《【国外英文文学】Every Man in his Humour.doc》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《【国外英文文学】Every Man in his Humour.doc（107页珍藏版）》请在taowenge.com淘文阁网|工程机械CAD图纸|机械工程制图|CAD装配图下载|SolidWorks_CaTia_CAD_UG_PROE_设计图分享下载上搜索。
1、【国外英文文学】Every Man in his HumourEvery Man in his Humourby Ben JonsonINTRODUCTIONTHE greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent co
2、urse of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least in his age.Ben Jonson came of the stock that was centuries after to give to the world Thomas Carlyle; for Jonsons grandfather was of Annandale, over the Solway, wh
3、ence he migrated to England. Jonsons father lost his estate under Queen Mary, having been cast into prison and forfeited. He entered the church, but died a month before his illustrious son was born, leaving his widow and child in poverty. Jonsons birthplace was Westminster, and the time of his birth
4、 early in 1573. He was thus nearly ten years Shakespeares junior, and less well off, if a trifle better born. But Jonson did not profit even by this slight advantage. His mother married beneath her, a wright or bricklayer, and Jonson was for a time apprenticed to the trade. As a youth he attracted t
5、he attention of the famous antiquary, William Camden, then usher at Westminster School, and there the poet laid the solid foundations of his classical learning. Jonson always held Camden in veneration, acknowledging that to him he owed, All that I am in arts, all that I know: and dedicating his firs
6、t dramatic success, Every Man in His Humour, to him. It is doubtful whether Jonson ever went to either university, though Fuller says that he was statutably admitted into St. Johns College, Cambridge. He tells us that he took no degree, but was later Master of Arts in both the universities, by their
7、 favour, not his study. When a mere youth Jonson enlisted as a soldier trailing his pike in Flanders in the protracted wars of William the Silent against the Spanish. Jonson was a large and raw-boned lad; he became by his own account in time exceedingly bulky. In chat with his friend William Drummon
8、d of Hawthornden, Jonson told how in his service in the Low Countries he had, in the face of both the camps, killed an enemy, and taken opima spolia from him; and how since his coming to England, being appealed to the fields, he had killed his adversary which had hurt him in the arm and whose sword
9、was ten inches longer than his. Jonsons reach may have made up for the lack of his sword; certainly his prowess lost nothing in the telling. Obviously Jonson was brave, combative, and not averse to talking of himself and his doings.In 1592, Jonson returned from abroad penniless. Soon after he marrie
10、d, almost as early and quite as imprudently as Shakespeare. He told Drummond curtly that his wife was a shrew, yet honest; for some years he lived apart from her in the household of Lord Albany. Yet two touching epitaphs among Jonsons Epigrams, On my first daughter, and On my first son, attest the w
11、armth of the poets family affections. The daughter died in infancy, the son of the plague; another son grew up to manhood little credit to his father whom he survived. We know nothing beyond this of Jonsons domestic life.How soon Jonson drifted into what we now call grandly the theatrical profession
12、 we do not know. In 1593 Marlowe made his tragic exit from life, and Greene, Shakespeares other rival on the popular stage, had preceded Marlowe in an equally miserable death the year before. Shakespeare already had the running to himself. Jonson appears first in the employment of Philip Henslowe, t
13、he exploiter of several troupes of players, manager, and father-in-law of the famous actor, Edward Alleyn. From entries in Henslowes Diary, a species of theatrical account book which has been handed down to us, we know that Jonson was connected with the Admirals men; for he borrowed ? of Henslowe, J
14、uly 28, 1597, paying back 3s. 9d. on the same day on account of his share (in what is not altogether clear); while later, on December 3, of the same year, Henslowe advanced 20s. to him upon a book which he showed the plot unto the company which he promised to deliver unto the company at Christmas ne
15、xt. In the next August Jonson was in collaboration with Chettle and Porter in a play called Hot Anger Soon Cold. All this points to an association with Henslowe of some duration, as no mere tyro would be thus paid in advance upon mere promise. From allusions in Dekkers play, Satiromastix, it appears
16、 that Jonson, like Shakespeare, began life as an actor, and that he ambled in a leather pitch by a play-wagon taking at one time the part of Hieronimo in Kyds famous play, The Spanish Tragedy. By the beginning of 1598, Jonson, though still in needy circumstances, had begun to receive recognition. Fr
