Ben Jonson's construction of "Poet"
by Joshua Messer

Ben Jonson occupies a complex place in the history of authorship. The manuscript was slowly giving way to printed text, the system of patronage to market economy, coteries to the "general public", and the amateur courtier poet to the professional writer. None of these things happened suddenly. There is no moment when one can say: here the manuscript died. But it may just be possible to point at Ben Jonson, especially the Ben Jonson of the Folio of 1616, and say: here is one of the first professional writers of Europe.

It is my position that Ben Jonson cannot be pinned down into any single one of the categories mentioned above, but rather he must be seen as skillfully placing himself within both the older traditions that were giving way and the new traditions just beginning to develop. It would be quite easy to point out certain inconsistencies in Jonson’s work and claim to have found a hypocrite, but instead this paper will look at some of those same inconsistencies and see a man struggling to shoulder his way into this complex milieu. In this way, it can be seen that Jonson’s seeming inconsistencies are not accidents but rather deliberate actions helping him position himself in the precarious, often contradictory worlds of courtier-poet and professional writer.

The overarching concern with this topic will be Jonson’s construction of an artist he calls a poet, a construction he envelops himself in and as which he insists that he be recognised. It will be useful then to examine some of the particulars of this creation, and then to discuss certain facets of the poem "To Penshurst" in relation to what is seen about Jonson’s tactics.

Therefore, as Foucault asked himself, "What is an Author?" so must we ask, "What is a Poet?" Or more precisely, what does Ben Jonson think a poet is? At its heart, Ben Jonson’s Poet, as Sir Phillip Sidney’s before him, belonged to a tradition with its roots in classical antiquity. In his posthumously published critical work Timber, or Discoveries Jonson defines the poet:

A poet is that which by the Greeks is called kat exochn, o poihihz [the maker par excellence], a maker or a feigner; his art, an art of imitation or feigning, expressing the life of man in fit measure, numbers, and harmony, according to Aristotle: from the word poiein, which signifies to make or feign. Hence, he is called a poet, not he which writeth in measure only; but that feigneth and formeth a fable, and writes things like the truth. For, fable and fiction is (as it were) the form and soul of any poetical work, or poem. (qtd. in Dutton, 57-8)

Thus he ties himself and poetry explicitly to the poets of classical antiquity and the humanist tradition. It has been noted as far back as Dryden that there was little new in Jonson’s Discoveries (Abrams, et al. 1254), and in fact this passage seems to be little more than a thinly veiled lifting from Sidney’s Defense of Poesy, but again we encounter an issue in turmoil at the time. His use of the word "imitation"–though here most likely referring to the idea of holding a mirror up to nature–is significant. These matters of classicism and imitation will come up again later in this essay.

Now that we have had a look at the poet figure Jonson was constructing, let us look more closely at his identification of himself with that construct. Drummond notes of Jonson, "In his merry humor, he was wont to name himself the Poet." (Hereford-Simpson 150; line 636) Note here that he names himself "the Poet," and not simply a poet, though in other places he does rely on the indefinite article. Thus others may be "poets," or "poetasters," or the insulting "playwright," but Jonson in his claim to be "the" Poet takes upon himself the distinction of being the definition of poet. Rosalind Miles says of Jonson, "poetry set the standard which he hoped all his work would attain, and by which he hoped to be judged. He always described himself as ‘a poet’ if not ‘the poet’, and his dramas not as plays, but ‘poems’." (169, emphasis Miles)

One of the major possibilities for criticising Jonson on consistency lies in his classical leaning towards imitation. Jonson writes about this "Imitation", saying that it allows the poet, "to convert the substance, or Riches of an other Poet, to his owne use. To make choice of one excellent man above the rest, and so to follow him, till he grow very Hee: or so like him, as the Copie may be mistaken for the Principall." (qtd. in Boehrer 295.) Manuscript transmission created an environment in which literature belonged to a "cultural cache" that an author or redactor could draw upon as they chose without attribution. In addition, Jonson is invoking the authority of the classical tradition; a tradition in which what we call plagiarism would be admired (Boehrer 296). Imitating great men was a way to make oneself great. In fact, in painting and writing even today one school of thought holds that the best way to improve one’s own technique is to copy the masters. And indeed Jonson was purposely associating himself with these giants of classical antiquity in order to usurp some of their authority for himself.

