Working with Ian Donaldson and David Bevington on the Cambridge Ben Jonson was the most enjoyable, and stressful, period of my professional life. The intellectual rewards were huge, but another level of reward came from the people involved, the wonderful team that we assembled and the special pleasure of being in virtually day-to-day contact with Ian and David. As personalities they were completely opposite. David was a bundle of explosive energy, a sender of immense and frequent emails, endlessly worrying away at details, and involved in so many other editions he sometimes had to ask which set of guidelines we were using (guidelines he had largely written himself). Ian, by contrast, radiated calm, the reassuring presence with a clear overall vision and a confident sense of how to carry it through. He was also intimately familiar with Jonson’s language and canon, and had an unrivalled knowledge of the critical history. He could effortlessly summon up the precise allusion, cross-reference, or date that you needed – a crucial skill in helping editors shape their introductions and commentaries. But he wore all this so lightly that you barely knew you were being encouraged down particular paths. It’s a great talent to know how to get everyone to feel part of a common enterprise. There’s a lot of variety in CWBJ, as we thought it important to recruit a team with many interests and strengths, but the underlying unity is principally his achievement.
We record with great sadness the death on 2 August 2019 of our dear friend and colleague
David Bevington, a fellow General Editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of
Ben Jonson and an inspiring force behind its creation. David was recruited in 1994,
to our great delight, to join the then still-nascent Cambridge Jonsonian team, to
which he brought astounding energy and experience. Perhaps the most seasoned Shakespearian
scholar of his generation, David had already edited Shakespeare’s complete works in
29 volumes for Bantam Classics and in a single collected volume for Longmans, and
written illuminatingly about aspects of the entire Shakespearian canon. But his sense
of the English dramatic tradition hardly stopped there. His classic study, From Mankind
to Marlowe (1962), had given early indication of his dramatic appetite and reach,
which was later vividly demonstrated in the range and number of scholarly ventures
in English drama, especially of the early modern period, with which he was constantly
involved. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson is one of the many enterprises
to have been blessed by his learning, his dedication, and his enthusiasm. The entire
editorial team and those who worked on the project at Cambridge University Press remember
him with deep admiration and gratitude. To his widow, Peggy – always an engaged and
supportive companion in his work -- and his family we offer our most sincere condolences.
Ian Donaldson and Martin Butler
A moment of Jonsonian history was made on 20 November 2018, when the Playhouse Lab at the University of Leeds gave an unrehearsed reading of A Tale of a Tub. Tub is one of the few plays in the canon for which there is virtually no backstory of stage performance. When we compiled the Performance Archive for the electronic edition we could find no record of revival later than the original stagings in 1634, so (as far as I’m aware) our scratch performance at Leeds is the first documented staging since Jonson’s death.
A few exciting Jonson volumes have turned up in the last few months which may interest readers of this occasional blog. One is a book from Jonson’s own library: Adagia, sive proverbia Graecorum (Antwerp, 1612) by Andreas Schottus. This book, which has hitherto been in a private collection and does not appear in David McPherson’s catalogue of Jonson’s library, has Jonson’s signature (‘Svm Ben: Ionsonij’) and motto (‘tanquam Explorator’). It will be sold later this year at Sotheby’s.
Last week I managed to catch the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Volpone at Stratford before the end of the run. I was looking forward to seeing Henry Goodman in the title role, as he is such a thrilling actor; I still have powerful memories of him as Kitely in the RSC Every Man In in 1986. His marvellous ability to create empathy was very much in evidence last week, though as things went on I came to think empathy is not the top quality one needs for Volpone, whose heartlessness and recklessness need equally to be on the top. Goodman managed to find some humanity in the character, but at some cost to the caustic humour and edginess.
Contribution by Christopher Highley, Ohio State University
An interesting copy of the 1616 Jonson folio is listed in a recent catalogue by the specialist booksellers Maggs Bros. Ltd (catalogue 1471, 2013, item 46). This copy was sold at auction in October 2012, and has now been bought by the Folger Shakespeare Library. The book is yet to reach the shelves at the Folger, but the following preliminary account is based on details from Maggsʼs catalogue.
We are holding a colloquium to mark the completion of the print edition and the release of the online edition on Friday 30 May 2014, in the Special Collections department at the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds. Admission and refreshments are free.
Regular readers of this blog will have noticed that there have been no new updates for several months. This is because of technical work on the electronic edition, and the blogʼs migration to a new URL. Now, though, the online Jonson is finally launched and we can welcome new and returning users to the site. We hope you will find this a rich and powerful resource, and that it will add exciting new dimensions to Jonson as he appears in the print edition.
The Banqueting House, Whitehall, currently has an exhibition called 'Performing for
the King: The Making of a Court Masque' , which runs from 19 July to 1 September 2013.
