The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

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  • From Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623), ‘To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Master William Shakespeare, And What He Hath Left Us’

From Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623), ‘To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Master William Shakespeare, And What He Hath Left Us’

[From Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, 1623 ]

  To the Memory of My  Belovèd,
The Author
 Master William Shakespeare
And What He Hath Left Us

 To draw  no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,

Am I thus  ample to thy book and fame;

While I  confess thy writings to be such

As neither man nor muse can praise too much:

’Tis true, and all men’s  suffrage. But these ways 5

Were not the paths I  meant unto thy praise,

For  seeliest ignorance on these may light,

Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes  right;

 Or blind affection, which doth ne’er advance

The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance; 10

Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,

And think to ruin, where it seemed to raise.

 These are as some  infamous bawd or whore

Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more?

But thou art proof against them, and indeed 15

Above th’ill fortune of them, or the need.

I, therefore, will begin. Soul of the age!

 The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!

 My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by

Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie 20

A little further, to make thee a room;

 Thou art a monument without a tomb,

 And art alive still, while thy book doth live,

And we have wits to read, and praise to give.

That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses; 25

I mean with great, but disproportioned muses:

For if I thought my judgement were  of years

I should  commit thee surely with thy peers,

 And tell how far thou didst our Lyly  outshine,

Or  sporting Kyd, or Marlowe’s  mighty line. 30

And,  though thou hadst  small Latin and less Greek,

From thence to honour thee I would not seek

For names, but call forth thundering Aeschylus,

Euripides and Sophocles to us,

 Pacuvius, Accius,  him of Cordova dead, 35

To life again, to hear thy  buskin tread

And shake a stage; or, when thy  socks were on

Leave thee alone for the comparison

Of all that  insolent Greece or haughty Rome

Sent forth, or since did  from their ashes come. 40

 Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show,

To whom all  scenes of Europe homage owe.

He was not of an age, but for all time!

And all the muses  still were in their prime,

When, like  Apollo, he came forth to warm 45

Our ears, or like a  Mercury to charm!

Nature herself was proud of his designs,

And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines!

Which were so richly  spun and woven so fit

As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit. 50

The  merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,

Neat  Terence, witty Plautus, now not please,

But  antiquated and deserted lie,

As they were not of nature’s family.

 Yet must I not give nature all: thy art, 55

My  gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.

For though the poet’s matter nature be,

His art doth give the  fashion. And,  that he

Who  casts to write a  living line must sweat

(Such as thine are) and strike the  second heat 60

Upon the muses’  anvil; turn the same,

( And himself with it) that he thinks to  frame;

Or  for the laurel he may gain a scorn,

 For a good poet’s made as well as born.

And such wert thou.   Look how the father’s face 65

Lives in his issue; even so the  race

Of Shakespeare’s mind and manners brightly shines

In his well-turnèd and true- filèd lines;

In each of which he seems to  shake a lance,

As brandished at the eyes of ignorance. 70

Sweet  swan of Avon! What a sight it were

To see thee in our waters yet appear,

And make those flights upon the banks of Thames

That so did  take Eliza, and our James!

But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere 75

 Advanced and made a  constellation there!

Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with  rage

Or  influence  chide or cheer the drooping stage;

