I'll give any thing for a good copy now, be it true or false, so it be news.
Printer, in Ben Jonson's News from the New World Discovered in the Moon (17) [1]
Ben Jonson penned News from the New World Discovered in the Moon in 1620, the same year that the first single-sheet news corantos started appearing on the streets of Amsterdam.[2] The masque, together with Jonson's comedy The Staple of News (written six years later), are among the earliest literary works critical of the emerging field of journalism. A passage in Jonson's note "To the Readers," which he appended in 1631 to The Staple of News just before act III, is particularly scathing. The author directs readers not to treat the "news" presented in the play as though it reflected his own opinions, but rather:
To consider the news here vented to be none of his news, or any reasonable man's, but news made like the time's news (a weekly cheat to draw money) and could not be fitter reprehended than in raising this ridiculous Office of the Staple, wherein the age may see her own folly, or hunger and thirst after published pamphlets of news, set out every Saturday but made all at home, and no syllable of truth in them; than which there cannot be a greater disease in nature, or a fouler scorn put upon the times. [3]
Jonson's mocking of the fledgling news industry may well have been an expression born of professional rivalry, Mark Z. Muggli suggests in a 1992 essay titled "Ben Jonson and the Business of News."
These masques and poems of the early 1620s show that Jonson continued to disdain the ambitious statesmen served by private news sources. They also show that he increasingly saw the developing news media as competitors of poetry and the poetic culture epitomized in the "Tribe of Ben." [4]
Although Jonson's jibes about accuracy and gossip continue to ring true, the "competing" fields of journalism and poetry were far more similar during the early 17th century than they are today. The news industry, at the time still embryonic, printed fictitious letters as though they were true [5] and publications sometimes took verse form, purporting in a few cases to be ballads composed by condemned, notorious criminals. Shaaber observes that most of these poems were "contemptible" in quality, "but then they were never written nor read as poetry, but as a reflection of passing events." [6] Even as news reports blurred the line between fact and fiction, poets like Jonson wrote (albeit obliquely) about current events and performed a role as social commentators in an era of active censorship. Put another way, Jonson occupied a societal niche equivalent to today's news columnists and radio talk show hosts, roles associated more with the modern news media than with literature or entertainment.
What then was Jonson criticizing? How did the poet's business differ from that of the emerging news industry? If Jonson's poetic tradition and the emerging news tradition were identical, his criticism would amount to hypocrisy. However, the two fields -- even as early as the late 1500s -- had a few differences which might have mattered to Jonson and his devotees. This essay will explore three key ways in which the two fields differed: utility, longevity, and audience.
Before embarking on a study of the differences between Renaissance poetry and early journalism, early journalism itself should be described, for it had not yet developed many of the standards and principles that typically guide today's reporters. The early history of the field has been more thoroughly explored and chronicled since Muggli wrote his essay, and a body of work that might be termed the industry's first periodical received particularly close attention in a 1995 dissertation by Paul J. Voss titled "The Unfortunate Theater of France: Shakespeare, Marlowe, and the Elizabethan News Quarto, 1589-1593."
Newsbooks similar to the news quartos studied by Voss had appeared sporadically before the 1590s, but the assassination of King Henri III of France in 1589 triggered a religious civil war that captured the English imagination and prompted printers to take advantage of the demand for news. The result was an explosion in news publishing that lasted until 1593, when Henri of Navarre converted to Catholicism and lost his folk hero status in Protestant England. [7] Voss, who calls the four years a "watershed for news reporting," estimates more news quartos appeared during that period than appeared in the eight years following it. [8]
Newsbooks before the assassination were "usually long, book length, and philosophical in nature," but during the war they were sleeker pamphlets, averaging eight pages and topping out at around twenty pages, according to Voss. The quartos appeared frequently and promised future coverage to their readers; these and other considerations prompt Voss to argue that they represent the English language's first serial publication. [9] Before the Voss dissertation, Muggli and others had typically placed the start of periodicals covering foreign news in the 1620s. [10]
The quartos also changed in tone, becoming dramatic narratives with definite heroes (Henri of Navarre, later crowned Henri IV) and villains (the Catholics). Writes Voss: "[. . . .] the news quartos presented their information in a very dramatic fashion: in some ways, the reports resembled scripts from the playhouses." [11] Indeed, the quartos gained a reputation for blurring the lines between fact and fiction. In addition to relying -- as news reports of the time had to -- on letters that might or might not be accurate, some publications included fabricated letters to fictitious persons. Voss cites one 1590 missive from a French Catholic to a "Lady Jane Clement," which he labels as an allusion to Jacques Clement, the assassin of Henri III. It claims to be translated from French, giving the letter an air of authenticity, but its text attacks the Catholic League and seems hostile to "all things Roman." [12]
Fueled by such reports, Henri of Navarre and his struggles against the Catholics arguably became the English language's first major media sensation. The industry's first big story was probably, it should be noted, destined to be a foreign one: coverage of domestic political news was prohibited in England until the abolition of the Star Chamber in 1641. Censorship prevented such hot topics, but permitted foreign news, sensational stories about monstrous births and the like, natural disasters, executions and reprints of royal speeches. [13]
Shaaber describes the domestic news reports of the day as similar in many ways to today's supermarket tabloid.