17、ancis Meres - well known for his Comparative Discourse of our English Poets with the Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets, printed in 1598, and for his mention therein of a dozen plays of Shakespeare by title - accords to Ben Jonson a place as one of our best in tragedy, a matter of some surprise, as no
18、known tragedy of Jonson from so early a date has come down to us. That Jonson was at work on tragedy, however, is proved by the entries in Henslowe of at least three tragedies, now lost, in which he had a hand. These are Page of Plymouth, King Robert II. of Scotland, and Richard Crookback. But all o
19、f these came later, on his return to Henslowe, and range from August 1599 to June 1602.Returning to the autumn of 1598, an event now happened to sever for a time Jonsons relations with Henslowe. In a letter to Alleyn, dated September 26 of that year, Henslowe writes: I have lost one of my company th
20、at hurteth me greatly; that is Gabriel Spencer, for he is slain in Hogsden fields by the hands of Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer. The last word is perhaps Henslowes thrust at Jonson in his displeasure rather than a designation of his actual continuance at his trade up to this time. It is fair to Jonson
21、 to remark however, that his adversary appears to have been a notorious fire-eater who had shortly before killed one Feeke in a similar squabble. Duelling was a frequent occurrence of the time among gentlemen and the nobility; it was an imprudent breach of the peace on the part of a player. This due
22、l is the one which Jonson described years after to Drummond, and for it Jonson was duly arraigned at Old Bailey, tried, and convicted. He was sent to prison and such goods and chattels as he had were forfeited. It is a thought to give one pause that, but for the ancient law permitting convicted felo
23、ns to plead, as it was called, the benefit of clergy, Jonson might have been hanged for this deed. The circumstance that the poet could read and write saved him; and he received only a brand of the letter T, for Tyburn, on his left thumb. While in jail Jonson became a Roman Catholic; but he returned
24、 to the faith of the Church of England a dozen years later.On his release, in disgrace with Henslowe and his former associates, Jonson offered his services as a playwright to Henslowes rivals, the Lord Chamberlains company, in which Shakespeare was a prominent shareholder. A tradition of long standi
25、ng, though not susceptible of proof in a court of law, narrates that Jonson had submitted the manuscript of Every Man in His Humour to the Chamberlains men and had received from the company a refusal; that Shakespeare called him back, read the play himself, and at once accepted it. Whether this stor
26、y is true or not, certain it is that Every Man in His Humour was accepted by Shakespeares company and acted for the first time in 1598, with Shakespeare taking a part. The evidence of this is contained in the list of actors prefixed to the comedy in the folio of Jonsons works, 1616. But it is a mist
27、ake to infer, because Shakespeares name stands first in the list of actors and the elder Knowell first in the dramatis personae, that Shakespeare took that particular part. The order of a list of Elizabethan players was generally that of their importance or priority as shareholders in the company an
28、d seldom if ever corresponded to the list of characters.Every Man in His Humour was an immediate success, and with it Jonsons reputation as one of the leading dramatists of his time was established once and for all. This could have been by no means Jonsons earliest comedy, and we have just learned t
29、hat he was already reputed one of our best in tragedy. Indeed, one of Jonsons extant comedies, The Case is Altered, but one never claimed by him or published as his, must certainly have preceded Every Man in His Humour on the stage. The former play may be described as a comedy modelled on the Latin
30、plays of Plautus. (It combines, in fact, situations derived from the Captivi and the Aulularia of that dramatist). But the pretty story of the beggar-maiden, Rachel, and her suitors, Jonson found, not among the classics, but in the ideals of romantic love which Shakespeare had already popularised on
31、 the stage. Jonson never again produced so fresh and lovable a feminine personage as Rachel, although in other respects The Case is Altered is not a conspicuous play, and, save for the satirising of Antony Munday in the person of Antonio Balladino and Gabriel Harvey as well, is perhaps the least cha
32、racteristic of the comedies of Jonson.Every Man in His Humour, probably first acted late in the summer of 1598 and at the Curtain, is commonly regarded as an epoch-making play; and this view is not unjustified. As to plot, it tells little more than how an intercepted letter enabled a father to follo
33、w his supposedly studious son to London, and there observe his life with the gallants of the time. The real quality of this comedy is in its personages and in the theory upon which they are conceived. Ben Jonson had theories about poetry and the drama, and he was neither chary in talking of them nor
