Shakespeare

New theatres were about to be erected in the city and northern suburbs, also, among them the Fortune and the newly refurbished Boar’s Head. In addition, the boys’ companies were soon to be in operation again. In the following year an indoor playhouse was opened in the precincts of St. Paul’s grammar school, where the children of St. Paul’s performed two plays by a new writer, who referred to himself as the “barking satirist,” John Marston. The competition demonstrated the vitality of theatrical life in London, but it was an annoyance to the already established players. Nevertheless the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were still at the Curtain, and the Admiral’s Men across the river at the Rose. There is no record of the players touring in this year, so it can be supposed that Shakespeare and the rest of the company were playing in the capital. We know that they were performing Ben Jonson’s new play, Every Man in His Humour, in the autumn of 1598. So Shakespeare acted in a drama written by one whom posterity has declared to be his “rival.” Reports of such rivalry are always greatly exaggerated by various partisans. We may place them against the testimony that Shakespeare became godfather to one of Jonson’s children.

The wayward, obstinate and bad-tempered character of Ben Jonson is well enough known. But it is often forgotten that he was a supreme literary artist who wrote for the play-going public only on his own terms. Unlike Shakespeare he was not born to please. He had genuine faith and pride in his achievement, however, and ensured that his dramas were properly collected and published. His opinion about Shakespeare’s work seems to have been one of admiration only slightly modified by misgivings about what he considered to be his excessive fluency and his dramatic “absurdities.” Jonson was a classicist by inclination and by training. He recognised Shakespeare’s genius but considered it prone to extravagance and unrealism. “In reading some bombast speeches of Macbeth,” according to John Dryden, “which are not to be understood, he [Ben Jonson] used to say that it was horrour.”² There are also reports of conversations between the two men at the Mermaid Tavern. The tavern itself lay back from Bread Street, with passage entries from Cheapside and Friday Street. Since Jonson had a reputation for a loose tongue, flowing with sexual innuendoes and sexual gossip, these dialogues were perhaps not always very edifying; we have seen that Shakespeare himself was not averse to bawdry. Modern auditors would no doubt be shocked. “Many were the wit-combates betwixt him and Ben Johnson,” wrote Thomas Fuller in his Worthies of England:

which two I behold like a Spanish great Gallion and an English man of War; Master Johnson (like the former) was built far higher in Learning; Solid but Slow in his performances. Shake-spear, with the English-man of War, lesser in bulk but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his Wit and Invention.³

This itself is a pleasing invention. Fuller has captured something of the spirit of both men but, having been born as late as 1608, can hardly be cited as a witness.

In this period Sir Walter Raleigh established a “Mermaid Club” that met on the first Friday of every month; among its members, according to one of Ben Jonson’s early editors, were Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Donne and Jonson himself. Beaumont wrote some verses to Jonson in which he remarks:

What things have we seen

Done at the “Mermaid”? Heard words that have been

So nimble, and so full of subtle flame …⁴

Whether any of those “words” came from Shakespeare is open to doubt. Among the members of the Mermaid Club, however, was Edward Blount; Blount was one of the publishers of Shakespeare’s First Folio. So there are connections. Jonson at this time was an avowed Catholic who used to meet his co-religionists at the Mermaid. The previous owner of the Mermaid had been the Catholic printer John Rastell, who was also brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More. Certain associations cling to specific sites. At a later date Shakespeare purchased a house harbouring Catholic associations; one of his co-purchasers was the landlord of the Mermaid, William Johnson.