Almost all the news published on these subjects is by way of being sensational; its appeal is not to public spirit, or enlightened self-interest, or intellectual curiosity, or anything else but the sense of wonder. [14]
For almost two years of the war and corresponding media coverage, a young Ben Jonson was serving in the English army and stationed in the Netherlands. [15] He had not yet converted to Catholicism, so he is unlikely to have taken religious umbrage at the decidedly pro-Protestant coverage. However, The Cambridge History of English and American Literature suggests Jonson might have taken issue with an early publisher of corantos, Captain Francis Gainsford, for the latter's portrayal of his conduct in the Low Countries. [16] Regardless, it is clear that Jonson grew up and developed his poetic tradition in fairly close conjunction with the inception of a news profession.
Jonson returned to England in time to witness the end of the first news boom in 1593, when Henri of Navarre converted to Catholicism and his story lost luster among English newsreaders. Until roughly 1620, most news coverage appeared sporadically in the form of corantos -- irregular, unserialized foreign news pamphlets which were translated into English. Weekly single-sheet corantos appeared in Amsterdam in 1620 (the same year Jonson wrote the masque News from the New World) and continued there for nearly a year. Others soon followed suit; single-sheet corantos appeared in London in 1621. A series of quarto-style newsbooks published regularly from 1622 to 1632 has frequently been described as the first English newspaper. [17]
Roughly halfway through that period, Jonson wrote The Staple of News, a satire of the news business that expands on attacks first launched in the earlier masque. He expanded his attack yet again in 1631, when he added the aforementioned note "To the Readers." [18] Jonson was evidently not the only Englishman growing frustrated with an increasingly aggressive news tradition. In 1632, the news business was shut down by order of the state, and it did not resume until 1638. [19] Three years later, with the Star Chamber abolished, newsbooks covering domestic politics sprang into existance. The first daily English newspaper was printed in 1702. [20]
Even in the 1620s, the line between journalism and poetry remained indistinct, in terms of both purpose and form. Compare, for instance, Jonson's statement of intent in Volpone ("In all his poems still hath been this measure / To mix profit with your pleasure" ["Prologue" 7-8]) [21] to Voss' observation that "The news quartos set out to inform, make money, and even entertain." [22] Jonson, as will be shown below, wrote social commentary under the guise of fiction; his plays and poems are filled with parallels to real persons and newsworthy events of his day. At the same time, news reports in ballad form and fiction in the guise of news were commonplace. Shaaber makes this observation about professional poets who lived by the pen (among whom one must include Jonson): "When such a writer wrote his topical verses with the expectation of profiting by their publication, he is indistingishable from a journalist." [23]
Jonson's verses were indeed topical. Scholars combing his work for historical parallels have found plenty of them. As established above, Jonson's skewering of the news business was quite timely; Muggli even warrants that Jonson might have predicted several developments within the industry, including subscriber newsletters and something akin to a news service. [24] The tragedy Sejanus resulted in charges of treason (though Jonson was able to dispel them) and some scholars have drawn connections between the play and the Essex Rebellion. [25] Likewise, B. N. DeLuna makes a case that Jonson's Catiline His Conspiracy was meant to mirror the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in which Jonson was tangently involved. [26]
In fact, Jonson's conduct following the uncovering of the Gunpowder Plot was virtually indistinguishable from the conduct of the news hounds he sometimes ridicules. As noted above, the backbone of the emerging news industry -- and of private intelligence -- was the letter. As a Catholic who had already faced charges of treason, and who had dined with some of the conspirators, Jonson became embroiled in the case and pledged to help in the investigation, perhaps eager to prove himself a loyal subject of the crown. In so doing, Jonson wrote several letters of intelligence, including one to the Earl of Salisbury, related to the investigation of the plot. [27] These letters are strikingly similar to the letters of news common for his day, except that it does not appear that they were ever published in a coranto. One, to the Earl of Salisbury, suggests the Catholic conspiracy might be larger than it first appeared:
I think they are All so enweaved in it, as will make 500 gentlemen less of the Religion within this week, if they carry their understanding about them. [28]
A conspiracy so large never materialized, [29] leaving the veteran Jonson vulnerable to the sort of criticism frequently leveled (by Jonson and others) at soldiers' news: that it was unreliable. For instance, in Epigram 107, "To Captain Hungry," Jonson writes:
Do what you come for, captain, with your news;
That's sit and eat: do not my ears abuse. [. . . .]
