Panegyre on the Happy Entrance of James | The Cambridge Works of Ben Jonson

Edited by Martin Butler

INTRODUCTION

Jonson’s Panegyre was written to celebrate James’s first meeting with parliament, on 19 March 1604. This was an unusual choice of subject – poets such as Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, and Henry Petowe had preferred to memorialize the accession in March 1603, or the coronation in July – but it produced Jonson’s single most important political poem, a dramatic and focused performance that stages the poet’s privileged intimacy with James by representing them both as distanced from the noisy celebrations which the king endures on his journey from Whitehall to Westminster Hall.

The immediate model for the Panegyre was Sir Thomas More’s Carmen Gratulatorium, a nearly 200-line Latin poem celebrating the coronation of the eighteen-year-old Henry VIII in 1509, a copy of which Jonson owned and annotated (More, Latin Poems, ed. Miller et al., 100–113; see Evans, 1995a, 191–99). More’s poem is, in part, a learned and humanistic recreation of the imperial panegyrics of Claudian and Pliny (Garrison, 1975, 72–82). Jonson too echoes these classical sources, but he also diplomatically incorporates ideas from the political testament of his new king, Basilikon Doron. His distinctive contribution to the form is to make his own presence more explicit within the poem as James’s associate and counsellor, by emphasizing his poetic and prophetic insight into the king’s secret purposes. There is also no equivalent to More’s polite compliments to Katharine of Aragon. Instead, James is represented as the focus of a generalized and sexualized ardour emanating from the spectators who eagerly watch him pass by.

More depicts Henry processing to the ceremony through the jostling crowds. He describes the spectators’ ecstatic acclamations, and reflects on how they articulate the huge shift that the accession will produce, from the despotic rule of Henry VII to what he predicts will be Henry VIII’s more lawful and loving reign. Jonson too presents the new king’s arrival as a clean break from the errors of the past, though, ironically, it is the faults of the Tudors, and of Henry VIII in particular, that his panegyric repudiates (see the notes to 102–5). In this respect, Jonson’s poem has a strongly Catholic resonance, as the new dynasty is particularly envisaged as putting an end to the injustice and religious persecution that the recusant community had suffered under Elizabeth, and which was the ultimate consequence of events set in train by her grandfather. The poem thus articulates the hopes of toleration which James’s Catholic subjects invested in him early in the reign. In fact, at the recent Hampton Court conference (called in January 1604 to discuss the religious settlement) James had made no such concessions, and in his speech to parliament, delivered as the culmination of the ceremony that the Panegyre describes, while disavowing any intention of persecuting Catholics, he decisively dashed whatever remaining thoughts of greater liberalization that they may still have entertained.

A Panegyre was printed in 1604 as a supplement to the text of the triumphal arches that Jonson had written for the royal entry into London on 15 March (see King’s Ent., Introduction), and reprinted in the 1616 folio, without substantive alteration. One leaf (the title-page) of what may have been a presentation manuscript gifted to the king survives in the British Library, though it is not certain that it really belongs to this poem (see Textual Essay, Electronic Edition).

B. J. HIS PANEGYRE on the happy entrance of James our sovereign to his first high session of Parliament in this his kingdom, the 19th of March 1604.

Martial, Licet toto nunc Helicone frui.

Heaven now not strives, alone, our breasts to fill

With joys, but urgeth his full favours still.

Again the glory of our western world

Unfolds himself, and from his eyes are hurled,

Today, a thousand radiant lights, that stream 5

To every nook and angle of his realm.

His former rays did only clear the sky,

But these his searching beams are cast to pry

Into those dark and deep concealèd vaults

Where men commit black incest with their faults, 10

And snore supinely in the stall of sin;

Where Murder, Rapine, Lust do sit within,

Carousing human blood in iron bowls,

And make their den the slaughter-house of souls;

From whose foul reeking caverns first arise 15

Those damps that so offend all good men’s eyes,

And would, if not dispersed, infect the crown,

And in their vapour her bright metal drown.

To this so clear and sanctified an end,

I saw, when reverend Themis did descend 20

Upon his state, let down in that rich chain

That fast’neth heavenly power to earthly reign.

Beside her stooped on either hand a maid,

Fair Dice and Eunomia, who were said

To be her daughters, and but faintly known 25

On earth till now they came to grace his throne;

Her third, Irene, helped to bear his train,

And in her office vowed she would remain

Till foreign malice or unnatural spite –

Which Fates avert – should force her from her right. 30

With these he passed, and with his people’s hearts

Breathed in his way, and souls (their better parts)

Hasting to follow forth in shouts and cries.

Upon his face all threw their covetous eyes,

As on a wonder: some amazèd stood, 35

As if they felt, but had not known their good;

Others would fain have shown it in their words,

But when their speech so poor a help affords

Unto their zeal’s expression, they are mute,

And only with red silence him salute. 40

Some cry from tops of houses, thinking noise

The fittest herald to proclaim true joys;

Others on ground run gazing by his side,

All as unwearied as unsatisfied;

And every window grieved it could not move 45

Along with him, and the same trouble prove.