The masque highlighted at the centre of the show is Aurelian Townshend Tempe Restored,
but Jonson also makes an appearance. More information can be found at http://www.hrp.org.uk/BanquetingHouse/stories/palacehighlights/PerformingfortheKing/default.aspx
A related exhibition on court fashion, with some nice sidelights on masque costume,
is also running at the Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, to 6 October 2013:
http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/exhibitions/in-fine-style-the-art-of-tudor-and-stuart-fashion-QGBP
;
There's an interesting piece in the Guardian by Charles Nicholl, examining John Aubrey's reference to the 'studying chair' in which Jonson liked to work. He shows that Aubrey probably saw it at Robert Wilson's 'tippling-house' in the Strand, named the Ben Jonson's Head, and that it was a 'lipwork' chair, constructed from coils of wheat-straw. For a picture of such a chair, and other fascinating details, see <http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2013/jul/04/trail-ben-jonson-writing-chair>.
During this summer, researchers working on Jonson's 1618 walk from London to Edinburgh will be staging a digital recreation of his journey. Tweets and posts will follow his route from 8 July to 5 October, on a daily basis, at the following addresses:
Contribution by Martin Butler
In the Times Literary Supplement for 22 March 2013, Martin Wiggins announced that he had uncovered an important new document relating to Prince Henryʼs Barriers. Jonsonʼs speeches, presented at Whitehall on 6 January 1610, had been designed to introduce a chivalric show in which the 15-year-old Prince Henry demonstrated his skill in the management of arms. Helped by six supporters and adopting the persona of Meliadus, Prince of the Isles, Henry demonstrated his chivalric prowess by fighting at pike and sword against 56 opponents. Jonsonʼs text, spoken by Merlin, the Lady of the Lake, and the spirit of King Arthur himself, is fulsome in praise of Henry, but it does not reveal what the fictional cause was over which he claimed to be fighting. Martin Wigginsʼs document, which is the original ‘challengeʼ spoken at Whitehall seven days earlier, now fills in that gap.
Contribution by Martin Butler
Contribution by John Creaser, editor of Bartholomew Fair
The Globe Theatre, London, is mounting a staged reading of Cynthia's Revels on Sunday, 2 December at 3pm, preceded by an introductory discussion at 12 noon-2pm. This is probably the first time that the play has been publicly performed since the seventeenth century.
A long review essay by Blair Worden, discussing the edition and Ian Donaldson's Life of Ben Jonson, can be found in the London Review of Books for 11 October 2012. Worden asks what the impact of the edition is likely to be for today's picture of Jonson, and how electronic editing affects our idea of Jonson's self-presentation as author.
The date is significant if we are to understand the place of the folio version of Every Man In in Jonsonʼs stylistic and theatrical development. The choices most favoured in the on-going debate are some time around 1605 and 1612. In 1923 E. K. Chambers argued for the first date, noting that the revival at court on 2 February 1605 would have provided Jonson with an occasion for revision. Internal clues to support this date are, however, not very substantial. Bobadillʼs recounting of his presumed exploits at Strigonium ‘some ten years nowʼ (3.1.92ff.) alludes to the Battle of Graan or Êstergom in Hungary, recaptured from the Turks in 1595; but we need to consider that Bobadill is spinning a lie of epic proportions, and that when Brainworm, disguised as a wounded veteran, has his turn to recount his military career, he goes back all the way, in both quarto and folio texts, to the sieges of Aleppo (1516) and Vienna (1529). Internal evidence about the Turkish Grand Signor is no more substantial. Wellbredʼs letter to young Knowell promises him a present ‘our Turkey company never sent the like to the Grand Signorʼ (1.2.69–70), which might have seemed especially relevant around after Christmas 1605, when a large gift was made to the Sultan, but this possible date has the disadvantage of coming after the court performance in February 1605. Moreover, payments to the Sultan were made in 1583 and 1593, and Dekkerʼs The Wonderful Year (1603) alludes familiarly to New Yearʼs gifts ‘more in number and more worth than those that are given to the great Turk or the Emperor of Persiaʼ.
On 30 April 2012, a public celebration of the edition and of Ian Donaldson's Life of Jonson was held at the British Academy, at which the three General Editors each spoke about their work on Jonson. An audio recording of the evening is now on the British Academy website and can be downloaded here (http://www.britac.ac.uk/cmsfiles/assets/11330.mp3).
Has anyone ever looked at Jonsonʼs inscription to Queen Anne in the British Library copy of The Characters of Two Royal Masques? This is the gift-copy of the masques of Blackness and Beauty which Jonson gave to Anne in 1608, and has an autograph Latin dedication to her. Unfortunately, there is an abbreviation which has resisted our best efforts at explanation. The inscription reads as follows:
The general editors are delighted to announce that the print version of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson was published on 12 July 2012. To order the edition, please follow this link. The online edition is in preparation and will appear in spring 2013. Readers who are interested in the work that underlies the edition can consult the sixty textual essays on this website, written by our contributing editors, which give full technical analyses of the individual plays, poems, masques, and prose works (click on the tab for 'Essays' above).