Lecture Six. Early Seventeenth Century.

1. Drama after Shakespeare. Ben Jonson

2. Baroque.

3. Metaphysical poetry. John Donne. Herbert.

1. DRAMA AFTER SHAKESPEARE

In the reign of James I and Charles I, English drama began to change. It was now less popular, more obsessive in themes.

There was an obvious shift to a more cynical (and realistic) view of human nature and corruption.

Drama lost much of its vigour and directness, but a great deal of highly impressive drama was produced in a mode that appealed to the century. Dramatists looked more and more to the court for patronage and protection, and drama was growing more exclusive.

The 16^th century was a time of the rise of the Puritans, a protestant religious movement who wished to make religion simple and less ceremonial. Most broke away from the Church of England. Under their attacks drama acquired the aura of the forbidden fruit.

King James I and his queen Anne of Denmark were as enthusiastic patrons for drama as had been Elizabeth.

A new form of theatrical entertainment developed known as masques – drama combined with dances, elaborate settings. They were presented on special days and usually only once. Spectacular elements predominated over plot and character. They were normally presented for a small audience, usually in court, actors were often members of noble families rather than professional actors.

The masques were perhaps of Italian origin, but acquired a distinctive character in England. Often they had political overtones.

Many playwrights of the period wrote masques (Middleton, Chapman), but they reached the highest degree of elaboration in the hands of Ben Jonson.

Ben Jonson (1572 –1637) did so many different things in the literary world of the early seventeenth century, and made use of so many different styles to do them, that it is difficult to see him as a whole person. Actor, playwright, poet, poet laureate, scholar, critic, translator, and head, for the first time in English, of a literary “school”, the so-called “sons of Ben”, he was a giant of a man.

His birth was low: he was a bricklayer, a soldier. Yet, somewhere he’d picked up an impressive learning, which he made no effort to conceal. It affected his dramatic theory and practice, not always for the good. But in the best of his comedies the combination of a learned and powerful mind with wide experience of low life is unique and irresistible.

Ben Jonson bestrode the Stuart drama as a personality and a theorist. Obvious neoclassical tendencies in his plays: unities of time, place and action, characters defined by one ruling passion. Introduced a new type of comedy – comedy of humors.

The comedy of humors - the type of comic drama written by Jonson, where a ‘humor’ is an embodiment of some dominating individual passion or propensity (a natural tendency towards particular kind of behavior). The cardinal humors were blood, phlegm, choler, melancholy, or black choler. The sort of characterization which aims to delineate the dominating features of a man’s character.

Major works by Jonson: Every Man in His Humour (with Shakespeare in the cast).

Contents: Kitely, a merchant, has a young wife. His ‘humor is his irresistible jealousy. His brother-in-law Wellbred with a group of riotous but harmless gallants are staying in his house and he suspects them of designs on his wife and his sister Bridget. One of these young men is Knowell, whose father’s humor is excessive concern for his son’s morals. At the end all misunderstanding is cleared, the negative characters (such as Bobadill, a boastful cowawdly solier, one of Jonson’s best creations) are held up to ridicule, and Knowell marries Bridget.

Every Man Out of His Humour. A variety of characters dominated by different humors. By means of various episodes each is driven out of his humor. Two onlookers provide a moral commentary.

Volpone, or The Fox.

Contents: Volpone, a rich Venetian, feigns that he is dying in order to draw gifts from his would be heirs. Mosca persuades each of them in turn that he is to be sole heir and extracts costly presents. One of the prospective heirs (Corvino, the raven) even attempts to sacrifice his own wife to Volpone. Finally, Volpone leaves his property by will to Mosca and pretends to be dead. Mosca trie to blackmail him, but he prefers to reveal all to the authorities.

Jonson directed his satire particularly against those hungry for money or power.

In many of his comedies Jonson brings to the forth of the stage the uproaring life of London streets, ‘the mob’ – Jonson’s low birth gave him a unique insight into the pulsing life of sidestreets. In his plays we see the ordinary man not sentimentalized, but speaking for themselves.

Jonson is too rigorous, too unbending for modern tastes. Most of his characters are villains, the satirical note is always strong.

Apart from plays, Jonson produced poetry of various kinds: songs, epitaphs, elegies and epigrams. He took his calling as a poet with great seriousness, asserted the dignity of the profession with a kind of pedantry and emphasis that contrast Shakespeare’s extraordinary anonymity. He succeeded in making the fact of professional authorship somehow respectable.

During the reign of James I Jonson’s literary reputation ad influence were unrivalled. In his latter years he became the unofficial literary dictator of London, the king’s pensioned poet, and the good friend of men like Shakespeare, Donne, Francis Bacon, etc. In addition he engaged the affection of younger men (poets like Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, and Sir John Suckling) who delighted to christen themselves “sons of Ben”. Sons of Ben provided the nucleus for the entire “Cavalier school” of English poets.

Cavalier poets – a group of English gentlemen poets called cavaliers because of their loyalty to Charles I during the English Civil wars, as opposed to Roundheads, who supported Parliament. They were also cavaliers in their style of life and counted the writing of polished and elegant lyrics as only one of their accomplishments as soldiers, courtiers, gallants and wits. The term embraces: Richard Lovelace, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, Edmund Waller, Robert Herrick.

Cavalier poets wrote short, graceful lyrics on love and dalliance; lyrics addressed to mistresses with fanciful names, like Anthea, Lucasta, Althea, or Amarantha. They are noted for elegance and smoothness.

Hedonism , or carpe diem (seize the day) philosophy (Gather ye rosebuds while ye may) is typical of the Cavalier style. The Cavaliers developed a manner of ease and naturalness, suitable to the world of gentlemanly pleasures in which they moved.

They also wrote of war, honor and their duty to the king. Sometimes they deftly combined those themes as in Richard Lovelace’s well-known poem To Lucasta, Going to the Wars, which ends,

I couldn’t love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not honour more.