The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

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Letter 1, to Robert Cotton (1602-3)

Introduction

This letter, which survives in holograph as BL Cotton MS, Julius. C.iii.fol.222, is evidently addressed to Jonson’s friend and fellow student from Westminster School, Sir Robert Cotton (1571–1631), the antiquary and (from 1604) MP for Huntingdonshire, from whose extensive library Jonson borrowed freely over many years. Cotton had been knighted on 11 May 1603. The letter was first identified as Jonson’s by Percy Simpson, and is printed in H&S 1.215 as Letter XXI. Earlier scholars had misread the signature ‘Ben’ as the surname ‘Bell’ (Planta, 1802, 9, lists it as fol. 62 in Julius. C.iii, ‘A Collection of 328 original Letters to Sir Robert Cotton’). Simpson believed the letter to have been written in Jonson’s ‘latest years after the attack of the palsy’, an assumption endorsed by W. W. Greg, who reproduced and transcribed the letter in his English Literary Autographs (1932), 1, section XXIII, dating it to c. 1635, but noting that despite the letter’s reference to severe illness, ‘the hand shows no sign of weakness’. As Sir Robert Cotton had died in 1631, Greg imagined the letter to have been addressed to his son, Sir Thomas Cotton (1594–1662). The library had been closed by royal decree in 1629, and access thereafter was difficult.

In an important re-examination of internal and contextual evidence, Bland (1998a) re-dates the letter to 1603, arguing that Jonson’s request for topographical information about the Campania region of Italy, around the Bay of Naples, suggests he was then at work on Sejanus, and wanting to pinpoint more exactly Tiberius’s possible movements after his departure from Rome at the end of Act Three: ‘We are in purpose, Macro, to depart / The city for a time, and see Campania; / Not for our pleasures, but to dedicate / A pair of temples, one to Jupiter / At Capua, the other at Nola, to Augustus’ (3.669–73). The Campania region was by this time ‘a notorious playground of the elite’ (Talbert, 1988). As Jonson was aware, however, Tiberius’s apparent retreat to Campania was in fact an excuse for moving on to his even more notorious personal playground of Capri (Suetonius, Lives, 3.40, Tacitus, Annals, 4.66, Dio, Roman History, 58.1). Whether or not as a result of his researches, Jonson chose to shift the area of Tiberius’s travels slightly away from the places mentioned in this letter, which lie to the west of Naples; Capua and Nola are immediately to the north and north-east, respectively. If Sejanus was first acted in May 1603, as Cain suggests in his Introduction to the play in this edition, and Jonson was still working on the third act at the time of writing this letter, then the letter is probably to be dated late 1602 or early 1603, probably before Jonson’s period of residence with Sir Robert Townsend (reported in Feb. 1603 by Manningham, 1976, 187).

Ian Donaldson

 

Letter 1, to Robert Cotton

Sir,

As seriously as a man but faintly returning to his  despaired health can, I salute

you. And by these few lines request you, that you would, by this bearer, lend

me some book that would determinately satisfy me of the true site and distance

betwixt  Bauli or  Portus Baiarum and  Villa Augusta, into which (if I err not) runs 5

 Lacus Lucrinus. They are near by my historical aim to  Cumae Chalcidensium,

 Misenum,  Avernus, in  Campania.

Good sir, add this to many other courtesies you have done me, that though I

chance to survive now, I may hereafter die more in your debt.

The book shall be  returned this night without excuse. 10

Your infirm,

Ben now.

2 despaired health There is no evidence outside the present letter to suggest that Jonson was seriously ill in 1602–3, and the nature of his illness is quite unknown. Bland (1998a) suggests that Jonson may have been touched by the devastating plague of 1603, and that while subsequently convalescing with Cotton at his country estate at Conington in Huntingdonshire, he had his (possibly feverish) premonition of the death of his son which he later described to Drummond (Informations, 198–206). This is possible, but in the light of Cain’s dating of Sejanus, unlikely. The effects of the 1603 plague were not significantly felt in London until late April; they escalated in late July, and reached a peak in August and September (Wilson, 1927, ch. 3). It was probably in those latter months that Jonson was at Conington. The present letter appears to reflect an earlier crisis.
5 Bauli Modern Bacoli, near Misenum, at the west of the Bay of Naples.
5 Portus Baiarum The port of Baia, overlooking the Gulf of Pozzuoli, had natural warm springs, and was a fashionable bathing resort for Roman society.
5 Villa Augusta Augustus, like many of the Roman emperors, had evidently kept a villa at Baia. Tiberius was his adopted son.
6 Lacus Lucrinus Modern Lago (Lake) Lucrino, in the region of Baia.
6 Cumae Chalcidensium Cumae or Cuma, 12 miles west of Naples, had been settled c. 750 bc by Greeks from the city of Chalcis (on the island of Euboea) and elsewhere, and was home of the legendary Sybil.
7 Misenum Harbour town about 3 miles south of Baiae, at the western extremity of the Gulf of Pozzuoli; another fashionable resort, where Augustus had kept a large fleet.
7 Avernus Crater of an extinct volcano, and modern Lago d’Averno (Lake Averno), immediately north of Lake Lucrino; believed in antiquity to be the entrance to the underworld. Cf. Aeneid, 6 (humorously alluded to in Epigr. 133.41).
7 Campania The fertile province of Italy lying south-east of the Tiber (It. Campagnia di Roma).
10 returned this night Cotton’s town house was in Westminster, abutting the walls of Westminster School; by 1603, however, he was living in Blackfriars, at the house of the recently widowed Lady Hunsdon. At either location, Jonson would have been a relatively near neighbour.