Which, since thy flight from hence hath mourned like night,

And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light. 80

To the Memory of My Belovèd First printed in Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623), this is Jonson’s only poem to combine the conventions of dedicatory epistle and elegy. Jonson wrote at least six plays for Shakespeare’s theatrical company (the Lord Chamberlain’s Men), and Shakespeare acted in EMI and Sej. Barton (1984), 258–9 suggests that he may have read the First Folio through, perhaps while preparing to write this poem; certainly the majority of his dedicatory poems show detailed knowledge of the works which they accompany. Dryden saw the poem as ‘an insolent, sparing, and invidious panegyric’ (Dryden, Essays, 2.18), and it has often been linked, to Jonson’s discredit, with the remarks on Shakespeare in Discoveries, 468–82 and in Informations, 35 and 156–7. Views of it as predominantly negative include T. J. B. Spencer (1974) and Trimpi (1962a), 148–52, who finds it an attempt to praise Shakespeare as though he were Bacon, which is thwarted by the fact that he is not. More recent critics have presented Jonson as a generous panegyrist of his friend (notably Donaldson, 1997a, 20–5, Donaldson, 2001a, and Vickers, 1999: ‘In Jonson’s generous version [of Cicero’s De Oratore, 3.7], Shakespeare excels in all styles, and transcends all ages’). However, line 31n. indicates that those who knew Jonson personally felt he was not lavish with praise, and the poem’s slowness in starting certainly makes it seem that its generosity is measured and perhaps hard won. Lipking (1981), 140, 144 strikes a fine balance: ‘the living poet is driven to search out weaknesses as well as strengths, something he can improve. Thus praise itself must leave room for fault . . . Jonson reconstructs Shakespeare in his own image, metamorphosing him into, if not a Son, then a Brother of Ben.’ Schoenbaum (1970b) surveys the relationship between the two poets; R. S. Peterson (1981), 158–94 judiciously relates the poem’s balance to the differing priorities of Jonson’s and Shakespeare’s aesthetics; van den Berg (1987), 146–54 emphasizes how it praises Shakespeare in Jonsonian terms. [Editor: Colin Burrow]
Belovèd Cf. ‘for I loved the man, and do honour his memory (on this side idolatry) as much as any’, Discoveries, 473–4.
Title Master] Shakespeare (1623) (MR.)
1–17 Jonson’s poems often begin by stating what they will not say (Fish, 1984, 28); here the proem is detached from the main body of praise (Trimpi, 1962a, 149).
1 no envy Despite this, see Dryden’s comment (quoted in the headnote).
2 ample copious (rather than ‘adequate’).
3 confess (1) declare; (2) admit. The latter sense is held in check, but is there for the likes of Dryden to hear reluctance in the word.
5 suffrage vote, opinion.
6 meant meant to take.
7 seeliest simplest; most foolish or feeble (sometimes modernized as ‘silliest’, which suggests a rather different sense).
8 right the correct view. The whole line means ‘At the best, uninformed judgements may echo sound ones’ (Vickers, 1999).
9–11 Or . . . Or Either . . . Or. Cf. Bacon’s Essay ‘Of Praise’: ‘Some men are praised maliciously to their hurt, thereby to stir envy and jealousy toward them’ (Bacon, Essays, 160).
13–14 For the idea that praise from ‘a wrong person’ can harm the person praised, see Discoveries, 172–3.
13 infamous Stressed on the second syllable.
18 Cf. Martial, 9.28.1–2, an epitaph for an actor called Latinus: Dulce decus scenae, ludorum fama, Latinus / ille ego sum, plausus deliciaeque tuae, ‘I am Latinus, the darling pride of the stage, the glory of the games . . . your applause and delight.’
19–21 Chaucer, Spenser, and Francis Beaumont (1584–1616) are all buried in Westminster Abbey. Jonson differentiates his praise from that of William Basse’s ‘Elegy on Shakespeare’ (found widely in manuscript miscellanies and in the 1633 edition of Donne’s poems): ‘Renownèd Spenser, lie a thought more nigh / To learnèd Chaucer, and, rare Beaumont, lie / A little nearer Spenser to make room / For Shakespeare in your threefold fourfold tomb.’ Shakespeare was buried at Stratford-upon-Avon in Holy Trinity Church, where his actual monument is on the wall.
