Classical Criticism of Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson (1573–1637) is the first true classical critic in English literature who established rigorous neoclassical standards that shaped English poetry and drama. He was a born critic with stupendous encyclopaedic learning, with great penetration and with sound common sense. He translated Horace’s ‘Ars Poetica’ and came out with his ‘Timber or Discoveries’. Moreover the prologues and preface to his plays like, ‘Volpone’ and ‘Everyman in His Humour’ have his critical ideas.

The Age of Sidney was concerned with the justification of imaginative literature and the understanding of the basic principles of Art. But Jonson’s classicism is a reaction to the romantic exuberance, excess and extravagance of the Elizabethans. That is how he differs from the later neoclassicists, Dryden, Pope and Dr. Johnson. Ben Jonson considered the ancient Greek and Latin writers like Aristotle, Horace and Quintilian as ultimate models. He believed that good writing requires deliberate labour, architectural structures and severe self editing rather than mere spontaneous inspiration. He also echoed Horace and established that poetry and drama must both instruct and delight, serving a strong moral purpose to correct social vices, and human folly. Thus Jonson proved himself to be a legislative critic, who demanded intellectual vigor, rules and craftsmanship.

According to Ben Jonson, poetry contains all that is best in philosophy, divinity and science of politics, and leads and persuades men to virtue with a ravishing delight, while the other arts, but threaten and compel. As he says that poetry both delights and instructs, a typical Horatian doctrine, he becomes one of the Renaissance critics. Concerning poets, he says that they should be divinely inspired. They should exercise and practice to perfect the inner gifts and they should also have wide reading and knowledge.

Ben Jonson pays more attention to the theory of comedy than to that of tragedy in dramatic criticism. He opines that the parts or divisions of comedy and tragedy are the same, and both have a common end to teach and delight. The delights of comedy should arise not only from the sinful vices and weaknesses but also from human follies and errors. As regards to the three unities, he is less strict than Sidney. He lays particular stress on the unity of action. He says that the action should be allowed to grow until necessity demands a conclusion. In comedy, he championed a realistic depiction of contemporary manners and the satirical exposure of human absurdity through his theory of ‘humours’, where his characters were driven by a single dominating trait or obsession.

The greatest contribution of Ben Jonson is that in an age of literary lawlessness, he brought rules and principles. He demands clarity, precision and restraint but hates ‘excess’ in literature. That is why he says that Bacon is alive today because there is vitality, tone, strength and precision in his writing. Though Ben Jonson’s prejudiced and blunt pronouncements that Shakespeare ‘wanted art’ and that Spenser ‘writ no language’, invited severe criticism, he was the first great English critic, who gave to criticism a definite place in literary activities.

-------Thulasidharan V Thillaiakathu