The remarkable thing is that it is possible, though not likely, that this imitation might not be considered as negatively as it is now if it hadn’t been for Jonson. It is hard to reconcile the late Jonson-poet of the Discoveries with the Jonson-poet of the earlier Epigrammes as printed in the Folio of 1616. Critics have made much of this work, in which Ben Jonson immortalises himself as an "instant classic" (Butler 378). His care in choosing and ordering the texts included in this work and overseeing the regularity of its printing has been noted in nearly every work consulted, including Butler, Dutton, and Boehrer. Such discussions of his care in choosing, preparing, and printing this text form a major reason for assuming deliberateness on Jonson’s part in other areas.

As far as Jonson’s view on imitation, it seems it was only laudable if he was doing the imitating. Epigrammes LVI. On Poet-Ape, LXXXI. To Proule the Plagiary, and C. On Play-Wright (not to be confused with Epigramme LXVIII) lay out quite clearly Jonson’s thoughts on those who borrow from him. Poet-Ape "takes up all, makes each mans wit his own," and "from brocage is become so bold a thiefe,/As we, the rob’d, leave rage, and pittie it" (Hunter 24). Jonson claims that he "will not show/A line unto [Proule the Plagiary], till the world it know" (Hunter 34) in order to avoid having Proule claim it as his own. And of Play-Wright, "Five of my jests, then stolne, past him a play" (Hunter 46). This seems a bald hypocrisy. A man whose "tendency to lift whole passages out of ancient sources was famous even in his own day" (Boehrer 296) reacting so accusingly to his own work being "imitated" is hard to reconcile. Indeed, Miles doesn’t even dare to attempt reconciliation, instead opting to argue that Jonson is not imitative, therefore there is no contradiction. Miles declares, "No reader…could long harbor the notion that [Jonson] had made himself merely the mouthpiece of another ‘poet antique or deceased.’ In his varied essays in these poetic forms, Jonson was able to adapt and extend the methods of his classical forebears, rather than simply taking over their ideas and phrases." (170-1) Why then does Boehrer cite Dryden’s characterisation of Jonson as "not onely a professed Imitator of Horace, but a learned Plagiary of all the other [classical poets]" (Boehrer 298, brackets Boehrer)? Clearly the contradiction will not simply go away if we pretend it does not exist. Two things help define this seeming contradiction as a necessary evil Jonson had to bear if he was to survive as a professional writer. The first has to do with Jonson’s use of the humanist tradition to lend his work authority, and the second is the fact that Jonson was the first to make a living solely as a writer, so he was in effect forced to create the rules single handedly.

In the humanist tradition, authority was gained by connecting one’s work to classical antiquity. In Jonson’s earlier, glossed work, he was building his authority in connection to this humanist model. He used his marginal glosses of his own words not as aids to reader study or understanding, but to call attention to his classical learning as the source of his authority (Tribble 132). It is harder to forgive his apparent gloss of Sidney in their citation of the Greeks in defining a poet, but that might be taken as an innocent attempt to associate himself with the same tradition Sidney was linking up to rather than a theft from Sidney.

On Jonson’s position as the first purely professional writer, Dutton writes, "Jonson may lay reasonable claim to have been the first Englishman to build a sustained career solely on his skill with a pen. He did this, perhaps fortuitously, not by siding with either the old or the new literary systems, but by exploiting the potentials of both, as they existed (not always harmoniously) side by side" (2). Jonson, therefore, seems to have behaved in the only way one could reasonably expect. Inasmuch as he claimed his writing as work, the result of his labor (Boehrer 299), and therefore reasonably expected to get his living from this work, he must rigorously assert his possession of that work