Tell the gross Dutch those grosser tales of yours,
How great you were with their two emperours; (1-2, 5-6)
Jonson also disparages amateur statesmen who disseminate intelligence by letters in his poem "The New Cry" (Epigram 92):
They all get Porta, for the sundry ways
To write in cipher, and the several keys,
To ope the character; they've found the slight
With juice of limons, onions, piss, to write;
To break up seals, and close them [. . . .] (25-29)
It is somewhat ironic that Jonson himself engaged at times in activities that might be accurately described as newsgathering. That he wrote "topical" fiction based on the Gunpowder Plot in Catiline helps close the gap between his works and those of journalists. The topicality of Jonson's plays is particularly striking when one compares a news pamphlet described by Shaaber to the contexts of Volpone, which Robert C. Evans argues is based upon a well known man of his era named Thomas Sutton. A moneylender who built up a huge asset base through investments and real estate, Sutton was English society's wealthiest commoner by far -- a close modern parallel would be Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates. His phenomonal acquisition of wealth over just a few decades was the object of some suspicion and mystery. More significantly, the distribution of that wealth in the event of his demise was the object of rampant speculation and scheming in the last decade before his death in 1611. After disinheriting his son, Sutton changed his will often and entertained frequent proposals for its future use. One scheme planned without his knowledge and scrapped almost as soon as it saw light was orchestrated by Sir John Harington, a courtier. Harington's plan: to have Sutton name Prince Charles as his heir (which gives one an idea of the amount of wealth involved) in exchange for peerage and a commission paid to Harington from both sides. [30]
Halfway through this period of scheming, Jonson wrote Volpone, in which a wealthy rogue pretends to be on his deathbed so that he can collect gifts and favors from greedy gulls hoping to win a favorable position in his will. Suitors bring Volpone treasures, offer to name him their heirs, even attempt to lend him their wives. The avocatori -- judges who settle most of the disputes in the fifth act -- behave in a similar manner when presented with Mosca, Volpone's apparent heir (as opposed to heir apparent): they defer to him and one judge aspires to marry his daughter to the rogue, at least until all the play's deceptions are revealed.