They that had seen but four short days before

His gladding look, now longed to see it more.

And as of late, when he through London went,

The amorous city spared no ornament 50

That might her beauties heighten, but so dressed

As our ambitious dames when they make feast

And would be courted, so this town put on

Her brightest tire, and in it equal shone

To her great sister – save that modesty, 55

Her place and years, gave her precedency.

The joy of either was alike, and full;

No age nor sex so weak, or strongly dull,

That did not bear a part in this concent

Of hearts and voices. All the air was rent, 60

As with the murmur of a moving wood;

The ground beneath did seem a moving flood:

Walls, windows, roofs, towers, steeples, all were set

With several eyes, that in this object met.

Old men were glad their fates till now did last; 65

And infants, that the hours had made such haste

To bring them forth; whilst riper aged, and apt

To understand the more, the more were rapt.

This was the people’s love, with which did strive

The nobles’ zeal, yet either kept alive 70

The other’s flame, as doth the wick and wax,

That, friendly tempered, one pure taper makes.

Meanwhile the reverend Themis draws aside

The king’s obeying will from taking pride

In these vain stirs, and to his mind suggests 75

How he may triumph in his subjects’ breasts

With better pomp. She tells him first that kings

Are here on earth the most conspicuous things;

That they by heaven are placed upon his throne,

To rule like heaven, and have no more their own, 80

As they are men, than men; that all they do,

Though hid at home, abroad is searched into;

And, being once found out, discovered lies

Unto as many envies there as eyes;

That princes, since they know it is their fate 85

Oft-times to have the secrets of their state

Betrayed to fame, should take more care, and fear

In public acts what face and form they bear.

She then remembered to his thought the place

Where he was going, and the upward race 90

Of kings preceding him in that high court;

Their laws, their ends, the men she did report,

And all so justly as his ear was joyed

To hear the truth, from spite or flattery void.

She showed him who made wise, who honest acts; 95

Who both, who neither; all the cunning tracts

And thriving statutes she could promptly note;

The bloody, base, and barbarous she did quote;

Where laws were made to serve the tyran’ will;

Where sleeping they could save, and waking kill; 100

Where acts gave licence to impetuous lust

To bury churches in forgotten dust,

And with their ruins raise the pander’s bowers;

When public justice borrowed all her powers

From private chambers, that could then create 105

Laws, judges, councillors, yea, prince and state.

All this she told and more, with bleeding eyes,

For Right is as compassionate as wise.

Nor did he seem their vices so to love

As once defend what Themis did reprove. 110

For though by right and benefit of times

He owned their crowns, he would not so their crimes.

He knew that princes who had sold their fame

To their voluptuous lusts had lost their name,

And that no wretch was more unblest than he 115

Whose necessary good ’twas now to be

An evil king, and so must such be still,

Who once have got the habit to do ill.

One wickedness another must defend;

For vice is safe while she hath vice to friend. 120

He knew that those who would with love command

Must with a tender yet a steadfast hand

Sustain the reins, and in the check forbear

To offer cause of injury or fear;

That kings by their example more do sway 125

Than by their power, and men do more obey

When they are led than when they are compelled.

In all these knowing arts our prince excelled.

And now the dame had dried her dropping eyne,

When, like an April Iris, flew her shine 130

About the streets, as it would force a spring

From out the stones, to gratulate the king.

She blest the people, that in shoals did swim

To hear her speech; which still began in him

And ceased in them. She told them what a fate 135

Was gently fall’n from heaven upon this state;

How dear a father they did now enjoy,

That came to save what discord would destroy;

And ent’ring with the power of a king,

The temperance of a private man did bring, 140

That won affections ere his steps won ground,

And was not hot or covetous to be crowned

Before men’s hearts had crowned him; who – unlike

Those greater bodies of the sky, that strike

The lesser fires dim – in his access 145

Brighter than all, hath yet made no one less,

Though many greater, and the most, the best;

Wherein his choice was happy with the rest

Of his great actions, first to see and do

What all men’s wishes did aspire unto. 150

Hereat the people could no longer hold

Their bursting joys, but through the air was rolled

The lengthened shout, as when th’artillery

Of heaven is discharged along the sky,

And this confession flew from every voice: 155

‘Never had land more reason to rejoice;

Nor to her bliss, could aught now added be,

Save that she might the same perpetual see.’

Which when time, nature, and the fates denied,

With a twice louder shout again they cried, 160

‘Yet, let blest Britain ask, without your wrong,

Still to have such a king, and this king long.’

Solus rex et poeta non quotannis nascitur.

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

A Panegyre on the Happy Entrance of James ... to His First High Session of Parliament (1604)

Edited by Martin Butler

INTRODUCTION

B. J. HIS PANEGYRE on the happy entrance of James our sovereign to his first high session of Parliament in this his kingdom, the 19th of March 1604.