The nature of Jonson’s poetry contributes to this rhetoric of possession. Many of his poems are personal and possessive. His epigram "To the Ghost of Martial" (XXXVI) reads in part, "Martial, thou gav’st far nobler Epigrammes/To thy Domitian, than I can my James" (Hunter 16), not only connects him to the classical tradition of the epigram as practised by Martial, but also in a way claims possession of the king. Of course that claim of possession is inherent in making someone the subject of a poem—as the subject they become a part of the creation of the author, whether they will or no, and the author subsumes even the power of a king. Butler recognised a tendency similar to this when he wrote of the Folio of 1616:

Jonson siezes on the ability of print to empower the author, validating himself as sovereign voice by controlling the minutest details of textual production…The volume parades all the aristocratic paraphenalia of dedications and concludes with eulogies of the king, but it is the sovereign power of Jonson himself, subjecting monarch and reader alike, that the book implicitly affirms. (Butler 378-9)

But it is not only ownership of the particular words he used in the order he used them that concerned Jonson. He also wished to assert his right to control the meaning and interpretations of his works. In his first Epigramme, "To the Reader" Jonson cautions, "Pray thee, take care, that tak’st my booke in hand,/To reade it well: that is, to understand" (Hunter 4). This seems to have been meant as a preface to a smaller pamphlet of poems containing only the Epigrammes, and that fact could be taken to mean that the sentiment expressed has little bearing on the monument of the Folio in which it appeared, but that fact rather enhances the exclusionary tendency expressed. The first three Epigrammes concern themselves with excluding those Jonson deems unworthy (Miles 174). He in fact assumes (in Epigramme II) that most readers will be biased against his poetry and not understand it. In the third, he distances himself from the print marketplace, and begs his bookseller not to advertise. "He imagines, in effect, a worst seller" (Marotti 242), purchased and read only by those wise enough to understand. And his production of such a large and expensive volume assists him in this exclusion; no "common" people would be likely to get their hands on it. This may be at odds with a "professional man of letters", but remember that Jonson’s success came from straddling the old and new forms of literary expression, and that after the publication of the Folio in1616 he began to receive the royal pension. Not only that, but he slipped back almost entirely into the coterie/patronage that the Folio seemed to mark his escape from.

According to Arthur Marotti, this return to the manuscript system was not a matter of balancing between two rival systems or of resting on his laurels, but was rather a retreat from the monolith he created. "Sidney did not have to live under the burden of being a (self-promoted) contemporary classic. Jonson, however, did and he responded by returning to the socioliterary environment of manuscript transmission" (Marotti 244). In a sense, this attests to Jonson’s success in creating himself as an "instant classic". Having so carefully crafted his Folio to present "a serene unfolding of his talent rather than as a process of competition, trial, and error" (Butler 378), Jonson would have been forced to live up to that serene unfolding if he wished to continue in the world of print. In effect he wrote himself into a corner that he did not seem confident of writing himself out of.

Now that Jonson’s creation of himself has been examined in some detail, I would like to look at "To Penshurst" and how it relates to some of these issues. This poem is significant in the first place in being a celebration of the Sidney family home, and even this fact has several facets. First was the inevitable connection to Sir Phillip, a powerful authority for Jonson to associate himself with. Then there is the fact that one of Jonson’s major patrons was the Earl of Pembroke, son of Sir Phillip’s sister and nephew to the current Lord of Penshurst, Sir Robert. Among other things the book of Epigrammes was dedicated to the Earl of Pembroke. Jonson is also connected to the Sidney family through friendship with Sir Phillip’s daughter, the Countesse of Rutland, subject of Epigramme LXXIX and The Forest (XII).

The poem is also important as an illustration of Jonson’s classical-humanist model of "poet". It includes multiple references to images of Greek pastoral mythology, and one to Sidney’s "Astrophel and Stella". It presents the reader with the picture of the Muses of classical inspiration blessing the birth of Sir Phillip with their presence. Jonson is indeed creating a "feigning" here for the reader in which we might read all the hedonistic joys of an old fashioned bacchanal.

Jonson cleverly weaves these mythological images and references to Sir Phillip with allusions to other Sidneys. Thus Sir Robert’s wife becomes mixed in with classical antiquity, as does Sir Phillip. But the complexity does not stop there. Jonson frames these blended classical-Sidney family images with images of the English countryside. He is very cleverly and deliberately building the house’s surroundings into a classical paradise, which paradise again alludes to Sir Phillip as author of Arcadia.

