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Drink to me
Only With Thine Eyes
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| Home Page A Celebration of Charys I (His Excuse For Loving) II (How He Saw Her) III (What He Suffered) IV (Her Triumph) V (His Discourse With Cupid) VI (Claiming a Second Kiss By Desert) VII (On Begging Another) VIII (Urging Her of a Promise) IX Her Man Described By Her Own Dictamen X (Another Lady's Exception, present at the Hearing) An Elegy (i) An Elegy (ii) A Nymph's Passion Clerimont's Song Exerpt: The Poetaster Song to Celia The Hour Glass To Celia Why I Write Not of Love |
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Ben Jonson had a most inauspicious start in life. His father, a clergyman, died before he was born; his mother was left penniless and re-married a bricklayer but still managed to have young Ben educated at Westminster School where he quickly became a star pupil, learning to write in Latin and Greek, no mean feat at the time. Unimpressed by a spell of sweating on the building sites of Elizabethan England under his stepfather, Jonson joined the army and served for some time in Flanders where, rumour has it, he advanced before the army, challenged a Spaniard to single combat and killed him in front of the assembled warriors; not, sadly, the only man he was to kill. Soldiering does not appear to have been completely to his taste however since he returned home aged around twenty, married a lady named Anne Lewis and took up the life of a strolling player, emerging as an improving (although hard drinking) actor and playwright; this led to his first major brush with the law when he was involved in a satire called 'The Isle of Dogs' (no copy survives unfortunately) which was declared seditious and he was flung into the dungeons. His second brush with the Grim Reaper followed a year later; he had a quarrel with an actor named Gabriel Spencer, there was a duel, and Spencer was killed. Jonson was arrested again and he was taken to the Old Bailey to be tried for murder. This time the gallows beckoned. In England, in Elizabethan times, men who could read and write were in short supply and so a statute called the 'benefit of clergy' often stepped in to save them from the consequences of their less thoughtful actions; hardly democratic (but then these were not democratic times) this piece of legal sleight-of-hand meant that only under the most exceptional of circumstances could a man of letters be executed, or even serve a long term of imprisonment. Jonson successfully pleaded for this right and served only a short time in gaol, emerging with all his possessions forfeit to the Crown and a felon's brand on his thumb. No publicity is bad publicity however; his career blossomed and he revelled in satire which made him a lot of enemies until, once again, he went a little too far; he was called before the Privy Council on charges of treason and popery and given a severe reprimand. This fell on deaf ears and he was soon in trouble again for anti-Scottish elements in 'Eastward Ho' which resulted in yet another spell as a guest in His Majesty's prison. Thankfully for Jonson King James, the Scottish King of England, had taken a liking to the masques (allegoric performances designed for select, wealthy audiences) that he wrote and produced in collaboration with Inigo Jones; and this even saw him safely through the turmoil which followed the Gunpowder Plot in which he was rumoured to be implicated. His fiery temperament proved eventually to be too much for Inigo Jones and they finally fell out. Jonson found himself called to court on fewer and fewer occasions. He was however still idolised and was probably as famous, in his day, as William Shakespeare and after his death in 1637 he was granted the ultimate honour of burial in Westminster Abbey. |
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