34、 in experimenting with them in his plays. This makes Jonson, like Dryden in his time, and Wordsworth much later, an author to reckon with; particularly when we remember that many of Jonsons notions came for a time definitely to prevail and to modify the whole trend of English poetry. First of all Jo
35、nson was a classicist, that is, he believed in restraint and precedent in art in opposition to the prevalent ungoverned and irresponsible Renaissance spirit. Jonson believed that there was a professional way of doing things which might be reached by a study of the best examples, and he found these e
36、xamples for the most part among the ancients. To confine our attention to the drama, Jonson objected to the amateurishness and haphazard nature of many contemporary plays, and set himself to do something different; and the first and most striking thing that he evolved was his conception and practice
37、 of the comedy of humours.As Jonson has been much misrepresented in this matter, let us quote his own words as to humour. A humour, according to Jonson, was a bias of disposition, a warp, so to speak, in character by which Some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his af
38、fects, his spirits, and his powers, In their confluctions, all to run one way.But continuing, Jonson is careful to add: But that a rook by wearing a pied feather, The cable hat-band, or the three-piled ruff, A yard of shoe-tie, or the Switzers knot On his French garters, should affect a humour! O, i
39、t is more than most ridiculous.Jonsons comedy of humours, in a word, conceived of stage personages on the basis of a ruling trait or passion (a notable simplification of actual life be it observed in passing); and, placing these typified traits in juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck
40、 the spark of comedy. Downright, as his name indicates, is a plain squire; Bobadills humour is that of the braggart who is incidentally, and with delightfully comic effect, a coward; Brainworms humour is the finding out of things to the end of fooling everybody: of course he is fooled in the end him
41、self. But it was not Jonsons theories alone that made the success of Every Man in His Humour. The play is admirably written and each character is vividly conceived, and with a firm touch based on observation of the men of the London of the day. Jonson was neither in this, his first great comedy (nor
42、 in any other play that he wrote), a supine classicist, urging that English drama return to a slavish adherence to classical conditions. He says as to the laws of the old comedy (meaning by laws, such matters as the unities of time and place and the use of chorus): I see not then, but we should enjo
43、y the same licence, or free power to illustrate and heighten our invention as they the ancients did; and not be tied to those strict and regular forms which the niceness of a few, who are nothing but form, would thrust upon us. Every Man in His Humour is written in prose, a novel practice which Jons
44、on had of his predecessor in comedy, John Lyly. Even the word humour seems to have been employed in the Jonsonian sense by Chapman before Jonsons use of it. Indeed, the comedy of humours itself is only a heightened variety of the comedy of manners which represents life, viewed at a satirical angle,
45、and is the oldest and most persistent species of comedy in the language. None the less, Jonsons comedy merited its immediate success and marked out a definite course in which comedy long continued to run. To mention only Shakespeares Falstaff and his rout, Bardolph, Pistol, Dame Quickly, and the res
46、t, whether in Henry IV. or in The Merry Wives of Windsor, all are conceived in the spirit of humours. So are the captains, Welsh, Scotch, and Irish of Henry V., and Malvolio especially later; though Shakespeare never employed the method of humours for an important personage. It was not Jonsons fault
47、 that many of his successors did precisely the thing that he had reprobated, that is, degrade the humour: into an oddity of speech, an eccentricity of manner, of dress, or cut of beard. There was an anonymous play called Every Woman in Her Humour. Chapman wrote A Humourous Days Mirth, Day, Humour Ou
48、t of Breath, Fletcher later, The Humourous Lieutenant, and Jonson, besides Every Man Out of His Humour, returned to the title in closing the cycle of his comedies in The Magnetic Lady or Humours Reconciled.With the performance of Every Man Out of His Humour in 1599, by Shakespeares company once more at the Globe, we turn a new page in Jonsons career. Despite his many real virtues, if there is one feature more than any other that distinguishes Jonson, it is his arrogance; and to this may be added his self-righteousness, especially under criticism or satire. Every Man Out of His Humour