The entry for Esmé Stuart, brother of Ludovic, Duke of Lennox, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography occupies a mere two paragraphs. But who was this person who served James I from 1603 until his death in 1624? This article argues for Esmé's importance and produces evidence to support the claim, beginning with his becoming a Gentleman of the Bedchamber and member of the Privy Council in 1603. Later that year the king granted Esmé a license to export 6,000 tons of “double beer.” This marks just the beginning of the king's exceptional largesse. More grants and privileges flowed Esmé's way, including the title of Earl of March in 1619. Esmé's involvement with the arts, especially drama, has largely been ignored; but he served as patron, performer, and protector of dramatists. He formed his own acting company, he danced in court masques, and he helped dramatists get out of prison. Esmé had a special relationship with Ben Jonson. For five years Jonson even lived in Esmé's household in Blackfriars. He gratefully acknowledged such generosity, claiming in Epigram 127 that Esmé had given him “new life.” In poetry and in the dedication to Sejanus (1616), Jonson cited Esmé's influence and hospitality. This article creates the first full portrait of Esmé: his personal and court life and his interest and participation in the theater.
{"title":"Ben Jonson's Patron, Esmé Stuart","authors":"David M. Bergeron","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2024.0359","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2024.0359","url":null,"abstract":"The entry for Esmé Stuart, brother of Ludovic, Duke of Lennox, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography occupies a mere two paragraphs. But who was this person who served James I from 1603 until his death in 1624? This article argues for Esmé's importance and produces evidence to support the claim, beginning with his becoming a Gentleman of the Bedchamber and member of the Privy Council in 1603. Later that year the king granted Esmé a license to export 6,000 tons of “double beer.” This marks just the beginning of the king's exceptional largesse. More grants and privileges flowed Esmé's way, including the title of Earl of March in 1619. Esmé's involvement with the arts, especially drama, has largely been ignored; but he served as patron, performer, and protector of dramatists. He formed his own acting company, he danced in court masques, and he helped dramatists get out of prison. Esmé had a special relationship with Ben Jonson. For five years Jonson even lived in Esmé's household in Blackfriars. He gratefully acknowledged such generosity, claiming in Epigram 127 that Esmé had given him “new life.” In poetry and in the dedication to Sejanus (1616), Jonson cited Esmé's influence and hospitality. This article creates the first full portrait of Esmé: his personal and court life and his interest and participation in the theater.","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141044532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay discusses how in Much Ado About Nothing, Measure for Measure, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, providential events that work over and above those plays' benevolent manipulators serve to help bring about these plays' comic endings in ways that transcend human control, both its well-intended aspects as well as its problematic aspects. These providential events also offer grace and mercy toward the plays' various transgressors who, demonstrating repentance, are freed from the justice their transgressions merit and are consequently granted hopeful futures. By contrast, in the tragedies Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and King Lear, acts of misfortune help aid the malevolent machinations of those characters that manipulate others for their own wicked ends. But these incidents of bad fortune are not sufficient to bring about tragedy, but rather act in conjunction with the stubborn and violent decisions of the tragedy's protagonists, whose poor choices coincide with unfortunate developments to bring about tragedy for the protagonists and those whom they love. This essay maintains that the workings of Providence in these comedies and romances is in keeping with the Christian grounding evident throughout Shakespeare's dramas, concluding that in a fallen world, tragedy is normative, whereas providential intervention is necessary for the happy endings of the discussed comedies and romances.
{"title":"Transcending Justice, Transcending Human Control: Overarching Providence in Shakespeare's Comedies and Romances","authors":"David V. Urban","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2024.0362","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2024.0362","url":null,"abstract":"This essay discusses how in Much Ado About Nothing, Measure for Measure, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, providential events that work over and above those plays' benevolent manipulators serve to help bring about these plays' comic endings in ways that transcend human control, both its well-intended aspects as well as its problematic aspects. These providential events also offer grace and mercy toward the plays' various transgressors who, demonstrating repentance, are freed from the justice their transgressions merit and are consequently granted hopeful futures. By contrast, in the tragedies Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and King Lear, acts of misfortune help aid the malevolent machinations of those characters that manipulate others for their own wicked ends. But these incidents of bad fortune are not sufficient to bring about tragedy, but rather act in conjunction with the stubborn and violent decisions of the tragedy's protagonists, whose poor choices coincide with unfortunate developments to bring about tragedy for the protagonists and those whom they love. This essay maintains that the workings of Providence in these comedies and romances is in keeping with the Christian grounding evident throughout Shakespeare's dramas, concluding that in a fallen world, tragedy is normative, whereas providential intervention is necessary for the happy endings of the discussed comedies and romances.","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141029063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article reassesses Ben Jonson's relationship to the Roman-Catholic priest and missionary Thomas Wright (c. 1561–1623). Wright plays two roles in critical accounts of Jonson's life and works: first as the spiritual mentor who probably worked Jonson's conversion in 1598, second as the dedicatee of one of Jonson's only six extant sonnets. My article applies literary analysis to the sonnet Jonson wrote for Wright in order to show that it signals negative feelings for the priest. This recognition is important to Jonson studies for two reasons. It contributes the first extended literary analysis of an artful poem by Jonson. In addition, it raises questions about the tendency of much recent scholarship to explain various aspects of Jonson's life and works by reference to his religion. In contrast to this recent religious turn stands an older narrative about Jonson as a secular individualist largely indifferent to the supernatural. By revealing Jonson to be struggling against a figure central to his spiritual biography, I suggest a middle ground between these two narratives in which the secularizing aspects of Jonson's thought are enmeshed with, rather than opposed to, the religious aspects emphasized by recent scholarship.
