Part Three - Jonson and Shakespeare

But there are some earlier Jonsonian utterances upon which we have not yet touched, but which must by no means be left out of the account. In 1616, the year of player Shakspere's death, Jonson published a book of Epigrams. The volume was dedicated to William Earl of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain, the elder brother of the "Incom­ parable Pair" of the Shakespeare Folio, and Jonson writes, "I here offer to your lordship the ripest of my studies, my Epigrams." Now among these Epigrams appears one which must have been written a good many years earlier, "On Poet-Ape," and there can be little doubt that by "Poet-Ape" Jonson intended to make reference to player Shakspere. This Epigram runs as follows:

Poor Poet-Ape, that would be thought our chief,
    Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit,
From brokage is become so bold a thief,
    As we, the robb'd, leave rage, and pity it.
At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,
    Buy the reversion of old plays, now grown
To a little wealth and credit in the scene,
    He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own,
And told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes
    The sluggish, gaping auditor devours;
He marks not whose 'twas first, and after times
    May judge it to be his as well as ours.
Fool! as if half eyes will not know a fleece
    From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece.

[32] Jonson, then, it seems looked upon Shakspere very much as Greene looked upon " the only Shakescene," viz., as "an upstart crow" beautified with stolen feathers.* "Poet-Ape" is the player-poet, arrayed in garments stolen from others, whose works are "the frippery of wit" (i.e., the cast-off garments of others); who lives by "brokage" (was Shakspere then, perchance, a broker of plays?), and "makes each man's wit his own." Here we may compare the Prologue to Jonson's Poetaster where the figure of Envy is brought on the stage and asks,

    "Are there no players here? No poet-apes?"

and where we read further

    "And apes are apes though clothed in scarlet,"

which reminds us that players belonging to the royal household were clothed in scarlet cloth.

We remark also the words "he takes up all," an expression which brings to our mind Pantalabus of the Poetaster (Act. iii., sc. i.). This Pantalabus was a player and "parcel-poet" ** who had the repu­ tation of writing "high, lofty, in a new stalking strain," and against whom Jonson is bitterly sarcastic. His name is, obviously, derived from the Greek panta lambanein to "take all," or to "take up all," as "Poet-Ape" is said to do.

In this play also ( Act I., sc. 1) we find Tucca, the braggart Captain saying, with reference to the players, "They forget they are i' the statute, the rascals, they are blazoned there, there they are [33] tricked, they and their pedigrees; they need no other heralds I wiss." The statute is, of course, the statute of Elizabeth (see 14 Eliz., c. 5, and 39 Eliz., c. 4) under which players were classed with "Rogues and Vagabonds" unless duly licensed to play under the hand and seal of any Baron of the Realm or other Personage of greater Degree, and one can hardly doubt that the words, "they are blazoned there," etc., are a hit at Shakspere's prolonged but ultimately successful efforts to obtain a Coat of Arms, to which Jonson makes another and still more obvious allusion in Every Man out of his Humour. I refer to the conversation between Sogliardo, Sir Puntarvolo, and Carlo Buffone, the Jester, in Act III., sc. 1. Here we find Sogliardo saying,

    "By this parchment, gentlemen, I have been so toiled among the harrots
     [i.e., heralds] yonder you will not believe; they do speak i' the strangest
    language and give a man the hardest terms for his money, that ever you knew."

"But," asks Carlo Buffone, "ha' you arms? ha' you arms?" To which Sogliardo replies: "I' faith I thank God, I can write myself a gentle­ man now; here's my patent, it cost me thirty pound by this breath."

Then, after more talk about this newly-granted "coat" and the "crest," during which Puntarvolo says ("aside") "It is the most vile, foolish, absurd, palpable, and ridiculous escutcheon that ever these eyes survised," the same character, asked by Sogliardo, "How like you 'hem, signior?" replies, "Let the word [i.e., the Motto] be, 'Not without mustard.' Your crest is very rare, sir."