The parallels with Sutton's case were enough for Jonson's contemporaries to assume a connection. "It hardly seems surprising that many spectators of Volpone assumed that Sutton was Jonson's target," Evans writes, later concluding: "Jonson would have had few grounds to complain if Sutton, his friends, or his enemies, detected some personal application in the work." [31]
Even historians for the Charterhouse -- a charitible hospital and Sutton's eventual beneficiary -- add fuel to the fire in their defense of Sutton's reputation, he observed. "Particularly fascinating are their discussions of how Sutton tricked persons who tried to manipulate him into making them his heirs." [32]
By writing on Sutton in 1605, Jonson covered a story of great interest well before the subject's death -- a story of enough interest to warrant news coverage as well. Three years after Sutton passed on, a news pamphlet appeared: The Charterhouse with the last will and Testament of Thomas Sutton. Rather than skewer its subject, as Jonson did, the later news publication treated him with respect. The pamphlet included a "pious exordium" on the virtue of charity, a brief history of the purchase of the Charterhouse property, a list of Sutton's endowments, and a copy of Sutton's will. [33]
By comparing pamphlet and play, one brings into sharp relief the first major difference between Jonson's poetic tradition and the emerging news culture: Jonson's format enabled him to tackle topics of local, political interest in an era of censorship, while the news printers, when they did print on such subjects, could only do so as instruments of public relations. The issue of censorship and its evasion can be seen as part of a larger category, that of utility, a broad umbrella which would also include traits like accuracy and timeliness. Although poetry and journalism each dealt with topical issues and social commentary, Jonson saw poetry as more useful to society than the nascent news industry. The former could focus on the truths of behavior and tackle topical concerns obliquely, while the latter's value was constantly undermined by the threat of censorship, inaccuracies, and issues of timeliness.
Jonson's approach to censorship is apparent in the aforementioned plays: he rarely if ever attacks a topic directly, but instead deals with it obliquely. In Volpone, for instance, he creates a character that many viewers of his day linked to Sutton, but he maintains plausible deniability by setting the action in Venice, changing the names, and making Volpone fatherless. Moreover, he denies any topicality in his dedication of Volpone to Cambridge and Oxford universities, saying: "[. . . .] I would ask of these supercilious politics, what nation, society, or general order or state, I have provoked? What public person?" (Dedication 26-27) Later, in the same passage, he adds:
Application is now grown a trade with many; and there are that profess to have a key for the decyphering of every thing: but let wise and noble persons take heed how they be too credulous, or give leave to these invading interpreters to be overfamiliar with their fames, who cunningly, and often, utter their own virulent malice, under other men's simplest meanings. (Dedication 33-37)
Scholars today generally take such protestations with a grain of salt, seeing them as part of an overall strategy of plausible deniability. Annabel Patterson, upon investigating Jonson and censorship under Queen Elizabeth and King James I, concludes that Jonson's "Disclaimers of topical intention are not to be trusted, and are more likely to be entry codes to precisely that kind of reading they protect against." [34] DeLuna draws a similar conclusion in Jonson's Romish Plot, noting that in addition to making his parallels in Catiline invisible to all but classically educated playgoers, Jonson also deliberately crafted sloppy and inconsistent parallels in his plays, as observed above, with Volpone. Such inexact parallels were part of his strategy, she contends.
Applied to Catiline, this would mean that Jonson could utilize details A, B, C, D, and X, straight out of his sources, intending applications to the contemporary events only in respect to A, B, C, and D, taking care, however, to make prominent use of detail X to offer as proof that no applications were intended. [35]
Applied to Volpone, this means Jonson could write, with little fear of censorship, about a powerful man whose fortune had been eyed by the crown. Such a topic would be trecherous ground for journalists interested in anything other than public relations. Notes Shaaber: "The names of the high and mighty were not to be trifled with; unless the news involving them was wholly respectful and favorable, no one dared print it." [36]
Despite his evasions, Jonson was an outspoken advocate of the poet as a voice of truth. In News from the New World, it is the poet who is described as an agent of truth, after each of the news printers in turn admits to chicanery. (95-97) Jonson emphasizes the utility of poetry in his Prologue for the Court to The Staple of News:
Wherein, although our title, sir, be News,
We yet adventure here to tell you none,
But show you common follies, and so known,
That though they are not truths, th'innocent Muse
Hath made so like, as fant'sy could them state
Or poetry, without scandal, imitate. (9-14)
Again, in Discoveries, the poet touches on the need for a frank voice to comment on society, but then backstops his argument with a general disclaimer of topicality.
