The chronological arrangement of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson has been designed to give readers some sense of the progressive development of Jonson’s career, and the multitude and variety of tasks on which he was often simultaneously involved. The present Chronology aims to amplify and enrich that perspective. It lists, to begin with, the entire contents of the Print Edition, showing in bold in the left-hand margins the volume and page numbers where particular texts (or, in the case of lost works, essays speculating on the possible nature of these texts) are to be found. It also lists chronologically other events relevant to Jonson’s life and writings, and cross-references documents available elsewhere in the edition (such as the Life Records, the Literary Record, the Masque Archive, the Textual Essays, and the Performance Histories) where more detailed arguments for datings summarily stated here are generally to be found. At the end of each calendar year the Chronology also offers, for comparative purposes, an altogether more selective listing of other publications, performances, and social and political events occurring in that year, and of the births and deaths of notable figures of the time.
Several systems of dating existed within Ben Jonson’s lifetime (1572-1637). On 2 February 1582 Pope Gregory XIII introduced by papal bull a reformed calendar to rectify the increasing divergence of the calendar year from the solar year, which over the years had created by this time a discrepancy of ten days. The new calendar was adopted by most Catholic countries by 1583, but not accepted in England until 1751. Throughout most of Jonson’s lifetime the calendar in England consequently lagged ten days behind that of continental Europe. The dual system of dating is indicated here (e.g. in relation of Jonson’s continental travels in 1612/1613) by a double citation often adopted in Jonson’s lifetime, e.g. 12/22 November. Within England itself the new year was sometimes reckoned to begin on 1 January, but sometimes, in accordance with legal practice, on Lady Day, 25 March. The Gregorian calendar was introduced to Scotland in 1600, and by a simultaneous adjustment the new year was said to begin on 1 January. All datings given in this Chronology and through this edition assume that the British year began on 1 January.
The inconsistency of Jonson’s own dating practices has long been recognized. To the confusion of later scholars, Jonson at times adopted the calendrical system of dating, where the year began at 1 January, while at other times he followed the legal style, in which the new year was assumed to begin on 25 March. This has led to much uncertainty in the dating of Jonson’s writings. In an influential study many years ago (‘The Riddle of Jonson’s Chronology’, 1926c), W. W. Greg attempted to trace a developing logic in Jonson’s use of dates, suggesting that throughout the first half of his career Jonson dated his works according to the calendrical system (which Greg believed underlay, for example, the organization of Jonson’s 1616 folio), while in the 1620s he began to adopt the legal system, which largely dominated his practice thereafter. In a searching critique of Greg’s theory, published at the end of this present listing (‘The Riddle of Jonson’s Chronology Revisited’), Martin Butler shows that Jonson’s practice was far more inconsistent than Greg was aware. Many of the dates attached to Jonson’s work were not furthermore (Butler argues) of authorial provenance, but added later to his texts by scribes or printers or friends or court officials. While Butler’s fine account scarcely removes the initial difficulty he sets out to analyse, it confirms the need for special vigilance in establishing a chronology of this kind, and the value of drawing wherever possible on multiple kinds of evidence when determining the dates of Jonson’s works.
Biographical dates in this Chronology, along with dates of publications and performances, generally conform to those provided in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004, and online revisions). Dates given here for the masques and entertainments follow those established by Martin Butler in ‘A Calendar of Masques and Entertainments, 1603-1641’, printed as an appendix to his The Stuart Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge, 2008). In the dating of dramatic works by Jonson’s contemporaries, I have been much helped by G. E. Bentley’s The Jacobean and Caroline Stage (7 volumes, 1941-68), E. K. Chambers’ The Elizabethan Stage (4 volumes, 1923), Alfred Harbage’s Annals of English Drama 975-1700 , revised by Samuel Schoenbaum (1964), David Bevington’s account of ‘Canon, Dates, and Early Texts’, Appendix 1 in his edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare , seventh edition, 2013, Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture: A Companion to The Collected Works , edited by Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (Oxford, 2007), and G. K. Hunter’s Chronology in English Drama, 1586-1642: The Age of Shakespeare (Oxford History of English Literature, 1997). I have drawn on the documents assembled by Glynne Wickham, Herbert Berry, and William Ingram in English Professional Theatre 1530-1660 (2000) in selectively chronicling year-by-year developments in the London theatre. More detailed accounts of biographical episodes noted briefly here can usually be found in my own Ben Jonson: A Life (2011).
Information about poems from Jonson’s three major collections, Epigrams , The Forest , and The Underwood , is noted from time to time at the appropriate historical place within the Chronology. Readers are reminded, however, that these poems are located in this edition not at the point at which they might be presumed to have been written, but within the collections, as Jonson evidently wished to see them presented: those from the Epigrams and The Forest (which were published together in Jonson’s first folio in 1616) in volume 5 of the Print Edition, between pages 101 and 198 and 199-248 respectively, and those from The Underwood (published together after Jonson’s death in the second folio of 1640-1) in volume 7, between pages 69 and 295.
Spellings are modernized throughout this Chronology, except in those instances where it may be important to preserve the original spelling in order to sustain a significant uncertainty (e.g. in the identification of names found in parish records) or other quality.
Many dates given in this Chronology are necessarily approximate, and are based here on the best information currently available. Uncertainty is indicated either by ‘ c .’ (for ‘ circa ’) or by slashes: e.g. 1613/1617 (signifying that an event occurred at some unknown moment between the two named dates). The last form is regularly inserted for convenience’ sake only at the first of the two named dates (e.g. in this example at 1613, but not thereafter at 1614, 1615, 1616, and 1617), without implication that the earliest date is the more likely to be correct. Hyphenated dates (e.g. 27-28 April 1613) are used for events that continued or were repeated over more than one day. In the performance entries for Shakespeare’s plays (though not for other writers, apart from Jonson) publication dates are also regularly included as a further guide to dating.
‘His grandfather came from Carlisle, and he thought from Annandale to it; he served King Henry VIII, and was a gentleman. His father lost all his estate under Queen Mary; having been cast in prison and forfeited, at last turned minister. So he was a minister’s son’ ( Informations , 177-80). Henry VIII ruled from 1509 to 1547; Mary from 1553 to 1558. Jonson’s grandfather probably moved from Annandale to Carlisle after the Battle of Solway Moss on 24 November 1542 (Donaldson, 2011, ch. 3).
1692 : publication of Jonson’s third folio (F3) by a syndicate of booksellers (Henry Herringman, Edward Brewster, Thomas Bassett, Richard Chiswell, Matthew Wotton, and George Conyers), adding some new texts -- The New Inn, Leges Convivales , the lines over the entrance to the Apollo Room at the Devil Tavern -- and supplying a recast version of The English Grammar. See Tom Lockwood, Textual Essay, Collected Editions, F3.
1716-17: ‘The Booksellers’ Edition’: a six-volume octavo edition of Jonson’s works reprinted from the 1692 F3 by another syndicate of booksellers (John Walthoe, Matthew Wotton, John Nicholson, John Sprint, George Conyers, Benjamin Tooke, Daniel Midwinter, Thomas Ballard, Benjamin Cowse, Jacob Tonson, and William Innys). See Tom Lockwood, Textual Essay, Collected Editions, The Booksellers’ Edition.
1756: Peter Whalley’s seven-volume annotated octavo edition of Jonson’s works based on the 1716-17 Booksellers’ edition, adding The Case Is Altered to the canon: published by D. Midwinter, W. Innys and J. Richardson, J. Knapton, T. Wotton, C. Hitch and L. Hawes, J. Walthoe, D. Browne, J. and R. Tonson, C. Bathurst, J. Hodges, J. Ward, M. and T. Longman, W. Johnston, P. Davey, and B. Law. See Tom Lockwood, Textual Essay, Collected Editions, Peter Whalley.
1816: The Works of Ben Jonson in Nine Volumes With Notes Critical and Explanatory, and a Biographical Memoir , by William Gifford. Reprinted by Francis Cunningham in a three-volume recension in 1870/1 and in a nine-volume edition in 1875, with additional annotation. See Lockwood, Textual Essay, Collected Editions, William Gifford, and Lockwood, 2005.
1925-52: Ben Jonson , edited in eleven volumes by C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson and published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford. See Martin Butler, Textual Essay, Collected Editions, Herford & Simpson.
May: death of Jonson’s father. ‘He himself was posthumous born, a month after his father’s decease; brought up poorly’ ( Informations , 180-1).
Date: 11 June: Jonson born. ‘Witness his action done at Scandaroon, / Upon my birthday, the eleventh of June ’ : so Jonson writes of Sir Kenelm Digby in The Underwood 78. 13-14 . Whalley, prompted perhaps by the text of Benson’s 1640 quarto, argues that ‘Upon my birthday’ should be amended to read ‘Upon his birthday’ (i.e. Digby’s). He cites Richard Ferrar’s Epitaph on the death of Sir Kenelm Digby, which makes 11 June ‘memorable for his birthday, the day of his victory, and the day of his death’:
Born on the day he died, the eleventh of June,
And that day bravely fought at Scandaroon;
‘Tis rare that one and the same day should be
His day of birth and death and victory.
But Ferrar’s dating appears to be mistaken, for Digby’s surviving horoscope, prepared in his own hand, clearly shows that he was born on 11 July, not 11 June. See Briggs (1918), 137-45; Miles (1986), 280-2; Donaldson (2011), 62.
‘Benjamin Jonson was born in this city [Westminster]’ (Thomas Fuller, Early Lives). Jonson ‘made his first entry on the stage of this vain world within the City of Westminster, being the son of a grave minister’ (Antony à Wood, Early Lives). But ‘wherever Jonson was born, it was almost certainly not in Westminster. Westminster then comprised only two parishes, St Margaret’s and St Martin’s, and the registers of neither contain any record of Jonson’s baptism. His connection with Westminster presumably began when his mother married the bricklayer who lived in Hartshorn Lane’: Eccles (1936a), 262.
Lives: Comparative birthdates: Edmund Spenser, born c. 1552; Thomas Kyd, baptised 1558; George Chapman, born 1559/1560, Francis Bacon, born 22 January 1561; Samuel Daniel, born 1562/1563; Michael Drayton, born early 1563; William Shakespeare, baptised 23 April 1564; Christopher Marlowe, baptised 1564; Thomas Nashe, baptised November 1567; Thomas Campion, born 12 February 1567; John Donne, born between 24 January and 19 June 1572; Thomas Dekker, born c. 1572.
Performances: An ‘Act for the Punishment of Vagabonds and for Relief of the Poor and Impotent’ is passed on 29 June, requiring theatrical companies to be authorized by senior members of the nobility: a more restrictive definition of theatrical patronage than hitherto.
Publications: Thomas Wilson, Discourse upon Usury.
Events: On 16 January Thomas Howard, 4 th Duke of Norfolk – brother of Jonson’s ‘mortal enemy’, Henry Howard, 1 st Earl of Northampton ( Informations , 250) – is found guilty of conspiring to marry Mary, Queen of Scots, and attempting to restore Catholicism to England, and is beheaded on 2 June.
In July William Cecil, Lord Burghley, becomes Lord Treasurer.
Date: 23 August: Massacre of French Huguenots on St Bartholomew’s Day, six days after the wedding of Charles IV’s sister Margaret to the Protestant Henri of Navarre (the future Henri IV of France). The massacre intensifies hostility towards Catholics in England and Scotland, and in particular towards Mary, Queen of Scots.
Lives: Inigo Jones (15 July), Henry Wriothesley (6 October), William Laud (7 October), and Thomas Heywood ( c. 1573) born.
Performances: Mamillia performed by Leicester’s Men at Court.
Publications: George Gascoigne, Hundred Sundry Flowers.
Events: Siege of the Huguenot-held city of La Rochelle by French Catholic forces following the St Bartholomew Day massacre.
In December Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s future spymaster, is appointed Principal Secretary and Privy Councillor.
Lives: Joseph Hall (1 July) and Anne of Denmark (12 December) born; William Parker, future Baron Monteagle (praised in Epigrams 60) born 1574/1575.
Performances: On 6 December an Act is passed by the Court of Common Council (City of London) ‘Concerning Interludes and Plays within this City’ in a further attempt to regulate playing. Leicester’s Men are granted a royal patent.
Publications: John Higgins, The First Part of the Mirror for Magistrates.
Events: In the summer Elizabeth signs the Anglo-Spanish Treaty in Bristol, ending the embargo on trade with Spain.
A first contingent of Roman Catholic seminary priests arrives in England.
Lives: Birth (by 10 November) of Arbella Stuart, first cousin of James VI of Scotland; birth of Lionel Cranfield, merchant and financier; and of Edmund Bolton, Catholic writer and friend of Jonson (1575/1576).
Performances: George Gascoigne’s The Princely Pleasures at the Court at Kenilworth is performed before Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth Castle (published 1576).
Publications: George Gascoigne, The Noble Art of Venery or Hunting.
Events: Queen Elizabeth grants Thomas Tallis and William Byrd a 25-year monopoly to print music.
Henri III of France is crowned at Rheims.
Lives: John Marston born (baptised 7 October).
Performances: James Burbage builds the Theatre, a public playhouse in Shoreditch, just outside the City boundaries and therefore beyond civic regulation; it opens late in the year. A similar smaller public playhouse had opened earlier in 1576 or possibly in 1575 at Newington Butts. The first Blackfriars theatre, a private playhouse, opens late in 1576 on the site of a former Dominican convent in Blackfriars.
Publications: Jean Bodin, Six livres de la République.
Events: Martin Frobisher’s first voyage in search of a northwest passage to Cathay (or China).
‘He was first bred in a private school in St Martin’s church’ (Fuller on Jonson, Early Lives), i.e. a small elementary school associated with the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. ‘When a little child, he lived in Hartshorn Lane near Charing Cross, where his mother married a bricklayer for her second husband’ (Fuller, Early Lives). Jonson’s stepfather has been identified by J. B. Bamborough (1961) as Robert Brett (Life Records, 2). The precise date of his mother’s remarriage is unknown, but is likely to have occurred before this date.
Lives: Robert Burton (8 February) and Thomas Coryate ( c. 1577) are born. George Gascoigne dies (7 October).
Performances: The Curtain, another large public playhouse, is built by Henry Lanman immediately south of the Theatre in Shoreditch. It opens in the autumn, serving initially as an auxiliary playhouse (or ‘easer’) to the Theatre, to which it is financially linked. Newington Butts, a public playhouse in Surrey a mile south of London Bridge, is in use by this time, and may have been constructed earlier.
Publications: The first edition of Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles is published. The second edition, consulted by Shakespeare, is published in 1587.
Events: A ‘great comet’ appears in the skies in November, prompting further debate about the supposedly unchanging nature of the heavens. In December Francis Drake sets off on a privateering expedition to explore South America and seize Spanish bullion, and eventually circumnavigates the world.
Lives: George Sandys (2 March) and William Harvey (1 April) born.
Performances: George Whetstone’s Promos and Cassandra possibly acted.
Publications: Guillaume Du Bartas, Première semaine ou création du monde ; John Florio, First Fruits ; John Lyly, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit.
Events: Frobisher sets off on his third voyage; Drake passes through the Straits of Magellan on his circumnavigation of the globe.
Discussions begin about a possible marriage between Elizabeth I and the 23-year-old François of Valois, duc d’Anjou (21 years her junior), the younger brother of the French King, Henri III. Jonson comments on the duc’s visit to England in Informations , 265-7.
In September, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, marries Lettice ( née Knollys) Devereux, Dowager Countess of Essex, without Elizabeth’s knowledge or consent.
Jonson begins at Westminster School perhaps in this year, around the age of seven (the minimum age for admission: Foster Watson, 1908); ‘brought up poorly, put to school by a friend (his master, Camden)’: Informations , 181.
Lives: John Fletcher born (20 December).
Performances: Edmund Tilney is appointed Master of Revels under patent, having served on an annual commission the previous year.
Publications: Edmund Spenser’s The Shepheardes Calender ; Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans ; Stephen Gosson’s School of Abuse ; Thomas Lodge’s Defence of Stage Plays.
Events: Through the Union of Utrecht, seven northern provinces in the Low Countries join together against the Catholics to become the United Provinces (essentially the Dutch Republic in what would later be known as the Netherlands), vowing to fight for freedom of worship and independence from Spain. The provinces in the south meanwhile sign an accord at Arras pledging their allegiance to Philip II of Spain and the Catholic religion.
Burghley and the Earl of Sussex support Elizabeth’s proposed marriage to the duc d’Anjou, while Leicester and Walsingham oppose it.
James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald arrives in Kerry in July with Spanish and Italian troops to resist English rule in Ireland, but is killed the following month.
The English College is established in Rome.
Esmé Stuart, 6 th Seigneur d’Aubigny -- father of Jonson’s future patron -- is sent to Scotland by Catholic authorities, and establishes himself as a favourite of the young King James VI.
Lives: William Herbert, Jonson’s future patron, third Earl of Pembroke, born (8 April); Thomas Middleton born (baptised 18 April).
Performances: Thomas Legge’s Latin play, Richardus Tertius , is performed at St John’s College, Cambridge.
Publications: John Lyly, Euphues and His England.
Events: The first Jesuit mission, with Robert Persons and Edmund Campion, arrives in England.
Philip II of Spain enters Lisbon and is crowned King of Portugal.
Date: 15 July: Sara Brett is buried at St Martin’s; Jonson’s stepsister? (Life Records, 1).
Lives: Thomas Overbury born (baptised 18 June).
Performances: George Peele, The Arraignment of Paris (1581/1584).
Publications: Edmund Campion, Rationes decem , outlining ten points of the Catholic religion that he would defend against Protestant argument.
Events: Edmund Campion and seven other priests are tortured, then hanged, drawn, and quartered.
Drake, having returned the previous year from his circumnavigation of the world with much Spanish booty, is knighted by Queen Elizabeth on board The Golden Hind near Deptford.
Date: 1 January: John Brett, Jonson’s stepbrother, is baptised at St Martin-in-the-Fields (Life Records, 1).
Lives: William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway marry. Phineas Fletcher born (baptised 8 April).
Performances: William Gager, Meleager.
Publications: Douay-Rheims Bible; Richard Hakluyt, Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of America ; Anthony Mundy’s Discovery of Edward Campion and English Roman Life.
Events: The reformed Calendar is introduced into Italy and other Catholic countries by Pope Gregory XIII.
Elizabeth declares all Jesuits and seminary priests arriving in England will be prosecuted as traitors.
Date: 22 August: William Ruthven, Earl of Gowrie, and other Presbyterian nobles abduct James VI of Scotland, hoping to limit Catholic influence on the young King, and to curb in particular the power of his favourite, Esmé Stuart senior, father of Jonson’s future patron.
Lives: Philip Massinger born (baptised 24 November); William and Anne Shakespeare’s daughter, Susanna, born.
Performances: John Lyly, Campaspe (1583/4). Queen Elizabeth’s Men established.
Publications: Sir Thomas Smith (admired by Jonson, Discoveries , 648), De Republica Anglorum ; Philip Stubbes’s The Anatomy of Abuses.
Events: François duc d’Anjou leaves England when marriage negotiations with Elizabeth collapse, and returns to France after attempting unsuccessfully to collaborate with Protestant forces in the Low Countries.
Francis Throckmorton confesses under torture to his involvement in a plot to remove Elizabeth and place Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne of England, and is executed the following year.
John Whitgift is appointed Archbishop of Canterbury and moves to check Puritanism and ensure conformity in England.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert voyages to America, explores Newfoundland, and is lost at sea.
Gerald fitz James Fitzgerald, fifteenth Earl of Desmond (‘the rebel earl’ and father of James Fitzgerald, sixteenth Earl of Desmond of Jonson’s The Underwood 25) is captured and beheaded in Ireland.
Date: 22 March: Robert Brett (Jonson’s stepbrother) baptised, St Martin-in-the-Fields (Life Records, 1).
Lives: Birth of Philip Herbert, future Earl of Montgomery (10 October), John Selden (16 December), and Francis Beaumont (1584/1585).
Performances: Lyly, Galatea and Sappho and Phao .
Publications: William Allen, A True, Sincere, and Modest Defence of the English Catholics ; Reginald Scot, The Discovery of Witchcraft ; Guillaume Du Bartas, Seconde semaine, ou enfance du monde ; James VI of Scotland, Essays of a Prentice in the Divine Art of Poesy . The University Press at Cambridge begins printing books.
Events: Having returned to France after his failed courtship of Elizabeth, François duc d’Anjou – the King’s young brother and presumptive heir to the French throne -- dies in June, leaving Henri of Navarre, the Huguenot leader, as the new heir presumptive.
In the Low Countries, William of Orange is assassinated by a Catholic fanatic, throwing the Protestant revolt into jeopardy.
In November Parliament resolves to banish all Roman Catholic priests from England, to recall all Englishmen from Catholic seminaries in Europe, and to prescribe the death penalty for anyone conspiring to overthrow or assassinate the Queen.
Date: 24 April: Rebecca Brett buried at St Martin's: Jonson’s stepsister? (Mason, 1898, 140; Life Records, 1).
Date: 16 June: Margareta Brett baptised at St Martin's: Jonson’s stepsister? (Life Records, 1).
Lives: William Drummond born (13 December); Pierre de Ronsard dies (December).
Performances: The Lord Admiral’s Men become active.
Richard Tarlton (attributed), The Seven Deadly Sins.
Publications: Cervantes’ first book, La Galatea.
Events: Elizabeth sends Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester to the Netherlands to aid the Dutch and make open war on Spain in revenge for the murder of William of Orange, and sends Drake to plunder the West Indies.
Sir Walter Ralegh sets off to found the colony of Virginia, but abandons the attempt the following year.
A lease granted this year for a property in Hartshorn (or Christopher) Lane, near Charing Cross -- where the young Jonson is living with his now extended family -- refers to ‘the little garden lately made over the sewer or ditch by Robert Brett’ (Life Records, 1).
Lives: John Ford born (baptised 12 April).
Performances: Marlowe and Nashe, Dido, Queen of Carthage (1586/1593); Famous Victories of Henry V (1583/1588).
Publications: Camden’s Britannia.
A Star Chamber act is passed forbidding publications that are not approved by ecclesiastical authorities, thus provoking the 1588 Martin Marprelate pamphlet warfare between an anonymous puritan writer and defenders of the Anglican church (whose writings are ghosted in peppery style by John Lyly, Thomas Nashe, Robert Greene, and others).
Events: Leicester angers Queen Elizabeth by accepting the title and office of Governor General in the United Provinces, thus implying her sovereignty within the region. Philip Sidney meets his death at Zutphen.
Mary Queen of Scots’ complicity in a plot against Elizabeth organized by Anthony Babington is suspected; she is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.
Jonson is ‘taken from’ Westminster School ‘and put to another craft (I think was to be a wright or bricklayer), which he could not endure’ ( Informations , 181-3). ‘He was statutably admitted into St John’s College in Cambridge (as many years after incorporated an honorary member of Christ Church College in Oxford) where he continued but few weeks for want of further maintenance, being fain to return to the trade of his father-in-law’ (Fuller, Life Records; ZZZDonaldson, 2011,[ Bib. # 2048a ]ZZZ ch. 5).
Lives: Jonson’s future protégé, Nathan Field (see Informations , 121-2), is born (baptised 17 October).
Performances: Greene, Alphonsus, King of Aragon (1587/1588); Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy (1586/1590; published 1592); Lyly, Mother Bombie (1587/1590); Marlowe, Tamburlaine part 1 (1587/1588); Marlowe and Nashe, Dido, Queen of Carthage (1587/1588).
The Rose theatre, the first of five public playhouses to be erected on Bankside in Southwark, is built for Philip Henslowe.
Publications: The Whole Works of George Gascoigne.
Events: Elizabeth signs the death warrant of Mary Queen of Scots, who is executed at Fotheringhay Castle.
Drake raids Cadiz and destroys the Spanish fleet there; the Armada is delayed for twelve months.
The Black Books of Lincoln’s Inn record the sum of £298.7s.11d. paid for a brick wall to be made in this year ‘at the upper end of the backside toward Holborn’, along with a gate towards Fichett’s Field, and another gate in the brick wall towards the pump; and for repairs in 1587 and 1589 to be made by 'Thomas Brett, "le Bricklayer"' (Eccles, 1936a, 264; Life Records, 3). Jonson is likely to have been involved in some at least of these activities (though his stepfather was Robert Brett, not Thomas Brett): Bamborough (1960), Donaldson (2011), 87-8.
Lives: The Earl of Leicester dies (4 September), having been recalled from the Low Countries in 1587. On the alleged circumstances of his death, see Informations , 271-3. Thomas Hobbes (5 April) and George Wither (11 June?) are born.
