Despite having been acted ‘with no great applause’ at Christ Church, Oxford, on 13 February 1617, Barten Holyday’s university comedy Technogamia, or The Marriages of the Arts was played again before James I at Woodstock, 26 August 1621 (Wood, 1691-2, 2.170). The play appears to have been revised for the royal performance, but the extent and nature of the revisions are unknown. Antony à Wood tells us that the author made ‘some foolish alterations in it’, but that it proved ‘too grave for the King, and too Scholastick for the auditory’ (2.170). The performance was a resounding disaster, the King’s repeated attempts to leave prematurely providing fodder for a spate of satirical jests in commonplace books of the period.

Many of these poems imitated the jibing verses composed by Peter Heylyn of Magdalen College shortly after the play’s performance. One such satire—a version of Heylyn’s poem, ‘Whoop Holyday’ (Bentley, 1943-68, 4.595)—is of particular interest to Jonsonians: ‘A Satyr made against mr Holydayes Technogama or rather Technogamia, presented before ye kings matie at woodstock on friday 26 of Aug: 1621, by the students of Christchurch.’ The poem occurs uniquely in pages 140-2 of Folger MS V.a.345, a commonplace book (c. 1630; 341 pages) which also contains transcriptions of poems by Donne, Marvell, Raleigh, Jonson, Herbert, and Harington, numerous songs and epitaphs, and a substantial amount of John Earle’s Microcosmographie. The ‘Satyr’ is notable for the following lines about Holyday’s play:

[W]as his muse
Tongue tyde, or wittbound! that she did refuse
To lend new matter, or els did hee deame
Crambe bis cocta was of such esteeme?
What though Ben Johnson made some alteration
yet stil he built vppon ye old foundation
Nay more tis fear’d ye second repetition
wil plague ye print, or elsewise a new edition. (142)

In her critical edition of Technogamia, Sister M. Jean Carmel Cavanaugh glosses these lines with the note, ‘[t]he nature of these alterations—if they were ever actually made—is not clear. . . . The text of the play does not reveal any changes made between the two performances, but it is possible that the revised version has not been preserved’ (Holyday, 1942, xxxvi, n. 36).

It is certainly possible that when Jonson visited Oxford in the summer of 1619 Holyday may have solicited his assistance in revising the play for its royal reception. Wood reports that Richard Corbett and other poets invited Jonson to Oxford, where ‘continuing for some time in Ch. Ch. in writing and composing Plays, he was, as a Member thereof, actually created M. of A. in 1619’ (1.518). Cavanaugh presents ‘some evidence that Ben Jonson and Holyday were on intimate terms’ (xxii), namely the ‘extravagant piece of verse’ which Holyday supplied for the 1640 John Benson edition of Horace’s Art of Poetry and other works, and Holyday’s acknowledgment of debt to his ‘dear friend, the Patriarch of our Poets, Ben. Johnson’ for ‘an ancient Manuscript partly written in the Saxon Character’ (Holyday, 1673, 'Preface to the Reader', sig. a2v; Jonson's Library, item 90). Jonson probably knew Holyday through such Christ Church common acquaintances as Sir Francis Stewart: Wood tells us that in 1618, Holyday ‘went as Chaplain to Sir Franc. Steaart [sic]’ (2.169), and Martin Butler has in turn documented Jonson’s connection to Stewart, noting in particular that ‘although Jonson may not have been responsible for revising Holyday’s academic morality play Technogamia (as has sometimes been claimed), he certainly knew Holyday’ (1995b, 116).

The question of what, if anything, Jonson contributed to Technogamia ultimately remains insoluble. Bentley remained agnostic about the possibility: ‘It is not impossible that Jonson had helped Holyday touch up the play, yet had his revisions been very extensive it seems likely that other satirists of the Woodstock fiasco would have mentioned it. Jonson never wanted for enemies’ (4.595-96). The fact that the 1630 edition of Holyday’s play ‘represents merely an uncritical reprint of the 1618 quarto’ (Cavanaugh, ed., xxxvi, n. 36) ought to preclude the possibility of Jonson having made any alterations. However, the curious fact of Technogamia receiving a second print run after the disastrous royal performance is a puzzle in itself—and it is tempting to speculate that, given the poor reception of the text in 1621, Holyday may have retained the original 1618 text for this second print run in 1630 even if Jonson had suggested improvements. The lack of an ‘expected boast about a royal performance’ from the second quarto’s title-page supports Bentley’s suspicion that ‘Holyday wished to commit this performance to oblivion’ (4.595), and if such were the case, the revisions (if there were any) would never have made it to print.