22 ‘Jonson erects a cenotaph — a monument without a tomb — in honor of someone buried elsewhere’ (Lipking, 1981, 139). The phrase alludes to the commonly quoted line of Horace, Odes, 3.30.1–2: exegi monumentum aere perennius, ‘I have built a monument [these poems] more durable than brass’, conceivably with an allusion to the ‘Verses on the Stanley Tomb at Tong’ ascribed in manuscript to Shakespeare: ‘No monumental stone preserves our fame, / Nor sky-aspiring pyramids our name.’ These lines feed into Milton’s ‘On Shakespeare’, which was printed in the Second Folio of 1632. Line 18 of the Earl of Newcastle’s poem ‘To Ben Jonson’s Ghost’ quotes the phrase; see Raylor (2000b), 113.
23–4 Possibly echoing Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18.13–14: ‘So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.’
27 of years mature. Jonson plays the faltering adolescent to Shakespeare’s achieved mastery, unless the phrase means ‘permanent’, in which case Dryden’s reading of the poem again becomes a possibility.
28 commit match, compare in rivalry (OED, 9a).
29–30 John Lyly (1554?–1606), Thomas Kyd (1558–94), and Christopher Marlowe (1564–93) all died before Shakespeare’s retirement from the stage, and represent here the slightly earlier forms of drama which Shakespeare transcended. A. Miller (1991) suggests a parallel with Cicero, De Oratore, 3.27, which compares a Greek triad of tragedians with a Latin one and uses similarly pithy adjectives to describe the writers it lists.
29 outshine The lily is flower of light in Und. 70.72.
30 sporting Kyd (like a young goat).
30 mighty line Refers to the heavy pulse of Marlowe’s pentameters.
31 though Usually glossed as ‘despite the fact that’; its force may instead be ‘even if we imagine for a moment that . . .’ (favoured by Vickers). This would suit the subjunctive mood of what follows: ‘even if you were ignorant of Latin and Greek I wouldn’t seek names from classical authors; I would bring them back themselves to bear witness’. Against this should be set Alexander Brome in his preface to Richard Brome’s (no relation) Five New Plays (1659), sig. A4v, who clearly regarded it as an insult: Jonson ‘threw in [Shakespeare’s] face “… small Latin and less Greek”.’ He goes on to take Jonson to task for the meanness of his praise.
31 small . . . Greek The charge, if such it is, is refuted at length in Baldwin (1944). Spingarn (1899), 89 notes a debt to Minturno’s L’Arte Poetica (Venice, 1564), 158, which attacks critics who per aventura sanno poco del Latino e pochissimo del Greco, ‘perhaps know little Latin and very little Greek’.
35 Pacuvius, Accius Marcus Pacuvius (c. 130–220) and Lucius Accius (107 – c. 86 bc) were Roman tragedians who were known to Jonson only through their reputation. Quintilian, 10.1.97, compares them, and Horace, Epistles, 2.1.55–6, links them, although he evidently regards them as unsophisticated. Donaldson (1997a), 22 argues that they recalled for Jonson the art of ‘syncrisis’ or the formal comparison of two writers.
35 him . . . dead Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 bc – ad 65), author of nine extant tragedies which had an extensive influence on Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy; born at Cordoba in Spain.
36 buskin The high boots worn by actors in classical tragedy; hence ‘shake a stage’.
37 socks The socci, low-heeled shoes or slippers, worn by performers of classical comedy.
39 insolent . . . Rome Jonson here imitates the elder Seneca’s Controversiae, 1.pref.6: quidquid Romana facundia habet quod insolenti Graeciae aut opponet aut praeferat, ‘whatever Roman eloquence has that can either fight against or transcend the insolence of Greece’. Cf. the description of Francis Bacon in Discoveries, 657–8, who has ‘performed that in our tongue which may be compared, or preferred either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome’.
40 from . . . come This alludes to imitations of the classics. Works such as Du Bellay’s Antiquitez de Rome (1558) present themselves as growing from the ashy ruins of Rome.
41 Triumph Lipking (1981), 144 notes that this word falls at the centre of the poem, traditionally the place in which to locate royal or national triumphs.
42 scenes theatres, stages.
44 still This functions doubly to mean that their energy remained from the classical period, and to imply that the present has declined since Shakespeare’s prime.
45 Apollo God of poetry, who tweaks Virgil’s ear in Eclogues, 6.3–4; also the sun god, hence ‘warm’.
46 Mercury God of eloquence. With the indefinite article a mercury could be simply a messenger: Shakespeare informs and inspires those who follow him. Mercury stole Apollo’s oxen and then charmed him with a lyre.