{"title":"Ben Jonson on Father Thomas Wright","authors":"Victor Lenthe","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2024.0360","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2024.0360","url":null,"abstract":"This article reassesses Ben Jonson's relationship to the Roman-Catholic priest and missionary Thomas Wright (c. 1561–1623). Wright plays two roles in critical accounts of Jonson's life and works: first as the spiritual mentor who probably worked Jonson's conversion in 1598, second as the dedicatee of one of Jonson's only six extant sonnets. My article applies literary analysis to the sonnet Jonson wrote for Wright in order to show that it signals negative feelings for the priest. This recognition is important to Jonson studies for two reasons. It contributes the first extended literary analysis of an artful poem by Jonson. In addition, it raises questions about the tendency of much recent scholarship to explain various aspects of Jonson's life and works by reference to his religion. In contrast to this recent religious turn stands an older narrative about Jonson as a secular individualist largely indifferent to the supernatural. By revealing Jonson to be struggling against a figure central to his spiritual biography, I suggest a middle ground between these two narratives in which the secularizing aspects of Jonson's thought are enmeshed with, rather than opposed to, the religious aspects emphasized by recent scholarship.","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141054943","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay examines the disruptive, even skeptical, potential of female silence in two plays not often discussed together: Ben Jonson’s Volpone (Celia) and William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (Isabella). These silences – whether voluntary or forced – come after each woman delivers an impassioned speech defending herself from an attempted physical assault. In both instances, their concluding silences help the playwrights critique the very comic conventions they are deploying. For Shakespeare, Isabella’s refusal to respond to Duke Vincentio’s proposals of marriage reflects the play’s skepticism of the Duke’s theatrical manipulations and signals religious and political uncertainty for a woman who begins the play as a would-be nun and effectively betrothed to the Church. For Jonson, Celia’s forced silence before her dismissal to her father’s house sends a similar message of a woman awkwardly positioned neither within nor without marriage. However, Jonson’s silencing of his paragon of virtue reflects his attempt to possess such virtue for himself, recuperating the moral authority of the true playwright. This essay thus contributes to studies of how the Poets’ War involved Shakespeare and continued past its presumed ceasefire in 1601.
{"title":"Female Silence and Poetic Authority in Jonson’s Volpone and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure","authors":"Suzanne M. Tartamella","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2024.0361","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2024.0361","url":null,"abstract":"This essay examines the disruptive, even skeptical, potential of female silence in two plays not often discussed together: Ben Jonson’s Volpone (Celia) and William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (Isabella). These silences – whether voluntary or forced – come after each woman delivers an impassioned speech defending herself from an attempted physical assault. In both instances, their concluding silences help the playwrights critique the very comic conventions they are deploying. For Shakespeare, Isabella’s refusal to respond to Duke Vincentio’s proposals of marriage reflects the play’s skepticism of the Duke’s theatrical manipulations and signals religious and political uncertainty for a woman who begins the play as a would-be nun and effectively betrothed to the Church. For Jonson, Celia’s forced silence before her dismissal to her father’s house sends a similar message of a woman awkwardly positioned neither within nor without marriage. However, Jonson’s silencing of his paragon of virtue reflects his attempt to possess such virtue for himself, recuperating the moral authority of the true playwright. This essay thus contributes to studies of how the Poets’ War involved Shakespeare and continued past its presumed ceasefire in 1601.","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141058223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The English Renaissance Playwright’s Classical Encyclopedia: The Lectiones Antiquae of Caelius Rhodiginus as a Resource for Jonson and Chapman","authors":"Thomas Matthew Vozar","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2024.0364","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2024.0364","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141042416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article identifies a hitherto unnoticed reference to Saint Uncumber, a bearded woman martyr, in Ben Jonson's Epicene. Saint Uncumber was venerated and polemicised in England through to the seventeenth century, with her memory – and several images – persisting long after the Protestant Reformations. This article suggests that Jonson invokes Saint Uncumber as an archetype for the play's miraculous disruption of gender and frustrated marriage.
本文指出了本-琼森的《史诗》中一处迄今未被注意到的关于大胡子女殉道者 Saint Uncumber 的记载。直到 17 世纪，英国人一直对圣人安康伯（Saint Uncumber）怀有崇敬之情，并对其进行了论战，在新教改革之后，人们对她的记忆--以及她的一些形象--一直延续了很长时间。这篇文章认为，琼森引用圣人安康伯作为该剧中神奇地破坏性别和受挫婚姻的原型。
{"title":"Epicene and the Bearded Woman Saint","authors":"Brett Greatley-Hirsch","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2024.0363","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2024.0363","url":null,"abstract":"This article identifies a hitherto unnoticed reference to Saint Uncumber, a bearded woman martyr, in Ben Jonson's Epicene. Saint Uncumber was venerated and polemicised in England through to the seventeenth century, with her memory – and several images – persisting long after the Protestant Reformations. This article suggests that Jonson invokes Saint Uncumber as an archetype for the play's miraculous disruption of gender and frustrated marriage.","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141043515","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rebecca M. Rush, The Fetters of Rhyme: Liberty and Poetic Form in Early Modern England","authors":"Richard Danson Brown","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2024.0366","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2024.0366","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141028532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lee Oser, Christian Humanism in Shakespeare: A Study in Religion and Literature","authors":"Jordan Zajac O. P.","doi":"10.3366/bjj.2024.0365","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2024.0365","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40862,"journal":{"name":"Ben Jonson Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141052792","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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