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a "familiar" to help him at gambling and who is made to believe that he is nephew to the Queen of Fairies (Dol later appearing to him as his aunt). Abel Drugger is building a new shop and wants to know how to arrange his door and shelves. Most important of all is Sir Epicure Mammon, a really magnificent picture of greed and sensuality, who pours out a torrent of images and words and knowledge. Then there is Tribulation, a pastor at Amsterdam, who wants money for the enrichment of his church and who sends his deacon Ananias to deal with the alchemist before he comes himself. Finally comes Dame Pliant, who is also duped. Jeremie in the meantime, while Captain Face in the street, is in the house Lungs, Subtle's assistant. Lovewit returns at last to hear from the neighbors of unusual events at his house; but Jeremie comes to an understanding with him inasmuch as his endeavors have gained for his master a wife. The Alchemist has been greatly praised. Coleridge remarked enthusiastically that it was one of "the three most perfect plots ever planned." When all possible detraction is made for the superlative, the play still remains as that production which later criticism has ranked highest among Jonson's dramas.

Bartholomew Fair (1614) is in prose and is a pure farce, showing the humors of a London crowd on a clear day. A Puritan preacher rebukes the wickedness of the fair and then enjoys the good things there. Among the prominent characters are Littlewit, the proctor, who has a pretty wife; Cokes, the foolish squire; Edgeworth, the cutpurse; Joan Trash, the gingerbread woman; and Ursula, the pig-woman. One after another they all pass by, and as we see the procession that Jonson has given us

more and more we wonder if this great master of satire and cynicism has ever drawn for us a truly noble man or a truly virtuous woman.

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From what has been said, Jonson's outstanding qualities as a dramatist have perhaps been suggested. "His wide and penetrating observation of manners, whether of city or of court, and his ingenious and systematic construction of plots are obvious merits. But the great excellence of both his tragedies and his comedies is their delineation of character. What most discourages the reader of Jonson is the absence of charm. Jonson was certainly not incapable of depicting noble passions or of writing winsome verse; but in his plays resolutely refused to attempt either. He did not write of passions, but of follies-not of fairyland, but of London; he often deliberately preferred prose to poetry, and he always restrained poetry to his subject." 3 As a great realist, however, he exercised an influence that has continued down to the present day. In the novel as well as in the drama this has been felt, and Fielding and Dickens especially owe much to his suggestion.

The final influence of Jonson on his age, however, "was an influence of restraint; and never were there wilder steeds than those that drew the gorgeous, glittering car of Elizabethan romantic drama. It was Jonson that reclaimed the drama from amateurishness and insisted on its serious function as an art existing for more than idle diversion. It was Jonson that set a standard of literary excellence, not recognized before his time; and assumed in so doing an attitude of independence towards the public. Jonson developed the masque and devised a species of

Ashley H. Thorndike: "Ben Jonson," in C. H. E. L., VI, 29-30.

Roman tragedy conceived historically and freed alike from the restrictions of Senecan models and the improbabilities of romantic treatment. Most important of all, Jonson added the comedy of manners or humours, as he called it, to the forms of the English drama. It was this satirically heightened picture of contemporary life handled with a restraint and finish ultimately traceable to classical example that survived on the stage after the Restoration in the comedies of D'Avenant, Dryden, Etherege, and Vanbrugh. In a word, Jonson gave to the later drama one of its two permanent types." 4

39. George Chapman. George Chapman (1559?1634) was born near Hitchin in Hertfordshire and possibly studied at both Oxford and Cambridge. From passages in his plays he is thought to have traveled on the continent and especially to have served on an expedition to the Netherlands; but many years of his life are a blank. He was mentioned by Meres in 1598 as a writer of distinction in both tragedy and comedy. In 1605 he was imprisoned along with Jonson because of the passage in Eastward Ho! referring to the Scots. He was distinguished among the contemporaries of Shakespeare, however, not only for his plays but also for his poems and translations. He is perhaps best known for his vigorous English version of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, in fourteen and ten syllable lines respectively. In 1604 he was appointed sewer (i. e. cupbearer) in ordinary" to Prince Henry, eldest son of James I. It was under the patronage of this prince that the translation of the Iliad was completed in 1611 and that of the Odyssey begun, a

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* Schelling: Introduction to Eastward Hoe and The Alchemist,

folio volume entitled The Whole Works of Homer appearing in 1616. One recalls in this connection the highly appreciative sonnet by Keats, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer."

Bussy D'Ambois (1598?) and All Fools (1599) were among the first and most successful of Chapman's comedies. The first of these, based upon the life of a Frenchman of the sixteenth century, readily exhibits the qualities of appeal to an Elizabethan audience. It contains much braggadocio and intrigue, portraying the sudden elevation of Bussy from the condition of a poor man to that of a courtier making love to the Duchess of Guise, and his ultimate downfall through the schemes of the man who first brought him to court. "Throughout the drama men and women are playing for great stakes. No one is ever at rest. Action and passion are both at fever heat. We move in an atmosphere of duels and state intrigues by day, of assignations and murders by night. Even the subordinate persons in the drama, the stewards and waitingwomen, partake of the restless spirit of their superiors. Thus Chapman aimed throughout at energy of expression at all costs." The plotting of the play is on the whole better than the characterization. All Fools similarly places emphasis primarily on plotting. The play is a satire on the life of Elizabethan London, and is really an example of the new comedy of humours, popularized by Jonson.

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The Gentleman Usher (1601-2) and Monsieur D'Olive (1605) are two other noteworthy productions. The Gentleman Usher is Bassiolo, chief servant in the house of Lord Lasso, father of Margaret, heroine of the play. His

"Boas: Introduction to Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, xxvi.

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business is to act as a go-between in the love affair of Margaret and Vincentio, son of the Duke Alphonso, who is himself paying court to Margaret. All of this is conventional enough; but there is nothing conventional about the actual working out of the plot. Monsieur D'Olive is in every way one of the best examples of Chapman's work. Above the story of Vandome, who must work to bring his old mistress out of seclusion and to win his brother-in-law to a healthier love than that for his embalmed first wife, stands the triumphant figure of Monsieur D'Olive, an upstart and a braggart, but also a wit whose good humor is imperturbable. As Bassiolo is thought to have received some suggestion from Malvolio, so D'Olive's questioning of his followers (III, 1) reminds one of Falstaff.

"The general impression left by a repeated and consecutive reading of Chapman's comedies is one of lively and vigorous comic force. This is due in the main to the abundance of action that characterizes his plays. It is quite in keeping with this abundance of action that Chapman's humor should be one of incident and situation rather than of character and dialogue. Nor, it must be confessed, is he any great master of characterization. Perhaps his most noticeable defect, however, is his want of constructive ability. On the whole more nearly allied to Jonson than to any other Elizabethan poet, not only by the circumstances of his life but by his scholarly acquirements and the general temper of his mind, he quite lacks Jonson's architectonic genius. With one or two exceptions his plays are ill-planned and badly proportioned. [On the other hand] in certain plays, Sir Giles Goosecap, Monsieur D'Olive, and especially The Gentleman Usher,

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