sheer strength of personality came to be the literary dictator of his age. He was a poet, scholar, dramatist, satirist, and critic, and in all these capacities greatly influenced his own and subsequent times. A contemporary poet said of him, "He was better versed, and knew more in Greek and Latin, than all the poets in England." The foundation of this knowledge was laid by the great scholar Camden, who early befriended Jonson, and of whom the poet always spoke with sincere gratitude. Jonson was, it seems, too poor to go to college, and so was put to the craft of brick-laying. But his independent and ambitious nature early asserted itself, and he went off to the Low Countries to the wars. Not long after, Jonson returned to London, and there grew familiar with the varied life of the streets in all its realistic detail. As he was ambitious of literary fame, he connected himself with the theaters, much, no doubt, as Shakespeare had done before. In 1598 he produced his first play, Every Man in His Humour, in which Shakespeare himself probably acted. It was successful at once, and Jonson rapidly advanced in reputation. He wrote other comedies and several tragedies, which by their cleverness, wit, scholarship, and vigor of mind, won for him a distinguished position. He also wrote many masques for the entertainment of the court, or in celebration of great marriages in the families of the nobles. King James made him Poet Laureate, and it is said offered him knighthood, which he declined. He was always in favor with both King James and King Charles. It seems that notwithstanding his bulky, ungainly figure, and his blunt and sometimes coarse speech, Jonson had a certain courtliness of manner which, together with his wit and learning, won him friends among men and women of the highest

rank. Although he quarreled with many men, he was a welcome companion in the famous company of wits that gathered at the Mermaid Tavern, where he is said to have engaged in many "wit-combats" with his friend Shakespeare. After Shakespeare's death, Jonson was the most prominent man of letters in England. He was surrounded by a group of admiring disciples, called the sons of Ben," who were the means of continuing his literary opinions and ideals to later times.

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Jonson and Shakespeare. The differences between Jonson and Shakespeare are numerous and fundamental. Jonson's work as a whole is barer, more prosaic, more learned, and more labored than Shakespeare's. Shakespeare, while remaining true to life, yet contrives to invest his mimic world with a magical atmosphere of beauty and romance. But Jonson is a realist. He was impatient with the attempts to imitate storms and battles on the stage, and he objected to changing the scene in a play from one country to another, from England to France, for example, as Shakespeare had done in Henry V. His purpose was not to picture romantic and distant scenes, but rather to present

66 deeds, and language, such as men do use."

In Every Man in His Humour, Bartholomew Fair, and other plays he satirized the humours, or eccentricities, of London characters; he showed playwright and audience what a wealth of dramatic interest lay in the everyday life of street and tavern. In his Roman tragedies of Sejanus and Catiline he used his great knowledge of the ancients to paint with scrupulous care scenes that should be historically correct in every detail. But though these plays are massive, scholarly, and painstaking, they lack the warmth and humanity which distinguished

Shakespeare's treatment of classical themes, and one is apt to read them with respect and profit rather than with delight. Jonson's plays lose much by sacrificing poetry to satire and scholarship, and yet they are excellent in their ingenuity of plot (especially The Alchemist), in their wealth of literal detail, their wit and versatility. Jonson aims to teach a moral, to reform society, and he is not above using the drama as a means of flaying his enemies. Further, he never throws himself completely into his characters; he does not see them from all sides, but takes one trait, and, magnifying it, makes that the man. His men and women are too often caricatures rather than characters.

But there was another side to Jonson's rugged nature. Ponderous as he often seems, he could write the lightest and most charming of lyrics. Songs such as the " Hymn to Diana," "Drink to Me only with Thine Eyes," or "See the Chariot at hand here of Love," are among the treasures of English poetry, while his charming pastoral drama, The Sad Shepherd (1637), is filled with an unexpected tenderness and beauty.

Beaumont and Fletcher.

FRANCIS BEAUMONT (15861616) and JOHN FLETCHER (1579-1625), "the great twin brethren of the stage," follow Shakespeare and not Jonson in the type of their art. The plays which pass under their joint names are full of romance, beauty, and passion; there are melodies in them—as in the lyrical passages in The Faithful Shepherdess — which invite comparison with Shakespeare. But beautiful as these plays are, they lack the wholesomeness, the masculine vigor, the depth of thought, the firm grasp of human character, which delight us in Shakespeare. They were written more to satisfy the taste of the court than of all classes of Englishmen, and therefore are less

broad in appeal.

They are softer, more relaxing, and we feel that in them the sharp distinctions between right and wrong are blurred or obscured. So the work of Beaumont and Fletcher, like that of Ben Jonson, shows in its own fashion that the decadence of the drama has begun.

Decline of the Drama. - For some years before Jonson's death, the Elizabethan drama had shown symptoms of decline, and when he died in 1637 the force and productiveness of this extraordinary dramatic period were nearing their end. Plays were indeed written after that time in which something of the old glory survived, but these are but the echoes of a greater age. At last in JAMES SHIRLEY (1596-1666), the great part of whose work was done between 1625-1655, these last echoes of the Elizabethan drama died away, and the splendid creative energy that had sustained itself so long was almost entirely exhausted.

Puritan Hostility to the Stage. But we must remember that in addition to any decline in its original power, to any failure that came from within, the drama was forced to contend with the bitter attacks of the Puritans from without. In the early seventeenth century this hostility to the stage increased; unsuccessful attempts were made (1619–1631–1633) to suppress the Blackfriars Theater, and the representation of plays on Sunday was prohibited. Many of the more respectable people stayed away from the theaters altogether, while those who came demanded plays of a more and more depraved character. Finally, about the beginning of the Civil War (1642), the theaters were closed altogether, and the drama almost ceased, until the Restoration of the Stuart Kings in 1660.

General Survey.

Looked at as a whole, the Elizabethan drama, even apart from Shakespeare, in its

magnitude, its intensity, its beauty, its variety, its snatches of exquisite song, is one of the most astonishing achievements of the English genius in literature. In attempting to form any general estimate of it, we must remember that these dramas were, as a rule, not carefully elaborated literary productions, but acting plays, hastily put together for immediate use. Playwriting was an art, but it was a business also. The demand for plays was great, the price (especially before 1600) was comparatively trifling. Under these circumstances, the dramatists naturally saved time and invention by appropriating such material as could serve their turn. They ransacked the literatures of Italy, Spain, or France; they borrowed from foreign novels or dramas; they worked singly, or in partnership like Beaumont and Fletcher; they translated, they made new plays, they adapted or furbished up old ones. We can form no definite idea of the number of these plays; many of them are doubtless irretrievably lost. Only twenty-three of Thomas Heywood's plays have been preserved, yet he declared in 1633, before his adventurous career was over, that he had had "an entire hand, or at least a main finger," in the composition of no less than two hundred and twenty plays. Work produced under such conditions is naturally of very unequal merit, yet even in the poorer plays we are likely to stumble upon a passage that shows us that the lesser men could catch for a moment the accent of the masters. De Quincey, speaking of the Elizabethan drama, has said, "No literature, not excepting even that of Athens, has ever presented such a multiform theater, such a carnival display, mask and antimask, of impassioned life-breathing, moving, acting, suffering, laughing."