The
Vision of Ben Jonson First printed in Michael Drayton’s
The Battle of Agincourt (
1627), entered in the Stationers’
Register 16 Apr. 1627. The epistle evidently arrived late in the
production of the volume, and was possibly also longer than expected: an
extra gathering had to be inserted after the blank A4v (although in some
copies it is bound after sig. A2). Jonson’s copy of the volume survives
in the Bodleian (Juel-Jensen Drayton d. 14;
described in Drayton, The
Works, 5.305). It is likely that Jonson, as was his
wont, took time to read the volume he was commending. He would have
found fulsome praise of himself on p. 207. He looked not only at the
volume for which he was composing this epistle, but at the whole range
of Drayton’s oeuvre. In 1618–19 Jonson had said that ‘Drayton feared
him, and he
[Jonson
] esteemed not of
him’,
Informations, 111; lines 1–5 register the unease
there evidently was or had been in this relationship. Despite having
both written verses for Lucy Countess of Bedford, and for volumes of
poems by Palmer, Coryate, Browne, Chapman, and John Beaumont, neither
poet before this date had written dedicatory verse for the other. The
hyperbolic praise in this poem has been seen as ironical: Newdigate
(
1961), 136
suggests it is ‘a bit of good-tempered leg-pulling’, and Hebel (
1924), 830 sees
the work as ‘sly satire rather than compliment’. It may be rather that
Jonson is so eager to cancel out any negative views of Drayton that he
presents those negative views as strong enough to need energetic
suppression. Lipking (
1981), 141 shrewdly compares the poem with ‘Shakes.
Beloved’. [Editor: Colin Burrow]
Michael
Drayton (1563–1631). During a long career as a professional
poet he produced works ranging from odes, sonnets, verse epistles, poems
about British landscape and history, to minor epics. ‘M. Drayton’ in the
original might alternatively be expanded to ‘Master Drayton’.
Michael]
Drayton (
1627) (M.
)
3 who those
who.
5 ’Tis true:
The punctuation allows the suggestion that Jonson is indeed not a friend
to Drayton. As Lipking (
1981), 141 puts it ‘even the most careful reading of these
verses does not answer the question’ as to whether Jonson
is Drayton’s friend.
8 rhyming club
For Jonson’s contempt for ‘clubs’ which were not his own, see ‘Ode
(‘Come, leave’)', 6.310, line 26.
William Winstanley, Poor
Robin’s Jests, 78, records a jest, in one version of
which Jonson and Drayton were drinking together at the Devil Tavern.
9 reck’ning
tavern bill.
10 conferring
symbols comparing contributions. ‘Symbols’ is used in the
Greek sense ‘contributions to provide a common meal’, which was adopted
by Roman dramatists (e.g. Plautus’s Curculio, 474,
which refers to members of an eating club as symbolarum
collatores). Cf. Apollo, ‘Leges’, (5.416,
Latin text, line 1).
10 my day my
time for payment; but with something of the generosity of ‘it’s my
round’.
11 It . . .
dream Possibly echoing Wyatt’s ‘They flee from me’, 15 (‘It
was no dream; I lay broad waking’).
12–13 draw . . .
truth add widespread amazement to my true vision.
15 rise As the
goddess Venus rose from the sea.
20 regions
seven Seven works are named on the title-page of Drayton’s
volume: The Battle of Agincourt, The
Miseries of Queen Margaret, Nymphidia, The Quest of Cynthia, The Shepherd’s
Sirena, The Moon-Calf, Elegies
upon Sundry Occasions. Jonson’s section-by-section analysis of
Drayton’s works in the lines that follow, however, derives from the
title-page of the 1619 edition of which he owned a copy (Jonson’s
Library, Electronic Edition).
22 circle . . .
arts The seven liberal arts form a circle of complete
knowledge, or an
ἐγκύκλιος
παιδ∊ία (hence our modern ‘encyclopaedia’). See
Und. 14.32–3n.,
Discoveries, 1337–40, and
Blanchard (
1990).
23 Ideas Drayton’s sonnet sequence, Idea
(originally in 1594 entitled Idea’s Mirror) was
revised and augmented in 1599, 1600, 1602–3, 1605, and 1619.
25 Legends
three There are in fact four
legends in the 1619 edition: Piers Gaveston (1593;
revised in 1595, 1596, 1605, and 1619), Matilda (1594;
revised in 1596, 1605, and 1619), Robert, Duke of
Normandy (1596; revised in 1605 and 1619), and Great Cromwell (1607; revised in 1619). Drayton’s Poems (1605) contains only the first three.
26–8 Drayton’s pastorals, originally called Idea, The Shepherds Garland fashioned in nine Eglogs, first
appeared in 1593; they were revised extensively in 1606 and 1619.
27 Theocritus
Greek pastoral poet (early third century bc),
the chief influence on Virgil’s Eclogues.
