every one must make due acknowledgment of the delightful love-passages at the meeting of Robin and Marian : Mar. You are a wanton. Rob. One, I do confess, I want-ed till you came; but now I have you, I'll grow to your embraces, till two souls Distilled into kisses through our lips, Do make one spirit of love. Mar. O Robin, Robin ! Rob. [Kisses her. Breathe, breathe awhile; what says my gentle Marian? Rob. What, a week! Was that so long? Mar. How long are lover's weeks, Do you think, Robin, when they are asunder? Are they not prisoner's years? Rob. To some they seem so; But being met again, they are school-boys' hours. Mar. That have got leave to play, and so we use them.1 That is indeed splendid; but there is no justification in calling The New Inn a work of dotage and imbecility because such touches are lacking. It is merely that this play belongs rather to the realm of humor-comedies than to the pastoral land of The Sad Shepherd. The humor is the humor of love, gently dealt with; but still humor is there, and in handling it the poet does not depart greatly from his satiric methods. His aim was an exposition of love and valor, and, with his eye firmly fixed on his objective point, he failed to note the opportunities and requirements that lay on either side of his path. Nothing could be a more convincing proof of this than the improbabilities of situation and absurdities of character that develop in the part played by the Nurse in the comedy. These glaring inconsistencies, on which the critics have founded their judgments of 'dotage,' and The Sad Shepherd, Wks. 6. 251-2. for which an adjective properly descriptive fails us, have not been mentioned hitherto in this consideration of the causes which led to the 'damning' of The New Inn, merely because, in my opinion, they did not play an important part in the ill-success of the comedy's first night. Read by the study lamp, these incongruous features reveal the author in a ridiculous light; but seen on the stage, in a play that abounded with life and action, they might have passed unnoticed. In them we have but another instance of the master of farce and satire appearing as a stranger in the strange land of romance. How different was his genius from that of Shakespeare! In the most farcical production of the latter there is a missing wife and mother, whose identity is revealed in the last act. And in what guise? As a reverend and honored abbess. But the drunken Welsh herald's widow, a charwoman at the inn- ! Alas for Ben Jonson! Truly, as Swinburne says, 'The Nemesis of the satirist is upon him!'1 Enough has been written to show that The New Inn deserves to be considered kith and kin of the other offspring of the poet's brain. It is a child of his later years, and the parent's characteristics are peculiarly impressed upon it; but no one who looks round upon the other plays that bear the name of Jonson can fail to trace the family resemblance. I entertain no hope that this brain-child will ever arouse admiration through its beauty of form or grace of action; if it be but realized that it is not a lusus naturæ, my purpose is accomplished. 1 With regard to Epicæne: A Study of Ben Jonson, p. 51. SOURCES A. An Episode Parallel in The Widow In drawing on the stores of the past, Jonson's method was diametrically opposed to that of Shakespeare. The latter took the general framework left by some predecessor, and, through the power of his genius, built up about it a new play; the former was independent in the creation of his outlines (which were often quite meagre), but made use of the ancients in selecting the materials with which he filled in the details, and rounded out a whole. In Jonson's plays, then, and especially in one like The New Inn, where there is little or no plot, we need have little expectation of finding an earlier work whose plan was adopted by the poet, and remodeled to suit his purpose. As a matter of fact, however, it seems that in the present instance we do have a recurrence of an earlier plan of action in the Beaufort-Frank-Lætitia incident, wherein is expressed the play's chief claim to a plot. Gifford1 noted a similarity in this respect to an episode in The Widow, which has since been recognized by Dyce2 and Koeppel. In that play, probably written by Middleton, but in which Jonson perhaps had a hand, a girl, Martia, disguised as a boy at the beginning of the play, in the course of the action assumes the dress of a girl with the connivance of certain persons in the play, and in this guise is married to Francisco. The revelation of this marriage is represented as follows: 1 Wks. 5. 433. 2 Beaumont and Fletcher, Wks. 4. 381. 3 Quellen-Studien, p. 18. Re-enter Violetta. Vio. Oh, master, gentlemen, and you, sweet widow, I think you are no forwarder, yet I know not, If ever you be sure to laugh again, Now is the time! Val. Vio. Why, what's the matter, wench? Bran. Speak, speak. Vio. Ha a marriage, A marriage; I cannot tell't for laughing-ha, ha! Bran. A marriage! do you make that a laughing matter? Vio. Ha-ay, and you'll make it so when you know all. Here they come, here they come, one man married to another! Val. How man to man! There'll be good sport at night to bring 'em both to bed: Do you see 'em now? ha, ha, ha! First. Suit. My daughter Martia! Martia. Oh, my father! your love and pardon, sir. Martia's femininity is thus established, and the play ends happily. This constitutes the only plot-source, if such it may be considered. The incident is not so striking that it might not be conceived quite independently of The Widow; but if Jonson had a hand in this comedy, it is quite likely that a reminiscence. prompted the employment of such a device in The New Inn. B. The Debt to the Philosophers A debt to earlier writers for many of the ideas and sentiments expressed in the dialogue is, on the other hand, unmistakably evident. A very superficial reading of The New Inn reveals the fact that Jonson was under a strong Platonic influence when he wrote it. This is most clearly indicated when Lovel comments on Beaufort's explanation of the origin of love: It is a fable of Plato's, in his Banquet, -3. 2. 87. A little further along in the same scene Lady Frampul exclaims: Who hath read Plato, Heliodore, or Tatius, 3. 2. 206. And Prudence adds her testimony in the case, crying out: gi' you ioy O' your Platonick loue, here, Mr Lovel. -3. 2. 238. Such scattered allusions carry with them an intimation that Plato's works will bear close study with reference to an appraisal of Jonson's debt to the Greek; yet no investigation to this end has been made, or hardly even suggested, by previous editors and critics of The New Inn. Whalley noted a passage in Love's Triumph Through Callipolis as a 'fiction of Plato,' but did not in any way refer it to its parallel in this play; Ward has spoken of the 'oration in praise of "Platonic" love,' but beyond that he does not go; the others have made no mention of it whatever. The exposition of love in the second scene of the Third Act is the portion of The New Inn which bids us look back to Plato for the origin of its inspiration. The Symposium contains the philosopher's great dissertation upon love-his only one on that subject, with the exception of the Phædrus-and in it we are able to find resemblances close enough to Jonson's work to justify an assertion that the Symposium was the chief and direct source from which our poet drew. A similarity of ideas, rather than any word-for-word likeness, marks the closeness of the resemblance; but inasmuch as all the points in Lovel's speeches can be paralleled in the Greek, and since an acknowledgment is made of indebtedness to the Symposium, 1 Wks. 8. 87. See 3. 2. 73 ff. note. |