49 spun and woven ‘Perhaps remembering the literal and figurative senses of Greek ῥάπτω: to sew together, to plot or contrive’ (Donaldson, OA), with also a more obvious play on the senses of the Latin textum: woven, text.
51 merry Greek ‘Greek’ could mean ‘a merry fellow’ or ‘roisterer’ (OED, 5). Aristophanes (c. 460 – c. 386 bc) was famous for bawdy and sharply satirical comedy.
52 Terence . . . Plautus The Roman comic playwrights Publius Terentius Afer (d. 159 bc) and Titus Maccius Plautus (254–184 bc).
53 antiquated First cited usage: the verbal innovation sharply contrasts the vital energy of English with the antiquity of Rome.
55 Perhaps a retort to Francis Beaumont’s poem to Jonson which claimed to ‘let slip / (If I had any in me) scholarship, / And from all learning keep these lines as clear / As Shakespeare’s best are, which . . . show / How far sometimes a mortal man may go / By the dim light of nature’, printed in E. K. Chambers (1930), 2.224–5. Jonson believed art and nature should co-operate: see Discoveries, 1774–80, and his translation of Ars Poetica, 581–6.
56 gentle See ‘Shakes. Reader’ 2n.
58 fashion (1) ‘The action or process of making’ (OED, †1); (2) ‘particular shape’ (OED, 3a).
58 that he that man.
59 casts intends (OED, †44). The verb can also mean ‘plan, arrange’ (OED, †45), ‘grow’, ‘dig’, and ‘to pour metal into a mould’ (OED, 50), a sense which comes out as the poem is hammered on the anvil in line 61.
59 living line Cf. ‘lines of life’ in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 16.9, a phrase echoed in the commendatory verse to the First Folio by Jonson’s friend Hugh Holland: ‘Though his line of life went soon about, / The life yet of his lines shall never out.’
60 second heat second product of the forge; ‘heat’ means ‘the quantity of metal heated at one operation’ (OED, n. 8b); cf. Queens, 45.
61 anvil Cf. Horace, Ars Poetica, 441.
62 (And . . . it) Cf. Horace, Epistles, 2.2.120–5, in which an artist refines and prunes his work, and ‘twists and turns as though he is acting now a satyr, now a bumpkin of a Cyclops’.
62 frame make.
63 for instead of.
64 Modifies poeta nascitur, non fit ‘the poet is born, not made’, a proverb used in Sidney, An Apology, ed. G. Shepherd (1973), 132. It is not classical, but is found as early as the third century in pseudo-Acron’s commentary on Horace’s Ars Poetica, 295–8; see Ringler (1941).
65–6 Look . . . issue Again the arguments of Shakespeare’s ‘reproduction’ sonnets are adapted to Shakespeare’s works (cf., e.g. Sonnets 3, 6) as Jonson enacts his own claim that Shakespeare lives through his followers.
65 Look how Just as.
66 race (1) offspring (his writings and literary heirs); (2) liveliness of his writings (OED, n.2 10b; predating first cited usage); (3) onward rush (as of waters); Lipking (1981), 143 also suggests ‘flavour of the soil’ (OED, n.2 10a).
68 filèd polished. Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 85.4.
69 shake a lance Puns on Shakespeare’s name, and on his coat of arms (a falcon brandishing a spear). Similar puns are in lines 29–30, ‘Palmer’ (1.229). The idea is that Shakespeare creates ‘simulacra of his own mental features . . . and an array of tiny lances’, R. S. Peterson (1981), 189. For words as the image of their parent, the mind, see Discoveries, 1439–43.
71 swan of Avon Homer was known as the swan of Meander, Virgil as the swan of Mantua, and Pindar as the Dircaean swan (Horace, Odes, 4.2.25–7). Jonson also compares Holland to a swan, ‘Ode (Pancharis)’, 2.413–17, 2n., echoing Horace, Odes, 2.20. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men (Shakespeare’s company) wore the insignia of a flying silver swan (T. J. B. Spencer, 1974, 37).
74 take transport, delight.
76 Cf. G[eorge] C[hapman]’s dedicatory verses to Volp. 11: ‘So, thou shalt be advanced and made a star.’
76 constellation Presumably Cygnus, the swan. For the classical commonplace that the glorious dead becomes stars, see Und. 70.98n. For poets as swans, see ‘Ode (Splendour! O more than mortal)’, 1.555, headnote.
77 rage (1) poetic inspiration; (2) anger (hence ‘rage’ could both ‘chide’ and ‘cheer’ the stage).
78 influence Ethereal fluid was believed literally to flow from (Latin in-fluere) the stars and hence affect human conduct. The image is especially appropriate to a star that is linked with a river.
78 chide or cheer May echo Sonnet 15: ‘When I perceive that men as plants increase, / Cheerèd and checked even by the selfsame sky . . . ’; Shakespeare is again praised in language which comes from his own poems (which were not included in the folio edition).