Performances: Lodge, Wounds of Civil War (1587/1592); Lyly, Endymion: The Man in the Moon ; Marlowe, Tamburlaine , part 2; Marlowe (and Rowley?), Doctor Faustus (1588/1589 or 1592); Henry Porter, Two Angry Women of Abingdon (1585/ 1589); Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost ( c. 1588/1597); Robert Wilson, Three Lords and Three Ladies of London (1588/1590).
Publications: Robert Greene, Pandosto (first surviving edition, perhaps published earlier).
Events: After a series of naval battles between English and Spanish fleets in the English Channel in late July and early August, the Spanish Armada is routed, and driven north by storms which destroy most of its remaining vessels. The encounter is described in Merlin’s speech in Prince Henry’s Barriers , 292-317.
Accession of Christian IV of Denmark.
Date: 25 September: Alicia Breet ( sic ) buried at St Martin's: Jonson's stepsister? (Life Records, 1).
Lives: Death (5 January) of Catherine de Médicis, Queen consort of Henri II of France and mother of Henri III (see ‘Events’ below).
Performances: Greene’s Menaphon ; Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1589/1592); Guarini, Il pastor fido ( Informations , 45); Lyly, Midas (1589/1590); Marlowe, The Jew of Malta (1589/1590); Nashe, Anatomy of Absurdity ; Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors (1589/1594), 3 parts of Henry VI (1589/1592). (Shortened versions of 2 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI were to be published in 1594 and 1595, and the full sequence in folio in 1623.)
Publications: Puttenham’s The Art of English Poesy printed and published anonymously after circulating in manuscript (‘That old book that goes about, The Art of English Poesy , was done twenty years since, and kept long in writ as a secret’: Informations , 325-6).
Events: Henri III of France is murdered on 1 August by a Dominican friar, Jacques Clément, in revenge for the assassination of the Guise brothers the previous December. The protestant Henri of Navarre proclaims himself King Henri IV, and seeks assistance from Queen Elizabeth to support his claims: she sends military reinforcements.
Marriage of James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark (by proxy, 20 August; in Oslo, 23 November).
Robert Brett is employed by the Pensioner of Lincoln’s Inn as a bricklayer in 1590-1; Jonson is perhaps working with him at this time. Jonson ‘helped in the building of the new structure of Lincoln’s Inn, when having a trowel in his hand, he had a book in his pocket. Some gentlemen, pitying that his parts should be buried under the rubbish of so mean a calling, did by their bounty manumise him freely to follow his own ingenuous inclinations’ (Fuller, Early Lives). William Oldys in his copy of Langbaine’s Account of the English Dramatic Poets (Oxford 1691: now in the British Library) notes further against this passage from Fuller: ‘in the square whose chapel stands, not far from the old gate which leads into Chancery Lane which gate indeed was built or repaired in 1591, but the buildings or chambers which Ben was engaged in raising must be above twenty years more modern’ (283). Aubrey (Early Lives): ‘’tis generally said that he wrought some time with his father-in-law ( sic ), and particularly on the garden-wall of Lincoln’s Inn next to Chancery Lane, and that a knight, a bencher, walking through and hearing him repeat some Greek verses out of Homer, discoursing with him and finding him to have a wit extraordinary, gave him some exhibition to maintain him at Trinity College in Cambridge.’ No other contemporary evidence associates Jonson with Trinity College (perhaps a slip for St John’s).
Lives: Francis Walsingham dies (6 April); George Puttenham dies (1590/1591). Lady Anne Clifford born (30 January); William Browne of Tavistock born (1590/1591).
Performances: Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590/1594; first printed in 1623 folio) , The Taming of the Shrew (1590/1593; first printed in 1623 folio).
Publications: Lodge, Rosalynd ; Sidney, Arcadia ; Spenser, The Faerie Queene , Books 1-3.
Events: Henri IV defeats French Catholics at Ivry in Normandy and prepares to besiege Paris.
Jonson enlists for service in Low Countries probably in this year, when special efforts are being made to reinforce the English expeditionary army sent to the Netherlands: 'then went he to the Low Countries, but returning soon he betook himself to his wonted studies. In his service in the Low Countries he had, in the face of both the camps, killed an enemy and taken opima spolia from him': Informations, 183-6. Cf. Epigrams, 108.
Date: 31 October: Anthony Brett baptised at St Martin's: stepbrother? (Mason, 1898, 22; Literary Record, 1).
Lives: Robert Herrick born (baptised 24 August).
Performances: Anon., Arden of Faversham? (1585/1592); Anon., The True Tragedy of Richard III ? (1588/1594); Marlowe, Edward II ? (1591/1593); Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus ( c. 1589/1592; published in quarto in 1594).
Publications: John Florio, Second Fruits ; Abraham Fraunce, The Countess of Pembroke’s Ivy-church (and 1592) and The Countess of Pembroke’s Emmanuel (disparagingly mentioned in Informations , 37); Harington’s translation of Orlando Furioso , revised 1607 (‘That John Harington’s Ariosto under all translations was the worst’, Informations , 25); Spenser, Complaints and Colin Clout ; Savile’s translation of Tacitus’s Histories, Books 1-4 ( hailed by Jonson in Epigrams 95, noted in Informations , 285); Sidney, Astrophil and Stella (praised in The Underwood 27.25-6).
Events: Jonson’s future patron, Sir Robert Cecil, is sworn in as Privy Councillor.
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, joins Henri IV with an expeditionary force in Normandy.
The English commander in the Low Countries, Sir Francis Vere, works in league with Maurice of Nassau to recapture Zutphen, Deventer, and Nijmegen.
May: Elizabeth orders the withdrawal of English troops from the Netherlands. Vere and Maurice stall for additional time, but after the capture of Steenwyck (24 June) and Coeverdon (8 September), English troops begin to return. Jonson was probably amongst them: Drummond speaks of his ‘returning soon', Informations , 183-4. Nevertheless, 3,400 English troops were still in the Low Countries in 1593.
Aubrey writes that after service in the Low Countries, Jonson ‘came over into England, and acted and wrote at the Green Curtain, but both ill, a kind of nursery or obscure playhouse, somewhere in the suburbs, I think towards Shoreditch, or Clerkenwell’ (Early Lives). ‘Green Curtain’ may be a slip for the Curtain theatre, Shoreditch, where Every Man In His Humour was performed in 1598.
Lives: Death of Greene (3 September) and Montaigne (13 September). Francis Quarles born (baptised 8 May).
Performances: Philip Henslowe rebuilds the Rose theatre and starts to keep his diary (from 19 February 1592 to 5 November 1597). The actor Edward Alleyn forms a partnership with Henslowe in the autumn, and marries Henslowe’s stepdaughter Joan Woodward on 22 October.
Shakespeare, Richard III (1592/1594; published in quarto in a defective state in 1597).
Plague in London forces an extended closure of the theatres from June.
Publications: Jean Bonnefons, Pervigilium Veneris ( Informations , 49), Daniel, Delia ; Nashe, Piers Penniless ; Summer’s Last Will and Testament ; Sylvester’s translation of Du Bartas’s La semaine ( Informations , 20-1); Warner, Albion’s England , Books 1-8 (see also 1596 and 1612). Greene gibes at Shakespeare (as an ‘upstart crow’) in A Groatsworth of Wit .
Events: Sir Walter Ralegh and his wife Bess née Throckmorton are committed to the Tower after angering Elizabeth by their secret marriage.
Anthony Bacon returns to England and begins working for the Earl of Essex. Essex is sworn in as a Privy Councillor.
Lives: Marlowe is killed at Deptford (30 May); George Herbert (3 April) and Izaak Walton (9 August) are born.
Performances: Theatres closed in London from February to December on account of the plague. Alleyn’s company disbands. Lord Strange’s Men become known as Derby’s Men.
Publications: Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity , Books 1-4 ( Informations , 101-2; Book 5 published in 1597, and three more books after Hooker’s death in 1600); Chettle, Kind Heart’s Dream ; Drayton, Idea: The Shepherd’s Garland ; Marlowe, Lucan’s First Book ; Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis.
Events: July: Henri IV is converted to Catholicism ( ‘Paris vaut bien une messe’ : ‘Paris is well worth a mass’) and publicly abjures the Protestant faith.
Date: 14 November: ‘Beniamine Johnson and Anne Lewis maryed’: parish register of St Magnus the Martyr by London Bridge (Life Records, 4). ‘The fact that Jonson seems to have taken a wife in the parish of St Magnus, which adjoined the theatrical parish of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, may indicate that by 1594 he was already an actor, either living on the Bankside or accustomed to the daily crossing of the Bridge on his way to Paris Garden, the Rose, or Newington Butts’, Eccles (1936a), 261. Jonson played the part of Zulziman in a now-lost tragedy at the Paris Garden, according to Dekker: Satiromastix, 4.1.121-3, in Dramatic Works , 1, ed. Bowers (1953) .
Mark Eccles (1988), 445-6, thinks that by 1594 Jonson was ‘probably’ a freeman of the Tylers’ and Bricklayers’ Company. David Kay (1995), 15, suggests he completed his apprenticeship in June 1595; Mary Edmond (1974), 129-36, proposes Michaelmas 1595.
Lives: Barnabe Googe dies (7 February); Thomas Carew born (1594/1595).
Performances: Alleyn buys the Bear Garden. Reorganization of the London companies after the plague: Alleyn leads a new Admiral’s Men at the Rose theatre, under Philip Henslowe’s management; the Burbages form a new Chamberlain’s Men, playing initially at James Burbage’s Theatre, the Curtain, and later the Globe and the second Blackfriars theatre.
First recorded performance of Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors on 28 December at Gray’s Inn, though the play was probably first performed some years earlier (it would not be published until the folio of 1623); Richard II (1594/1596; published in quarto 1597); Romeo and Juliet (1594/1596; a corrupt and unregistered quarto is published in 1597); Titus Andronicus (1589/1592; quarto edition 1594); King John (performed 1594/1597, or according to some, 1590; first published in folio, 1623).
Publications: Chapman, Shadow of the Night ; Daniel, The Tragedy of Cleopatra (revised 1607); Sir John Davies, Orchestra (or 1595; Informations , 142); Lodge, Wounds of Civil War ; Lodge and Greene, A Looking Glass for London and England ; Lyly, Mother Bombie ; Nashe, Terrors of the Night , The Unfortunate Traveller ; Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece .
Events: Henri IV is crowned King of France in Chartres Cathedral on 27 February.
A three-year period of wet summers and poor harvests leads to hoarding and riots.
Elizabeth’s Portuguese physician, Dr Roderigo Lopez, is found guilty of a plot to poison the Queen, and is hanged, drawn, and quartered (7 June).
Jonson is perhaps working as a strolling player at this time, and performing in Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy : 'thou hast forgot how thou amblest in leather pilch by a play-wagon in the highway, and took’st mad Hieronimo's part, to get service among the mimics', says Tucca to Horace in Dekker’s Satiromastix, 4.1.130-2, in Dramatic Works , 1, ed. Bowers (1953) . ‘The actual date when Jonson acted Hieronimo with Pembroke’s men, however, must remain concealed between 1592 and 1596, with the probabilities lying in the years 1595-6 when the company is definitely known to have been on tour, and just before the time that Jonson’s name begins to appear in theatrical records’: F. T. Bowers (1937a), 396-7.
Lives: Robert Southwell executed (21 February): ‘That Southwell was hanged; yet so he had written that piece of his, “The Burning Babe”, he would have been content to destroy many of his’ ( Informations , 136-7).
Performances: Francis Langley builds the Swan theatre in Southwark on the south bank of the Thames. This is the second of five public playhouses to be erected on the Bankside. It is sketched the following year by Aernot van Buchell, based on the observations of his friend, the Dutch traveller, Johannes de Witt.
Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream ( c. 1595; quarto edition 1600).
Publications: Daniel, The Civil Wars (8 books published between 1595 and 1609, but never completed; Informations , 158); Sidney, The Defence of Poetry ; Spenser, Amoretti, Epithalamion.
Events: Ralegh returns from his unsuccessful voyage to Guiana.
Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, leads the rebellion in Ulster, and appeals to Spain for help, and is proclaimed a traitor.
Jonson’s son Benjamin, who was to die in 1603 at the age of seven, is probably born in this year.
Date: 29 June: First payment of 16d. to Tylers’ and Bricklayers’ Company by Jonson (Life Records, 5) shows he is certainly a freeman by now, having completed his apprenticeship.
18 October (St Luke’s Day): Tylers’ and Bricklayers’ Company payment by Jonson of 4d. (Life Records, 6).
Jonson is possibly associated with the Earl of Essex by this time, and working in the scriptorium or literary workshop established by Anthony and Francis Bacon (Donaldson, 2011, 120-2).
Lives: Birth on 19 August of Princess Elizabeth Stuart, the future ‘Winter Queen’ of Bohemia, daughter of James VI of Scotland and Queen Anne. Birth of James Shirley (baptised 7 September). Death of George Peele (buried 9 November).
Performances: Chapman, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria ; Anon., Tamer Cham parts 1 and 2 (revised versions perhaps of older plays?): ‘the Tamerlanes and Tamer-Chams of the late age . . . had nothing in them but the scenical strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant gapers’ ( Discoveries , 562-4). Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (1596/1597; published in quarto 1600); Henry IV , part 1 (1596/1597; first published in quarto 1598).
James Burbage purchases the parliament chamber and other parts of the former convent of the Dominicans adjacent to the first Blackfriars playhouse, and creates the second Blackfriars theatre, a private playhouse used initially by boys of the Chapel Royal and from 1608 by the King’s Men.
Publications: Drayton, Mortimeriados (republished as The Barons’ Wars , 1603: Informations , 142); Harington, Metamorphoses of Ajax ; Spenser, enlarged Faerie Queene (see Informations , 14-15 and notes); Prothalamion ; Foure Hymnes ; A View of the Present State of Ireland ; Warner, Albion’s England , Books 1-12.
Events: In June the Earl of Essex and Lord Admiral Howard attack Cadiz, seizing and destroying Spanish vessels and sacking the city. In October Philip II prepares to attack England in retaliation for the raid on Cadiz, but his fleet is dispersed by storms.
In July Sir Robert Cecil is appointed Principal Secretary, consolidating his family’s power and prompting talk of regnum Cecilianum , a kingdom of the Cecils.
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Before July: The Case Is Altered is performed by Pembroke’s Men.
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July: The Isle of Dogs (lost play, co-authored with Thomas Nashe and others) is performed by Pembroke's Men at Francis Langley’s new Swan playhouse.
Date: 28 July: the Court of Common Council at Guildhall writes to the Privy Council asking for the suppression of plays and playhouses (Wickham, Berry, and Ingram, 2000, document 53).
Date: 28 July: the Privy Council orders all of London theatres to be closed on account of 'very great disorders' caused both 'by lewd matters that are handled on the stages, and by resort and confluence of bad people' and ‘that also those playhouses that are erected and built only for such purposes shall be plucked down’: Wickham, Berry, and Ingram (2000), document 54.
Date: 28 July: Henslowe records lending £4 to ‘Benjamin Jonson player’ and on the same day receiving ‘Benjamin Jonson’s share as followeth 1597' (Life Records, 7, 8). For interpretation of these transactions, see F. T. Bowers (1937a), 393-4, n.; Chambers (1923), 2.253; Bentley (1984), 52; Kay (1995), 20.
Date: 10 August: Henslowe notes that the current restraint order ‘is by the means of playing The Isle of Dogs’ : Diary (ed. Foakes, 2002), 240.
Date: 15 August: Privy Council reports on ‘information given us of a lewd play that was played in one of the playhouses on the Bankside, containing very seditious and slanderous matter’ leading to their ordering ’some of the players to be apprehended and committed to prison, whereof one of them was not only an actor but a maker of the said play’: Dasent (1903), 27.33; Wickham, Berry, and Ingram (2000), document 55: referring to The Isle of Dogs , and specifically to Jonson.
Mid-August to 2 October: Ben Jonson, Gabriel Spencer, and Robert Shaa are imprisoned and interrogated over The Isle of Dogs . ‘In the time of his close imprisonment under Queen Elizabeth, his judges could get nothing of him to all their demands but “ay” and “no”. They placed two damned villains to catch advantage of him, with him, but he was advertised by his keeper. Of the spies he hath an epigram’ ( Informations , 194-7; Epigrams , 59).
Date: 15 August: hearings in Court at Greenwich and 2 October at Richmond to review charges against Jonson and others concerning The Isle of Dogs (Life Records, 10, 11).
29 September (Michaelmas): Churchwardens’ account, St Martin-in-the-Fields: ‘Money gathered toward the building and for their pews that were unplaced’: Robert Brett contributes two shillings, Jonson eighteen pence (Life Records, 9).
Date: 8 October: warrants issued to the Keeper of Marshalsea Prison for the release of Spencer, Shaa, and Jonson (Dasent, 1904, 28. 33).
Date: 3 December: Henslowe’s Diary , ed. Foakes (2000), 73 (cf. 85): 'Lent unto Benjamin Jonson the 3 of December 1597 upon a book which he was to write for us before Christmas next after the date hereof which he showed the plot unto the company, I say lent in ready money unto him the sum of 20 shillings' (Life Records, 12).
Lives: Death of James Burbage (January), and of the Lord Chamberlain, William Brooke, 10 th Baron Cobham (6 March), who is replaced by George Carey, 2 nd Baron Hunsdon.
Performances: Chapman, A Humorous Day’s Mirth ; Shakespeare, Henry IV, part 2 (1597/1598; first published in quarto 1600); Much Ado About Nothing (1598/1599; first published in quarto 1600); The Merry Wives of Windsor (first published in quarto in 1602, but perhaps first performed as early as 1597). Edward Alleyn, the leading player in Marlowe’s major dramas and of the 1590s, stops acting for a while in order to concentrate on tasks of theatrical management, but later returns to the stage, and performs in Jonson’s Entertainment at Salisbury House in 1604. Jonson praises his virtuoso skills as an actor in Epigrams 89.
Publications: First edition of Bacon’s Essays , containing 10 essays, with Colours of Good and Evil and Religious Meditations (reprinted 1597, 1598, 1606, 1612); Drayton, England’s Heroical Epistles ; John Gerard, The Herbal, or General History of Plants ; King James, Demonology .
Events: The Earl of Essex is made Master of the Ordnance in March, and in July sails with Ralegh to the Azores for a pre-emptive strike against Spanish vessels. Philip II’s second Armada fails owing to bad weather.
5 January, Henslowe records a loan of 5 shillings to Jonson (Life Records, 13).
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August: Hot Anger Soon Cold (lost play, with Henry Porter and Henry Chettle) probably performed this month. Henslowe, Diary, ed. Foakes, 2002, 96: 'lent unto the company the 18 of August 1598 to buy a book called Hot Anger Soon Cold of Master Porter, Master Chettle, and Benjamin Jonson in full payment the sum of £6’ (Life Records, 14).
Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia: Wit's Treasury (Stationers’ Register: 7 September) mentions Jonson as amongst ‘our best for tragedy’.
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Autumn: Every Man In His Humour performed by the Chamberlain's Men at the Curtain theatre, Shoreditch. The play is first mentioned by Tobie Mathew writing to Dudley Carleton on 20 September.
September: Jonson kills Gabriel Spencer in a duel in Hoxton Fields, north of the city beyond Shoreditch: ‘since his coming to England, being appealed to the fields, he had killed his adversary, which had hurt him in the arm, and whose sword was ten inches longer than his; for the which he was imprisoned, and almost at the gallows’ ( Informations , 186-9).
Date: 22 September: 'Benjamin Jonson nup[er] de London [recently of London], yeoman' indicted for manslaughter at Shoreditch (Life Records, 15). He is saved by a legal technicality through reading the ‘neck-verse’ (Psalm 51), is branded on the thumb as a convicted felon, and his goods are confiscated. While in jail he is converted to Catholicism: ‘Then took he his religion by trust of a priest who visited him in prison. Thereafter he was twelve years a papist’ ( Informations , 189-90). The priest in question may have been Father Thomas Wright (Stroud, 1947) .
Date: 26 September: Henslowe to Alleyn: 'I will tell you some [news] but that is for me hard and heavy. Since you were with me I have lost one of my company, which hurteth me greatly: that is Gabriel, for he is slain in Hoxton fields by the hands of Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer. Therefore I would fain have a little of your counsel' (Life Records, 16).
Date: 23 October: Henslowe: 'Lent unto Robert Shaa and Juby the 23 October 1598 to lend unto Mr Chapman on his play book and two acts of a tragedy of Benjamin’s plot the sum of £3’ (Life Records, 17). The subject and ultimate fate of this tragedy is unknown.
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Jonson’s verses on Thomas Palmer's manuscript ‘The Sprite of Trees and Herbs’ are composed this year. The manuscript is intended for presentation to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who dies on 4 August 1598; it is presented instead to his son, Robert Cecil, on 1 January 1599.
Lives: Death of William Cecil, Lord Burghley (4 August), and Philip II of Spain (11 September).
Performances: Late in the year members of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, under threat from the landlord of the Theatre, their principal acting venue, dismantle the building and carry the timbers across to the banks of the Thames, in preparation for the construction of the Globe Theatre.
Publications: Chapman, The Seven Books of the Iliads ; Richard Grenewey’s translation of Tacitus’s History , Books 1-4 (‘The first four books of Tacitus ignorantly done in English’, Informations , 482; cf. Sejanus , To the Readers, 26-7 and n.); Marlowe, Hero and Leander (humorously remembered in Littlewit’s puppet play in Bartholomew Fair ) and Chapman’s continuation; Marston, Metamorphosis of Pygmalion , Certain Satires, Scourge of Villainy ; Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost (first published this year in quarto, perhaps in revised form after some years in performance).
Events: Edict of Nantes issued by Henri IV gives French Protestants political rights and freedom to worship.
The English forces in Ireland are defeated at Blackwater; the Ulster rebellion spreads to Munster; the Earl of Essex offers to lead the English army, and is appointed Lord Lieutenant in Ireland, with military powers.
George Blackwell is appointed by Rome as the Catholic archpriest in England.
Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton, loses Elizabeth’s favour after secretly marrying her maid of honour, Elizabeth Vernon.
[Date unknown]: ‘----- [torn leaf] tells me that Ben Jonson was master of a playhouse (lately Aldersgate Street), now a meeting house of Mr James Foster, the dissenting minister, and lived for some time in the house lately inhabited by Mr Sam. Palmer, the printer, in Bartholomew Close whence he accounts for the rhyme upon the Sun and Moon taverns in Aldersgate Street. He mentions something of his theatre to the Earl of Pembroke I think before his Epigrams ’: William Oldys’s marginal note in his copy of Langbaine’s Account of the English Dramatic Poets (1691), 286, now in the British Library. There is no other evidence to support the idea that Jonson ever worked as ‘master of a playhouse’; Oldys misunderstands the final sentence of Jonson’s dedication to Pembroke of his Epigrams, in which ‘my theatre’ signifies a poetic collection, not a playhouse. It is possible however that Jonson might have lodged for a time in Bartholomew Close near Smithfield Market, an area vividly evoked in Bartholomew Fair. For ‘the rhyme upon the Sun and Moon taverns’, cf. William Winstanley, 1687 (Dubia, Poems, 29).
John Weever’s tribute to Jonson, ‘And thine embuskin’d Jonson doth retain/ So rich a style, and wondrous gallant spirit’, etc., Epigrams (late 1598, early 1599: Honigmann, 1987 ; Literary Record).
25 April (St Mark’s Day): payment by Jonson to Tylers’ and Bricklayers’ Company of 3s.4d. (= 4d. a quarter for ten quarters): Eccles (1988), 445; Life Records, 18.
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August: Page of Plymouth probably performed: lost play, with Thomas Dekker. Henslowe, Diary, 123: 'Lent unto William Borne (alias Bird) the 10 of August 1599 to lend unto Benjamin Jonson and Thomas Dekker in earnest of their book which they be a-writing called Page of Plymouth the sum of 40s.’ (Henslowe, Diary , ed. Foakes (2002), 123; Carson, 1988, 72, records payments to Jonson and Dekker between 10 August and 2 September; Life Records, 19).
August: Histriomastix , sometimes attributed to Marston (probably an old play revised) probably performed this month by the Children of St Paul’s at their newly reopened theatre. Jonson and his followers assume, perhaps mistakenly, that the character of Chrisoganus, the learned moralist, is intended as a satirical portrait of him: Cyrus Hoy (1980), 1.182-3; Roslyn Knutson (2001b), ch. 4. ‘ Histriomastix (lightning-like) doth wound/ Those things alone that solid are and sound’, writes Richard West defensively years later in 1637/8, evidently sensing an implied attack on Jonson in the play ( Jonsonus Virbius , Literary Record).
