Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson's father died before he was born, which meant that he would probably receive no formal education. However, young Ben became a self-taught scholar, and as luck would have it, he became acquainted with William Camden, the headmaster of the Westminster School of London. The young boy impressed Camden so much that he enrolled young Ben in his school and educated him at his own expense.
After leaving Westminster with no money for a university education, Jonson joined the English army and fought against the Spanish. While stationed in Flanders, he became well-known because he engaged in man-to-man combat with the Spanish champion and killed him.
In his early twenties, Jonson returned to London, joined a theater company, and began acting and writing. Unlike his friends William Shakespeare and John Donne, Jonson was more like today's writers who are eager for public notice. His first major literary success was a play entitled Every Man in His Humor. It was produced when he was only twenty-six and featured Shakespeare in a leading role. Both critics and audiences loved it.
Jonson was part of the tough, violent life at that time in London. He was hot tempered and never worried about being politically correct. This led to two serious brushes with the law. He killed a fellow actor in a duel and was convicted and sentenced to hang.
He only managed to escape the gallows by proving that he could read Latin, which entitled him to a trial in a more lenient church court. This court overturned the civil court's death sentence, but Jonson was branded on the thumb as a convicted felon. On another occasion he went to prison for making offensive remarks about Scotland (King James was Scottish).
Jonson's passionate, out-spoken nature got him into trouble with many of his colleagues and friends throughout his lifetime. However, his literary career prospered, and by 1616 his plays and other works were so popular that King James gave him a lifetime pension, making him England's first poet laureate.
At the height of his career, Jonson was a sort of literary dictator in London, creating the word "playwright" to describe himself. He was highly admired by a number of younger writers who became known as the "tribe of Ben" or the "sons of Ben."
In Jonson's later years, his style of writing had become less popular and his blunt manner had made him many enemies. When he died at sixty-four, he was sick, poor, and neglected.
Shortly before his death, Jonson begged King Charles I for 18 inches of ground in Westminster Abbey for his burial. The request was granted, and a legend grew that Jonson was buried in an upright position in 2 feet by 2 feet space beneath his grave marker on the wall.
The historians at Westminster Abbey believe the story to be true because when a Victorian grave was being dug nearby, two leg bones were found buried upright in the earth and a skull rolled down from above these bones.
In spite of his utter poverty and near obscurity at the time of his death, when word of his death was circulated throughout London, a tremendous crowd of mourners attended his burial at Westminster Abbey. He is regarded as one of the major dramatists and poets of the seventeenth century. Jonson's marker has only 4 words, "O rare Ben Johnson." (His name was misspelled on the marker when it was replaced many years after his death.)
The poem "On My First Son" by Ben Jonson was written on the death of his first son who died at the age of seven, a victim of the plague. We call such poems elegies. Jonson contrasts his feelings of sorrow with what he thinks he ought to feel - happiness that his son is in a better place. As you read, notice that Jonson writes as if talking to his son.
On My First Son
Read Jonson's poem "On My First Son."
Jonson calls his son the child of his "right hand," which is the literal translation of the Hebrew name Benjamin.
It also suggests the boy's great worth to his father and the fact that he would have been the writer's heir; the image comes from the Bible - it reflects ancient cultures and the way Jesus is shown as sitting at God's right hand.
Jonson sees the boy's death as being caused by his own sin of loving the boy too much - an idea that he restates in the last two lines of the poem. In lines 3-4, he sees the boy's life in terms of a loan, which he has had to repay at the end of seven years, on the day set for
repayment.
This extended metaphor expresses the idea that all people really belong to God and are just "loaned" to this world for a time. In line 5, we see that Jonson's grief causes him to give up all thoughts of being a father again.
In lines 6-8, Jonson considers the fact that he is crying over something we should really envy - escaping the hardships of life and the misery of aging. In the following lines, the poet includes his son's epitaph, "Here doth lie Ben Jonson's best piece of poetry." In the final couplet, he remembers his sin and promises that from now on, whatever he loves, he will not love it "too much."
Song to Celia
Next, you are going to read another poem by Ben Jonson called "Song To Celia." Read it carefully, looking for tone, theme, rhyme scheme, and figurative language.
An annotation is a note added by way of comment or explanation. We are going to annotate the poem "To Celia" together.
Sample Annotation
Drink to me only with thine eyes
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not look for wine.
In lines 1-8, Jonson uses "drinking" and "thirst" as metaphors for love and desire.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine:
But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
The speaker is saying that even if he could drink Zeus' or Jupiter's nectar, he wouldn't; he would rather Celia's.
Love is intoxicating. He doesn't need anything else but Celia.
I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee,
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be.
But thou thereon didst only breathe,
And sent'st it back to me:
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee.
The theme of the poem is love.
The tone of the poem is somewhat insistent by telling Celia to "drink to me" and sending her a "wreath" ; however, it then changes to a longing for something he can't have when the wreath was returned.
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