Townshend, a poet scarcely known, was employed to invent the masques represented at Court, in conjunction with Inigo Jones.
The same year that was marked by the death of Buckingham witnessed poor Jonson’s “fatal stroke,” as he termed it, of palsy. He never recovered this attack of 1628, and his days were overclouded by successive mortifications. Hitherto the city of London had given him a pension for his services. At the very time when it was most needed by the forlorn dramatist, it was withdrawn, but restored three years afterwards. The office for which he received this annuity was that of City Chronologer. The plea made for its cessation was that there had been “no fruits of his labours in that his place,” which place was to commemorate signal events; other sources of emolument were also withheld, on the plea that the fruits of that now exhausted brain were no longer forthcoming.
But bright instances of compassion and generosity stood forth amid all this gloom. Amongst the great patrons of the drama was William Cavendish, the first Earl of Newcastle, declared by Cibber to be “one of the most finished gentlemen and distinguished patriots of his time.” He had been constituted governor to Prince Charles, for whom he ever retained the most loyal affection. Of this nobleman it was said that he understood horsemanship, music, and poetry; but that he was a better horseman than a musician, a better musician than a poet. His wife, the eccentric Margaret Lucas, wrote of him that “his mind was above his fortune, his generosity above his purse, his courage above danger, his justice above bribers, his friendship above self-interest, his truth too firm for falsehood, his temperance beyond temptation.”
It was by no means prejudicial to the popularity of this fine specimen of an English nobleman that “he was fitter to break Pegasus for a manège than to mount him on the steps of Parnassus.” He wrote a work entitled, “A new Method and Extraordinary Invention to Dress Horses and Work them according to Nature, as also to Perfect Nature by the Subtlety of Art.” The work, a folio, was succeeded by various comedies, several of them written when Lord Newcastle was in banishment, and acted, after his return to England, at Blackfriars. He wrote, it is said, in the manner of Ben Jonson, to whom he was a kind patron. The Earl was a singular compound of military skill and ardour with literary tastes; by him Sir William Davenant, poet-laureate after Jonson’s death, was made Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance.[[224]]
His wife, who at the time Ben Jonson knew her was Countess of Newcastle, and afterwards Duchess, is one of the most voluminous of writers among the (now) long catalogue of literary ladies in this country. She was at once ridiculous and estimable--a combination of qualities painful to friends, but never acknowledged by her husband, who revered her talents, and tried to defend what was incomprehensible to the learned--her philosophy. In private life she was reserved, living almost entirely among her books, or in contemplation, or writing indefatigably. Even during the night, one of the Duke’s secretaries is said to have slept on a truckle bed in a closet in her bedroom, in order to be ready to answer any sudden bursts of inspiration that might occur; and the summonses to John, “to get up and write down her Grace’s suggestions,” were frequent and wearisome. Kind, pious, charitable, generous, and really gifted, though romantic and visionary, this excellent lady’s peculiarities might have furnished Molière with a model for his “Precieuses Ridicules;” but, to Ben Jonson, they were lessened by the vast amount of amiability that welcomed the poet to her stately abode, or, better still, relieved him in his poverty and want.
When the Earl and Countess of Newcastle heard of the poet’s play being condemned--when they learned that various copies of complimentary verses had been addressed to him by admirers, pitying his humiliation--the Earl, worthy of the name of Cavendish (so dear to England), sent to[sent to] request a transcript of them. The reply is very touching:--[[225]]
"My Noblest Lord, and my Patron by Excellence--I have here obeyed your commands, and sent you a packet of my own praises, which I should not have done if I had any stock of modesty in store; but ‘obedience is better than sacrifice,’ and you command it. I am now like an old bankrupt in wit, that am driven to pay debts on my friends’ credit; and, for want of satisfying letters, to subscribe bills of exchange.
“Your devoted
“Ben Jonson.
"4th February, 1632.
“To the Right Hon. the Earl of Newcastle.”
Also note, same page:--
"My Noblest Lord and best Patron--I send no borrowing epistle to provoke your lordship, for I have neither fortune to repay, nor security to engage, that will be taken; but I make a most humble petition to your lordship’s bounty to succour my present necessities this good time of Easter; and it shall conclude a begging request hereafter on behalf of
"Your truest bondsman and
"Most thankful servant,
“B. J.”
