On the heels of the lance-brandishing jest comes the passionate utterance: “Sweet Swan of Avon, what a sight it were to see thee in our waters yet appeare, and make those flights upon the bankes of Thames, that so did take Eliza and our James!” (Here suggestio falsi is carried to the verge of the lie. What Jonson would have us think he felt about Warwick and its Avon is one thing. What he actually thought may be gathered from a fragment of rather later date in which he jeers at “Warwick Muses” for choosing a “Hoby-horse” as their favourite mount—“the Pegasus that uses to waite on Warwick Muses,” etc. Be this as it may, the ethics of the case would cause him no uneasiness. A secret had to be kept in deference to the wishes of one whom Jonson regarded as almost the greatest and most admirable of men, one too whose right to an incognito no living man of letters was likely to dispute.)
Jonson’s yearning to see Shakespeare once more “upon the bankes of Thames” is suddenly arrested by a vision. Turning his poetic eye upwards and catching sight of the constellation Cygnus, he affects to be thrilled by the conceit that Shakespeare had been metamorphosed, “advanced” to a higher sphere—“the hemisphere” as he calls it. (The Ode belongs, as has been said, to 1622-23. Some ten or a dozen years earlier, Shakspere, preferring humdrum Stratford to London and poetry, had turned his back on the Capital. If this yearning had been uttered in 1612-13, instead of 1622-23, it might have been meant for the Stratford man. So with the vision and the thrill, if we could have referred them to 1616-17, they would have provoked no question. But as things stand, question is inevitable. Had the yearning been kept under since 1612, and why? The vision too and the thrill, what had they to do with the testator of 1616? What more likely than that Jonson had in his mind the social elevation of the wonderful man who long before 1623 had broken his magic wand, doffed his singing robes, and taken leave of the stage for ever?)
The Ode closes on a note akin to despair at the low estate of Poetry ever since Shakespeare had ceased to enrich and adorn it. A similar note, it will be remembered, marks the close of Jonson’s appreciation of Bacon: “Now things daily fall: wits grow downe-ward, and Eloquence growes back-ward” etc. Here again the thoughts of Jonson were evidently running on Shakespeare; for with Jonson Eloquence was Poetry, or rather—to speak by the book—Poetry was “the most prevailing Eloquence, and of the most exalted Charact.”
The contention of this article may be compressed into one sentence: The Prince’s Masque and the famous Ode to Shakespeare were a signal act of homage in two parts to one man, and that man Francis Bacon. The proposition does not admit of demonstrative proof. High probability is all that is claimed, and if the claim be rejected the fault is with the advocate.
Such being the Preface, let us now turn to the further Essay on the Masque of Time Vindicated, which Edward Smithson left for, alas, posthumous publication.
Proprietas denique illa inseparabilis, quae Tempus ipsum sequitur, ut veritatem indies parturiat. De Aug: Scientiarum, 1623.
The year 1623 was a memorable one for literature. First in order of date came a masterpiece of Ben Jonson’s, the Masque of Time Vindicated. This was followed by Bacon’s De Augmentis Scientiarum, an expanded version of his Advancement of Learning, written many years earlier. The finest gift of that year was the First Folio of Shakespeare.
Time Vindicated consists of two violently contrasted parts; jest and earnest, antimasque and masque proper. The most conspicuous figure in the farcical part is CHRONOMASTIX, an enigmatical creature, so greedy of publicity (for fame is denied him) that his only “end” is “to get himselfe a name,” to ingratiate himself with “rumor” (he would have said Fame) as an inspired poet or maker.[31] Chronomastix is escorted by a doting mob of inquisitive adorers, the Curious, who are obsessed by the expectation that they are about to assist at the deification of a great poet, their own incomparable Chronomastix as they fondly imagine. Fame, the mouthpiece of Jonson, derides the Curious at every turn, and when they tell her that Chronomastix “has got a Fame of his owne, as well as a Faction: and these will deifie him, to despite you,” Fame replies: “I envie not the Apotheosis. ’Twill prove but deifying of a Pompion.” The antimasque closes with the ignominious expulsion of Chronomastix and his votaries; obviously because the “great spectacle,” which Time intended that “night to exhibit with all solemnity,” was too august for prying eyes to see.
The Masque proper opens with an address to King James, the gist of which is that “certaine glories of the Time,” till then artificially concealed, were about to be freed “at Love’s suit” or intercession because admirably fitted “to adorne the age.” The climax of the Masque follows this address almost immediately. The stage direction runs: “The Masquers are discovered, and that which obscur’d them, vanisheth.” The Chorus of the Masque is delighted by the vision of the Masquers, and cries out: “What griefe, or envie had it beene, that these, and such (as these) had not beene seene, but still obscur’d in shade! Who are the glories of the Time, ... and for the light were made!”
The essential fiction of Time Vindicated, known also as The Prince’s Masque, is that Time had been reproached with incapacity to produce masterpieces comparable anyway with those of Greece and Rome; and that the revelation of these Masquers was a triumphant refutation of the calumny. To suppose that this result was achieved by the Prince and his companions would be to insult Ben Jonson, the Prince, and all concerned. The all-important feature of the revelation must have been the make-up of the Masquers.