THE greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator
and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most
potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English
letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an
interest to us almost unparalleled, at least in his age.
Ben Jonson came of the stock that was centuries after to give to the world
Thomas Carlyle; for Jonson's grandfather was of Annandale, over the Solway,
whence he migrated to England. Jonson's father lost his estate under Queen
Mary, "having been cast into prison and forfeited." He entered the church, but
died a month before his illustrious son was born, leaving his widow and child in
poverty. Jonson's birthplace was Westminster, and the time of his birth early in
1573. He was thus nearly ten years Shakespeare's junior, and less well off, if a
trifle better born. But Jonson did not profit even by this slight advantage. His
mother married beneath her, a wright or bricklayer, and Jonson was for a time
apprenticed to the trade. As a youth he attracted the attention of the famous
antiquary, William Camden, then usher at Westminster School, and there the
poet laid the solid foundations of his classical learning. Jonson always held
Camden in veneration, acknowledging that to him he owed,
"All that I am in arts, all that I know;"
and dedicating his first dramatic success, "Every Man in His Humour," to him. It
is doubtful whether Jonson ever went to either university, though Fuller says that
he was "statutably admitted into St. John's College, Cambridge." He tells us that
he took no degree, but was later "Master of Arts in both the universities, by their
favour, not his study." When a mere youth Jonson enlisted as a soldier, trailing
his pike in Flanders in the protracted wars of William the Silent against the
Spanish. Jonson was a large and raw-boned lad; he became by his own account
in time exceedingly bulky. In chat with his friend William Drummond of
Hawthornden, Jonson told how "in his service in the Low Countries he had, in the
face of both the camps, killed an enemy, and taken opima spolia from him;" and
how "since his coming to England, being appealed to the fields, he had killed his
adversary which had hurt him in the arm and whose sword was ten inches longer
than his." Jonson's reach may have made up for the lack of his sword; certainly
his prowess lost nothing in the telling. Obviously Jonson was brave, combative,
and not averse to talking of himself and his doings.
