Ian Donaldson - Ben Jonson

Ian Donaldson, Ben Jonson, A Life (OUP)

Quite early in this book, the Stratfordian side of the Shakespeare debate might well consider just how much is known about Jonson's life compared to their man and begin to wonder if the opposition might have a point. I'm sure they don't and one good reason is that Jonson was more assiduous in preserving his own details in both his own poems and plays and his discussions with others but it still registers as a vague irritant.

Ian Donaldson's book is scholarly, which means detailed and thorough, without being captivating throughout. Jonson is a 'colourful' character but Donaldson limits his imaginings to a sensible minimum while accumulating genuine evidence from real sources. A book of this length on Shakespeare's life is filled out with historical context, contemporary facts and figures and speculation whereas this is able to fix on its main subject most of the time.

Never far from controversy, Jonson's first major skirmish is in 1597 with The Isle of Dogs, a play apparently so scurrilous that he and his collaborators found themselves in Marshalsea Prison and destroyed all copies of it. The episode threatened the whole enterprise and future of the theatre but exactly what offence it caused is now uncertain except that it must have marked an early benchmark by which to measure his swings between satire and the expedient glorification of eminent figures. His career continues through the duel in which he kills Gabriel Spencer, a fellow actor, some falling out with Shakespeare and the issue of the coats of arms that hint at the social ambitions of both Jonson and Shakespeare. But Donaldson doesn't see Jonson satirizing Shakespeare's ambition on the grounds that his own rise in status was even more spectacular. I don't know if that would have dissuaded Jonson from making the point, though. However, the unfortunate Spencer had been one of those imprisoned with Jonson before being despatched by him in a swordfight over some disagreement now unknown.

Whereas Shakespeare's allegiance to Catholicism is no more than implied or suspected in places, and John Donne changes religion quite well-advisedly in early adulthood, Jonson remains Catholic for much longer, and one can see his reputation for robust and belligerent attitudes given every justification in these episodes, and yet later in life, in 1625, it was suggested ('jocularly') that he might be made Dean of Westminster.

Jonson's energy and output are prolific, his cynical world-view as portrayed in so many of the plays only equalled by his shameless but orthodox flattery of monarchs and patrons. He became the undisputed star writer of his time, providing, with Inigo Jones- another friend with who he managed to find ongoing differences, the foundations for the Augustan Age before the preference of the Romantic period for Shakespeare replaced the taste for his 'neo-classicism'. Donaldson doubts if the poverty he claimed in old age was quite as dire as his appeals for financial help might have suggested and was in any case evidently brought about by the generous good living that he enjoyed and promoted, as reported by Izaak Walton,

(he) would be sure not to want wine, of which he usually took too much before he went to bed, if not oftener and sooner.

Ian Donaldson has provided an essential account of Jonson, including not only his adventures abroad and walking to Scotland but detailed summaries of many of the masques and plays. The journey from being a poor bricklayer in Charing Cross to the most eminent man of letters in England, in Westminster, went by a circuitous and apparently very lively route.