Now these words, "not without mustard," are, I think undoubtedly a parody of the Motto [34] assigned to Shakspere, when he and his father, after much "toiling among the harrots," obtained from them a grant of arms with the challenging Motto "Non sans Droit." This they finally did in 1599, though they had previously obtained a draft, and a "tricking" (cf. "there they are tricked" of the Poetaster) in October, 1596, and another later in the same year, neither of which drafts, says Sir Sidney Lee, was fully executed. *** Every Man out of his Humour was produced in 1599, and it may be noted that Sogliardo, who is laughed at as "a boor" by Sir Puntarvolo, is the younger brother of Sordido, a farmer (Shakspere's father was also a farmer amongst other things) and is described as "so enamoured of the name of gentleman that he will have it though he buys it." The Poetaster was entered on the stationers' registers in December, 1601. ****

Now is it possible to believe that when Jonson composed that splendid eulogium of "Shake­ speare "which was prefixed to the Folio of 1623, he was really addressing the man whom he had satirized as "Poet-Ape," and whose proceedings in obtaining a coat of arms, in order that he might "write himself a gentleman," he had held up to public contempt and ridicule? It appears to me impossible so to believe. †

[35] We, therefore, who find ourselves unable to believe that the young man who came from Stratford to London in 1587 as "a Stratford rustic" (as Messrs. Garnett and Gosse very truly describe him in their Illustrated History of English Literature, p. 200), composed "Love's Labour's Lost" in, say, 1590, and Venus and Adonis in, say, 1592; we to whom the arguments against the "Stratfordian" authorship appear insuperable; we who are in agreement with Professor Lefranc when he writes: "J'ai la conviction que toute personne dont le jugement est reste libre en ce qui concerne le probleme shakespearien, recon­naitra que les anciennes positions de la doctrine traditionelle ne sauraient etre maintenues " ††; we "heretics" are convinced that when Ben Jonson wrote his panegyric of "Shakespeare" as a send­off for the Folio, in the publication of which he was so closely associated, he was perfectly well aware that "Shakespeare"—speak of him as the "Swan of Avon" though he might, and depreciate his learning though he might †††—was, in truth and in fact, but a mask-name for other writers, and more particularly for one man of transcendent genius who was, indeed, "not of an age but for all time."

[36] And here it seems right that I should say a word concerning Jonson's ten lines "To the Reader," introducing him to the Droeshout Engraving of "Gentle Shakespeare."

Now as to this famous engraving, I can never understand how any unprejudiced person, endowed with a sense of humour, can look upon it without being tempted to irreverent laughter. Not only is it, as many have pointed out, and as is apparent even to the untrained eye, altogether out of drawing; not only is the head preternaturally large for the body; not only is it quaintly suggestive of an unduly deferred razor; but it looks at one with a peculiar expression of sheepish oafishness which is irresistibly comic. As George Steevens long ago remarked, "Shakespeare's countenance deformed by Droeshout resembles the sign of Sir Roger de Coverley when it had been changed into a Saracen's head, on which occasion the Spectator observes that the features of the gentle knight were still apparent through the lineaments of the ferocious Mussulman." Even Mr. Pollard writes: "If his [Jonson's} lines on Droeshout's portrait are compared with their subject, we may well be inclined to wonder whether he had seen that very doubtful masterpiece at the time that he wrote them"—a suggestion which certainly does not say much for the value of Jonson's testimony.

And it is of this ridiculous caricature that Jonson writes:

    This Figure that thou seest put
    It was for gentle Shakespeare cut
    Wherein the graver had a strife
    With nature to out-doo the life.

Now Jonson was an enthusiast concerning the pictorial art. "Whoever loves not picture," he [37] writes, "is injurious to truth and all the wisdom of poetry. Picture is the invention of heaven, the most ancient and most akin to Nature. †††† How then could he have thus written concerning the Droeshout signboard? When one looks at this graven image of the Folio frontispiece, the sugges­ tion that the Graver had here a strife with nature to "out-doo the life" appears to be so absurd that, surely, it can hardly be taken as seriously intended.

And what interpretation are we to put upon the following lines?

