Ben Jonson in the Romantic Age (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Ben Jonson in the Romantic Age Neil Rhodes Tom Lockwood , Ben Jonson in the Romantic Age (Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 272. £45 hb. 0 19 928078 9. The age of organic form has long been thought unreceptive to the 'mechanic humour' of Ben Jonson. Tom Lockwood begins this new study of the Romantic response to Jonson by quoting Dryden's disparaging phrase and pointing out that the term 'mechanic' doubles as a description of Jonson's method of dramatic construction and as an indicator of his concern with the employment roles of his characters. So partly to offer an alternative, less mechanical view of Jonson, and one more attuned to Romantic sympathies, Lockwood begins both parts of his book with a discussion of Francis Godolphin Waldron's edition and continuation of the pastoral The Sad Shepherd (1783). The first of these chapters serves as an introduction to the historical resituation of Jonson in the period in the contexts first of theatrical performance, then of criticism, and finally of editing through a discussion of Gifford's 1816 edition of the Works. The later chapter sets in motion the second half of the book which is concerned with allusion and imitation and focuses in particular on Coleridge, his son Hartley and Southey. This gives the study a pleasant symmetry, and Lockwood's habit of introducing the subject of each chapter at the end of the one before produces a series of links which helps to tighten the argument of the work as a whole. The book has a conscious elegance of construction (andof phrasing) which is itself rather Jonsonian. It is certainly true that the Romantic age is largely omitted from the record of Jonsonian reception. D.H. Craig's Critical Heritage volume stops at 1798 and Robert Gayle Noyes's Ben Jonson on the English Stage, 1660–1776 takes Garrick's retirement as its terminus ad quem. So there is some uncharted territory here and Lockwood's aim is to produce the Jonsonian equivalent to Jonathan Bate's Shakespeare and the English Romantic Imagination and Shakespearean Constitutions. This is an ambitious agenda and Lockwood is hindered from fulfilling it partly through his own scrupulous objectivity. In his chapter on 'Theatrical Jonson' he acknowledges the failure of Colman's adaptation of Epicoene in 1776; he accepts that Jonson disappears from the stage from the late 1780s to the late 1790s and that the revivals which followed were 'unremarkable'; he also agrees that the Drury Lane production of Every Man In in 1802 was a failure.The one bright spot seems to have been Kean's performance as Kiteley in the same play in 1816. Lockwood also suggests that the earlier unsuccessful production of Epicoene may have influenced School for Scandal, but he does not discuss Colman's well-received 1783 revival of Volpone. Despite his claim that 1776 doesn't 'signal the close of Jonson's theatrical vitality', his evidence to the contrary seems rather thin, and this remark is in fact followed by a discussion of text and paratext. Lockwood is really much more at ease with the history of the book than with plays in performance. His acknowledged masters are D.F. McKenzie and Jerome McGann and the chapter on the theatre begins with a lovingly detailed account of 'a duodecimo, published by a syndicate of four stationers' with 'three stab-holes in the gutter'. The book in question turns out to be a heavily annotated edition of Every Man In which had been used as a prompt copy. It is clearly a fascinating document, but the density of the annotation, as Lockwood admits, makes it almost impossible to decipher, so it yields no information about how Jonson was staged in the Romantic theatre. Lockwood's earlier claim that when 'performance … is not accessible, the resources of the library perform an equivalent service to Jonson' certainly indicates his preferences, but it it is not substantiated by this example. Unfortunately, when we move into Jonson's critical reception during the period the record still seems to be largely negative. Johnson and Warton set the tone and minor commentators such as Isaac Reed, Thomas Davies, Isaac D'Israeli, Charles...