"Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heautarit,"
and another asks:—
"Can you sublime and dulcify? calcine?
Know you the sapor pontic? sapor stiptic,
Or what is homogene, or heterogene?"
Lines like the following show that Jonson's acute mind had grasped something of the principle of evolution:—
"…'twere absurd
To think that nature in the earth bred gold
Perfect in the instant: something went before.
There must be remote matter."
The Silent Woman is in lighter vein than either of the plays just mentioned. The leading character is called Morose, and his special whim or "humor" is a horror of noise. His home is on a street "so narrow at both ends that it will receive no coaches nor carts, nor any of these common noises." He has mattresses on the stairs, and he dismisses the footman for wearing squeaking shoes. For a long time Morose does not marry, fearing the noise of a wife's tongue. Finally he commissions his nephew to find him a silent woman for a wife, and the author uses to good advantage the opportunity for comic situations which this turn in the action affords. Dryden preferred The Silent Woman to any of the other plays.
Besides the plays mentioned in this section, Jonson wrote during his long life many other comedies and masques as well as some tragedies.
Marks of Decline.—A study of the decline of the drama, as shown in
Jonson's plays, will give us a better appreciation of the genius of
Shakespeare. We may change Jonson's line so that it will state one
reason for his not maintaining Shakespearean excellence:—
"He was not for all time, but of an age."
His first play, Every Man in his Humor, paints, not the universal emotions of men, but some special humor. He thus defines the sense in which he uses humor:—