Letter 2 The unnamed addressee of this letter (Folger MS.V.a.321, fol. 90) is probably the Lord Chamberlain, Thomas Howard, first Earl of Suffolk (1561–1626), to whom, as Jonson explains to Salisbury in this letter, he had also recently written. Howard had been appointed Lord Chamberlain by James on 6 April 1603, and was one of the King’s closest advisers. Later in 1605 he was appointed a commissioner to investigate the Gunpowder Plot, which he had played a central part in uncovering. Jonson was later to praise Suffolk in Epigr. 67, a poem which H&S suggest may be a thank-you gift to Suffolk for having secured Jonson’s and Chapman’s release from prison. This seems too specific a reading of a poem whose closing lines appear to suggest a different occasion (perhaps, as Whalley believed, Suffolk’s appointment as Lord Treasurer in 1614). Yet Jonson certainly felt a continuing gratitude towards Suffolk. His masque Hymenaei, composed later in 1605 for the marriage of Suffolk’s daughter Frances Howard with Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, and performed at court on 4 and 5 January 1606, was an early token of his indebtedness to him. Nine years later, in acutely difficult social circumstances, Jonson was ready to compose further entertainments in celebration of Frances Howard’s second marriage to Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset. Chapman’s tribute to ‘Most noble Suffolk’ in verses prefixed to the 1605 quarto edition of Sejanus probably alludes to Suffolk’s rescue of the two authors on the present occasion. Richard Dutton notes that the Lord Chamberlain’s name is nowhere mentioned in the present correspondence, either by Jonson or by Chapman (see Letter (b)), and that it is thus theoretically possible that the person addressed in these letters is not Suffolk at all, but Robert Sidney, Viscount Lisle, who was not James’s but Anne’s Lord High Chamberlain, and more closely associated with the company who had performed Eastward Ho!, the Children of the Queen’s Revels (Dutton, 1991, 192; Gossett and Kay, Eastward Ho!, Introduction). This seems unlikely. Lisle was away in the Low Countries in August 1605, and throughout September was fighting for his political life, having been accused by his numerous enemies of brokering a secret deal to hand over Flushing to the Spanish, and forced before the Privy Council to answer charges (Hay, 1984, 213). As he was not cleared of suspicion until the end of the month, he would not have been a competent advocate for the two authors in their time of need. [Editor: Ian Donaldson]

3 removed ‘Remote; retired, secluded’ (OED, 2†a, Obs).

14 posterity A characteristic hope: cf. Sejanus, 3.471–4, Catiline, Dedication, Epigr. 127.4, and Letter 3.42.

15 though now neglected Jonson’s present predicament arose not from the neglect of his writings, but the fact that they attracted over-much attention. The phrase is a remarkable testimony to his literary ambition, or diversionary skills.

16–17 It . . . tale Referring to Jonson’s earlier clashes with the law over Dogs and Poet.

19 virtue . . . nobility Cf. Und. 84.8.12, ‘’Tis virtue alone is true nobility’; Juvenal, Sat. 8.20, ‘nobilitas sola est atque unica virtu’, ‘virtue is the one and only true nobility’; cf. Tilley V85.

22 comfortable comforting.