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September: Robert II, The King of Scots (lost tragedy) written and perhaps performed this month. Henslowe records four separate entries in September for payments to Jonson, Chettle, Dekker, and one ‘other gentleman’ (probably Marston) for work on this play: Diary , ed. Foakes (2002),{ Bib. # bibLP009 ] 124; Life Records, 20, 21.
‘The strange turning of The Isle of Dogs from a comedy to a tragedy two summers past, with the troublesome stir which happened about it, is a general rumour that hath filled all England’: Thomas Nashe in Lenten Stuff , published this year. In a marginal gloss Nashe adds: ‘I having begun but the induction and first act of it, the other four acts, without my consent or the least guess of my drift or scope, by the players were supplied, which bred both their trouble and mine too.’
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Late November/December: Every Man Out of His Humour performed by Chamberlain's Men at Richard Burbage’s newly-built Globe theatre; Court performance around Christmas.
Date: 9 December: ‘Joseph, the sone of Beniamyne Johnson’ baptised at Cripplegate, the next parish to Shoreditch, where Jonson had been working for the Chamberlain’s Men the previous year: Eccles (1936a), 272, Life Records, 22.
'On Margaret Radcliffe' ( Epigrams 40) written shortly after her death on 10 November 1599.
Lives: Death of Spenser (13 January; on the alleged circumstances, see Informations , 129-32 and n.). Birth of Oliver Cromwell (25 April), Anthony van Dyck (22 March), and Diego Velásquez (6 June).
Performances: The Globe theatre is built in Southwark for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, with the timbers salvaged from the Theatre, Shoreditch. This is the third of five public playhouses to be erected on the Bankside.
Performed this year: Chapman, All Fools ; Dekker, Old Fortunatus , The Shoemakers’ Holiday ; Marston, Antonio and Mellida ; Porter, The Two Angry Women of Abingdon , part 2; Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (first published in folio 1623); and Henry V (corrupt quarto, 1600). Hamlet (unauthorized quarto, 1603) and Troilus and Cressida (first quarto, 1609) were both probably first performed in the period c. 1599-1601.
Publications: Sir John Davies’s Nosce Teipsum ; James VI of Scotland’s Basilikon Doron (revised 1601); John Minsheu (mentioned disparagingly in Informations , 36), A Dictionary in Spanish and English ; and John Weever’s Epigrams in the Oldest Cut and Newest Fashion (sarcastically noted in Epigrams 18).
Date: 4 June: John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Richard Bancroft, Bishop of London, decree that ‘no satires or epigrams be printed hereafter’, ‘that no English histories be printed except they be allowed by some of Her Majesty’s Privy Council’, and ‘That no plays be printed except they be allowed by such as have authority’. They order the burning of numerous books, including Sir John Davies’s Epigrams , Joseph Hall’s Satires , Marlowe’s Elegies , Marston’s Scourge of Villainy , and Middleton’s Microcynicon: Six Snarling Satires , further declaring ‘That all Nashe’s books and Dr Harvey’s books be taken wheresoever they may be found and that none of their books be ever printed hereafter.’ Sir John Hayward’s The First Part of the Life and Reign of Henry IV is published in February; a second ‘corrected’ edition is seized and burnt in June, and Hayward himself remanded to the Tower in July 1600, where he remains throughout the rest of Elizabeth’s reign.
Events: Essex parlays in Ireland with the Earl of Tyrone, but fails to crush his rebellion. He returns to England in September against Elizabeth’s instructions, angering her with an abrupt confrontation at Nonsuch Palace.
1 January, 'Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland' ( The Forest 12) sent to the Countess as a new year’s gift.
Late January: Jonson is sued for debt by Robert Browne (perhaps the player, though see Eccles, 1991, 41) over the sum of £10 borrowed from Browne on 2 April 1598 and not repaid by the due date of 27 May 1598; he is imprisoned in Marshalsea prison in Southwark ( Eccles, 1988, 445-6; Life Records, 23).
Date: 8 April: Every Man Out of His Humour (Q1), Jonson’s first published play, entered in Stationers’ Register: ‘William Holme. Entered for his copy under the hands of Master Harsnet, and Master Wyndet, Warden’, 6d.’ Holme published a second quarto of the play later in 1600, and Nicholas Linge a third quarto late 1600 or early 1601: see EMO , Textual Essay.
4 August and 14 August: Stationers’ Register entries for quarto edition Every Man In His Humour , published in 1601: see EMI , Textual Essay.
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Late in the year or early the following year (after 2 September 1600 and before May 1601) The Fountain of Self-Love, or Cynthia’s Revels is performed by 'the then Children of Queen Elizabeth’s Chapel' at Blackfriars.
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'In Authorem', verses on Nicholas Breton, Melancholic Humours (Stationers’ Register, 22 August).
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Fragments from Robert Allot’s England's Parnassus, or The Choicest Flowers of Our Modern Poets : ‘Murder’, ‘Peace’, ‘Riches’, along with passages from Every Man In His Humour and Every Man Out of His Humour , ‘Epode’ ( The Forest 11), and lines 40-52 of the Desmond Ode ( The Underwood 25) : Stationers’ Register, 2 October.
John Bodenham lists Jonson amongst the ‘rare and ingenious spirits . . . drawn together into the muses’ garden’, and quotes four passages from The Case Is Altered : ‘To the Reader’, Belvedere, or The Garden of the Muses , published 1600 (Bradley and Adams, 7-8). (Jonson possibly recalls this title in ‘To the Readers’, Sejanus , 21-2, as he chides misguided readers of his work ‘whose noses are ever like swine spoiling and rooting up the muses’ gardens’.)
'An Ode to James, Earl of Desmond' is composed between July and October this year (when the fourth stanza appeared in England’s Parnassus ). Mark Bland (2000) dates the autograph MS to July-October. The poem circulated in manuscript and is quoted in Satiromastix , 1601, but is not published in full until 1641, as The Underwood 25.
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Epitaph on Thomas Nashe (who died 1600/1, possibly January or February 1601).
Lives: Giordano Bruno is burnt at the stake in Rome for heresy (17 February). Richard Hooker dies (2 November).
Performances: Philip Henslowe and his son-in-law Edward Alleyn build the Fortune theatre, a public playhouse outside Cripplegate; the Lord Admiral’s Men cease playing at the Rose theatre and move to the Fortune in the autumn. The Chamberlain’s Men lease the second Blackfriars playhouse to the Children of the Chapel Royal (also known as the Children of the Queen’s Revels, the Children of the Revels, the Children of Blackfriars, the Children of Whitefriars).
Chettle, Damon and Pythias ; Marston, Antonio’s Revenge (part 2 of Antonio and Mellida ); Jack Drum’s Entertainment ; Shakespeare, As You Like It (Stationers’ Register entry in August, and perhaps performed this year at the Globe; not published until the folio of 1623); Twelfth Night (first mentioned in John Manningham’s Diary as performed at the Middle Temple on 2 February 1602, and also probably performed at the Globe theatre between 1600 and early 1602).
Publications: Dekker, The Shoemakers’ Holiday, Old Fortunatus ; Fairfax, Godfrey of Bulloigne , the first complete translation of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberate (of which Jonson disapproves, Informations , 22); Kemp, Nine Days’ Wonder ; Nashe, Summer’s Last Will and Testament .
Events: The Earl of Essex, suffering from illness, debt, and the Queen’s disfavour, is charged with acts of insubordination during his time in Ireland, and is succeeded there by Charles Blount, Baron Mountjoy, who systematically ravages the country.
In Scotland, Alexander Ruthven and his elder brother the Earl of Gowrie are killed by James VI’s attendants after allegedly assaulting the King (the ‘Gowrie Plot’).
The East India Company is founded.
22 February (or 6 January): Cynthia’s Revels is perhaps performed at court, and, to judge from Dekker’s disparaging taunts, poorly received ( Satiromastix , 5.2.324-5, in Dramatic Works , 1, ed. Bowers, 1953).
February: the baptism of ‘Maria Johnson’ is recorded (without mention of the identity of her parents) in the parish records of St Martin-in-the-Fields. This is plausibly Jonson’s ‘first daughter’, Mary, whose death ‘At six months’ end’ is mourned in Epigrams 22 (Cain, 2007).
Date: 23 May: Cynthia’s Revels entered in Stationers’ Register by Walter Burre and published in quarto this year as ‘ The Fountain of Self-Love, or Cynthia’s Revels , as it hath been sundry times privately acted in the Blackfriars by the Children of Her Majesty’s Chapel’: Cynthia , Textual Essay.
Every Man In His Humour published this year in quarto, ‘As it hath been sundry times publicly acted by the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlain his Servants: written by Ben Jonson.’ See EMI , Textual Essay.
Marston’s What You Will performed this year: his depiction of the ineffectively railing Lampatho Doria may perhaps be aimed at Jonson. (For interpretation, see the exchanges between Bednarz and Yearling, 2010, 293-313.)
Charles Fitzgeffrey (or Fitzgeoffrey), ‘Ad Beniaminum Ionsonium’ in Affaniae: sive Epigrammatum Libri Tres (Literary Record). Phoebus defends Jonson against the charge of stealing from Plautus: perhaps alluding to The Case Is Altered, which borrows from Captivi and Aulularia (Kay, 1970-1, 227).
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'The Phoenix Analysed' and 'Ode ενθουσιαστικη' published in Robert Chester's Love's Martyr , along with 'And must I sing?' ( Forest 10), and ‘Epode’ ( Forest 11) and poems by Shakespeare, Chapman, Marston, and ‘Ignoto’.
25 July (St James’s Day) payment by Jonson to the Tylers’ and Bricklayers’ Company, 3d. (Life Records, 24).
?August: death of the Jonsons’ six-month-old daughter, mourned in Epigrams 22 (see entry above, under February 1601). No record of her burial has been found.
After 11 August (Stationers’ Register entry): Nicholas Breton’s No Whipping nor Tripping deplores the current vogue for satire, and hopes that poets will ‘Not bite, nor claw, nor scoff, nor check, nor chide,/ But each mend one, and ‘ware the fall of pride’. This is possibly aimed at Jonson, who had nevertheless written admiring verses on Breton’s own Melancholic Humours the previous year. See Literary Record.
After 14 August: Jonson is addressed by ‘W. I.’ (probably John Weever, though sometimes identified as W. Ingram) as ‘Monsieur Humourist, you that talk of men’s humours and dispositions’, in The Whipping of the Satyr (Stationers’ Register, 14 August), Literary Record. A reference to this publication in Dekker’s Satiromastix , 5.2.243 ( Dramatic Works , 1, ed. Bowers, 1953), provides a terminus a quo for that play.
Date: 25 September: Henslowe records loan of forty shillings to Jonson for his ‘writing of his additions in Jeronymo ’ (= Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy ): Life Records, 25; Dubia, 6.
2.1
Early October (Jackson, this edition; Cain, 1995, 28-9): Poetaster, or The Arraignment performed at Blackfriars theatre by the Children of Her Majesty’s Chapel. The Player’s words at 3.4.266, ‘this winter has made us all poorer than so many starved snakes’, are taken by H&S to refer to the winter of 1600-1, suggesting a performance date for the play of spring or summer 1601. Cain and Jackson, while not wholly rejecting this possibility, see the Player’s statement as more probably referring to the winter of 1601-2, when the play may have been performed on several occasions.
Late 1601: Jonson examined by Lord Chief Justice Sir John Popham over charges relating to Poetaster.
Date: 11 November: Dekker’s Satiromastix entered in the Stationers’ Register.
Late November/December: Satiromastix is performed, responding to Poetaster and ridiculing Jonson in the character of ‘Horace’. See Hoy (1980), 1.181 and n. 5. This could be late in the year if the phrase ‘now, at Christmas’, at 4.1.190-1 (Dekker, Dramatic Works , 1, ed. Bowers, 1953) is to be read literally.
The Apologetical Dialogue to Poetaster , in which Jonson replies to criticisms levelled at him in Satiromastix , was probably written after the latter play had been performed, though rumours of its composition and contents may have reached him earlier. It ‘was only once spoken upon the stage’ (To the Reader, 3, prefixed to the Apologetical Dialogue in the 1616 folio). 'To Captain Hungry' and 'To True Soldiers' ( Epigrams , 107, 108) must also have been written at this time, the latter verses being read aloud in Apologetical Dialogue, 118-27.
Date: 21 December: Poetaster, or His Arraignment entered in Stationers’ Register to Matthew Lownes. (The play was later to be published under the title Poetaster, or The Arraignment : see 1602 below.)
Lives: Death of Tycho Brahe (24 October).
Performances: Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well , not published until the first folio of 1623, may have been first acted c. 1601/1605.
Publications: Daniel, Works ; Philemon Holland, The Natural History of Pliny the Elder ; Shakespeare, The Phoenix and Turtle (in Love’s Martyr ). Donne begins writing ‘The Progress of the Soul’ or ‘Metempsychosis’ ( Informations , 31-4, 91).
Events: On 7 February Richard II (almost certainly Shakespeare’s version) is performed at the request of followers of the Earl of Essex. The following day Essex leads a rising in the City of London. He is arrested and tried, and on 25 February is executed; his colleague Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton, is imprisoned in the Tower of London.
On 25 March Jonson’s future patron, William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, is dispatched for a month to the Fleet Prison, having impregnated (though failed to marry) Mary Fitton, a lady of Queen Elizabeth’s court.
In April Robert Cecil begins a secret correspondence with James VI of Scotland, now favoured as a possible successor to the English throne.
Jonson is referred to in the Cambridge student play, The Return From Parnassus , Part 2, probably written 1601 and acted 1602 (published 1606), as ‘The wittiest fellow of a bricklayer in England’, and as ‘A mere empiric, one that gets what he hath by observation and makes only nature privy to what he indicts, so slow an inventor that he were better betake himself to his old trade of bricklaying; a bold whoreson, as confident now in making a book, as he was in times past in laying of a brick.’ ‘Why, here’s our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, ay, and Ben Jonson too. Oh, that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow. He brought up Horace giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit.’ See Literary Record; and for interpretation, Riggs (1989), 84-5; Cain (1995), 36-8; Bednarz (2001), ch. 1.
Phantastes in the anonymous play of Lingua refers probably to Jonson as ‘That fellow in the bays, methinks I should have known him; oh, ’tis Comedus, ’tis so; but he has become nowadays something humorous, and too-too satirical up and down, like his great-grandfather Aristophanes’ (Bradley and Adams, 1922, 33).
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Date: 22 June: Henslowe's Diary, 203: payment to Jonson of £10 'in earnest of a book called Richard Crookback and for new additions for Jeronimo ': see Life Records, 26; Print Edition, 2.183-4, for Richard Crookback (lost play), and Dubia, 6, for The Spanish Tragedy additions.
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Letter 1, Jonson to Robert Cotton, asking for topographical information about the Campania region of Italy (relevant probably to Sejanus , on which Jonson was then evidently at work) and speaking of a recent serious illness. Written probably late in 1602 or early in 1603, before Jonson’s move to Townshend’s house. Re-dating by Bland, 1998a.
2.187
Jonson’s Ode, 'If men and times', probably written about now, its concerns being close to those voiced in the Apologetical Dialogue to Poetaster . Jonson’s reference to his ‘lean face’ (25) suggests it was composed early in his career, while he was still seen as a 'so lean a hollow-cheeked scrag' (Dekker, Satiromastix, 5.2. 262, in Dramatic Works , 1, ed. Bowers, 1953).
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‘An Epistle to a Friend’ (‘Censure not sharply then’) probably written between now and 1603.
Date: 25 July: 13 year-old Solomon Pavy, who had acted in Cynthia’s Revels and Poetaster , is buried at St Mary Somerset in London, and commemorated in Jonson’s Epigrams 120.
30 November (St Andrew’s Day): payment by Jonson of 20d. to Tylers’ and Bricklayers’ Company (Life Records, 27).
Poetaster, or The Arraignment , ‘As it hath been sundry times privately acted in the Blackfriars by the Children of Her Majesty’s Chapel. Composed by Ben Jonson’, printed in quarto for Matthew Lownes, probably by Richard Bradock. See Poetaster , Textual Essay.
Lives: William Lawes (April), William Chillingworth (12 October), and Owen Felltham (1602?) all born.
Performances: Anon., The Merry Devil of Edmonton ; Dekker, Blurt Master-Constable . Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is presented on 2 February by the Chamberlain’s Men at the Middle Temple, but may have been first performed a year or two earlier at the Globe (first published in folio in 1623).
Publications: Beaumont, Salmacis and Hermaphroditus ; Campion, Observations in the Art of English Poesy ( Informations , 4), Lindsay, Satyr of Three Estates ; Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Events: Mountjoy repels the Spanish forces who arrive in Ireland to assist the Earl of Tyrone, defeats Tyrone himself, and quells the rebellion.
The University Library at Oxford, dismantled under Edward VI, is re-established by Sir Thomas Bodley.
February: ‘Ben Jonson the poet now lives upon one Townsend and scorns the world’: Manningham, Diary, ed. Sorlien, 1976, p. 187, reporting gossip from Sir Thomas Overbury (Life Records, 28). Jonson’s inscription to Sir Robert Townsend in a surviving copy of the 1605 quarto of Sejanus (see Print Edition, 2.211, illustration 11, and Jonson’s Library) suggests that he was probably working on that play while living in Townsend’s house.
After 24 March: Henry Chettle in England’s Mourning Garment chides Jonson (along with Shakespeare and others) for not writing about Queen Elizabeth’s death. ‘Nor does our English Horace, whose steel pen/Can draw characters which will never die,/Tell her bright glories unto list’ning men,/Of her he seems to have no memory:/His muse another path desires to tread,/True satires scourge the living, leave the dead’ (Literary Record).
After 24 March: A Mournful Ditty Entitled Elizabeth’s Loss calls on Jonson and others to write on the death of Elizabeth (Bradley and Adams, 1922, 35-6).
‘He married a wife who was a shrew yet honest. Five years he had not bedded with her, but remained with my Lord Aubigny’ ( Informations , 192-3). Jonson’s friendship with Esmé Stuart, Lord Aubigny and his period of residence with him may have begun in the early summer of this year, shortly after Aubigny’s arrival in London (Donaldson, 1997, 61-2).
2.192
'A Speech out of Lucan' possibly written around now, perhaps as a trial run for a passage in Sejanus (2.180-7; cf. lines 9-16 of the translation).
2.195
9-16 May: first performance of Sejanus His Fall at the Globe (Cain, Introduction, 2.200), following the re-opening of the theatres after their closure for the death of Queen Elizabeth; and just before they were again closed down on 17 May on account of the plague.
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25 and 27 June: A Particular Entertainment at Althorp performed at Sir Robert Spencer’s estate to welcome Queen Anne and Prince Henry ‘as they first came into the kingdom’ (Title, 4-5).
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Late summer: Jonson’s tributary poem ‘Ode αλληγορικη’ (‘Who saith our times not have, nor can’) published with Hugh Holland’s Pancharis (Stationers’ Register, 1 August). The poem must have been composed between 3 April (when Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, received the submission of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone after the battle of Kinsale) and 26 May (when Mountjoy was recalled from Ireland), these events being referred to in lines 44-56.
August/September?: Death from plague of Jonson’s seven-year-old son, Benjamin, while Jonson is staying with Cotton in Huntingdonshire: Informations , 198-206; Epigrams 45.
Lives: Kenelm Digby born (11 July).
Performances: The London playhouses are closed on account of plague in late March, April, and early May. Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure may have been first performed later in the summer, after the re-opening of the playhouses (the play is first published in the 1623 folio); Othello (first published in quarto 1622) is probably first played 1603/1604.
Date: 17 May: A Royal Patent is issued enrolling the company formerly known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men as Grooms of the Chamber within James’s personal household, to be known as the King’s Men and to play at the Globe and elsewhere ‘when the infection of the plague shall decrease’.
Chapman, Bussy D’Ambois (1603/1604); Thomas Heywood, A Woman Killed With Kindness.
Publications: Bacon, A Brief Discourse Touching the Happy Union of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland ; Drayton, The Barons’ Wars (first published under the title Mortimeriados , 1596); Dekker, The Wonderful Year 1603 ; Daniel, A Defence of Rhyme ( Informations , 4), Poetical Epistles, Panegyric Congratulatory ; Florio’s translation of the Essays of Michel de Montaigne; King James, The True Law of Free Monarchies ; Lodge, A Treatise of the Plague.
Events: 24 March: the death of Queen Elizabeth, and accession of James VI and I, who journeys south in April and May and arrives in London on 7 May, during a severe onset on plague. His coronation takes place as planned on 25 July but his formal entry into the City and opening of parliament are postponed until the following year. Catholic discontent prompts the ‘Bye-Plot’ to kidnap James and force religious concessions from him. The ‘Main Plot’, to set the King’s cousin Arbella Stuart on the throne in place of James, is allegedly contrived by Henry Brooke, 8 th Baron Cobham, his brother George Brooke, Sir Walter Ralegh, and Lord Grey of Wilton. Ralegh is imprisoned; Cobham is condemned to death, then confined to the Tower until 1619; George Brooke is sent to the Tower and later executed.
January: ‘That Sir John Roe loved him; and when they two were ushered by my Lord Suffolk from a masque, Roe wrote a moral epistle which began, “That next to plays, the court and the state were best. God threateneth kings, kings lords, and lords do us”’: Informations , 113-16. The masque was probably Samuel Daniel’s The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses (8 January at Hampton Court: see Butler, 2008, ch. 2) though Roe’s poem (printed in Donne, Poems , ed. Grierson (1912), 1.414-15; Literary Record) is dated 6 January 1603.
Daniel’s dedication of The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, glances at Jonson’s pedantry and failure to progress as a writer of masques (Literary Record).
2.421
Date: 15 March: Part of the King's Entertainment performed. Originally planned for St James’s Day (25 July) 1603 to celebrate King James’s entry to the City of London, the Entertainment was postponed until 1604 on account of the severe visitation of plague.
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Date: 19 March: Jonson’s A Panegyre is presented to King James to celebrate James’s first meeting with parliament.
Date: 19 March: The King’s Entertainment , A Panegyre , and An Entertainment at Althorp are entered in Stationers’ Register and printed as a composite quarto for Valentine Simmes and George Eld. See the Textual Essay for the printing history of these works.
In The Magnificent Entertainment Given to King James, Queen Anne his Wife, and Henry Frederick the Prince , published shortly after the appearance of Jonson’s quarto, Thomas Dekker snidely comments on Jonson’s part in the celebrations for the King’s entry to the City of London: see Literary Record.
After 19 March: 'On the Union' ( Epigrams , 5) and 'To King James' ( Epigrams , 35) written, both poems echoing sentiments that James had expressed in his speech at the opening of parliament.
2.483
1 May (May Day): A Private Entertainment at Highgate performed at Sir William Cornwallis’s house at Highgate.
May/June: ‘To the Parliament’ ( Epigrams 24) is perhaps composed around now, though a later dating is also possible.
After 5 July (Stationers’ Register), Marston’s The Malcontent is published with a Latin dedication to Jonson, whom Marston hails as ‘ poetae elegantissimo, gravissimo’ , ‘the most elegant and eminent of poets’, describing himself as ‘ amico suo, candido et cordato’ , Jonson’s ‘candid and judicious friend’. The play’s epilogue contains a further probable reference to Jonson. See Literary Record.
29 October (St Simon and St Jude’s Day): Jonson is paid the sum of £12 by Haberdashers' Company ‘for his device and speech for the children’ (now lost) for the inauguration of the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Lowe, in the presence of King James. Anthony Munday is paid £2 for his contribution to this event (Robertson and Gordon, 1954, 63; Masque Archive). A publication deriving from the entertainment was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 20 October but no copies survive.
2.501
Jonson’s verses 'To the Author' published with the second edition of Thomas Wright's The Passions of the Mind in General . The first, unauthorized, edition of this work had been published three years earlier (Stationers’ Register, 12 June 1601).
Date: 2 November: ‘A book called the tragedy of Sejanus’ entered by Edward Blount in the Stationers’ Register; Sejanus , Textual Essay.
Date: 9 November: ‘To Ben Jonson 9 Novembris , 1603’ [=1604], ‘If great men wrong me, I will spare myself’: probably by Sir John Roe: see Donne, Poetical Works , ed. Grierson (1912), 1. 415-16; 2. cxxx-cxxxii; Literary Record.
December: letters from Sir Thomas Edmonds, John Packer, and John Chamberlain describing preparations for the performance at court of The Masque of Blackness : see Masque Archive.