    O, could he but have drawn his wit
    As well in brass as he hath hit
    His face, the Print would then surpasse
    All that was ever writ in brasse.

Sir Sidney Lee's comment is: "Jonson's testimony does no credit to his artistic discern­ment." But is it possible to believe that old Ben was not only so lacking in "artistic discernment" but also so deficient in the sense of humour and the perception of the grotesque as to write these lines with the Droeshout engraving before him, if, indeed, he wrote them seriously? I think, on the contrary, it is reasonable to believe that Jonson was aware when he so wrote that this portentous caricature was not, in truth and in fact, a portrait of the true Shakespeare; that the lines above quoted are capable of a meaning other than that which the ordinary reader would put upon them; that, as that "orthodox" writer, Mr. John Corbin, says, Ben does well to advise the reader , "if he wants to find the real Shakespeare, to turn to the plays" and to look "not on his picture, but his book," which is certainly very excellent advice.

[38] Here, then, the sceptic can find no strengthening of the orthodox tradition concerning the Shakespearean authorship. He rather prays in aid the portentous Droeshout portrait, and the Jonsonian lines, as lending themselves to a cryptic inter­ pretation which, as it appears to him, may quite reasonably be put upon them, and which is, to say the least of it, quite consistent with the "heretical" case. ‡

But did those who were intimate with Shakspere of Stratford really believe that he was the man whom Jonson intended to eulogise as the author of the plays of "Shakespeare"? Did they themselves believe that he was, in truth and in fact, the author of those plays?

Now but twelve years after Jonson's magnificent panegyric was published, viz., in 1635, we find that the Burbages, to wit, Cuthbert Burbage, and Winifred, the widow of Richard Burbage, and William his son, presented a petition to the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, the survivor of the "Incomparable Pair" to whom the Folio was dedicated in such eulogistic terms, and then Lord Chamberlain, praying that their rights and interests in the Globe Theatre, which they say they built at great expense, and the Blackfriars, which was their inheritance from their father— those theatres where "Shakespeare's" dramas were presented—should be recognized and re­ spected. The petitioners are naturally anxious to say all they possibly can for themselves and the company of players with whom they were associated, and they seek to enforce their claim by a reference to the past history of those theatres, [39] and those connected with them, both as players and profit-sharers. One of those players, one of the " partners in the profits of that they call the House" (viz., the Globe) was William Shakspere.

And how do they speak of him? Surely here was a great opportunity to remind the Earl that one of their company had been that man of transcendent genius, "Shakespeare," the great dramatist, the renowned poet, the "sweet swan of Avon," whom no less a man than Ben Jonson had eulogised but twelve years before—viz., in that great work containing his collected plays which was dedicated to the Earl himself and his brother—as the "Soul of the age, the applause, delight, the wonder of the stage "; that man whom, and whose works, the two Earls had "prosecuted with so much favour" during his lifetime! Surely they ought to have done this! Surely, as shrewd men of business, wishing to recommend their case to the Lord Chamberlain, they could not fail to recite these facts, so much in their favour, if facts they were! Surely they must have appealed to Jonson's splendid panegyric of their fellow, it they really believed that the Earl believed that it was their fellow whom Jonson had in mind as the author of the plays and the object of his eulogy! Yet what do they actually say? "To ourselves we joined those deserving men, Shakespere, Heminge, Condall, Phillips, and others, partners in the profits, etc.," and, as to the Blackfriars, there they say they "placed men players which were Hemings, Condall, Shakspeare, etc."

Those of the orthodox faith, who refuse to admit that there is a Shakespeare Problem at all, of course make light of this. They affect to think it the most natural thing in the world. Yet, [40] surely , to the impartial man it must seem incredible that the Burbages should have thus written about Shakspere, calling him just a "man-player," and speaking of him in the same terms as of the other players, viz., as a "deserving man," and nothing more, if indeed both they and the Lord Chamberlain knew, and all the world knew, that he was the immortal poet who was "not of an age but for all time," whose collected works, dedicated to the two Earls, to their everlasting honour, had been for twelve years before the public, and whose poems, dedicated to another great Earl, were "familiar as household words" to every man of the time who had the slightest pretension to literary taste or knowledge! The author of Venus and Adonis, and Lucrece, of Hamlet, Lear, and Othello, of As You Like It, The Merchant, and Twelfth Night, and all the other immortal works, but a "man-player" and "a deserving man"! Is it not incredible that he should be so described?

