Judging Jonson: Ben Jonson's Satirical Self-Defense in Poetaster

Abstract

This essay argues that Ben Jonson's antagonism with his audience in the comical satires was at least in part related to his translation of the satirist to the theater. Whereas printed satires anticipated and even encouraged the displeasure of their readers, Jonson's comical satires attempt to forestall the potential displeasure of the audience by replacing their judgment of his plays with his own judgment of his plays. When he was accused of arrogance by his fellow playwright John Marston, Jonson put Marston's judgment of Jonson's judgment on trial. This is the central “arraignment” of Poetaster, a play that repudiates Marston's accusation and upholds Jonson's confident self-assessment by demonstrating Jonson's merit. Jonson's satirical self-defense, finally, has implications for our broader theoretical understanding of Early Modern satire. The self-defensiveness of Jonson's satire may be unusually explicit, but it may well be an intrinsic feature of Early Modern satire; so too is the personal nature of Jonson's attack upon Marston much more representative of Early Modern satire than most critics have realized.