One of these complimentary poems was written by Lucius Cary, Lord Falkland--a patriot, a soldier, and a poet, the very model of that refined spirit of chivalry which never recovered itself after the Rebellion. There must have been consolation in such a strain, from such a man; but poor “old Ben,” as he was now called, was almost past consolation. He was engaged on another play, “The Majestic Lady.” The world, who had then deemed the old man dead,[[226]] received it as the injudicious effort of a mind enfeebled. Dryden, even, who should have forborne from the poor triumph over him whom he wrongly considered a “driveller and a show,” called these last plays “Ben’s dotages;” but, though feebler than his former dramas, they exhibit no traces of dotage--that invidious and almost cruel expression.[[227]]
Sustained by the Earl of Newcastle, praised by the noble Falkland, pensioned by the King, one might have supposed that Jonson’s last days would have been peaceful, though no longer cheerful. But he had debts; and he was forced--bed-ridden, shaken in body and mind--to write on to the very last. His latest effort was an interlude welcome of King Charles to Welbeck, on his way to Scotland; for which a tribute from Jonson’s muse was commanded by the ever-friendly and munificent Newcastle.
The timely gratuity sent to the poet, when the interlude was ordered, “fell,” he wrote, “like the dew of Heaven on his necessities.” He wrote to his patron in terms of gratitude, warm and expressive, and creditable to himself and that benefactor.
He continued at his desk; and a fragment of the “Last Shepherd,” one of his last efforts which is preserved, proves that his fancy was unclouded. Hitherto it has been painful to trace his decay--to record his distress; but now light came to his death-bed, and came from on high. Penitence, prayer, conviction of the true faith in our Holy Apostolic Church, confession of sins, hope, and rest--these were the Heavenly lights that broke over the gloom of his latter hours.
Happily--and let the fact he impressively recorded--his parents had carefully impressed on his infancy deep religious convictions.
As he lay, neglected by his former associates, and even believed by the worldly to be dead--and dead, indeed, was he to them--the impressions of his duty to his Maker grew more frequent and stronger in his affection.[[228]]
To the Bishop of Winchester, who visited him during his long illness, he expressed the deepest contrition for having profaned the sacred name of his Creator in his plays. His “remorse was poignant;” and doubtless this sense of the responsibility which is devolved on great talents, which comes to many too late, was the foundation of his heartfelt penitence and sorrow. He died on the 5th of April, 1637--and on the 9th his remains were entombed in Westminster Abbey, on the north side, just opposite the escutcheon of Robertus de Ros. A common pavement stone was placed over his grave; but Sir John Young, of Great Milton, Oxfordshire, passing through the Abbey, noticed that the stone was without any inscription to mark where the great poet lay. Sir John, or, as Aubrey calls him, “Jack” Young, gave one of the workmen eighteen-pence to cut an inscription; and the words, “O rare Ben Jonson!” were carved as a temporary distinction. Meantime, the admirers of the deceased poet were collecting a subscription to defray the expense of a suitable[[229]] monument to “poor Ben;” but the Rebellion breaking out, the project was abandoned, and the money returned to the subscribers.
No fewer than thirty-four elegies on Ben Jonson were collected by Dr. Duppa, the Bishop of Winchester, and published under the title of “Jonson’s Verbius;” and amongst the authors were Lord Falkland, Ford, Waller, George Donne, Lord Buckhurst, and other illustrious names. But perhaps there is no tribute more gratifying to the admirers of Ben Jonson than that of Taylor, the water-poet, who had met him at Leith. Jonson, be it remembered, had walked to Edinburgh, yet he could not see the humble poet without giving him what he could ill afford to bestow.
“At Leith,” says Taylor, “I found my long-approved and assured good friend, Master Benjamin Jonson, at one Master John Stuart’s house. I thank him for his great kindness; for at my taking leave of him, he give me a piece of gold, of two-and-twenty shillings value, to drink his health in England; and withall willed me to remember his kind commendations to all his friends. So, with a friendly farewell, I left him as well as I hope never to see him in a worse state; for he is among noblemen and gentlemen that know his true worth, and their own honours, where with much respective love he is entertained.”
The sum, as Gifford remarks, was not, in those days, an inconsiderable one; and there was something graceful and touching in the kindness of one placed so high, as Jonson was in literary fame, to the humbler poet.
This sketch of Ben Jonson’s life and writings may serve to illustrate the manners of those times, and the nature of that society in which George Villiers lived. In every revel Buckingham was the most distinguished courtier. In every masque, during King James’s life, he played a part. He knew the poet at Wilton; there can be little doubt that the friends of Villiers were the patrons of poor Ben. The panegyrist of the Duke, Lord Clarendon, lived, as he has himself declared, “many years on terms of the most friendly intercourse with Jonson.” In that conversation, praised by this historian “as very good, with men of most note,” Villiers must have borne a part; whilst Camden and Selden mingled with poor Ben, with the Sackvilles, the Sidneys, the Herberts, and the numerous family of Villiers.