But it was as a fellow-player—a "man-player" and a "deserving man "—that the Burbages knew Shakspere. It was in these capacities that the Earl of Pembroke knew him; and it was in these capacities, as I am convinced, that Ben Jonson knew him, however much it may have suited his purpose and the purpose of those who were associated with him in the publication of the Folio, that he should "camouflage " the immortal poet under the semblance of the player.

The truth is, as I cannot doubt, that the Burbages were writing as plain men dealing with facts, while Jonson's ambiguous poem has to be interpreted in an esoteric sense. If then, the real truth were known, I have no doubt that the "irrefragable rock" would turn out to be but scenic canvas [41] after all. There was "camouflage" even in those days, and plenty of it, although the name was then unknown. ‡‡

___________

* cf. Horace Epist., 1, 3, 18.

    "Ne si forte suss repetitum venerit olim
    Grex avium plumas, moveat cornicula risum
    Furtivis nudata coloribus." back

** i.e., like a parcel-gilt goblet, a poet on the surface only, but inwardly and truly only base metal. Herrick has written two lines headed "Parcel-gilt Poetry." back

*** See A Life of Shakespeare (1915), p. 282 seq. back

**** I have dealt with these matters at some length in The Shake­ speare Problem Restated (1903). See p. 454 et seq. back

† If he had come to look upon the man whom he had satirized under the name of "Poet-Ape" as having become the "Soul of the Age" would he have republished the Epigram among "the ripest of his studies" in 1616, and in a volume dedicated to the Earl of Pembroke? And would he have continued the con­ temptuous passage concerning Shakspere's coat of arms in Every Man out of his Humour, when he published that play in 1601 and again in 1616? back

†† Sous de Masque de "William Shakespeare," by Abel Lefrane, Professor au College de France (1919), Preface p. xiii. back

††† "And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek" wrote Jonson. "Here," says the learned Dr. Ingleby, "hadst is the subjunctive. The passage may be thus paraphrased: 'Even if thou hadst little scholarship, I would not seek to honour thee by calling thee as others have done, Ovid, Plautus, Terence, etc., i.e., by the names of the classical poets, but would rather invite them to witness how far thou dost outshine them.' Ben does not assert that Shakespeare had 'little Latin and less Greek,' as several understand him." (Centurie of Prayse, 2nd Edit., p. 151). This may be correct, but others contend that Ben's words are to be taken not in the subjunctive but in the indicative mood. It may be so, since Ben was writing on the hypothesis that the player would be generally taken as the poet, and, naturally, had to adapt his language to that hypothesis. Either interpretation will equally well suit the sceptical case. back

†††† Discoveries CIX. and CX., Poesis et pictura and De Pictura. back

‡ I have dealt with this matter at greater length in Is there a Shakespeare Problem? at p. 395 et seq. back

‡‡ Another instance in point is the case of John Manningham, barrister of the Middle Temple, a cultured and well-educated man, who saw Twelfth Night acted in the Hall of that Inn, and was so struck by it that he makes an appreciative note in his diary concerning it, under date Feb. 2, 1601, yet had no idea that player Shakspere was the author of the play, for on March 13 of the same year he makes a note of a scandalous story concerning Burbage and Shakspere while acting in Richard III., and instead of recording that Shakspere was the author either of that play or of the play that pleased them so much on the occasion of their Grand Night at the Middle Temple, he appends the laconic remark, "Shakespeare's name William!" How differently did he speak of Ben Jonson! Would he write "Jonson's name Benjamin?" Hardly. He well knew the literary and the theatrical world, and he tells us of "Ben Jonson, the poet," though "Shakespeare the poet" was unknown to him! See the Diary under date Feb. 12, 1603.back