29 thy’
epistolar
Heroic
Songs Drayton composed
England’s Heroical Epistles, modelled on the Heroides of Ovid, in 1597 (variously revised, but not
substantially, thereafter). ‘Thy’ is elided into ‘epistolar’.
31–2 ‘Who . . . man?’
]
this edn; who . . . man?
Drayton
(
1627)
32 the Naso
Ovid’s full name was Publius Ovidius Naso (‘nose’; Ovid’s was famously
large). Drayton was widely known as ‘the English Ovid’; see
Drayton, The
Works, 5.97.
33 Minerva’s
Roman goddess of wisdom’s. Her bird is the owl.
34 Owl
Drayton’s The Owl (1604) is a dream beast-fable
cum-satire on late Elizabethan/early Jacobean nobility; it is prudently
and deliberately obscure.
35 Orpheus
Legendary poet who is said to have charmed the birds with his song.
36 volary
aviary (
OED misdates this passage, which is the first cited
example).
42 Barons’
Wars A Lucanian epic (1603; revised in 1619) on the Wars of
the Roses, which in fact comes first in Draytons’s
Poems (
1619): Jonson orders his account of the volume to end
climactically with
Poly-Olbion, Drayton’s longest work. The
revisions to the earlier
Mortimeriados (
1596) in the
aftermath of the Essex rebellion deliberately diminish the appeal of the
potentially rebellious honour-conscious aristocracy; see C. Burrow (
1993), 184–90.
43 these times
Perhaps a narrow allusion to growing conflict between king and
parliament; perhaps a more general allusion back to recent history,
including the Essex rebellion of 1601.
46 authorized
sanctioned by those in high places (the nobility, in this case);
stressed on the second syllable.
47 Lucan (ad 39–65), the author of a ten-book unfinished
epic on Rome’s Civil War. During the period 1595–1619
Drayton revised many of his historical works to make the influence of
Ovid less pronounced and that of Lucan more evident.
50 periégesis
guided tour (first cited usage; imported from the Greek), alluding to
the chief classical prototype of poems which describe nations
(chorographies), Dionysius of Alexander’s Τῆς οἰκϰουμένης περιήγησις (The
Description of the Habitable World).
51 circumduction guided tour (translates ‘periegesis’ into Latin
to make it intelligible).
52 Poly-Olbion (1612–22), Drayton’s massive chorographical poem
on the English landscape, its myths and geographical features.
53 That read
it? The second part of
Poly-Olbion (
1622), in
alexandrines, was prefixed by a plaintive note from Drayton headed ‘To
any that will read it’; copies of the first volume remained unsold for
at least a decade. Cf.
Informations, 17–19: Drayton’s
‘long verses pleased him not’; the suspicion that Jonson here protests
too much is hard to lay to rest.
54 song
Poly-Olbion is divided into thirty ‘songs’ or
cantos.
56–8 The Battle of Agincourt relates
Henry V’s victories over the French in 1415.
65 where to to
the place where they can.
67 Look how
Just as.
68 Tyrtaeus’
Tyrtaeus was a Spartan elegiac poet (mid-seventh century
bc), whose works exhorted the Spartans to
fight to the death for their city in the second Messenian war. Jonson
probably came across the name in
Horace, Ars Poetica,
402, where it is linked with Homer’s (as it is in
Quintilian,
10.1.57).
70 ‘An . . . die.’
]
this edn; An . . . dye.
Drayton
(
1627)
71 catechism to
fight book of martial instruction.
72 of by.
75 Miseries . . . Queen
Agincourt is followed by The Miseries of
Queen Margaret, which relates the sufferings of Henry Ⅵ’s
wife.
79 with
]
Drayton (1627); by
Drayton
(
1631)
79 Fairy
Court
Nymphidia, a neo-Spenserian piece of whimsy, fused
with mock-heroic elements, is next in the Agincourt
volume.
80 Cynthia
. . . sport
The Quest of Cynthia and The Shepherd’s
Sirena.
84 Moon-calf The title of Drayton’s satire on luxurious living
means ‘mis-shapen birth’ or ‘idiot’.
86 Lapland
Traditionally regarded as a place full of witches.
86 Cobalus A
demon of the mines. (Cobalt was released in smelting processes and
ruined the health of German miners, who believed they had been bewitched
by a demon.)
87 Empusa,
Lamia Empusa is a spectre which could assume various shapes,
referred to in Aristophanes,
Frogs, 293. She is
identified with the Lamia, a child-eating ogre (
Horace, Ars Poetica,
340; see 510n. in Jonson’s translation) in Topsell’s
History of Four-Footed Beasts (
1607), 452–5.
89 Ends Presumably refers to the Elegies upon
Sundry Occasions which conclude the Agincourt
volume.
91 I . . .
there Jonson does not figure among the elegies to Drayton’s
friends, although he is mentioned favourably in the poem ‘To Henry
Reynolds’, lines 129–36. See headnote.
92 to wish I
were This suggests that Jonson does not wish to proceed
further in becoming one of Drayton’s friends until he receives some
reciprocal indication of his worthiness from Drayton.