The most telling and deliberate act in terms of the discussion of Jonson as self-created poet comes in lines 64-75. In these lines and these lines only, Jonson inserts himself into the idyllic scene he has created. Now he also becomes associated (in his poetic persona) with the nymphs and satyrs of the classical poetic tradition. But it is the specific situation in which he inserts himself that is so telling.

There are at least three ways to read this section. On the surface, it serves as a strong example of the generosity and hospitality of the Sidney family, an important virtue to praise when your livelihood might depend on it. In this reading Jonson’s carefully crafted structure serves him well, as the bounty of the Sidney table reflects the hyperbolic bounty of the land itself, where fish leap out from the river into the waiting hand of the fisherman and the tenants send their "ripe daughters" (Hunter 79) to the house, ostensibly to bring in the bounty of the land to share, but it is suggested by the fruit–which is an "emblem [symbolic representation] of themselves"–that the daughters come to the house for the sexual pleasure of the lord.

A look at Conversations with Drummond furnishes another possibility. Drummond writes, "being at ye end of my Lord Salisburie’s table with Inigo Jones & demanded by my Lord, why he was not glad My Lord said he yow promised I should dine with yow, but I doe not, for he had none of his meate, he esteamed only yt his meate which was of his owne dish" (Hereford-Simpson 141; 317-321). Drummond’s language about the lord and whose meat was whose suggests that perhaps the bounty of Sir Robert Sidney’s table is in contrast to that of Lord Salisbury. (Hereford-Simpson 57)

The third, and most cogent reading to Jonson’s construction of a public poet-figure for himself, is more metaphorical. Here Mr. Jonson sits, at the table of the Sidney family, having alluded no less than three times to Sir Phillip, eating "of thy Lord’s own meat: /Where the same beere, and bread, and selfe-same wine, /That is his Lordships, shall be also mine" (Hunter 79). While the Lord in question may factually be Sir Robert, one cannot help but think of Sir Phillip after Jonson has brought his ghost so insistently to the feeling of the poem. So here is Ben: Jonson, sitting at Sir Phillips table, drinking from the self-same wine and eating the very meat that is the Lord’s. Perhaps Jonson did not know the Old Norse stories linking mead to poetic inspiration, but given his care in all other matters it seems he must have had a similar effect in mind. Metaphorically, Jonson has himself sharing in the inspiration that blessed Sir Phillip, and once again invoking a great literary figure in order to usurp their authority for himself.

So one gets a sense of the dance Jonson was required to do in order to survive solely on his skill with a pen. Given the conflicting demands of an infant commercial print medium and the slowly dying manuscript patronage system, he was forced to now straddle the two, now leap from one to another. And while doing so create a reputation for himself as a man of letters, a poet in the age-old tradition of the classics as revived by the humanists. With little room for error he balanced these pressures and managed to create a monument to his accomplishments in the form of the Folio of 1616.

Abrams, M. H., et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6^th edition, vol.1. New York: Norton, 1993.

Boehrer, Bruce Thomas. "The Poet of Labor: Authorship and Property in the Work of Ben Jonson." Philological Quarterly 72 (1993): 289-312.

Butler, Martin. "Jonson’s Folio and the Politics of Patronage." Criticism 35 (1993): 377-390.

Dutton, Richard. Ben Jonson: Authority: Criticism. New York: St. Martin’s, 1996.

Hereford, C. H. and Percy Simpson, eds. Ben Jonson: The Man and His Work. Vol. 1. London: Oxford UP, 1925.

Hunter, William B., Jr., ed. The Complete Poetry of Ben Jonson. Garden City, NY: Anchor-Doubleday, 1963.

Marotti, Arthur I. Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993.

Miles, Rosalind. Ben Jonson His Craft and Art. Savage, MD: Barnes and Noble, 1990.

Tribble, Evelyn B. Margins and Marginality: The Printed Page in Early Modern England. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1993.

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