The Tears of the Hours , dated 1604. The title-page is in BL Royal MS 17.B.31, which also contains Blackness. Percy Simpson (H&S, 7.69) believes this may relate to Jonson’s Panegyre . Gabriel Heaton (2003) suggests that it could represent a lost work by Jonson, which he dates to late December 1604.
‘To me he read the preface of his Art of Poesy , upon Horace’s Art of Poetry . . . That, he said, he had done in my Lord Aubigny’s house ten years since, anno 1604’: Informations , 58-61. On this dating of Jonson’s translation of Horace’s Ars Poetica and his now-lost preface – work probably undertaken in 1604-5 -- see further Burrow, Print Edition, 7.3-4.
Lives: Death of Archbishop Whitgift (29 February) and of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (24 June). Birth of Jasper Mayne, future playwright and ‘son of Ben’ (baptised 23 November).
Performances: Chapman, Caesar and Pompey ; Monsieur D’Olive ; Day, Law Tricks (1604/1607); Dekker, Webster, Westward Ho! ; Middleton, Michaelmas Term (1604/1606), Your Five Gallants (1604/1607), Middleton and Dekker, The Roaring Girl (1604/1610); Marston, Parasitaster: Or, The Fawn .
The Red Bull is constructed as a public playhouse in Clerkenwell, just outside the City borders at Smithfield.
Publications: Dekker, News From Gravesend ; King James I, A Counterblast to Tobacco ; Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (A-text); Middleton, The Black Book .
The London Prodigal , published this year with a title-page ascribing it to Shakespeare, has at times been claimed for Jonson: Karen Britland reckons Jonson’s authorship ‘unlikely’, Dubia, 9.
Events: In January, James attempts to mediate between puritan reformers and Anglican bishops at the Hampton Court conference. Having urged his first parliament, to little effect, to embrace ‘one worship of God, one kingdom entirely governed, one uniformity of law’, James assumes in October the title of King of Great Britain by proclamation, hoping thereby to further the Union between England and Scotland. The latter ambition, though eloquently elaborated by Jonson in writings such as Hymenaei and by his mentor, William Camden, in his Britannia -- is to remain unfulfilled throughout James’s reign and the remainder of the century.
In August James negotiates peace with Spain.
A new star (or supernova) is seen in the heavens and observed from Padua by Galileo, who in January 1605 will argue that it is beyond the moon, and that change must therefore occur in that realm.
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6 January (Twelfth Night): The Masque of Blackness, Jonson’s first collaboration with Inigo Jones, is performed at the old Banqueting House, Whitehall. The masque is published by Thomas Thorpe in 1608 a single quarto (Stationers’ Register, 21 April) along with The Masque of Beauty and the Haddington Masque .
Date: 8 January: Every Man Out of His Humour is revived at Court by the King's Men.
‘To Master Joshua Sylvester’ ( Epigrams 132) is published with Sylvester’s translation of Du Bartas, Divine Weeks and Works (Stationers’ Register, 22 January). Jonson later changes his original, admiring, opinion: ‘That Sylvester’s translation of Du Bartas was not well done, and that he wrote his verses before it ere he understood to confer’ ( Informations , 20-1); ‘That he thought not Bartas a poet but a verser, because he wrote not fiction’ ( Informations , 40-1).
2 February (Candlemas Night): Every Man In His Humour revived by King's Men at Court ( EMI , Stage History).
23 April (St George’s Day): ‘Northampton was his mortal enemy for brawling, on a St George’s Day, one of his attenders. He was called before the Council for his Sejanus , and accused both of popery and treason by him’ ( Informations , 250-2). Henry Howard received his Knighthood of the Garter on 24 April this year, and was installed on 16 May (Shaw, 1906, 1.30). See Cain, Print Edition, 2.201.
After April: reference in the anonymous work Sir Thomas Smith’s Voyage and Entertainment in Russia to ‘the elaborate English Horace that gives number, weight, and measure to every word, to teach the reader by his industries, even our laureate-worthy Benjamin, whose muse approves him with (our mother), the Hebrew signification to be “the elder son” and haply to have been the child of sorrow’ (Literary Record).
Date: 4 May: Robert Cecil is created Earl of Salisbury on this day; Jonson’s 'To Robert, Earl of Salisbury' (= Epigrams 43) is possibly written to mark this event.
Mid-year 1605: ‘F. B.’ [=Francis Beaumont] writes his verse letter to Jonson, ‘What things have we seen/ Done at the Mermaid?’, etc. Dating by Mark Bland (2005a), rejecting alternative datings of 1609 and 1613 ( H&S, 11.377-9, E. K. Chambers, 1923, 2.222-5, I. A. Shapiro, 1950, 15). See Literary Record.
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Eastward Ho! , co-authored Chapman and Marston, is performed by the Children of the Queen’s Revels at Blackfriars, probably during King James’s summer progress, 16 July--31 August.
‘He was delated by Sir James Murray to the King for writing something against the Scots in a play, Eastward Ho! , and voluntarily imprisoned himself with Chapman and Marston, who had written it amongst them. The report was that they should then had their ears cut and noses’ ( Informations , 207-10).
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The following letters are sent from prison by Jonson and Chapman, probably between 31 August and 4 September after their imprisonment on account of anti-Scottish references in Eastward Ho!, pleading for their release:
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Letter 2, Jonson to (probably) Thomas Howard, first Earl of Suffolk.
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Letter 3, Jonson to Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury.
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Letter 4, Jonson to (probably) Esmé Stuart, Lord Aubigny.
2. 648
Letter 5, Jonson to an unnamed lady, probably Lucy, Countess of Bedford.
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Letter 6, Jonson to (probably) Esmé Stuart, Lord Aubigny.
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Letter 7, Jonson to Philip Herbert, first Earl of Montgomery.
2.650
Letter 8, Jonson to William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke.
2.651
Letter (a), George Chapman to King James.
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Letter (b), George Chapman to Thomas Howard, first Earl of Suffolk
2.653
Letter (c) George Chapman to Thomas Howard, first Earl of Suffolk.
Chapman and Jonson are released from prison probably in early September. ‘After their delivery he banqueted all his friends: there was Camden, Selden, and others. At the midst of the feast his old mother drank to him, and show him a paper which she had, if the sentence had taken execution, to have mixed in the prison among his drink, which was full of lusty strong poison. And that she was no churl, she told she minded first to have drunk of it herself’ ( Informations , 210-15).
Date: 4 September: Eastward Ho! , ‘made by George Chapman, Ben Jonson, and John Marston’, is entered in the Stationers’ Register by William Aspley and Thomas Thorpe. Three Q editions are printed for William Aspley by George Eld.
Date: 8 October: Sir Henry Cary is taken prisoner, while Sir John Roe avoids capture, near the river Ruhr in the Low Countries, after they and two others have taken an heroic stand against overwhelming military odds: an event Jonson recalls in Epigrams 66 (see also Epigrams 27 and 32).
c. 9 October: three weeks before the planned coup in Westminster Hall on 5 November, Jonson attends a supper party at William Patrick's house in the Strand with several leading conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot (Life Records, 29).
After August: publication of the quarto edition of Sejanus His Fall (‘not the same with that which was acted on the public stage, wherein a second pen had good share’) for Thomas Thorpe by George Eld, with commendatory verses by George Chapman, Hugh Holland, Thomas Roe, John Marston, William Strachey, and others (Stationers’ Register, 6 August). Cain, Sejanus , Textual Essay and Print Edition 2.201-2, suggests the printing was completed just after 5 November, and that the appearance of the text further provoked Northampton’s hostility towards Jonson. Cain argues that the summons for Jonson to appear before the Privy Council on 7 November was designed as a means to investigate the depth of his involvement in the Plot, as well as possible traces of ‘popery and treason’ in Sejanus ( Informations , 251-2).
Date: 7 November: Jonson receives a warrant from Privy Council ‘to let a certain priest know that offered to do good service to the state, that he should securely come and go to and from the Lords, which they promised in the said warrant upon their honours' (Life Records, 30). For a possible identification of the priest, see Martin and Finnis, 2005.
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Date: 8 November: Letter 9, to Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, reporting his lack of success in securing the priest but assuring Cecil of his continuing efforts on his behalf.
After 5 November: 'To William, Lord Monteagle', the discoverer of the Gunpowder Plot, written ( Epigrams 60).
Satirical verses about Jonson, sometimes attributed to Henry Parrot or John Hoskyns but more securely to Sir John Davies ( Poems , ed. Krueger, 1975, 181, 401-2), probably referring to Sejanus : ‘Put off thy Buskins, Sophocles the great,/ And mortar tread with thy disarmed shanks,/ For this man’s head hath had a happier sweat,/ For which the world doth con him little thanks;/ Blush Seneca to see thy feathers loose,/ Plucked from a Swan and stuck upon a goose.’
William Camden in his Remains (published this year) names Jonson -- along with Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, Holland, Campion, Drayton, Chapman, Marston, and Shakespeare -- amongst the ‘most pregnant wits of these our times, whom succeeding ages may justly admire’.
Lives: Thomas Browne (19 November) and Thomas Randolph (baptised 15 June; future playwright and ‘son of Ben’) are born.
Performances: Dekker, Webster, Northward Ho! ; Middleton, A Trick to Catch the Old One (1606/1606); Munday, The Triumphs of Reunited Britain ; Shakespeare, King Lear (first played 1605/1606; quarto edition, 1608; second quarto, 1619 with fraudulent date of 1608); Shakespeare and Middleton, Timon of Athens (1605/08; first published in 1623 folio).
Publications: Bacon, The Advancement of Learning ; Dekker, The Seven Deadly Sins of London.
Events: A group of Catholic conspirators plan to blow up Westminster Hall with gunpowder on 5 November. After William Parker, Lord Monteagle, receives on 26 October a letter of warning of the Plot, the Parliament building is searched and on 4 November ‘John Johnson’ (Guy Fawkes) is arrested, then interrogated and tortured in the Tower of London. His confessions on 7, 8, and 9 November lead to the arrest of other conspirators.
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5-6 January: Hymenaei performed in the Banqueting House, Whitehall, in celebration of the marriage of Frances Howard, daughter of Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. The masque is performed on the first evening, following the wedding itself, and the ‘barriers’ (or indoor tournament) the next. John Pory writes to Sir Robert Cotton about the occasion: see Hymenaei , Masque Archive. The masque is first published in quarto this year by Valentine Simmes for Thomas Thorpe.
9 and 10 January: Citation of Anne and Ben Jonson for recusancy (Life Records, 31, 32). They are instructed to answer charges in late April.
January: Jonson addresses three poems to Sir John Roe ( Epigrams 27, 32, 33), who dies this month (Ribeiro, 1973, 164). 'Sir John Roe was an infinite spender, and used to say, when he had no more to spend he could die. He died in his arms of the pest, and he furnished his charges, £20; which was given him back' ( Informations , 139-41).
3.1
Mid-March: Volpone is performed by King's Men at the Globe (the phrase 'first acted in the year 1605' on the title-page of the play in F1 is evidently a dating by the legal year). The play is later performed in Oxford (which the King’s Men visit in July 1606 and again in September 1607) and Cambridge.
Henry Parrot’s verses on Volpone are published in The Mouse-Trap , Epigram 97.
After 22 March: 'To King James' ( Epigrams 51) written after the rumour spread that James had been stabbed with a poisoned knife while hunting at Woking.
20 April, 7 and 14 May, 2 June: Anne and Ben Jonson appear in the Consistory Court to answer charges of recusancy. Ben is ordered to consult with the Dean of St Paul's, John Overall, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Chaplain, Zacharias Pasfield, and others in order to resolve his theological doubts. The couple are fined a total of thirteen shillings before proceedings are ‘stayed at seal’ (i.e. halted without a final decision being taken). See Life Records, 33, 34, 35.
Marston glances at Jonson’s methods in Sejanus in the preface to his own tragedy The Wonder of Women, or The Tragedy of Sophonisba : ‘Know that I have not laboured in this poem to tie myself to relate anything as an historian but to enlarge everything as a poet. To transcribe authors, quote authorities, and translate Latin prose orations into English blank verse hath in this subject been the least aim of my studies.’ See Literary Record.
May or June: Francis Beaumont’s verse letter to Jonson, ‘Neither to follow fashion’ (dating, Bland, 2005a; Literary Record).
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24-28 July: The Entertainment of the Two Kings at Theobalds is performed during the visit to England of Queen Anne’s brother, Christian IV of Denmark (18 July-11 August). The masque first appears in print in the 1616 folio.
Lives: Birth of William Davenant (baptised 3 March) and Pierre Corneille (6 June); death of Justus Lipsius (23 March) and John Lyly (buried 30 November).
Performances: Beaumont and Fletcher, The Woman Hater ; John Day, The Isle of Gulls ; Marston, The Dutch Courtesan ( c. 1604/1605); Middleton, The Revenger’s Tragedy ; Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (1606/1607; Stationers’ Register staying entry, 1608); (1606/1608; Stationers’ Register staying entry, 1608); Macbeth (1606/1607; first published in folio in 1623 with additions by Middleton).
Date: 27 May: An Act to Restrain the Abuses of Players is passed, limiting the use of oaths in plays.
Publications: Dekker, News From Hell.
Events: On 27 January the Gunpowder conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, Everard Digby, Thomas Wintour, and Father Henry Garnet (Head of the Jesuit Order in England) are tried, and on 30 and 31 January are executed. Tougher penalties on recusancy are introduced, along with the Oath of Allegiance in May, requiring Catholics to pledge ultimate loyalty to the monarch rather than to the Pope. Pope Paul V condemns the Oath, and encourages English Catholics to reject it. Jonson, like other moderate Catholics, is likely however to have subscribed (Donaldson, 2011, 258)..
In the November session of Parliament the question of the Union is debated and decisively defeated.
The quarto edition of Volpone , printed for Thomas Thorpe is published early this year, with commendatory verses by Edmund Bolton, John Donne, Sir Thomas Roe, Francis Beaumont, George Chapman, Esmé Stuart, Nat Field, and others. Jonson’s Epistle ‘To the two most noble and most equal sisters, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, is dated ‘this 11 of February, 1607’, ‘from my house in the Blackfriars’. This is evidently a dating by the calendar year.
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Date: 22 May: An Entertainment at Theobalds performed. The masque circulates in manuscript around the time of performance (seven such manuscripts survive), but does not appear in print until the folio of 1616.
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Date: 16 July: The Merchant Taylors' Entertainment (lost work, apart from three recently discovered songs) performed at the Company’s Guildhall in London. For further details of the occasion, see Masque Archive, Merchant Taylors.
Lives: Death of Lord Chief Justice Sir John Popham (10 June) and of John Rainolds, religious controversialist and President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (21 May). Birth of Thomas Fuller (1607/1608).
Performances: Masque: Campion, Lord Hay’s Masque (performed 6 January).
Plays: Alexander, Monarchic Tragedies ; Chapman, The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron (1607/1608); Middleton, Your Five Gallants (published 1608); Tourneur, The Atheist’s Tragedy (1607/1611).
Publications: Chapman, Bussy D’Ambois (written 1603/1604); Heywood, A Woman Killed With Kindness (performed 1603).
Events: Robert Carr, the future Earl of Somerset, begins his rise into royal favour, and late in the year is knighted and admitted as a Gentleman of the Bedchamber.
Susanna, daughter of William and Anne Shakespeare, marries John Hall.
Hugh O’Neill, 2 nd Earl of Tyrone, and Rury O’Donnell, 1 st Earl of Tyrconnell, flee Ireland for Spain and thence to Rome.
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Date: 10 January: The Masque of Beauty is performed at the new Banqueting House at Whitehall, belatedly complementing The Masque of Blackness (1605).
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9 February (Shrove Tuesday): The Haddington Masque is performed at Court to celebrate the marriage of Elizabeth Ratcliffe, daughter of the Earl of Sussex, and John Ramsay, Viscount Haddington.
Date: 20 February: 'Beniamin Johnson sonne to Beniamin' is baptized at St Anne's, Blackfriars (Life Records, 36). His burial is recorded on 18 November 1611 (Eccles, 1936a, 266-8).
After 24 April (Stationers’ Register entry for Blackness and Beauty ): publication of Blackness, Beauty , and Haddington , printed for Thomas Thorpe.
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Between 6 and 11 May: The Entertainment at Salisbury House (lost work). This may have been performed on 6 May, when Cecil was made Lord Treasurer. A bill for costumes at Hatfield House refers to ‘the show in the library made the 6 th of May 1608’ (Masque Archive).
Date: 6 May: 'To the Same [Robert, Earl of Salisbury], Upon the Accession of the Treasurership to Him’ ( Epigrams 64) and 'An Epigram on William, Lord Burghley, Lord High Treasurer of England' ( The Underwood 30) written to commemorate this same occasion.
Lives: John Milton born (9 December).
Performances: Shakespeare, Coriolanus (approximate date; first printed in folio 1623).
Publications: Dekker, The Bellman of London and Lantern and Candlelight ; Shakespeare, A Lover’s Complaint and Sonnets .
Events: Thomas Coryate journeys by foot across Europe.
After 26 January (Stationers’ Register entry): The Case Is Altered Q published: printed for Bartholomew Sutton and William Barrenger by Nicholas Okes (see Case , Textual Essay).
Date: 28 January: Robert Brett (stepbrother) marries Mariam Poulter (Life Records, 1).
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2 February (Candlemas Night): The Masque of Queens performed at Banqueting House at Whitehall, having been planned for 6 January but postponed because of ambassadorial wranglings over precedence.
After 22 February (Stationers’ Register entry): quarto edition published of The Masque of Queens , printed by Nicholas Okes for Richard Bonion and Henry Walley.
Jonson’s commendatory poems 'To Alfonso Ferrabosco' and ‘To the Same’ ( Epigrams , 130, 131) published this year with editions of Ferrabosco’s Airs (Stationers’ Register, 1 February) and Lessons .
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Date: 11 April: The Entertainment at Britain's Burse is performed for the opening in the royal presence of Robert Cecil’s New Exchange.
Date: 20 July: The Case Is Altered entered again in Stationers’ Register by Henry Walley, Richard Bonion, and Bartholomew Sutton, and is published in quarto this year with two different title-pages (see Textual Essay).
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Early August: Letter 10 to John Donne ‘in clearing himself upon a former accusation’, perhaps in relation to his attack on ‘the Court Pucelle’ ( The Underwood 49), the Countess of Bedford’s friend Cecilia Bulstrode, who had died at the Countess’s house at The Park, Twickenham, on 4 August. See Informations , 71-2, 520-2 and notes.
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Early August: Letter 11 to George Garrard with 'Epitaph on Cecilia Bulstrode'. Both the letter and the epitaph are written after Cecilia’s burial on 6 August.
Date: 29 August: burial of Jonson’s stepfather, Robert Brett (Life Records, 1).
Date: 9 September: burial of Rebecca Brett: Jonson's mother? (Kay, 1995, 2; Life Records, 1).
Jonson’s verses 'To Clement Edmondes' ( Epigrams 110) and ‘To the Same, on the Same’ ( Epigrams 111) published with the 1609 edition of Edmondes’ Observations .
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Published by spring of 1610, and possibly in 1609: Jonson’s verses 'To the Worthy Author, Mr John Fletcher', with The Faithful Shepherdess.
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Epicene, or The Silent Woman is first acted, according to the F1 title-page, ‘in the year 1609 by the Children of Her Majesty’s Revels’. This might have been after the re-opening of the theatres on 8 December 1609 following a long period of closure on account of the plague, or soon after 4 January 1610, when the company, otherwise known as the Blackfriars or Whitefriars Children, acquired the name used here: see Epicene , Introduction and Stage History.
Lives: Death of John Dee (26 March). Birth of Edward Hyde, future Earl of Clarendon (18 February) and John Suckling (baptised 18 February).
Performances: Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster ; Field, A Woman Is a Weathercock (1609/1610); Webster, The White Devil (1609/1612).
The London theatres are closed for part of the year on account of plague. The King’s Men move into the second Blackfriars playhouse, acquired by James Burbage in 1596.
Publications: Chapman, The Tears of Peace ; Twelve Books of the Iliad ; Dekker, The Gulls’ Hornbook ; Shakespeare, The Sonnets.
Events: In May Galileo hears about the invention of the telescope, and in June makes one himself. In August, Thomas Herriot, observing near London, makes a drawing of the moon as seen through a 6-powered telescope.
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6 January (Twelfth Night): The Speeches at Prince Henry's Barriers held at the Banqueting House, Whitehall. The masque first appears in print in Jonson’s 1616 folio.
Date: 8 February: Epicene is ‘suppressed’ by now, according to the (unverified) report of the Venetian ambassador, on account of supposedly disrespectful references to Lady Arbella Stuart (Introduction, 3. 376).
Date: 24 March: 'To Sir Annual Tilter', Epigrams, 29, may refer to a ‘sharp device’ used by Sir Richard Preston while tilting on this day, James’s accession day (Fleay, 1891, 1. 317).
Date: 25 March: Christening of ‘Elisib. daughter of Ben Johnson’ recorded in the register of St Mary Matfellon. This is probably an illegitimate daughter of Jonson’s (Eccles, 1936a, 267-8; Life Records, 37).
Date: 6 April: ‘Beniamen Johnson fil. Ben’ christened at St Martin-in-the-Fields. ‘Elizabeth and Benjamin must evidently have had different mothers; they may or may not have had the same father’ (Eccles, 1936a, 268; Life Records, 38.)
Date: 5 May: 'Beniamin Johnson of the Precinct of the blackfreers London gent. aged 37 yeers or therabouts' gives deposition in Chancery suit, William Roe versus William Garland (Life Records, 39).
Date: 14 May: Henri IV is assassinated in Paris by a Catholic extremist, François Ravaillac, increasing fears in England of Catholic violence and prompting further anti-Catholic legislation. Jonson converts back to the Church of England. 'After he was reconciled with the church and left off to be a recusant, at his first communion, in token of true reconciliation, he drank out all the full cup of wine' ( Informations , 241-2).
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The Alchemist is performed by the King's Men, probably at Blackfriars, in the early summer. In late August or early September the play is performed in Oxford. Internal references date the action of the play itself to 1 November 1610 (but the London theatres were closed that year from July until November on account of the plague). See The Alchemist , Introduction and Stage History.
The anonymous comedy of Mucedorus , printed this year in a revised version but first played years earlier, possibly alludes to Jonson in an exchange between the figure of Comedy and Envy as ‘a wretch,/ A lean and hungry meagre cannibal:/ Whose jaws swell to his eyes, with chawing malice’; ‘This scrambling raven, with his needy beard’. See Literary Record.
Date: 10 September: Stationers’ Register entry for Epicene by John Browne, who on 28 September transfers his rights in the play to Walter Burre. Epicene is first published in Jonson’s 1616 folio: see Textual Essay.
Lives: Death of the Jesuit leader, Father Robert Persons (15 April), and of the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Bancroft (2 November). Sidney Godolphin, future admirer of Jonson, is born (baptised 15 January).
Performances: Beaumont and Fletcher, The Maid’s Tragedy (1610/1611); Chapman, The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois (1601/1612); Fletcher, The Scornful Lady ; Heywood, The Bronze Age (1610/1613) and The Silver Age (1610/1612); Shakespeare, Cymbeline (May/June 1610; first printed in 1623 folio).
Publications: Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster ; Donne, Pseudo-Martyr and Ignatius His Conclave ; Philemon Holland’s English translation of Camden’s Britannia ; Selden, The Duello, or Single Combat.
Events: Henri IV of France is assassinated by (4/14 May) by a Catholic extremist, François Ravaillac, and Louis XIII is crowned as his successor. Fears of similar violent acts in England prompt James’s proclamation the following month forbidding Catholics access to his court or that of Queen Anne or Prince Henry.
In June the King’s cousin Lady Arbella Stuart secretly marries William Seymour without royal permission; the couple are imprisoned as a consequence. In the same month Henry is installed as Prince of Wales; Daniel’s Tethys’ Festival (performed 5 June) celebrates the occasion. Inigo Jones is appointed Henry’s Surveyor.
November: Failure of the Great Contract between James and his Parliament: a proposed transaction masterminded by Robert Cecil to provide steady revenue for the Crown in exchange for the abolition or modification of certain royal privileges, such as purveyance (the right of the Crown to requisition goods and services for royal use). James, in urgent need of supply, dissolves Parliament, and attempts to make do with loans from the City of London, the sale of Crown lands and monopolies, the sale of baronetcies, and other stratagems.
Galileo observes the four Galilean moons of Jupiter. Harriot records his first observation of sunspots.
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Date: 1 January: Oberon, The Fairy Prince performed in the Banqueting House, Whitehall: Prince Henry’s first appearance as principal masquer. The masque is first printed for the folio of 1616.
