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CHAPTER IX.

MASQUES; THEIR POPULARITY DURING JAMES THE FIRST'S REIGN.

ANECDOTE

OF SHAKESPEARE AND DAVENANT.-BEN JONSON; HIS UNPOPULARITY AS A
DRAMATIST.-SUCCESS OF HIS MASQUES.-
HIS HYMENEI' AND 'MASQUE OF
QUEENS' PERFORMED BEFORE THE COURT.—THE ENGLISH STAGE OWES THE
CLASSICAL DRAMA TO JONSON.-QUARRELS OF JONSON AND INIGO JONES.-
SHAKESPEARE AND JONSON.THE CLUB IN THE DEVIL TAVERN.-THE TONE
OF LITERATURE IN THE TIME OF ELIZABETH AND CHARLES II.

THE MASQUE OF FORMER DAYS.

189

CHAPTER IX.

WE boast of the wealth and luxury of our age; we load our tables with silver and gold instead of pewter, as in former days; these tables themselves are made of fine mahogany instead of deal and unpolished oak; we have (or we had) a magnificent opera house, fine theatres, innumerable concerts; still are our diversions poor compared with those which preceded the crisis of the Great Rebellion: poor in contrivances, poor in intellectual enjoyments, poor even in the vulgar item of cost. The masque, for instance, was a far more expensive, as well as nobler entertainment than any of modern days. It was in its perfection during King James's reign ; it became extinct in the civil wars. Davenant, Daniel, and Chapman were among its best composers, but Ben Jonson surpassed every competitor in a species of composition which required the most versatile talents. William Davenant owed to the notion that he was Shakespeare's son-a notion. which gratified the poet laureate's vanity-some of the celebrity which so completely died away after his death.

Anthony Wood used to relate that when Shakespeare made his annual visits to Stratford-upon-Avon he usually baited at the Crown inn in Oxford; it was kept by John Davenant, the father of Sir William. Mistress Davenant was very comely and even accomplished, and her husband was an enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare's plays. Their son, young

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Will, was a little schoolboy in the town; he too had caught the prevalent enthusiasm about Shakespeare, and whenever he heard of his arrival he would fly to meet him. One day, an old townsman seeing the boy running homewards almost out of breath, asked him where he was going. Will answered, 'to see his godfather, Shakespeare.' 'There's a good boy,' answered the old man; but have a care that you don't use God's name in vain.'

Jonson, notwithstanding the imputation of jealousy towards Shakespeare, paid to his popularity, as well as to his merit, a tribute, after the death of the great dramatist.

'Sweet Swan of Avon, what a sight it were,

To see thee in our waters yet appear;

And make these flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza and our James.'

Eliza and our James' would not, however, so continuously have patronized Ben Jonson had he confined himself to the production merely of the regular drama. 'The genius of Jonson seems,' says Dr. Drake, 'to have forsaken him when he touched the tragic chords.' From the following lines Jonson appears to have been very much of the same opinion as Nathan Drake. It is true that it was after the failure of the New Inn'-which was hissed off the stage -that these bitter lines were written; but it is evident that the author of 'Volpone' was aware of his unpopularity as a dramatist in his own day.

'Come leave the loathed stage,

And more the loathsome age

Where pride and impudence in fashion knit,

Usurp the chair of wit:

Indicting and arraigning every day

Something they call a play;

Let their fastidious, vain,

Commission of the brain,

Run on and rage, sweat, censure, and condemn :
They were not made for thee, less thou for them.

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