When James VI of Scotland came to the English throne, and lived no longer on the allowance of £3000 a year from Elizabeth, he spent very largely on elaborate masques, courtly entertainments, not unlike the ballets in which Louis XIV later danced his parts. The hosts of Greek mythology were let loose on the stage, all the sea-nymphs, daughters of Oceanus, for example, floating in a shell of mother-of-pearl, among Tritons better schooled in their parts than honest Mike Lambourn in "Kenilworth". The dresses scenery, and decorations, "the bodily parts, were of Master Inigo Jones his design and act" (see "The Masque of Blackness," 1605). The Queen and the Court ladies acted, or at least appeared as sea-nymphs, and Ben produced the words, which were deeply learned, and the exquisite songs. Unrefined as he was, he became intimate with hospitable and generous lords and ladies. Their gifts and his payment from the Royal coffers in pensions were of more profit to him than his plays, for which he said that he received only £200. It is hardly necessary to add that he had bitter quarrels with Inigo Jones.
Jonson's Roman tragedy, "Sejanus" (1603) on the fortunes and fall of that favourite of the Emperor Tiberius, is deeply learned. The author, in the printed version, gave references in footnotes, to his authorities, Tacitus, Juvenal, Suetonius, and many others, as if he had been writing a severe work of history. Nothing can be less like Shakespeare's Roman tragedies, with his free handling of North's translation of Plutarch, with his wild mobs, and murder done openly. Ben was classical and accurate; his Romans speak a stately blank verse: his Tiberius, slow, formal, hypocritical, and deceitful above all things, is the Tiberius of Tacitus; his all-daring Sejanus is a less candid Richard III; and though Ben admitted that the ancient Chorus, with its chants, was impossible on the English stage, he was, in other respects, conscientiously classical. The whole heavy air of Rome, the terror, the duplicity, the political influence of women, their passion, the servility and the discontent, live in the somewhat ponderous blank verse, of which Ben first wrote the matter in prose, an uninspired method.
The "Catiline and His Conspiracy," acted 1611, "did not please the populace," nor the Court much, as Ben admits in a quotation from Horace: in these "jig-given times" he asked Pembroke's patronage for "a legitimate poem". In fact Jonson with all his amazing energy, vigour, and appreciation of character—that of Cicero is excellent—was too pedantic, and the orations of his Cicero were too long for the stage. The odes of the Chorus were not apt to increase the pleasure of the audience.
Ben's recognized comic masterpieces were "The Fox (Volpone)" first acted at the Universities, then at the Globe, 1605; "The Silent Woman" (1609), "The Alchemist" (1610), and "Bartholomew Fair" (1614). Both in "The Fox" and "The Alchemist," there is something that reminds us of Marlowe. The Fox, Volpone, a Venetian magnifico, a childless man, for years pretends to be dying, surrounded by his little court of obscene depravities, and aided by his parasite, Mosca, gulls men who, each in his degree, is an incarnation of cruel greed.
Volpone is a voluptuary in his devilish delight in human corruption. The aged Corbaccio he tempts to disinherit his son; the madly jealous Corbino he tempts to prostitute his wife, from the avaricious Volt ore and from all of them he wrings rich presents. It is a masque of the Deadly Sins, and behind them stands Murder, hesitating between poison, the dagger, and the smothering pillow, for all the fortune-hunters would slay their tormentor if they dared.
The scene with the English Lady Would-be, an affected literary lady, who tires Volpone to death with literary chatter, is more than the rest in the true spirit of comedy. Celia, the suffering wife of Corbino, and Bonario, the young son of the evil dotard, Corbaccio, alone represent the soul of good in things evil. The plot is ingeniously entangled and untied, and justice can scarcely add to the torments which the characters owe to their own insatiate greed.
In "The Alchemist," three scoundrels, occupying by connivance of a servant an empty house, and captained by Subtle, an alchemist, play on the greed and lust of many "coneys". These each, in Jonson's way, represent a "humour". Sir Epicure Mammon, the City Knight, is all for unlimited lust, secured by the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher's Stone. He is as eager as Faustus for the unlimited, and as learned in his gloating discourses as Jonson himself, who, in Subtle, displays all his knowledge of the jargon of alchemy. Dol Common, the decoy, the Fairy Queen, has an extensive and peculiar knowledge of Billingsgate; Abel Drugger, the tobacconist, hopes to prosper in his trade by magical spells; the gamester, Pertinax Surly, strong in his own marked cards and loaded dice, has a salutary scepticism; and the two puritans, Ananias and Tribulation Wholesome, are ready for anything which will supply finance for their godly crew of Anarchists at Amsterdam. Ben well understood these extreme fanatics, "a sect of dangerous consequence that will have no king, but a presbytery," said Queen Elizabeth. They were soon to put an end to "merry England," and, when we look at the quality of much of the mirth in the later Jacobean plays, we are not enamoured of either party in the conflict. The play, with its constant bustle was and long remained popular. So did "Bartholomew Fair," a colossal exhibition of a London festival, with all the humours of the joyous populace, interrupted by Rabbi Busy, the fanatic, who has eaten more roast pig than any one, and rushes about denouncing all the other "Dagons" and "idols," like a bloated English Tartuffe, le pauvre homme. The stocks do not daunt him, his tongue remains as free as Mause Headrigg's. In an introduction to this enormous burlesque Jonson throws scoffs at "The Tempest" of Shakespeare.
"The Silent Woman" is truly a roaring farce on a singular subject, Morose, a gentleman as impatient of noise, and as certain that all silence except his own was golden, as the Sage of Chelsea. How he is saddled with a wife who, from being "mim as a mouse" becomes the most vociferous of Roaring Boys, and, indeed to the confusion of some boastful gallants, is a boy pranked up for the practical jokes whereby Morose's nephew extracts Morose's money, may be read, with much other mirthful noisy matter, by the curious.
"The Devil is an Ass" (1616) is a satire on conjurers, crystal-gazers, projectors, or, as we say, "promoters" of bubble enterprises, and their gulls and "coneys".
A walking tour to Scotland (1618-1619), where Jonson was entertained by Drummond of Hawthornden, had for its fruit Drummond's brief notes of his conversation and literary opinions. He did not care much for Drummond's Petrarchian sonnets, "cross-rhymes"; and, as to Shakespeare (whom Drummond himself does not seem to have appreciated), merely said that "he wanted art," and that, in his geography, he was wrong when he gave Bohemia a sea-coast. Happily Ben left splendid tributes other-where (in verses attached to the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, "The Folio" (1623), and in prose), to Shakespeare's genius and character. Drummond's estimate of Ben as a braggart about himself, and a contemner of others, as jealous and vindictive, is only true in part. No man had more or more admiring friends; at taverns he reigned, among the great wits "Sealed of the Tribe of Ben," like an earlier Dryden.