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Date: 3 February: Love Freed From Ignorance and Folly (originally designed for Christmas 1610, then twice postponed) is performed in the Banqueting House. It is first printed for the 1616 folio.
Date: 1 May: Jonson pays the sum of 11s. 4d to the Tylers’ and Bricklayers’ Company (Kay, 1995, 10; Kathman, 2004, 20; Life Records , 40). This sum covers Jonson’s membership fees retrospectively for the past eight years. ‘Around the same time, the Bricklayers paid 10s. 8d. “for wine and sugar for Benjamin Jonson”. The purpose of this substantial outlay is not certain; perhaps the company was welcoming Jonson back into their active ranks by celebrating in a tavern.’ (Kathman, 20, citing Guildhall Library MS 3054/1).
Late summer (before the death of Prince Henry in November): 'To Penshurst', The Forest 2, written. Jonson was probably in residence at Penshurst during this summer, acting as tutor to Lord and Lady Lisle’s son, William Sidney, as references in Lord Lisle’s correspondence as early as 21 July suggest (see Brennan and Kinnamon, 2003, 430-7). He may have been still at Penshurst when William turned 21 on 11 November that year, an event celebrated in The Forest 14.
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Before 29 August: Catiline His Conspiracy is performed by the King's Men at either the Globe theatre or at Blackfriars. The play is published in quarto later in the year for Walter Burre (no Stationers’ Register entry), with commendatory verses by Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, and Nat Field.
John Davies of Hereford’s epigram ‘To my well-accomplished friend Master Ben Jonson’, published in The Scourge of Folly.
Date: 18 November: burial at St Anne’s, Blackfriars, of ‘Benjamin Johnson sonne to Benjamin’: see Eccles (1936a) 267; Life Records, 41. This may be the poet’s son and the same ‘Benamin Johnson sonne to Benamin’ who was christened at this church on 20 February 1607/8. However, the birth of another ‘Beniamen Johnson fil. Ben’ had been recorded in April 1610 at St Martin-in-the-Fields (see above), about whom nothing further is known, so the identification is not secure.
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Contributions to Coryate's Crudities (26 November, Stationers’ Register):
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‘Certain Opening and Drawing Distichs’
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‘The Character of the Famous Odcombian’
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‘To the Right Noble Tom Tell-Truth of His Travails’
Coryate in Coryate’s Crudities , 159: ‘I heard in Venice that a certain Italian poet called Jacobus Sannazarius had a hundred crowns bestowed upon him by the Senate in Venice for each of these verses following. I would to God my poetical friend Master Benjamin Jonson were so well rewarded for this poems here in England, seeing he hath made many as good verses (in my opinion) as these by Sannazarius.’
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From Coryate’s Crambe, or his Colewort Twice Sodden :
‘Certain Verses Upon Coryate’s Crudities ’
Lives: William Cartwright, future playwright and ‘son of Ben’, is born (baptised 26 December).
Performances: Beaumont and Fletcher, A King and No King ; Chapman, The Tragedy of Chabot (1611/1612); Dekker, If This Be Not a Good Play the Devil Is In It ; Field, Amends for Ladies ; Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1611/1613); Shakespeare, (first recorded performance 15 May 1611 at the Globe; first printed in 1623 folio); The Tempest (first recorded performance 1 November 1611; first printed in 1623 folio).
The Lady Elizabeth’s Men formed under the patronage of James I’s daughter.
Publications: King James Bible (the Authorized Version); Chapman, The Complete Iliads ( c. 1611); Florio, Queen Anna’s New World of Words ; Speed, The History of Great Britain ; The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain .
Events: Robert Carr is created Viscount Rochester, and with Thomas Overbury as his personal secretary begins to dictate royal policy.
Thomas Sutton founds Charterhouse School.
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6 January (Twelfth Night): Love Restored performed at Whitehall. The masque first appears in print in the 1616 folio.
'Epistle to Katherine, Lady Aubigny' ( The Forest 13) written before the birth of the couple’s first son in April.
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Jonson’s Latin verses for Thomas Farnaby's Juvenal and Persius (Stationers’ Register, 29 April).
The Alchemist published in a quarto edition, printed for Walter Burre by Thomas Snodham, to be sold by John Stepneth. Verses by George Lucy.
‘Sir W. Ralegh sent him governor with his son, anno 1613, to France’ ( Informations , 226-33). The year of departure was 1612, not 1613. Jonson and the young Wat Ralegh probably left England around March; in his letter to William Trumbull on 21 February/3 March 1613 (see below), Jean Beaulieu refers to Jonson’s ‘having spent some twelve months’ travel in this country’. Anthony à Wood implausibly assigns these travels to an early period in Jonson’s life, before his time in Cambridge (Early Lives). On the stages of these travels, see Donaldson, 2011, ch. 14.
1 May (Feast of the Apostles Philip and James): John Catlin, son of John Catlin, deceased bricklayer of Birmingham, is assigned to Jonson ‘Ciui et Tyler et Bricklayer Lond’ as an apprentice for the term of eight years. Payment was made officially on 29 June. See David Kathman (2004), 1-49 at 20, citing Guildhall Library MS 3045/1, fol. 17.
Date: 15 May: 'A book called Ben Jonson his Epigrams’ entered in the Stationers’ Register. Was the book ever published? See Burrow, Print Edition, 4.103.
24 May Robert Cecil dies. Though Sir Henry Neville is the popular choice to succeed Cecil as Secretary of State, the post goes instead later in the summer to Ralph Winwood. Jonson’s Epigrams 109, ‘To Sir Henry Neville’, is probably written some time thereafter.
Date: 4 September: Jonson attends a debate in Paris between Daniel Featley and Richard Smith on the nature of the real presence, and testifies with John Pory as to what has been said (Life Records, 42, 43).
Date unknown (autumn 1612 or spring 1613?): Lord Stanhope claims to have met Jonson in Lyon (Life Records, 44).
John Webster pays tribute to ‘The laboured and understanding works of Master Jonson’ in his address to the reader prefaced to The White Devil , published in quarto this year .
John Taylor the Water-Poet, ‘To my dear respected friend Mr Benjamin Jonson ’, in The Sculler , published this year ‘Thou canst not die, for though the stroke of death/ Deprives the world of thy worst earthly part,/ Yet when thy corpse hath banishèd thy breath,/ Thy living muse shall still declare thy art’, etc. The compliment is probably routine hyperbole, rather than a literal indication of Jonson’s health at this time.
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Jonson’s Latin verses for Thomas Farnaby's Seneca (Stationers’ Register, 1613).
Lives: Death of two of Jonson’s most significant patrons, Prince Henry (6 November) and Robert Cecil (24 May), and of Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland, (‘nothing inferior to her father, Sir P. Sidney, in poesy’, Informations , 159; cf. Epigrams 79). Death of the puritan Hugh Broughton (whose book Concent of Scripture is ridiculed in The Alchemist ) and John Harington (whose epigrams and translation of Ariosto Jonson criticizes in Informations , 25-8). Birth of Samuel Butler (baptised 14 February) and Richard Crashaw (1612/1613).
Performances: Shakespeare and Fletcher, Cardenio (1612/13; lost play, of which Lewis Theobald’s Double Falsehood is thought to be an adaptation); Henry VIII (1612/ 1613); Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (1612/1614).
Publications: Donne’s Anniversaries (seen by Jonson as ‘profane, and full of blasphemies’, Informations , 31-3); Drayton, Poly-Olbion (written 1598-1622, part 1 (1612/13): ‘That Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion , if he had performed what he promised, to write the deeds of all the worthies, had been excellent. His long verses [twelve-syllable lines] pleased him not’, Informations , 17; Heywood, An Apology for Actors , Thomas Shelton’s translation of the first part of Cervantes’ Don Quixote ; William Warner, Albion’s England (‘That Warner, since the King’s coming to England, had marred all his Albion’s England : Informations , 29) .
Events: In March two convicted heretics are publicly burnt for their beliefs: Bartholomew Legate at Smithfield, and Edward Weightman at Lichfield.
21 February/3 March: Jean Beaulieu in Paris writes to William Trumbull in Brussels to forewarn him of Jonson’s and Ralegh’s impending visit (Life Records, 45).
1/11 March: Beaulieu writes again to Trumbull about Jonson, hinting at ‘the rumour of some ill cross-business wherein he hath been interested here’ (Life Records, 46). Jonson and Ralegh are now travelling from Paris to Brussels.
24 March/3 April: John Brownlowe in Antwerp tells Trumbull in Brussels he has honoured one of Jonson's and Ralegh's bills of exchange (Life Records, 47). Jonson and Ralegh are now travelling from Brussels to Antwerp.
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Date: 24 March: 'A Speech Presented unto King James at a Tilting in the Behalf of the Two Noble Brothers, Sir Robert and Sir Henry Rich, now Earls of Warwick and Holland.’
Late March/early April: Jonson and Ralegh move on to Leiden and meet Daniel Heinsius (McPherson, 1976a, 105-9).
Date: 29 June: Jonson, having returned to London at an unknown date this summer, witnesses the burning of the Globe theatre during a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII : The Underwood, 43. 135ff.
Date: 29 June: The Alchemist is revived at Court.
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Between 1 July and 13 November: Jonson’s Letter 12 ,‘To my worthy and honoured Friend, Mr Leech’ (John Leech, secretary to the Earl of Pembroke).
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Between 1 July and 13 November: Jonson’s Letter 13, ‘To my honoured and virtuous friend, Mr Thomas Bond, secretary to my honoured Lord, the Lord Chancellor of England [Thomas Egerton, Baron Ellesmere]’.
Date: 17 July: A letter from John Donne to Sir Henry Goodere shows Donne intervening as a peacemaker between Jonson and Hugh Holland, who had evidently taken offence at a reference to Inigo Jones in an early version of Bartholomew Fair (Gosse, 1899, 2.16, Bald, 1970, 196-7; Life Records, 48).
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Jonson’s verses 'To his Much and Worthily Esteemed Friend the Author' published with Cynthia's Revenge (by John Stephens of Lincoln's Inn, but published anonymously).
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Martial, Epigram 10.47 Translated (‘The things that make the happier life’). Composed some time before 1618; one of Jonson’s favourite recitation pieces in Scotland: Informations , 10-11, 74.
George Wither addresses Ben Jonson, along with Daniel, Drayton, Chapman, and Sylvester: ‘I long to know you better, that’s the truth,/ I am in hope you’ll not disdain my youth’, etc.: Abuses Stripped and Whipped , book 2, satire 3. Jonson will later ridicule Wither in Time Vindicated (1623).
Sir Edward Coke is compelled through Bacon’s influence and against his own wish to step down as Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas and accept the Chief Justiceship of the King’s Bench. Jonson’s ‘An Epigram on Sir Edward Coke, When He Was Lord Chief Justice of England‘ ( The Underwood 46) may have been written some time after Coke’s swearing-in as Chief Justice on 25 October.
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Date: 26 December: Jonson’s verses 'To the Most Noble, and Above his Titles, Robert, Earl of Somerset' are presented to Robert Carr on his marriage to Frances Howard, Lady Essex (but would not appear in any of Jonson’s poetic collections, remaining unpublished until the nineteenth century).
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Date: 27 December: A Challenge at Tilt is performed as part of the celebrations of the marriage of Robert Carr and Frances Howard. On 1 January 1614 the second part of the Challenge , the tournament itself, is presented in the tiltyard at Whitehall.
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Date: 29 December: The Irish Masque is performed in the Banqueting House in further celebration of the marriage of Robert Carr and Frances Howard, with a repeat performance on 3 January 1614.
Lives: Death of Sir Thomas Bodley (29 January) and of the poet Henry Constable (9 October), whose ‘ambrosiac muse’ Jonson praises in The Underwood 27.27-8. John Cleveland is born (baptised 20 June).
Performances: Masques: Campion, The Lords’ Masque (14 February), The Caversham Entertainment (27-28 April), The Masque of Squires (26 December); Chapman, The Memorable Masque (15 February); Beaumont, The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn (20 February).
Plays: Beaumont and Fletcher, The Scornful Lady (1613/1616); Shakespeare and Fletcher, The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613/1614; first published in quarto 1634).
Publications: Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Mariam ; Drummond, Tears on the Death of Moeliades (admired by Jonson, Informations , 75-6).
Events: James VI and I’s and Anne of Denmark’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, is married in the chapel at Whitehall on 14 February, St Valentine’s Day, to Frederick V, Count Palatine of the Rhine and Elector of the Holy Roman Empire. The marriage consolidates the alliance formed the previous year between England and the Protestant Union of German princes and free states. Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, with an entourage that includes Inigo Jones, escorts the couple to Heidelberg. Jones travels on with Arundel into Italy to examine Palladian and other buildings.
Royal marriage negotiations proceed between France and England on behalf of Prince Charles (following the death of Prince Henry, the first candidate for her hand) and the much younger Princess Christine, daughter of Henri IV.
Rumours spread about the increasing involvement of Frances Howard, Countess of Essex, with the King’s new favourite, Robert Carr. In May Frances Howard petitions for the annulment of her existing marriage to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, alleging that her husband has failed to consummate the union. The case is heard before a special ecclesiastical commission. The Countess is inspected by a panel of matrons who declare her to be still a virgin, though sexually capable. On 15 September Sir Thomas Overbury, who has opposed Frances Howard’s proposed marriage with Robert Carr, is found dead in the Tower of London in suspicious circumstances. On 25 September, despite opposition from George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, but with the support of James, the marriage of Frances Howard and Robert Devereux is formally annulled. On 3 November Robert Carr is created Earl of Somerset, and on 26 December he and Frances Howard are married. Jonson, who had written Hymenaei in celebration of Frances Howard’s first marriage to Robert Devereux, is again recruited as masque-writer for her second wedding.
On 27 October Francis Bacon is appointed Attorney General.
Diego de Sarmiento de Acuña (later Count of Gondomar) arrives in England to serve as Spanish ambassador from 1613 to 1618 and again from 1619 to 1622.
Sir Hugh Myddleton’s New River scheme is opened, piping water from Hertfordshire into London.
Date: 25 January: Eastward Ho! is presented at court by Lady Elizabeth’s Company.
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Jonson’s verses 'To his Friend the Author, Upon His Richard' printed with Christopher Brooke's The Ghost of Richard the Third (Stationers’ Register, 14 May).
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Jonson’s verses ‘To the Worthy Author on The Husband’ (Stationers’ Register, 1 July), an anonymous continuation of Sir Thomas Overbury’s poem A Wife , that (having circulated earlier in manuscript) is also published this year under the title A Wife, Now the Widow, of Sir T. Overbury. The author had been poisoned in the Tower of London the previous year. For Jonson’s and Overbury’s falling-out, see Informations , 159-65.
‘To Thomas, Earl of Suffolk’, Epigrams 67, may have been written to mark Suffolk’s appointment as Lord Treasurer this year (Burrow, Print Edition, 5.145; Whalley; Donaldson, OA ) though an earlier date of c. 1605 has also been proposed ( H&S; Butler, 1995a).
Ralegh's History of the World (Stationers’ Register, 1 July) is published anonymously in this year by William Stansby and presented to Princess Elizabeth . ‘The best wits of England were employed for making of his History . Ben himself had written a piece to him of the Punic War, which he altered and set in his book’ ( Informations, 150). On Jonson’s possible authorship of the section on the Punic War, see Dubia, 2; for his poem on the frontispiece of the History, see ‘The Mind of the Frontispiece to a Book’, The Underwood 24.
‘An Epistle to Master John Selden’ ( The Underwood 14) is published with Selden’s Titles of Honour (Stationers’ Register, 14 July). Selden in his preface acknowledges Jonson’s help with his researches (Life Records, 49, Literary Record). For Jonson’s high opinion of the book, see Informations , 102.
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31 October (Halloween) and 1 November (All Saints’ Day): Bartholomew Fair is performed first at the recently opened Hope theatre on the Bankside, and the following night before King James at Whitehall.
Lives: Death of the French-born scholar Isaac Casaubon (1 July) and of Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton (16 June), Jonson’s ‘mortal enemy’ ( Informations , 250).
Performances: Middleton, The Masque of Cupids (performed, 4 January); The Masque of Flowers (performed, 6 January); Daniel, Hymen’s Triumph (performed, 3 February).
Publications: Sir Arthur Gorges’ translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia .
Events: The ‘Addled’ Parliament is convened on 5 April and dissolved on 7 June, with no legislation having been passed. Jonson’s friend John Hoskyns, after speaking in the House against the influence of the Scots on royal policy, is summoned before the Privy Council along with three allies and committed to the Tower, where he remains for the next twelve months.
The projector Alderman William Cockayne advocates a ban on the exportation of undyed and undressed cloth to boost local dying and dressing, and the formation of a new King’s Company of Merchant Adventurers. The plan receives royal support but proves financially disastrous. See entry below for 8 June 1616.
George Villiers arrives at Court, and begins to usurp Robert Carr’s place as James’s favourite.
4.429
6 and 8 January: Mercury Vindicated From the Alchemists at Court is performed at the Banqueting House, Whitehall, with George Villiers, James’s new favourite, dancing for the first time in a court masque. For this re-dating, see Butler (2008), ch. 7, and Print Edition, 4.432. The masque first appears in print in the folio of 1616.
March: Jonson is commissioned to write a poem of welcome to King James on his visit to St John’s, Cambridge this month, as Robert Lane, President of the College, reports to Dr Gwyn, its Master (Life Records, 50).
An epigram by ‘R. C. Gent.’ in The Times Whistle ( ‘Scribimus indocti doctique epigrammata passim’ (‘Skilled or unskilled, we scribble poetry all alike’, Horace, Epist . 2.1.117) refers disparagingly to Jonson’s Epigrams , and hints at the possibility of the poems having been published as a ‘book’ prior to their appearance in Jonson’s 1616 folio (Literary Record).
Lives: Arbella Stuart dies in the Tower of London (25 September).
Performances: George Ruggle’s Latin comedy Ignoramus is performed before James at Cambridge. (Was Jonson present at this performance? See R. C. Evans, 1994, chapter 4.)
Middleton’s The Widow is performed, 1615/1616. When first published in 1652 the play is attributed to Jonson, Fletcher, and Middleton, but ‘the connection of Jonson’s name with The Widow seems to be entirely unsubstantial’: Karen Britland, Dubia 9.
The second Globe Theatre opens in June, the fifth and last public playhouse on Bankside, erected on the site of the first Globe by Cuthbert and Richard Burbage and the King’s Men.
Publications: Harington, Epigrams, Both Pleasant and Serious (‘narrations, and not epigrams’, according to Jonson, Informations , 26-8).
Events: 23 January: Donne is ordained deacon and priest in the Church of England.
Date: 1 October: Inigo Jones is appointed Surveyor of the King’s Works.
Date: 23 December: the Earl of Pembroke succeeds Robert Carr as Lord Chamberlain, as suspicions grow about Carr’s and his wife’s possible involvement in the death of Sir Thomas Overbury.
4.445
1 January and 6 January (Twelfth Night): The Golden Age Restored performed in the Banqueting House, Whitehall. For this re-dating, see Butler (2008), ch. 7, and Print Edition, 4.447-9. The masque is printed for the 1616 folio.
Date: 1 February: Jonson is granted an 'annuity or pension' of 100 marks, payable from the previous Christmas in quarterly instalments for the term of his natural life (Life Records, 51).
1 February 1616: The baptism of ‘Bedford Johnson’ is recorded in the register of St Martin-in-the Fields (Cain, 2007, 84-5). Cain argues this is a son of Ben Jonson’s, named after Lucy, Countess of Bedford: an identification further strengthened by his discovery of a baptismal record at the same church on 4 March 1638 of a son of Bedford’s named Benjamin (see below, 1638). For the speculation that Lucy, Countess of Bedford was offering Jonson protection in 1616 see Donaldson, 2011, 180-1, 469-70.
Date: 28 February: Letter (g) (Electronic Edition) John Selden’s letter to ‘To my honoured and truly worthy friend, Master Ben Jonson’ on biblical and historical attitudes to cross-dressing.
Before 23 April: Stratford legend: ‘Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted’: Reverend John Ward, Diary , 1839 (recorded 1662), 183; Donaldson, 2011, 323-326.
4.462
'To My Truly-Beloved Friend, Master Browne, on His Pastorals ', published with the second book of William Browne’s Britannia's Pastorals . Browne in this same work writes of Jonson (Book 2, Song 2) as ‘One so judicious, so well knowing, and/ A man whose least worth is to understand;/ One so exact in all he doth prefer/ To able censure; for the theatre/ Not Seneca transcends his worth of praise;/ Who writes him well shall well deserve the bays.’
4.463
Date: 8 June: The Merchant Adventurers' Entertainment (lost work) presented before King James at Alderman William Cockayne’s house in Broad Street.
William Fennor’s verses on the reception of Sejanus , in Fennor’s Descriptions (Literary Record).
Robert Anton’s references to Jonson’s work in The Philosopher’s Satyrs (Literary Record).
4.465
Early autumn: The Devil Is an Ass performed by the King’s Men at Blackfriars theatre. Possibly following an unrecorded performance of the play at court, Jonson is questioned over references to ‘the Duke of Drownland’ -- which were evidently seen as alluding to a recognizable contemporary investor in fen drainage -- and asked by the King to delete these passages. See Informations , 319-23 and Introduction to the play.
4.611
November: The Works of Benjamin Jonson (F1) published in folio by William Stansby soon after 6 November and before 25 November, having been at the press since perhaps January 1615: see Bland, (1998b), 10, and Print Edition, 1.clxix- clxxi. For the commendatory verses in the folio by John Selden and Edward Heyward, see Literary Record.
4.617
Every Man In His Humour , folio version. For the possible dates at which the quarto version of the play had undergone revision, see Print Edition, 4.620.
5.1
Cynthia’s Revels , or, The Fountain of Self-Love , folio version. On the dating of this revision of the quarto text, see Print Edition, 5.3-8.
5.101
Epigrams: First Book (from the 1616 folio) . On the possibility of the earlier publication of these poems as a separate ‘book’, see Print Edition, 5.103-8.
5.199
The Forest (from the 1616 folio). On the dating of the poems in this collection, see Print Edition, 5.201-5, and commentary.
Thomas Coryate in his letter from India this year, Thomas Coryate Traveller for the English Wits , addresses Jonson ‘at his chamber in the Blackfriars’.
5.249
Christmas season: Christmas His Masque : for possible performance dates, see Introduction, 5.251. The masque circulated in manuscript but did not appear in print until 1641, F2(3).
Lives: Death of Henslowe (6 January), Francis Beaumont (6 March),
and Shakespeare (23 April).
Performances: Middleton, The Witch ; Middleton and Rowley, A Fair Quarrel ; Middleton and Shakespeare, Macbeth (adaptation).
Publications: The Works of James VI and I published in a folio edition. Chapman’s Divine Poem of Musaeus ( Informations , 169); Dekker, The Artillery Garden ; Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (B-text).
Events: Frances Howard confesses and pleads guilty in Westminster Hall to having planned the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. In view of her confession and penitence, James spares her life, and in July grants her a pardon. Carr, who does not confess, is also found guilty, but together with his wife is committed to the Tower, where the couple remain until they are both released in 1622. Carr is subsequently pardoned.
Ralegh is released from the Tower to undertake another expedition to Orinoko in search of gold. The expedition eventually fails, and Ralegh returns to England in 1618.
After much feuding with the Crown and other members of the judiciary, Sir Edward Coke is suspended from the Privy Council and removed from his role as Chief Justice of the King’s Bench.
5.271
6 January (Twelfth Night) and 19 January: The Vision of Delight is danced in the Banqueting House, Whitehall, and is printed for the first time for Jonson’s second folio in 1640-1.
The Underwood 31, ‘An Epigram: To Thomas, Lord Ellesmere, The Last Term He Sat Chancellor’, is written between mid-January this year, when Thomas Egerton served his final term as Lord Chancellor, and 15 March, when Egerton died. The Underwood 32, ‘Another to Him’ probably belongs to this same period.
5.291
Date: 22 February: Lovers Made Men performed at the Wardrobe, and printed as a small quarto also this year (perhaps for distribution at the performance).
Jonson’s friend Edmund Bolton begins to petition King James, initially through George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, for the establishment of an ‘Academ Roial’ or ‘College of Honour’ for distinguished scholars. Jonson’s name is included in a (now vanished) list of 84 foundation members of the new academy (in the category of ‘Essentials’) prepared by Bolton in 1626 (Hunter, 1847; Portal, 1915-6; Donaldson, 2011, 365-6).
