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Ben Jonson, a contemporary, sometime collaborator, and competitor of Shakespeare and Marlowe, is the subject of Dr. Brownlow’s lecture. Jonson’s own adventurous and scandalous life is in curious contrast to Shakespeare’s modest public persona, and serve as a richer source for interpreting his intentions with his dramas. Although not as popular with the masses at the Globe in his own time, Jonson managed to print a large folio edition of his collected plays while he was alive: a feat later duplicated by Shakespeare’s friends soon after the Bard’s death.
Jonson’s two stage tragedies, Sir Janus and Cataline, were both likely subversive attempts around Elizabethan restrictions on the writing of English history, according to our speaker. The works were attacked on political, and, curiously, Popish grounds by powerful officials in Elizabeth’s court. Jonson’s academic approach to his plays provided him with many grounds of defense, for he eventually marked all of the sources he used for his plays, and his use of quotations were especially impressive in their accuracy. This scholarly approach to the material was not successful with audiences, however, and both tragedies were unpopular flops. Jonson’s obscure use of Latin meanings for English words was a particularly difficult obstacle for the Elizabethan audience.
Dr. Brownlow concludes with a final comparison between Shakespeare’s popular successes at the Globe and Jonson’s Cataline. Although Jonson made good use of Sallust, Plutarch, and Cicero for his tragedy, his style made it understandable only to an elite set. Shakespeare’s genius lay not in pandering to the vulgar, as his contemporary condemners suggested, but in superior and accessible style. Jonson’s failure with Cataline led him to despise the masses as the Globe who had shunned his work, and he later found lucrative patronage in the court of King James.
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