John Davies of Hereford’s ‘To my learnedly witty friend, Mr Benjamin Jonson’, who writes slowly, but his work lasts: printed this year in Wit’s Bedlam ( Works , ed. Grosart, 1878, 2.4).
Date: 4 June: ‘Ben Jonson is going on foot to Edinburgh and back, for his profit’: George Gerrard to Sir Dudley Carleton (Life Records, 52).
December: Exchequer receipts for payments to Thomas Knyvett, ‘ordinary groom of the Prince his Highness’s chamber’, who was sent ‘by Mr Gray from Whitehall to Blackfriars to Mr Jonson the poet to come to the Prince’; and to Thomas Henn, another ordinary groom of the Prince’s Chamber, for going ‘from Whitehall to Blackfriars with a message to Ben Jonson’ and returning with an answer (Life Records, 53).
The portrait of Ben Jonson by the Flemish artist Abraham van Blyenberch, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, may have been painted in this year (see frontispiece, Print Edition volume 1, and Portraits, Electronic Edition).
Lives: Thomas Coryate dies of dysentery in Surat (Gujarat, India) in December.
Performances: The Phoenix (or Cockpit) Theatre in Drury Lane is established as a private playhouse by Christopher Beeston.
Fletcher, The Chances (1617/1619). Barten Holyday, Technogamia, or The Marriage of the Arts is presented at Christ Church, Oxford, on 13 February, and is later revised for performance in 1623 before King James at Woodstock. For Jonson’s possible role in the play’s revision, see Dubia.
Publications: Drummond, Forth Feasting ( Informations , 78-9); James I, The King’s Majesty’s Declaration to His Subjects Concerning Lawful Sports to be Used (also known as The Book of Sports ; originally issued with application to Lancashire; re-issued in 1618 to cover all of England); Selden, De Diis Syris Syntagmata Duo ( Informations , 103).
Events: James VI and I pays his first return visit to Scotland since his accession in 1603, accompanied by a large entourage. The Scottish parliament sits during his visit, 27 May-28 June. The Five Articles of Perth, designed to impose Anglican ritual on the Scottish Kirk, are discussed and rejected by the General Assembly at St Andrews, but are accepted in Perth by the same body the following year.
George Villiers is created Earl of Buckingham (and elevated to Marquis, 1618, and Duke, 1623).
In France, the 17-year-old Louis XIII forces his mother, Marie de Médicis, into retirement, and has her favourite, Concino Concini, assassinated.
5.307
6 January (Twelfth Night): Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue is performed in the Banqueting House, Whitehall. ‘The masque of Twelfth Night was so dull that people say the poet should return to his old trade of brick-laying’ (Nathaniel Brent, 10 January). John Chamberlain and Edward Sherburn express similar disappointment (10 January). Orazio Busino, Chaplain to the Venetian Ambassador describes James’s irritation (‘Why don’t they dance?) and George Villiers’ intervention (10 January). See Masque Archive, Pleasure Reconciled. The masque was first printed for the second folio of 1640-1, but also survives in a quarto manuscript that is probably contemporary with performance.
5.329
Date: 17 February: For the Honour of Wales is performed at the Banqueting House.
5.343
Early summer: Jonson is perhaps working on his now-lost pastoral, The May-lord ( Informations , 307-12).
5.346
‘A Grace by Ben Jonson Extempore Before King James’ (in three versions), the first composed between 6 January 1617 (when George Villiers is made Earl of Buckingham) and 2 March 1619 (the death of Queen Anne).
5.348
Early summer: 'To my Worthy and Honoured Friend, Master George Chapman, on his Translation of Hesiod's Works and Days ' (Stationers’ Register, 14 May).
5.349
‘To Master Ben Jonson in his Journey by Master Craven’ and ‘This Was Master Ben Jonson’s Answer of the Sudden’.
Wednesday 8 July: Jonson and an unknown companion leave London by foot for Scotland, arriving that evening at Tottenham High Cross, about six miles north of London. For a detailed account of all stages of this journey, see Foot-Voyage.
5.350
In early August Jonson and his companion arrive at Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire and visit Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire, where Jonson consults with William Cavendish and his architect Robert Smythson (or his son John) about an epitaph commemorating Sir Charles Cavendish, who had died the previous year. ‘Charles Cavendish to His Posterity’ is perhaps drafted then, along with ‘An Epigram To William, Earl of Newcastle’ ( The Underwood 53), responding to a display of horsemanship by William Cavendish on Wednesday 4 August (Foot-Voyage).
Late summer: Jonson and his companion reach Sherburn in north Yorkshire ‘in the midst of August’; they leave York on 17 August; arrive in Darlington on 21 August, and move on towards Durham on 22 August. On 26 August they visit the ‘free school’ in Newcastle (now the Royal Grammar School) where Jonson gives the Master ‘a piece to buy a book with’: a visit which strengthens the grounds for supposing that the verses ‘On the Steeple of St Nicholas’ Church, Newcastle’ -- hitherto generally regarded as unauthentic: Dubia, Poems, 22 -- may indeed have been written by Jonson. They arrive at Widdrington on 1 September, pass through North Berwick on 16 September, and arrive in Edinburgh the following day. On Friday 18 September the two walkers are formally welcomed to Edinburgh by the bailiff, aldermen, and townspeople at Mercat Cross in Parliament Square (for details, see Foot-Voyage).
Saturday 19 September: Jonson and his companion ride to Culross on the north side of the Firth of Forth and visit Sir George Bruce’s coalmines, along with his salt-pans and ‘a rare waterwork’; are received by the Lord Chancellor and others at Dunfermline, and are made burgesses of the city. They lodge at the house of John Stuart and his wife in Leith (Foot-Voyage).
Date: 25 September: At an official dinner held in his honour by the City of Edinburgh, Jonson is admitted by the Dean of the Guild (David Aikenhead) as a ‘burgess and guildbrother’ (Foot-Voyage; Life Records, 57, 58).
Date: 26 September: burial of Robert Brett, Jonson’s stepbrother, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London (Life Records, 1).
Date: 5 October: Jonson’s companion departs from Scotland, taking a boat from Leith to Burntisland and then a ship back to England.
Date: 6 October: an expenditure of £4.7s. is recorded in the Edinburgh City Archives, Bailies’ Accounts, for time ‘spent in Leith with Mr Benjamin Jonson’ (Foot-Voyage; Life Records, 57.5).
Date: 16 October: expenses are recorded for a dinner for Jonson held by the City of Edinburgh (Life Records, 57).
Autumn: John Taylor the Water Poet in The Pennyless Pilgrimage describes Taylor’s own journey by foot to Scotland, and his friendly meeting with Jonson in Leith (Life Records, 56).
November: John Selden’s The History of Tithes published without licence, and with acknowledgement of Jonson’s help (Toomer, 2009, 1. 263-5; Life Records, 55).
Date: 3 December: burial of John Brett, stepbrother, at St Martin-in-the-Fields (Life Records, 1).
5.351
Late December 1618 until mid-January 1619: Jonson stays with William Drummond, Laird of Hawthornden, at Hawthornden Castle, seven miles south of Edinburgh. Over this period Drummond begins to draft the Informations to William Drummond of Hawthornden . These notes would be published in a severely abridged and re-ordered form in the 1711 folio edition of Drummond’s verse and prose, and in more extended form in 1842 by David Laing, from an eighteenth-century transcript of the now-lost original made by the Edinburgh scholar, Sir Robert Sibbald.
Lives: Joshua Sylvester dies (28 September), Richard Lovelace born (9 December).
Performances: Thomas Pestell, The Coleorton Masque (performed 2 February); The Masque of Mountebanks (performed 2 and 19 February).
Middleton and Rowley, The Old Law.
Publications: Thomas Farnaby’s edition of Lucan’s Pharsalia.
Events: Sir Walter Ralegh, on his quest to the Orinoco in search of the riches of El Dorado, clashes with the Spanish at San Thomé, thus jeopardizing England’s peace negotiations with Spain. His son Wat Ralegh, who had travelled under Jonson’s charge on the Continent in 1612-1613, is killed in these encounters. Ralegh is tried on his return to England and beheaded on 29 October.
Start of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), as Protestants in Bohemia refuse to accept the expected heir, the future Habsburg emperor Ferdinand of Styria.
Bacon is appointed Lord Chancellor (7 January) and created Baron Verulam (12 July).
5.392
Date: 17 January: Letter (d) from Drummond 'To his worthy friend, Mr Benjamin Jonson'. Jonson has evidently left Hawthornden by this date and has returned to Leith.
‘January 19, 1619’ : Jonson notes this date after writing out two of his poems, ‘On a lover’s dust, made sand for an hour-glass’, ‘And this, which is, as he said, a picture of himself’, which he sends from Leith to Drummond in thanks for his stay at Hawthornden. Drummond incorporates the date and the poems at the end of Informations . The poems are later revised and published as ‘The Hour-Glass’ and 'My Picture Left in Scotland', The Underwood 8 and 9.
Date: 20 January: notice for the payment of the writing and gilding of Jonson’s burgess ticket, in the Edinburgh City Archives (Life Records, 59).
Richard Andrewes’s verses in Newcastle MS (Harley 4955, f. 166b) about Jonson’s visit to the Peak, probably during his journey back to London early this year. ‘I’ll tell you here came on a time/ A big fat man, that spake in rhyme’, says the guide. See Life Records, 73.
Date: 2 March: ‘A Celebration of Charis in Ten Lyric Pieces’ ( The Underwood 2) has evidently been completed before this date, on which Queen Anne died. Dancing at Whitehall, Charis ‘was worthy (being so seen)/ To be envied of the queen’ (2.6.27-8).
March: ‘Epigram on Richard Burbage’ (who died this month) doubtfully ascribed to Jonson: Dubia, Poems, 18.
May: 'An Epitaph on Master Vincent Corbett' ( The Underwood 12) probably composed this month. Corbett died on 29 April.
5.393
Date: 30 April: Letter (e) from Drummond ‘To my good friend, Ben Jonson’, ‘longing to hear of your happy journey’ but uncertain about Jonson’s present whereabouts.
5.394
Date: 10 May: Letter 14, Jonson ‘To my worthy, honoured, and beloved friend, Mr William Drummond, Edinburgh’, announcing his arrival back in London, requesting local information for his account of the journey, and adding that ‘I have somewhat in hand, which shall look upon you with the next’ in honour of Anne’s funeral. No such work is known to have been completed.
5.395
Date: 1 July: Letter (f) from William Drummond ‘To his worthy friend, Master Benjamin Jonson’, responding to his questions in Letter 14 and giving detailed information about emblems inscribed in the Long Gallery of Pinkie Castle, Musselburgh.
Date unknown, after May 1619: Inigo Jones’s verses ‘To his False Friend Master Ben Jonson’, complaining of Jonson’s repeated stories of his walk to Scotland: Literary Record.
5.399
A Cavendish Christening Entertainment is perhaps performed this summer, perhaps in Blackfriars, though its date, subject, and location (reviewed in the Introduction, Print Edition, 5.401-3) cannot be established with any certainty.
Date: 17 July: Jonson receives an honorary degree at Oxford, conferred by the University’s Chancellor, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (Life Records, 60). Jonson’s honorary degrees at both Oxford and Cambridge had probably been proposed and approved prior to 1616 (Donaldson, 2011, 350). He begins a period of residence now at Christ Church, Oxford, at the initiative of Richard Corbett and others: Anthony à Wood, Early Lives.
5.418
Leges Convivales, rules for conduct in the Apollo Room at the Devil and St Dunstan tavern in Fleet Street, probably written in this year (Buxton, 1953), and later translated by Alexander Brome (1622-66) as ‘Ben Jonson’s Sociable Rules for the Apollo’ (5.419).
5.422
‘Verses Over the Door at the Entrance into the Apollo’.
Lives: Death of Queen Anne (4 March), of Richard Burbage (12 March), and of Samuel Daniel (buried 14 October).
Performances: Masques: 6 January and 8 February: Chapman, The Masque of the Twelve Months ( Informations , 38). 6 January and 2 February, The Inner Temple Masque, or, Masque of Heroes ; 22 April: Masque of Warriors (lost work) .
Plays: Fletcher and Massinger, Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt ; The Custom of the Country ( c. 1619/1620).
On 12 January the Banqueting House at Whitehall is destroyed by fire.
Publications: William Jaggard and Thomas Pavier plan to publish a collection of ten plays by Shakespeare (two of them falsely ascribed, A Yorkshire Tragedy and Sir John Oldcastle , part 1). They are prevented by the Lord Chamberlain after appeal from the King’s Men, but the plays are printed and issued individually, some with falsely dated title-pages.
Events: August: Frederick of the Palatinate accepts the crown of Bohemia, which is offered by Bohemian Protestants in revolt against their Habsburg ruler, Ferdinand II.
October, November: a comet that appears in the heavens during these months provokes scientific controversy and is seen as an omen of catastrophe.
5.423
6 January, 29 February: News From the New World Discovered in the Moon is performed at court. It is printed in Jonson’s second folio, 1640-1.
January: Jonson and Edward Heyward accompany John Selden to Theobalds for his interrogation by King James concerning The History of Tithes (for this re-dating of Selden’s own testimony, see Donaldson, 2011, 362-3).
January: Bill (now lost) from Thomas Cooke, one of the grooms of the Prince’s Chamber, for fetching Jonson from Cripplegate to attend at court (Life Records, 62; Eccles hesitates over its authenticity, 1936a, 271, n. 2).
March: a payment to Jonson of £33 is recorded in the papers of Lionel Cranfield, perhaps representing part of his pension: Bawcutt (1996), 50-2, Life Records, 61.
March/July: 'An Epistle to a Friend to Persuade Him to the Wars' ( The Underwood 15) written.
Lives: Death of Thomas Campion (1 March); John Evelyn born (31 October).
Performances: Masques: The Running Masque (performed January and February).
Plays: Fletcher and Massinger, The False One ; Massinger and Dekker, The Virgin Martyr ; Middleton and Rowley, The World Tossed at Tennis (performed 4 March); Middleton, Hengist, King of Kent.
Publications: Bacon publishes in part Instauratio Magna : preface and Novum Organum (two books only).
Events: Buckingham marries the wealthy Catholic heiress Lady Katherine Manners, daughter of the Earl of Rutland.
In October Anthony Van Dyck arrives in London for the first time, making the acquaintance of Buckingham and other patrons and collectors, and painting the portrait of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, and others.
At the Battle of White Mountain outside Prague in November Frederick’s forces suffer a crushing defeat by Habsburg-led troops. After barely a year’s occupancy of Bohemia, Frederick and his ‘Winter Queen’ are forced to flee to the Hague, Frederick’s traditional lands, the Palatinate, now being overrun by the Spanish army under the command of their general Ambrogio Spinola.
5.445
6 January (Twelfth Night) and 11 February (Shrove Sunday): Pan's Anniversary, or The Shepherds' Holiday is performed in the Hall at Whitehall. The masque is misdated ‘1625’ in the 1640-1 folio but the earlier dates are confirmed by a surviving bill for costumes: Butler (1992a), and Print Edition, 5.477. The masque is printed for the first time in F2 in 1640-1.
Date: 22 January: 'Lord Bacon's Birthday', written in celebration of Francis Bacon’s sixtieth birthday ( The Underwood 51).
Before 23 April: Records of loans to Jonson from Sir Robert Cotton’s library (Life Records, 63).
Date: 3 May: ‘To My Lord Chancellor, the Day of His Sentence, the 3 rd May 1621’, doubtfully attributed to Jonson (Dubia, Poems, 11).
Date: 1 June: deed of assignment to John Hull of his half-year's annuity, £36 to cover debts owed (Life Records, 64). Jonson is formally assigning payment to his creditors from his annual pension: cf. the entry for 26 April 1623 below, and see Bawcutt, 1996b, 51-2.
5.463
The Gypsies Metamorphosed is performed on 3 August at Buckingham’s newly acquired estate at Burley-on-the-Hill, and again on 5 August at Belvoir Castle; then once more at Windsor Castle, probably between 30 September and 20 October. Jonson journeys north to supervise arrangements for the performances at Burley and Belvoir. For the complex textual history of the masque, which survives in two printed witnesses -- different issues of Benson’s 1640 duodecimo -- and two manuscripts, Bridgewater and Newcastle, see Textual Essay.
Date: 15 September: Joseph Mead reports to Sir Martin Stuteville that a proposal for a knighthood for Ben Jonson has run into trouble: ‘for that his Majesty would have done it, had not been means made (himself not unwilling) to avoid it’ (Life Records, 66).
Date: 5 October: warrant granting Jonson the reversion of the Office of Master of the Revels in the event that Sir George Buck, the present Master, and Sir John Astley, who was next in line, should die before he did. In the event Jonson pre-deceases Astley, to whom the position passes (Life Records, 65).
Date: 17 November: John Chamberlain writes to Sir Dudley Carleton at the Hague humorously imagining the possibility of Jonson’s being installed as Dean of Westminster, thus completing a trio of ‘poetical deans’ with John Donne at St Paul’s and Richard Corbett at Christ Church, Oxford (Life Records, 67).
Edmund Bolton in Hypercritica -- probably written now, but not published until 1722 -- refers to Jonson as a model for ‘vital, judicious, and most practicable language’ (Literary Record).
Lives: Mary Lady Wroth, née Sidney, celebrated by Jonson in Epigrams 103 and in the dedication to The Alchemist , dies on 25 September. Thomas Harriot, mathematician and natural philosopher, dies on 2 July, and John Barclay, Scottish author of Argenis , on 15 August. Jonson’s translation of this latter work was to be destroyed in his household fire of 1623: see The Underwood 43.95-7, and entries for 1622 and 1623. Birth on 31 March of future poet and politician Andrew Marvell.
Performances: Masques: Chapman (?), The Essex House Masque (performed 8 January); The Middle Temple Masque (performed 13 February).
Plays: Dekker, Rowley, and Ford, The Witch of Edmonton ; Fletcher and Massinger, The Double Marriage, The Maid of Honour (1621/ 1622) ; Fletcher, The Island Princess ; The Wild Goose Chase ; The Pilgrim ; Middleton, Women Beware Women.
Publications: Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy ; Lady Mary Wroth, The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania ; Richard Mountague, Diatribae upon the First Part of the ‘Late History of Tithes’ (a reply to John Selden).
Events: Bacon is created Viscount St Alban on 27 January, but is sentenced by the House of Lords for taking bribes on 3 May, dismissed from office as Lord Chancellor the following month, and fined £40,000. Jonson reflects sympathetically on his fall in Discoveries , 673-9.
Death (21 March) of Philip III of Spain, as James I’s emissaries discuss the question of a possible Spanish withdrawal from the Palatinate, and a possible marriage between Prince Charles and the Spanish Infanta. The young Philip IV begins his 41-year reign.
The 1621 Parliament objects to patents and monopolies. On 18 December it issues a Protestation denying the king’s right to imprison members. James adjourns, then dissolves, Parliament.
Donne is installed on 22 November as Dean of St Paul’s.
5.581
6 January (Twelfth Night) and 5 May: The Masque of Augurs danced in Inigo Jones’s newly completed Banqueting House. A quarto edition of the masque is printed and possibly distributed at the performance.
5.610
'On the Author, Work, and Translator', from James Mabbe's The Rogue : Stationers’ Register, 28 February (part one), 21 August (part two).
Date: 11 May: John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton: ‘Barclay’s Argenis has grown so scarce that the price has risen from 5s. to 14s.; the King has ordered Ben Jonson to translate it, but he will not be able to equal the original’ ( Letters , ed. McClure, 1939, 2.436). See entry for 2 October 1623 below.
October: Anthony à Wood, listing Jonson’s publications (1691-2), 1. 509, includes ‘His Motives. – Printed 1622. Oct.’ On the possible nature of this now-lost and otherwise unknown work, see Dubia 3.
Lives: Sir Henry Savile, praised by Jonson in Epigrams 95 as ‘most weighty Savile’ and in Discoveries , 654, as ‘grave, and truly lettered’, dies on 19 February. William Parker, Lord Monteagle, hailed by Jonson as ‘saver of my country’ after revealing the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 ( Epigrams 60.10), dies on 1 July. The Latin poet John Owen -- scorned by Jonson as ‘a poor pedantic schoolmaster, sweeping his living from the posteriors of little children, and hath nothing good in him, his epigrams being bare narrations’: Informations , 166-8 – probably dies this year. Births this year: in Wales, of the twins and future writers Henry and Thomas Vaughan (17 April); in France, of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, later celebrated under his stage name, Molière (15 January); and, in Sweden, of the future Charles X (8 November).
Performances: Fletcher and Massinger, The Sea Voyage ; The Prophetess ; The Spanish Curate ; Middleton and Rowley, The Changeling.
Publications: Bacon, History of the Reign of Henry VII ; Henry Peacham, The Complete Gentleman.
Events: James faces growing unpopularity at home, being seen as under the sway of Spain and that country’s ambassador, Gondomar. He continues to favour a marriage between Prince Charles and the Spanish Infanta, as a means of persuading Spain to restore the Palatinate – overrun by Spanish troops in 1620 – to his son-in-law, Frederick. Endymion Porter is sent off to Madrid in October to negotiate. James’s attempt to quieten religious controversy at home through Directions to Preachers – declaring that henceforth no one under the degree of Bachelor of Divinity should preach on matters relating to predestination, election, reprobation, and grace – backfires, giving new stimulus to puritan debate.
5.611
Date: 19 January: Time Vindicated to Himself and to His Honours is performed at the Banqueting House, Whitehall, and printed in a quarto probably intended for distribution at the performance (see Textual Essay). John Chamberlain reports that Jonson is likely to lose both his ears for libelling George Wither in this masque: Masque Archive.
Date: 26 April: Deed of assignment to Nicholas Harman, Secretary in the Wards to Lionel Cranfield (Life Records, 68). For the circumstances, cf. the entry for 1 June 1621, above, assigning payment to John Hull.
July (or shortly thereafter): ‘On the King’s New Cellar’ ( The Underwood , 48). Prince Charles’s return from Spain with ‘the lady’ (the Infanta of Spain) is anticipated in line 54, yet on 5 October Charles would be back in England without her.
27 July 1623: the marriage of ‘Beniamyne Iohnson and Hester Hopkins’ is recorded in register of St Giles, Cripplegate (Life Records, 69). ‘A second marriage by Jonson seems unlikely, but it is not impossible’ (Eccles, 1936a, 271-2). No date has been found for the death of Anne Jonson, nor is there any further known reference to Jonson’s possible second wife (or widow).
Date: 10 August: Inscription to Richard Briggs, written on Farnaby's Martial (Jonson’s Library).
August/September: 'An Epistle Answering to One that Asked to be Sealed of the Tribe of Ben' ( The Underwood 47) probably written (Butler, 1992b).
Date: 2 October: Stationers’ Register entry for Jonson’s translation of Barclay’s Argenis , commissioned by King James, and evidently destroyed in Jonson’s house-fire the following month ( The Underwood 43.95-6). See entry for 11 May 1622 above.
Date: 20 October: Jonson is examined as a witness in a law-suit which Elizabeth, Lady Ralegh, widow of Sir Walter, brings against Sir Peter Vanlore in the Court of Chancery about a disputed settlement of Sir Walter’s estate, following his attainder and execution. He is described in interrogatories and depositions as ‘ Beniamin Johnson of Gresham Colledge in London gent. Aged 50. Yeares & vpwards’ (Life Records, 70). On the possible nature of Jonson’s connection with Gresham College, see Sisson, 1951, and Donaldson, 2011, ch. 17.
November: a domestic fire destroys many of Jonson’s books and papers. In ‘An Execration upon Vulcan’ ( The Underwood 43) he mourns the loss of his commentary on Horace’s Ars Poetica , of an early version of the English Grammar , of an account of his journey to Scotland ( A Discovery ), of his translation of Barclay’s Argenis and a history of the reign of Henry V, along with ‘twice-twelve years’ stored up humanity/ After the fathers, and those wiser guides/ Whom faction had not drawn to study sides’ (85-104). ‘An Invective Written by Master George Chapman Against Master Ben Jonson’ (date unknown) responds sceptically to Jonson’s ‘Execration’: Literary Record.
5.637, 638
November: Jonson’s verses ‘To the Reader’ and ‘To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Master William Shakespeare, And What He Hath Left Us’ are published with the 1623 first folio, Master William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (Stationers’ Register, 8 November). For the speculation that Jonson may have assisted Heminges and Condell in the preparation of the folio and in the drafting of other prefatory material, see Dubia 4.
Lives: William Byrd dies (4 July); Anne Hathaway dies (6 August); William Camden dies (9 November), and is buried in Westminster Abbey. Margaret Lucas, the future Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, is probably born this year.
Performances: Massinger, The Bondman ; Middleton, Rowley, Dekker, and Ford, The Spanish Gypsy.
Publications: Bacon, De Augmentis Scientiarum ; Drummond, Flowers of Sion .
Events: In February Buckingham and Charles travel incognito (as ‘Thomas and John Smith’) to Madrid where they spend six months in fruitless negotiation over the proposed royal marriage. They leave Madrid in August after the collapse of these talks, and return to England amidst scenes of national jubilation. Jonson professes his indifference to the outcome of these issues in The Underwood 47.31ff.
5.643
January: Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion is prepared for presentation on Twelfth Night, 6 January, but owing to the collapse of the proposed Spanish match it is never staged. A quarto text of the masque is printed in advance, perhaps for the benefit of the masquers.
5.673
Date: 19 August: The Masque of Owls at Kenilworth ‘Presented by the ghost of Captain Cox mounted in his hobby-horse’ at Kenilworth Castle for Prince Charles.
'An Elegy' ('Let me be what I am . . .', The Underwood 42) possibly written this year.
Verses from The Touchstone of Truth (2 nd edition, Stationers’ Register 2 November), dubiously attributed to Jonson: Dubia, Poems, 12.
Jonson is probably working on his English Grammar throughout this year: see Britton, 2002.
Lives: Death of George Chapman (12 May); Ludovick Stuart, 2 nd Duke of Lennox (16 February); his younger brother, Jonson’s patron, Esmé Stuart, Seigneur d’Aubigny and 3 rd Duke of Lennox (31 July); and Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton (10 November).
Performances: Davenport, The City Nightcap ; Dekker and Ford, The Bristow Merchant , The Fairy Knight , and The Sun’s Darling ; Fletcher, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife ; A Wife For a Month ; Massinger, The Renegado, or The Gentleman of Venice ; Massinger, The Parliament of Love ; The Unnatural Combat (c. 1624). In August, Middleton’s A Game at Chess, a transparent political allegory on current relations between England and Spain, is performed at the Globe to great popular success before being suppressed by the Privy Council, following protests from Ambassador Gondomar.
Publications: Bacon, Apophthegms New and Old ; Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions ; Henry Briggs, Arithmetica Logarithmica ; Richard Mountague, A New Gag for an Old Goose (seeking to define the true doctrine of the Church of England, strongly attacked in the Commons).
Events: As a condition of granting financial subsidies to James, the newly summoned Parliament insists that the Spanish negotiations be formally broken off. Attention now turns to a possible marriage between Prince Charles and Princess Henrietta Maria, daughter of the assassinated Henri IV and Marie de Médicis of France. As a token of the new alignment, an Anglo-French expedition is sent under the command of Count Mansfeld to expel Spanish forces from the Palatinate, but suffers a serious defeat. In December, after cautious negotiations between France and England, the marriage between Charles and Henrietta Maria is formally agreed.
5.685
Date: 9 January: The Fortunate Isles and their Union , Jonson’s last masque for King James, designed originally for presentation at Twelfth Night but postponed on account of the King’s poor health, is performed in the Banqueting House, Whitehall, and printed in quarto at the same time, perhaps for distribution at the performance.
5.715
January: 'To the Memory of That Most Honoured Lady Jane, Eldest Daughter to Cuthbert, Lord Ogle, and Countess of Shrewsbury' (who died on 7 January).
5.717
May, June, July: Jonson is involved in the planning of a now-lost Royal Entry celebrating the accession of Charles 1, with speeches of welcome to the new king at five specially constructed arches in the streets of London (Jonson being associated with the arch at Gracechurch Street erected by the Dutch community at Austin Friars). After a severe outbreak of plague and controversy concerning costs and protocols, the Entry is cancelled.
Autumn: Edward Hyde enters Middle Temple, and dates from this period (‘whilst he was only a student of the law, and stood at gaze, and irresolute what course of life to take’) the beginning of his friendship with Jonson and others in his circle, including John Selden, Charles Cotton, John Vaughan, Sir Kenelm Digby, Thomas May, and Thomas Carew (Earl of Clarendon, 1759, Early Lives).
Autumn: Jonson probably translates at this time Bacon’s Essays into Latin (under the title Sermones fideles ), with the assistance of John Hacket: see Dubia 8.
Date: 23 October: John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, is removed from office as Lord Keeper of Privy Seal, having been out of harmony with Buckingham and opposed to Charles’s policy of war with Spain. ‘An Epigram’, The Underwood 61, is written some time after this event.
Lives: Death of John Florio ( c. October) and of John Fletcher (29 August). Thomas Corneille born (20 August).
Performances: Massinger, A New Way to Pay Old Debts ; Shirley, Love Tricks (or The School of Compliment ).
Publications: Bacon, Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral . . . Newly Enlarged (58 essays). Richard Mountague’s Appello Caesarem extends his earlier attacks on Calvinist doctrine, and responds to criticism from the House of Commons of his Arminian views.
Events: On 27 March James I dies, and is succeeded by his son, Charles, who marries Henrietta Maria on 1 May. A spectacular funeral for James is held on 5 May.
A severe outbreak of plague (described in George Wither’s Histories of the Pestilence , 1625) curtails public events in London, where the playhouses are closed from 12 May to 24 November.
In October, with public sentiment turning now strongly against Spain, an unsuccessful English raid is made under Buckingham’s direction on Cadiz.
6.1
February: The Staple of News is performed by the King’s Men at Blackfriars and again at court (probably at Shrovetide, 19 February), with topical references to Charles’s coronation (2 February) and the death of William Rowley (who was buried on 11 February), and to seasonal happenings in Lent. Despite a Stationers’ Register entry for the play in April 1626 and later preparation of the play for publication in 1631 with Bartholomew Fair , The Devil Is an Ass , and other works, the play does not appear in print until F2 in 1640-1. See Textual Essay.
March/ April: 'A Speech According to Horace' ( The Underwood 44) is probably composed mid-March (Butler, 1992b).
Lives: Death of John Dowland (20 February), Francis Bacon (9 April), Robert Sidney (13 July), Lancelot Andrewes (25 September), Edward Alleyn (25 November), Ernst von Mansfeld (29 November), Sir John Davies (8 December). Birth of John Aubrey (12 March).
Performances: Fletcher, Ford, and others (but probably not Jonson, as sometimes proposed: see Dubia, 11), The Fair Maid of the Inn . Fletcher and others, The Noble Gentleman ; Massinger, The Roman Actor ; Shirley, The Brothers and The Maid’s Revenge.
Publications: Bacon, The New Atlantis.
Events: On 2 February Charles 1 is crowned in Westminster Abbey, but without his Queen, the French having scruples about her participation in an Anglican ceremony.
In February Buckingham calls a conference at York House to discuss the controversial question of Arminianism, the liberal doctrines of the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius often associated with high church views within the Church of England -- especially those of William Laud, with whom Buckingham was closely linked.
In June Charles dissolves Parliament in order to head off the Commons’ call – led by John Selden, Sir John Eliot, Sir Dudley Digges, and others – for the impeachment of the increasingly unpopular Buckingham.
Lacking a Parliament to vote him taxation, Charles is now in urgent need of revenue. In July he sends letters to JPs throughout the country instructing his subjects ‘lovingly, freely, and voluntarily’ to give him money. Most refuse to do so. In September Charles then levies a Forced Loan, with those who refuse to pay being answerable to the Privy Council. This highly unpopular measure has some financial success, but leads also to resistance, imprisonments, and litigation, and divides ministers of the Church of England whom Charles has encouraged to preach in its favour.
Date: 11 January: Petition of Robert Clarke against Jonson for debt (Life Records, 71).
6.159
March: 'To My Chosen Friend, The Learned Translator of Lucan, Thomas May, Esquire', published with Lucan's Pharsalia (Stationers’ Register, 12 March).
6.161
April: 'The Vision of Ben Jonson on the Muses of his Friend, Michael Drayton', published with The Battle of Agincourt (Stationers’ Register, 16 April). Drayton’s ‘To My Most Dearly-Loved Friend, Henry Reynolds Esquire’ in this same volume (p. 207) speaks of ‘learnèd Jonson’, ‘Who had drunk deep of the Pierian spring,/ Whose knowledge did him worthily prefer,/ And long was lord here of the theatre,/ Who in opinion made our learn’st to stick,/ Whether in poems rightly dramatic,/ Strong Seneca or Plautus, he or they,/ Should bear the buskin or the sock away.’
May: 'An Epitaph: on Elizabeth Chute’ ( The Underwood 35) commemorates this child’s death on 18 May.
Date: 10 July: Petition of Nathanaell Field against Jonson for debt: Life Records, 72.
Robert Vaughan’s portrait of Ben Jonson is probably engraved in this year (see Portraits, and frontispiece, Print Edition volume 6).
Lives: Death of Sir Henry Goodere on 18 March (addressed in Epigrams 85 and 86); of Sir John Beaumont (whose poem Bosworth Field is commended by Jonson, Print Edition, 6.317), buried 19 April; of Lucy, Countess of Bedford on 31 May (addressed in Epigrams 76, 84, 94, and participant in several of Jonson’s masques); of Sir John Hayward, the historian, on 27 June; of the dramatist Thomas Middleton (buried, 4 July); and of Sir John Radcliffe ( Epigrams 93).
Performances: Davenant, The Cruel Brother ; Massinger, The Great Duke of Florence.
Publications: Sir Robert Cotton’s A Short View of the Long Life and Reign of King Henry III is published without the author’s consent, and is seen as critical of Charles, as a ruler misled by favourites.
Events: Suspicious of the intentions of Cardinal Richelieu, Buckingham leads a military and naval expedition in July to capture the Huguenot stronghold on the island of Ré near La Rochelle, but is forced to retreat with heavy losses: a defeat that increases his unpopularity at home. A further unsuccessful expedition to La Rochelle under the command of Buckingham’s brother-in-law, the Earl of Denbigh, accelerates Buckingham’s decline.
In June William Laud is chosen as Bishop of London, and is installed in July 1628.
Jonson suffers a paralytic stroke (or ‘palsy’) some time this year (see Letter 17.3: ‘I, being strucken with the palsy in the year 1628’). This may have occurred some time after the Attorney-General’s examination of him on October 26 (see below), as Jonson’s testimony implies his continued mobility at that stage of the year.
Date: 20 January: Letter (h) from Dr Joseph Webbe to Jonson (Electronic Edition), concerning Webbe’s grammatical work, Usus et Authoritas , 1626. Jonson evidently responded to this letter but his reply does not survive. Another document in the same manuscript collection (BL Sloane MS, 1466, fol. 16: ‘Coppie of a noate of M r Morleye had fro Oxford’), a letter from Jonson and thirteen other signatories, including Sir Robert Cotton, John Selden, Thomas Farnaby, and Sir Henry Spelman (Life Records, 74), may have been written around the same time.
June: 'An Epitaph on Henry, Lord La Ware' ( The Underwood 60) is probably written soon after De La Ware’s death on 1 June.
Date: 2 September: the City of London Court of Aldermen appoint Ben Jonson as City Chronologer in succession to Thomas Middleton in return for 100 nobles (£33. 6s. 8d.) p.a., ‘to collect and set down all memorable acts of this City and occurrences thereof’ and accept ‘such other employments as this Court shall have occasion to use him in’ (Life Records, 75).
Date: 26 October: ‘Beniamyn Iohnson of westminster gent’ is examined by the Attorney-General, Sir Robert Heath, about anonymous verses written 'To his confined ffriend Mr ffelton': i.e., John Felton, a professional soldier who on 23 August had assassinated the unpopular royal favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, in Portsmouth. Jonson denies authorship, and hints that the verses may have been written by Zouch Townley of Christ Church, Oxford (Life Records, 76, and appendix).
Lives: Death in February of Christopher Brooke, member of the Mermaid Club, whose poem The Ghost of Richard III Jonson had commended in 1614 (Print Edition, 4.251). On 1 September Fulke Greville dies after being stabbed by one of his own servants.
Performances: Ford, The Lover’s Melancholy ; Shirley, The Witty Fair One.
Publications: Sir Robert Cotton’s The Danger Wherein the Kingdom Now Standeth and the Remedy is published, arguing for a return to traditional methods of governance, and criticizing by implication the role of court favourites.
Events: The House of Commons informs the King that supplies will be conditional on his acceptance of a petition of rights, confirming English liberties; Charles responds equivocally. Selden leads the Commons’ attacks on the practice of discretionary imprisonment, the imposition of martial law, and of extra-parliamentary taxation and loans. On 17 June the Commons present a remonstrance to the King, asking him to consider whether Buckingham has not abused his power and office. On 24 June Selden and eight other MPs are arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London, and on 26 June Charles terminates the parliamentary session. While at Portsmouth preparing to embark with a further expeditionary force to La Rochelle, Buckingham is assassinated on 23 August by a disaffected professional soldier, John Felton, who had served with him at Ré.
Richard Weston is appointed Lord High Treasurer (and is later addressed in The Underwood 73).
Date: 19 January: a grant of £5 is made by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster to Jonson ‘in his sickness and want’ (Life Records, 77). Those authorizing the grant include Bishop Williams and Williams’s close friend Lambert Osbaldeston, Master of Westminster School: a promoter of English composition and drama at the School, and a future critic of Laud.
6.165
Date: 19 January: The New Inn, or The Light Heart is licensed for performance. The play was probably acted – or ‘most negligently played’, as Jonson dismissively puts it on the title-page of the 1631 octavo edition -- at Blackfriars theatre by the King’s Men in January or February that year. The performance date ‘1629’ on the title-page must refer to the calendrical rather than the legal year, as Butler argues, ‘The Riddle of Jonson’s Chronology Revisited’, below. A planned performance at court did not proceed.
6.310
Jonson’s ‘Ode to Himself’ (‘Come, leave the loathed stage’) is prompted by the failure of The New Inn , and in turn provokes further verses by Owen Felltham, ‘I. C.’ (probably James Clayton), Thomas Carew, John Polwhele, R. Goodwin, and others, and Latin translations of the Ode by John Earles, Thomas Randolph, and William Strode. See Literary Record.
Nicholas Oldisworth’s ‘A Letter to Ben Jonson’ (month unknown, perhaps in the aftermath of The New Inn ) praises Jonson’s achievement, but suggests it is time for him to depart: ‘now thy fifth act’s ended, leave the stage,/ And let us clap’; ‘Die, for thine own sake’ (Literary Record).
'An Epigram to King Charles for £100 He Sent Me in My Sickness. 1629' ( The Underwood 62). The King’s gift may have been prompted by Jonson’s vow after the failure of The New Inn to tune ‘forth the acts of his sweet reign’: ‘Ode to Himself’ (‘Come, leave the loathèd stage’), 59.
March: 'An Epigram to Our Good and Great King Charles, On his Anniversary Day, 1629) ( The Underwood 64). The anniversary of Charles’s accession fell on 27 March. In the same month Charles suspended parliament for a period that was to extend for eleven years.
6.315
April/May: 'Epitaph on Katherine, Lady Ogle', died 18 April, the mother of Jonson’s patron, William Cavendish.
May: 'To King Charles and Queen Mary: For the Loss of Their First-Born: An Epigram Consolatory' ( The Underwood 63). The couple’s son, Charles, born prematurely, dies two hours after his birth on 12 May.
6.317
June: 'On the Honoured Poems of His Honoured Friend, Sir John Beaumont, Baronet', published in Sir John Beaumont’s Bosworth Field (Stationers’ Register, 2 June).
6.318
'To his Worthy Friend, Master Edward Filmer, On his Work Published', with Filmer’s French Court Airs.
August: 'To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of that Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morison' ( The Underwood 70) written after Morison’s death in this month.
Lives: Death in January of Susan Herbert, née de Vere, Countess of Montgomery, who had danced in several of Jonson’s masques, and been addressed by Jonson in Epigrams 104.
Performances: Richard Brome, The Lovesick Maid , and The Northern Lass ; Massinger, Minerva’s Sacrifice, The Picture.
Publications: Hobbes’s translation from the Greek of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War , probably prepared years earlier. Jonson and his friend Sir Robert Aytoun are invited ‘to give their judgement on his style of his translation of Thucydides’ before its publication, according to John Aubrey ( Brief Lives , ed. Clark, 1898, 1. 365).
Robert Le Grys’s and Thomas May’s translation of John Barclay’s Latin romance and political allegory, Argenis . Jonson’s own commissioned translation of this work had perished in the fire of 1623 (see The Underwood 43. 96-7, and entries above under 1621, 1622, 1623).
Events: On 10 March Charles dissolves Parliament, starting eleven years of Personal Rule.
In November, Charles orders the closure of Sir Robert Cotton’s library, which his advisors regard as a centre of political opposition and discontent. Cotton himself -- a known critic in the past of Buckingham’s influence over the King, and of Charles’s policies -- is briefly imprisoned.
Francis Russell, 4 th Earl of Bedford, begins to develop Covent Garden, with the approval of Charles and the involvement of Inigo Jones.
William Laud is appointed Chancellor of Oxford University.
Date: 1 January: ‘To the Right Honourable, the Lord Treasurer of England: An Epigram’ ( The Underwood 77) is presented as a new-year gift to Weston.
Date: 15 January: Petition of Peter Johnson against Jonson for debt (Life Records, 78).
Before 26 March: ‘The Humble Petition of Poor Ben: To th’Best of Monarchs, Masters, Men, King Charles’ ( The Underwood 76).
Date: 26 March: Jonson’s pension is increased from 100 marks p.a. (£75) to £100 p.a., along with a tierce of Canary Spanish wine from Charles's store at Whitehall (Life Records, 79).
John Eliot writes two satirical poems on Jonson’s ‘Humble Petition’ and its outcome (see The Underwood 77, headnote), prompting Jonson’s response, ‘To My Detractor J[ohn] E[liot]’, 6.387.
Date: 17 May: Petition of Richard Milward against Jonson for debt (Life Records, 80).
Date: 29 May: The future Charles II is born this day, prompting ‘An Epigram on the Prince’s Birth, 1630’ and ‘An Epigram to the Queen, Then Lying in’ ( The Underwood 65 and 66). ‘On the Birthday of Prince Charles, 29 May 1630’, is written for the same occasion but probably not by Jonson; see Dubia, Poems 13.
Date: 9 July: Payment to Jonson of £25 from the Exchequer (Life Records, 81).
‘A Petition of the Infant Prince Charles: The Prince’s Verses for One of his Rockers’, doubtfully ascribed to Jonson (Dubia, Poems, 14).
Pre-Christmas: ‘To Master John Burgess’ ( The Underwood 57) possibly written now.
Lives: Henry Briggs dies (26 January): John Heminges dies (10 October); Johannes Kepler dies (15 November). Charles Cotton born (28 April).
Performances: Salisbury Court theatre is built as private playhouse outside the City walls, in the ward of Farringdon Without. The first play performed at the theatre may have been Randolph’s The Muses’ Looking Glass in November 1630.
Publications: John Taylor, All the Works of John Taylor the Water Poet.
Events: Charles I and Philip IV of Spain sign the Treaty of Madrid, ending the Anglo-Spanish War (initiated in 1624).
6.319
Date: 9 January: Love’s Triumph Through Callipolis is performed, celebrating Charles’s attempts to re-develop the city of London and England’s withdrawal from continental war. The quarto edition of the masque (printed for Thomas Walkley by John Norton) names, as the masque’s ‘Inventors’, Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones’ – in that order, with the poet taking precedence over the architect – and reignites the quarrel between Jones and Jonson.
6.347
Date: 22 February: Chloridia , Jonson’s last Whitehall masque and last collaboration with Inigo Jones, is performed at the Banqueting House. The text is printed for Thomas Walkley the same year in a quarto edition.
Jonson evidently intends this year to publish a second folio volume of his works, comprising three of his plays, Bartholomew Fair , The Devil Is An Ass , and The Staple of News , and possibly some more recent masques and plays, for publication by Robert Allot. Dissatisfied with the work of Allot’s printer, John Beale (see Letter 15, next entry below), Jonson postpones this publication, which eventually appears after his death as the second volume in his three-volume second folio in 1640-1. See John Creaser’s Textual Essay, F2(2).
6.343
Letter 15, ‘A Letter to the Earl of Newcastle’ sent early in the year to the Earl of Newcastle, reporting that ‘It is the lewd printer’s fault that I can send Your Lordship no more of my book done’ (see immediately preceding entry).
6.375
‘An Expostulation with Inigo Jones’, reflecting the growing animosity between Jones and Jonson occasioned by the performance and publication of Chloridia – as do the two following poems:
6.382
‘To Inigo, Marquis Would-Be: A Corollary’.
6.382
‘To a Friend: An Epigram of Him’.
Letter (i) (Electronic Edition) from James Howell to Jonson, passing on ‘a choice story’ he has heard in France ‘whereof peradventure you may make some use in your way’, and adding that ‘I heard you censured lately at court that you have lighted too foul upon Sir Inigo, and that you write with a porcupine’s quill dipped in too much gall’. The letter is misdated ‘3 of May, 1635’ in the 1650 and 1655 editions of Epistolae Ho-elianae .
Letter (j) (Electronic Edition) from James Howell to Jonson repeating in firmer terms the warning of Letter (i), that his satires on Jones are causing offence. The letter is misdated ‘3 July, 1635’ in Howell’s A New Volume of Familiar Letters , 1650.
6.383
Letter 16, asking William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle, ‘to succour my present necessities at this good time of Easter’.
April: ‘An Elegy on the Lady Jane Paulet, Marchioness of Winchester’ ( The Underwood 83), who had died in childbirth 15 April.
Date: 17 April: Stationers’ Register entry for the octavo edition of The New Inn , to Thomas Alchorne, to be printed by Thomas Harper.
Date: 22 June: Letter from Richard Andrews to William Cavendish, reporting that Jonson has promised to write some poetry for him (Life Records, 82).
Date: 3 November: Queen Henrietta Maria makes an ex gratia payment to Jonson of £40: Bawcutt (1996b), 50-2, at 51.
Date: 10 November: the Court of Aldermen suspends any further payments to Jonson as City Chronologer 'until he shall have presented unto this Court some fruits of his labours in that his place' (Life Records, 83). This news evidently takes some time to reach Jonson: ‘Yesterday the barbarous Court of Aldermen have withdrawn their chanderly pension for verjuice and mustard, £33.6s.8d.’ (postscript to Letter 17 to William Cavendish, 20 December).
John Selden in the second edition of Titles of Honor , 1631 (402ff.), explains the historical origins of the laureateship in fulfilment of a ‘promise to you, my beloved Ben Jonson. Your curious learning and judgement may correct where I have erred, and add where my notes and memory have left me short’. See Broadus (1921), 47-50, Toomer (2009), 1.114, and Literary Record.
November: ‘An Ode, or Song by all the Muses. In Celebration of Her Majesty’s Birthday. 1630’ ( The Underwood 67): ‘The revels and the play/ Sum up this crowned day,/ Her two-and-twentieth year!’ (lines 46-8). Henrietta Maria turned 22 on 16 November.
6.385
20 December 1631, ‘this very week, being the week ushering Christmas’ (line 7): Letter 17, to William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle, telling of a dream about his pet fox and his affliction by ‘want’.
‘To the Right Honourable, the Lord High Treasurer of England: An Epistle Mendicant, 1631’ ( The Underwood 71) may have been written in this year, although the poem’s reference to Jonson’s ‘five years’ immobilization (line 6) more strongly suggests a date of 1633, if his stroke indeed occurred in 1628.
Lives: Death of John Donne (31 March), Sir Robert Cotton (6 May), and Michael Drayton (23 December). John Dryden born (9 August).
Performances: Mabbe, The Spanish Bawd ; Shirley, The Humorous Courtier , Love’s Cruelty , and The Traitor . Massinger’s Believe as You List is seen as seditious and is at first refused a licence – which is then granted after revision.
Publications: John Stow, Annals of England (final edition, incorporating Stow’s additions and Howe’s continuation).
Events: With the easing of England’s foreign commitments, Lord Treasurer Richard Weston begins to manage the large debts the country has accumulated through recent wars, and move towards a balanced national budget.
6.387
‘To My Detractor, J[ohn] E[liot]’. Eliot had criticized Jonson’s lines ‘To the Right Honourable, the Lord Treasurer of England: An Epigram’ ( The Underwood 77), which Jonson presented as a new-year gift to Richard Weston. Weston had responded generously to Jonson, but not to Eliot, who had also prepared a new-year poem.
Date: 12 January: John Pory to Sir Thomas Puckering: ‘The inventor or poet of this masque [ Albion’s Triumph , 8 January] was Mr Aurelian Townshend, sometime toward [steward] to the Lord Treasurer Salisbury; Ben Jonson being, for this time, discarded by reason of the predominant power of his antagonist, Inigo Jones, who, this time twelve-month, was angry with him for putting his own name before his in the title-page; which Ben Jonson has made the subject of a bitter satire or two against Inigo’ (Masque Archive, Love’s Triumph , 10).
6.388
Date: 4 February: Letter 18, ‘To the Right Honourable the Earl of Newcastle’, sending him ‘a packet of mine own praises’, verse tributes by Lucius Cary, Nicholas Oldisworth, and R. Goodwin. Though the letter is dated ‘4to February 1631’, Jonson is here using legal rather than calendrical dating, and the year is 1632 (Butler, ‘The Riddle of Jonson’s Chronology Revisited’).
Date: 3 May: Jonson is listed amongst the esquires who walk in the funeral procession of Sir John Lemmon, Lord Mayor, ‘from Grocer’s Hall to St Michael’s Church in Crook Lane’, amongst a group of City dignitaries including the Town Clerk, the Auditor, the Beadle, and the Chamberlain (Bland, 1998a, 169 and n. 34; Life Records, 84).
Date: 25 June: ‘Epithalamion: Or A Song Celebrating the Nuptials of that Noble Gentleman Master Jerome Weston, Lord High Treasurer of England, with the Lady Frances Stuart, Daughter of Esmé, Duke of Lennox Deceased, and Sister of the Surviving Duke of the Same Name’ ( The Underwood 75).
6.389
‘To My Old Faithful Servant, And (By His Continued Virtue) My Loving Friend, The Author of This Work, Richard Brome’ published with Brome’s The Northern Lass (Stationers’ Register, 24 March).
Lucius Cary sends his ‘Apostrophe’ to his ‘Noble Father’, Ben Jonson, together with an epistle written on the third anniversary of Sir Henry Morison’s death (Literary Record).
Date: 20 September: John Pory writes to Sir Thomas Pickering: ‘Ben Jonson (who, I thought, had been dead) hath written a play against next term called The Magnetic Lady ’ (Life Records, 85).
6.391
October: The Magnetic Lady, or Humours Reconciled performed at Blackfriars theatre, having been licensed on 12 October, when Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, notes: ‘Received of Knight for allowing of Ben Jonson’s play called Humours Reconciled or the Magnetic Lady to be acted’ ( Bawcutt, 1996a, 176). A court performance is implied by the play’s final chorus (‘changed into an Epilogue to the King’), but no surviving records confirm that this occurred.
Alexander Gil’s ‘Upon Ben Jonson’s Magnetic Lady’ dismisses Jonson’s play (‘Is this the child of your bedridden wit?’ etc.), and suggests he return to brick-laying (Literary Record).
6.541
Jonson’s ‘An Answer to Alexander Gil’. Zouch Townley writes a further answer to Gil in Jonson’s defence.
Date: 17 November: John Pory reports to Sir John Scudamore that the players of the Blackfriars have been called before High Commission at Lambeth to answer charges of ‘uttering some profane speeches in abuse of Scripture and holy things, which they found penned for them to act and play in Ben Jonson’s new comedy called The Magnetic Lady (Life Records, 85).
Date: 19 November: ‘To the King, on His Birthday: An Epigram Anniversary. November 19, 1632’ ( The Underwood 72).
Nicholas Oldisworth describes a visit in this year to Jonson in Westminster:
‘Behind the Abbey lives a man of fame,/ With awe and reverence we repeat his name:/ Ben Jonson. Him we saw, and thought to hear/ From him some flashes and fantastic gear;/ But he spake nothing less. His whole discourse/ Was how mankind grew daily worse and worse,/ How God was disregarded, how men went/ Down even to hell, and never did repent,/ With many such sad tales, as he would teach/ Us scholars, how hereafter we should preach./ Great wearer of the bays, look to thy lines,/ Lest they chance to be challenged by divines:/ Some future times will, by a gross mistake,/ Jonson a bishop, not a poet make’ (Bodleian MS Don. C. 24).
Oldisworth was the nephew of Sir Thomas Overbury and a Church of England clergyman and poet, educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford.
Leonard Digges’s lines ‘Upon Master William Shakespeare, the Deceased Author’ prefixed to the 1640 edition of Shakespeare’s Poems may have been written in this year, contrasting Shakespeare’s achievements with those of Jonson (Literary Record).
Thomas Randolph’s ‘An Eclogue to Master Jonson’, praising his achievement, (Literary Record) is perhaps written in this year.
Lives: Death of Dekker (25 August). Birth of John Locke (29 August), Christopher Wren (20 October), and Anthony à Wood (17 December).
Performances: Masques: Townshend, Albion’s Triumph (performed 8 January), Tempe Restored (performed 14 February).
Plays: Brome, The Weeding of the Covent Garden ; Massinger, The City Madam ; Randolph, The Jealous Lovers ; Shirley, The Ball , Changes, or Love in a Maze, and Hyde Park .
Publications: Lyly, Six Court Comedies , William Prynne, Histriomastix, The Players’ Scourge . Massinger (1632/1633) prepares seven of his previously published solo plays, together with The Fatal Dowry , for publication or presentation, perhaps in emulation of Jonson’s and Shakespeare’s example of ‘collected’ publication.
Events: Thomas Wentworth is appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland.
Anthony Van Dyck returns to London and delivers a number of royal portraits to Charles. On 5 July he is knighted and appointed ‘principal painter in ordinary to their Majesties’.
Date: 17 February: ‘On the Right Honourable and Virtuous Lord Weston, Lord High Treasurer of England, Upon the Day He Was Made Earl of Portland, 17 February 1633. To the Envious’ ( The Underwood 73). (The date ‘1632’ in the margin of F2 denotes the legal year.)
Mid-March: ‘To the Right Honourable Jerome, Lord Weston, An Ode Gratulatory, For His Return from His Embassy, 1633 ( The Underwood 74).
Date: 1 May: death of Venetia Digby. Jonson compiles his sequence of poems in her memory, ‘ Eupheme : Or The Fair Fame Left to Posterity Of That Truly Noble Lady, the Lady Venetia Digby, Late Wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, Knight: A Gentleman Absolute in All Numbers’ ( The Underwood 84). Colin Burrow suggests however that The Underwood 84.1, 84.2, and 84.8 were presented to mark anniversaries of Venetia’s death: ‘this would take us to May 1636, after which Jonson is not known to have composed any poems. This date would also make grimly appropriate Jonson’s reference to his “latest breath” at the end of the prose note prefixed to 84.8’ (Print Edition, 7.257).
6.543
May: A Tale of a Tub performed by Queen Henrietta’s Men at the Cockpit theatre, Drury Lane, having been licensed on 7 May by the Master of the Revels, Sir Henry Herbert, subject to certain excisions following complaints of ‘personal injury’ by Inigo Jones. Once regarded as early work (and placed at the start of the canon in the Oxford Ben Jonson ), A Tale of a Tub is now generally accepted as Jonson’s last complete play, belonging substantially to the 1630s: see Barton, 1984, ch. 15, and her Introduction, 6. 545-53.
6.655
Spring: Letter 19, to William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle, thanking him for payment for The King’s Entertainment at Welbeck and The King and Queen’s Entertainment at Bolsover .
6.656
‘A Song of Welcome to Charles’ (‘Fresh as the day’), possibly composed for the Earl of Newcastle’s entertainment of Charles at Welbeck on 21 May.
6.657
‘A Song of the Moon’: these lines perhaps formed part of The King’s Entertainment at Welbeck and were omitted from the performed and printed texts on account of their bawdiness.
6.659
Date: 21 May: The King’s Entertainment at Welbeck performed at William Cavendish’s home at Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire, in honour of Charles I as he journeys north for his coronation in Scotland.
Date: 10 May: Petition of Robert Barnes against Jonson for debt (Life Records, 86).
Date: 24 October: The Court of the High Commission lays the blame for ‘all offence’ occasioned by The Magnetic Lady on the players, not on Jonson or the Master of the Revels, Sir Henry Herbert: see Bawcutt, (1996a), p. 184, no. 266, and The Magnetic Lady , Introduction, 6.397.
Date: 24 November: ‘To My Lord the King, On the Christening His Second Son, James’ ( The Underwood 82).
Lives: Death of George Herbert (1 March), Anthony Munday (10 August), Cornelis Drebbel (7 November). Birth of Samuel Pepys (23 February) and Prince James Stuart, the future King James II of England and VII of Scotland (14 October).
Performances: Massinger, The Guardian ; Walter Montagu, The Shepherd’s Paradise (performed 9 January); Davenant’s The Wits ; Thomas Nabbes, Covent Garden ; Shirley, The Bird in a Cage , The Gamester , The Young Admiral.
Publications: Charles I re-issues his father’s The King's Majesty's Declaration to his Subjects Concerning Lawful Sports to be Used (or Book of Sports , published 1617 and 1618) . Donne’s Poems ; John Ford, Love’s Sacrifice , ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore , The Broken Heart ; George Herbert, The Temple.
Events: Galileo is brought to trial before the Inquisition in Rome for his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems , recants, but is convicted of heresy.
Charles is crowned in Edinburgh (18 June).
William Laud is elected as Archbishop of Canterbury (August, confirmed September).
Date: 14 January: A Tale of a Tub performed at court and 'not liked’ (Bawcutt, 1996a, 186).
6.681
Date: 30 July: The King and Queen’s Entertainment at Bolsover (entitled Love’s Welcome in F2) performed at William Cavendish’s Bolsover Castle, Derbyshire, during a one-day visit by Charles and Henrietta Maria.
6.697
‘To Mistress Alice Sutcliffe, on Her Divine Meditations’ published in second edition of her Meditation of Man’s Mortality (Stationers’ Register, 12 September).
Date: 18 September: the Court of Aldermen order the restoration of Jonson’s pension as City Chronologer and the payment of ‘all arrearages thereof’ (Life Records, 87).
Date: 4 December: Petition of Thomas Farnaby against Jonson for debt (Life Records, 88).
December: Letter (k) (Electronic Edition) from James Howell, reporting his search for a copy of ‘Dr Davies his Welsh Grammar’ which he hopes to obtain for Jonson ‘before Christmas’, and urging him ‘to look better hereafter to your charcoal fire and chimney’. 1650 and 1655 editions of Howell’s Familiar Letters mis-date this letter to ’27 June, 1629’ but references within the letter to The Magnetic Lady clearly suggest it was written after that date, while the evidence of Letter (l) (see 1635 below) favours 1634 for the present letter.
Lives: Death of George Chapman (12 May), John Marston (24 June), and Edward Coke (3 September).
Performances: Masques: Shirley, The Triumph of Peace (performed 3 and 13 February); Carew, Coelum Britannicum (performed 18 February); Milton, A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle ( Comus ) (performed 29 September); Townshend, Florimène (performed 21 December).
Drama: Brome and Heywood, The Late Lancashire Witches ; Davenant, Love and Honour , The Wits ; Nabbes, Tottenham Court (1633/1634), Rutter, The Shepherds’ Holiday (1633/1635); Shirley, The Example , The Opportunity .
Publications: Ford, Perkin Warbeck ; Quarles, Emblems (1st edition; 2 nd edition 1635).
Events: In October Charles I issues the first of six annual writs to justices of London and other seaports requiring them to provide certain numbers of ships of a prescribed tonnage and level of equipment, or their equivalent in Ship Money: a traditional measure in times of national emergency, but never invoked before in peacetime. The discontent caused by this measure, growing in intensity as Charles increases his demands over the coming years, is to be a major factor leading to Civil War.
Date: 1 January: Letter (l) (Electronic Edition) from James Howell to Jonson with a gift of the Welsh grammar by John David Rhys he has previously been hunting for (see Letter (k)), and some appropriate verses. 1650 and 1655 editions of Howell’s Familiar Letters incorrectly date the letter ‘Cal. Apr. 1629’. Jonson’s own dating in the book which Howell sent him reads ‘Kal. Jan (i.e. 1 January) 1634’. As Butler has shown (‘The Riddle of Jonson’s Chronology Revisited’) Jonson is still wavering between legal and calendrical systems of dating at this stage of his career, with a slight preference for legal dating. It is probable but not certain that Jonson’s ‘1634’ here means 1635 according to the modern calendar.
6.698
‘To My Dear and Right Learned Friend, Master Joseph Rutter’, from The Shepherds’ Holiday: A Pastoral Tragicomedy (Stationers’ Register, 19 January).
Catiline Q2 printed for John Spencer by Nicholas Okes.
12 September (Stationers’ Register): ‘The Garland of the Blessed Virgin Marie’, by ‘B. I.’, dubiously attributed to Jonson, published in Anthony Stafford’s The Female Glory : Dubia, Poems, 15.
6.698
‘To My Dear Son and Right-Learned Friend, Master Joseph Rutter’ published with The Shepherd’s Holiday . (Stationers’ Register, 19 January).
6 November Payment to Jonson of £25 from the Exchequer accounts (Life Records, 89).
Lives: Death of Lord Treasurer Richard Weston, Earl of Portland (13 March; commended by Jonson in The Underwood 73); Thomas Randolph, ‘son of Ben’ (buried 17 March); military commander Sir Horace Vere (now Baron Vere of Tilbury), ‘whose fame was won/ In the eye of Europe, where thy deeds were done’, Epigrams , 91.5-6 (early May); Richard Corbett, Bishop of Oxford and Norwich (28 July).
Performances: Masques: Davenant, The Temple of Love , with Inigo Jones, the last masque presented in the Banqueting House (10, 11, 12, and possibly 14 February); Townshend, Florimène (21 December).
Plays: Brome, The Sparagus Garden ; Davenant, News From Plymouth , The Platonic Lovers, The Temple of Love; Massinger, Shirley, The Coronation , The Lady of Pleasure.
Publications: Selden’s Mare clausum (first written c. 1619), arguing the case for legal dominion over the seas; Wither, A Collection of Emblems, Ancient and Modern.
Events: In August the Crown issues a second writ for Ship Money, extending the demand this time to include inland towns as well as seaports.
Date: 1 January: ‘A New Year’s Gift Sung to King Charles. 1636’ ( The Underwood 79) presented or performed.
Date: 5 April: Letter (m) (Electronic Edition) and Life Records, 90: James Howell reports to Sir Thomas Hawkins on ‘a solemn supper by B. J., where you were deeply remembered; there was good company, excellent cheer, choice wines, and jovial welcome’, yet Jonson engrossed the conversation.
George Morley, later Bishop of Winchester, describes Jonson’s style of life during his last years at Westminster (Early Lives, Aubrey: supplementary note from Izaak Walton).
6.700
‘An Epigram to My Jovial Good Friend, Master Robert Dover, on His Great Instauration of His Hunting and Dancing at Cotswold’ published this year in Annalia Dubrensia: Upon the Yearly Celebration of Master Robert Dover’s Olympic Games upon Cotswold Hills.
Lives: Sir Julius Caesar, judge, dies on 18 April.
Performances: Masques: Davenant, The Triumphs of the Prince d’Amour (performed 24 February).
Plays: Major plague closes all London playhouses from May 1636 to October 1637. William Strode’s The Floating Island and William Cartwright’s The Royal Slave (both with movable scenery by Inigo Jones) are amongst the plays performed before Charles I and Henrietta Maria at Christ Church, Oxford, in August.
Publications: After petitioning by Laud to Charles I, Oxford University Press receives its ‘Great Charter’ from the Crown to print ‘all manner of books’, and the privilege to print the Authorized Version of the Bible.
Events: A further demand for Ship Money is issued on 9 October. Charles now evidently regards this measure as a permanent form of taxation.
Ceiling designs prepared by Sir Peter Paul Rubens are installed in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, depicting The Union of the Crowns, The Apotheosis of James I, and The Peaceful Reign of James I.
Suckling’s caricature of Jonson as Signior Multecarni (a poet preparing a masque for court) in his unfinished tragedy, The Sad One , and his satire on Jonson in ‘A Session of the Poets’ are probably both written in this year: see Literary Record.
‘On My Friend and Adopted Son Master Thomas Jordan, the Infant Poet of Our Age’ by ‘J. B.’, dubiously identified as Ben Jonson, published in Thomas Jordan’s Poetical Varieties: Or, Variety of Fancies (1637): Dubia, Poems, 17.
Date: 16 August: death of Ben Jonson: see Phelps, 1980, 146-9, correcting the common earlier dating of this event to 6 August (e.g. Herford, DNB , 1891; H&S, 1.115). Bland, 2004a, proposes 18 August.
Anthony à Wood: ‘At length B. Jonson, after he had arrived at the sixty-third year of his age, marched off from the stage of this vain world on the 16 August in sixteen hundred thirty and seven, and was buried three days after in St Peter’s Church within the City of Westminster, commonly called the Abbey Church, not among the poets, but at the west end near to the belfry. . .’(Early Lives).
Sir Edward Walker, Garter Knight: ‘Anno 1637. – Thursday, 17 August. -- Died at Westminster Mr Benjamin Jonson, the most famous, accurate, and learned poet of our age. . . . He was buried the next day following, being accompanied to his grave with all or the greatest part of the nobility and gentry then in the town’ (Life Records, 92).
John Taylor the Water-Poet: ‘A Funeral Elegy In Memory of the Rare, Famous, and Admired Poet, Mr Benjamin Poet, Mr Benjamin Jonson deceased, Who died the sixteenth day of August last, 1637, and lyeth interred in the Cathedral Church of St Peter at Westminster’ (title). The Elegy was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 9 October 1637.
John Aubrey: ‘he lies buried in the north aisle, in the path of square stone, the the rest is lozenges, opposite to the scutcheon of Robertus de Ros, with this inscription only on him in a pavement square blue marble about 14 inches square: O RARE BEN JONSON, which was done at the charge of Jack Young, afterwards knighted, who walking there when the grave was covering gave the fellow eighteen pence to cut it’ (Early Lives).
Date: 22 August: warrant in the Westminster commissary court for the administration of the goods of ‘Beniaminus Johnson, nuper civitatis Westmonasterii’, grants his estate of £8.8s.10d. to a creditor, William Scandret (Life Records, 92).
Charles I to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London: ‘We understand that the place of historian to the City of London is become void by the death of Benjamin Jonson. We recommend Thomas May, whom we know to be every way qualified for that employment, expecting that you forthwith choose him to the said place’ (Life Records, 93).
Sir Kenelm Digby to Dr Brian Duppa: ‘I understand, with much gladness, you have been careful to gather what has been written upon Mr Jonson since his death. It is an office well beseeming that excellent piety that all men know you by; yet were but half performed if you should let it rest here . . . . I am writing by this private indictment of you unto so just a work to witness in a particular manner to yourself, who loved him dearly, the great value and esteem I have of this brave man, the honour of his age; and he that set a period to the perfection of our language; and will, as soon as I can do the like to the world, by making it share with me in those excellent pieces – alas, that many of them are but pieces! – which he hath left behind him, and that I keep religiously by me to that end’ etc. (BL Harley MS 4153, fol. 21; Life Records, 94)
Lives: Gervase Markham dies (February).
Performances: Brome, The English Moor, or The Mock Marriage ; Nabbes, Microcosmus ; Shirley, The Royal Master.
Publications: Hobbes, The Art of Rhetoric ; Milton, A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle ( Comus ), Shirley, The Example , The Gamester , Hyde Park , The Lady of Pleasure , The Young Admiral (all as separate editions); Suckling, Aglaura .
Events: John Hampden, a wealthy Buckinghamshire landowner, refuses to pay taxation levied in the name of Ship Money. Though he narrowly loses his case before the Court of the Exchequer, Hampden’s resistance to this highly unpopular form of tax – ultimately abolished by Parliament in 1641 -- wins him wide support throughout the country.
Early this year or late 1637: Letter (n) (Electronic Edition) from James Howell to Dr Brian Duppa, commending the ‘well-becoming and very worthy work you are about, not to suffer Master Ben Jonson to go so silently to his grave, or rot so suddenly’. Duppa’s collection of memorial verses, Jonsonus Virbius , is already in the press; Howell, having ‘newly come to town’, offers a late contribution.
Jonsonus Virbius published (23 January, imprimatur), edited by Bryan Duppa, printer, Elizabeth Purslowe, containing tributes from Lucius Cary, Richard Sackville, John Beaumont, Thomas Hawkins, Henry King, Henry Coventry, Tom May, Dudley Digges, George Fortescue, William Habington, Edmund Waller, James Howell, John Vernon, Sidney Godolphin, James Clayton, Jasper Mayne, William Cartwright, Joseph Rutter, Owen Felltham, George Donne, Shackerley Marmion, John Ford, Ralph Brideoak, Richard West, Robert Meade, Henry Ramsay, Francis Wortley, Thomas Terrent, Robert Waring, William Bew, and Samuel Evans. See Literary Record.
Rollo, Duke of Normandy: Or, The Bloody Brother is published in quarto this year (Stationers’ Register, 4 October: ‘by J: B:’) with a title-page announcement ‘By B. J. F.’. The play has sometimes therefore been ascribed to Beaumont, Jonson, and Fletcher; but for a sceptical view of Jonson’s hand in the play, see Peter Culhane’s account in Dubia.
Ben Jonson’s Execration Against Vulcan, With Divers Epigrams by the Same Author to Several Noble Personages in this Kingdom, Never Published Before , quarto edition printed by John Okes for John Benson.
Q. Horatius Flaccus, His Art of Poetry, Englished by Ben Jonson, With Other Works of the Author, Never Printed Before : duodecimo edition printed by John Okes for John Benson, with a title-page engraved by William Marshall, showing a bust of Jonson wearing a laurel crown. This is the earlier of Jonson’s two translations of Horace’s Ars Poetica, probably made around 1605; for his revised translation, see below, under 1641. The duodecimo includes a text of The Gypsies Metamorphosed (Windsor) and ‘Epigrams to Several Noble Personages in this Kingdom’, reprinted from Benson’s 1640 quarto, along with commendatory verses by Edward Herbert (praising Jonson as ‘the Horace of our times, and his’), Barten Holyday, and Zouch Townley.
The first volume of Jonson’s second folio, F2(1), is published. This is essentially a reprint of the first folio of 1616 by Richard Bishop, working under the direction of bookseller Andrew Crooke. The transfer of Stansby’s interest to Bishop is recorded by the Stationers’ Company on 4 March 1639. The volume includes Robert Vaughan’s portrait of Jonson, and verses by William Hodgson to ‘The Poet Laureate, Ben Jonson’. See David Gants’s Textual Essay for F1, 1616.
The second volume of Jonson’s second folio, F2(2), is published, containing Bartholomew Fair , The Devil Is An Ass , and The Staple of News (essentially the volume prepared for publication in 1631 but not then released): see John Creaser’s Textual Essay, F2(2).
The third volume of Jonson’s second folio published, F2(3), containing The King and Queen’s Entertainment at Bolsover, Christmas His Masque, A Vision of Delight, Lovers Made Men, The Underwood, Horace His Art of Poetry, Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, For the Honour of Wales, News From the New World Discovered in the Moon, Pan’s Anniversary, The Masque of Gypsies, The Masque of Augurs, Time Vindicated to Himself and to His Honours, Neptune Triumph, The Masque of Owls, The Fortunate Isles, Love’s Triumph Through Callipolis , Chloridia, The Magnetic Lady, A Tale of a Tub, The King’s Entertainment at Welbeck, The English Grammar, Mortimer His Fall, The Sad Shepherd, Timber, or Discoveries. See Peter Happé’s Textual Essay, Collected Editions, F2(3), and Eugene Giddens, Textual Essay, Collected Editions.
7.1
Horace His Art of Poetry, Made English by Ben Jonson , with parallel Latin text, Horatius de Arte Poetica , from F2(3). For the probable dating of this posthumously published work, see Introduction.
7.69
The Underwood , from F2(3): a posthumously published collection, though Jonson may have had a hand in its ordering: see Introduction, Kenelm Digby’s letter (under 1637 above).
7.297
The English Grammar , with Grammatica Anglicana, from F2(3). A revised version of the text destroyed in Jonson’s fire of 1623; well advanced by 1624, but probably lacking a final authorial finish by the time of Jonson’s death.
7.403
Mortimer His Fall , from F2(3). An unfinished tragedy, sometimes regarded as abandoned early work, but more persuasively explained as late work, written in the 1630s: see Introduction.
7.417
The Sad Shepherd, or A Tale of Robin Hood , from F2(3). An unfinished pastoral, substantially the work of Jonson’s last years.
7.481
Timber, or Discoveries , from F2(3), presumably prepared largely after the fire of November 1623 that had destroyed Jonson’s earlier commonplace collection (of ‘twice-twelve years’ stored up humanity’), though parts of that earlier collection may well have escaped the fire.