If men may by no means write freely, or speak truth, but when it offends not; why do physicians cure with sharp medicines, or corrosives? is not the same equally lawful in the cure of the mind, that is in the cure of the body? Some vices, you will say, are so foul, that it is better they should be done than spoken. But they that take offence where no name, character, or signature, doth blazon them, seem to me like affected as women, who if they hear anything ill spoken of the ill of their sex, are presently moved [. . . .] and on the contrary, when they hear good of good women, conclude, that it belongs to them all. (1887-1896)
Jonson, of course, could not truly write freely; he was jailed several times for pushing that envelope. Yet a survey of his work suggests he had a lot to say, and was not inclined to let possible objections or repurcussions stop him from saying it, even if he had to do so obliquely. One cannot conclude for certain how Jonson might have regarded the publication of the pamphlet on Sutton, given its glowing slant on a subject Jonson might have found deserving of satire. But one can speculate, based on other writings. In Underwoods 32, "An epistle to a friend, (Master Colby,) to persuade him to the wars," Jonson criticizes a practice akin to paid public relations:
Look on the ambitious man, and see him nurse
His unjust hopes with praises begg'd, or, worse,
Bought flatteries, the issue of his purse,
Till he become both their and his own curse! (11-14)
Jonson, it is true, was not above writing lavish praise himself. However, his technique boiled down to praising by name and criticizing by fictional surrogate. After Jonson's death, John Beaumont, a contemporary, described the poet's practice thusly in "To the Memory of Him Who Can Never Be Forgotten, Master Benjamin Jonson": "He whipt the vices, and yet spar'd the men." (26)
By the very nature of the problem, Jonson could not explicitly attack journalism for its weakness in the face of censorship. But he could openly attack other facets of the industry's overall utility, and did. Most of those attacks boil down to issues of accuracy and timeliness.
The corantos and newsbooks opened themselves up to criticism on matters of accuracy precisely because they claimed to be factual. Poetry, which simply mirrors reality, makes no such claim, and can seize upon any apparent inaccuracies as a disclaimer of topicality. In News from the New World, Jonson presents three types of news publishers and has each admit to printing false news. The Printer does so openly: "[. . . .] I'll give any thing for a good copy now, be it true or false, so it be news." (17) Some ripe examples of false news appear in The Staple of News, when Pennyboy Junior gets a sneak peek at the reports of the day in the third act:
THOMAS: [Reading.] They write, the King of Spain is chosen / Pope.
P. JUNIOR: How!
THOMAS: And Emperor too, the thirtieth of February. (III.ii.21-22)
A few moments later, Fitton raises the possibility of an army floating to war on shoes of cork. (III.ii.86-93)
P. JUNIOR: Is't true?
FITTON: As true as the rest. (III.ii.93)
To underscore the point on accuracy, Jonson borrows a chunk of dialog from his earlier masque and recycles it in Staple (I.v.35-50) so the same confessions of falsehood appear therein. The master of the Office of the Staple, Cymbal, aims a few puns at the falsehoods of his own organization, stating that he gets correspondence from "Liegers, that lie out / through all the shires o' the kingdom." (I.v.20-21)
The news offered for sale to the public in the scene following Pennyboy Junior's news briefing is similarly ludicrous, but the customers appear undiscriminating. Indeed, in The Staple of News, it is interesting to note that the only news which is ever factual is that which is freely given. Any information traded for coins is made laughable. Thus, there's a note of irony when Lickfinger freely offers Pennyboy Junior important (true) news in the final act, following the destruction of the Staple office.
LICKFINGER: Hear you the news?
P. JUNIOR: The Office is down; how should we?
(V.iii.27)
Just as Jonson was immune to concerns about accuracy -- his works are, after all, fictitious -- he had little reason to worry about issues of timeliness. He scooped the news pamphlets with Volpone, but trailed the Gunpowder Plot with Catiline by roughly six years. However, he harpooned news publishers for their timeliness problems. The publishers again opened themselves up to criticism on this front because they generally purported their stories to be new.
Jonson, though, observes that the reports were sometimes recycled. The Printer in News from the New World confesses he keeps old news items on hand, "which once in half a score years, as / the age grows forgetful, I print over again with a new date, and they / are of excellent use." (55-57) Jonson's contention is supported by Shaaber: "There is one more thing a publisher could do when news was scarce or troublesome to secure -- viz., he could publish an old story as the latest new thing." Shaaber cites, for an example, a story about a murder case from 1603; the tale makes a reappearance in 1613 as the first of three murders, all implied to be recent. [37]
To Jonson, timeliness was not an issue: he viewed poetry as potentially eternal. Once published, poetry retains its currency far longer than the news which inspired it. He touches on this point in his tribute, "To the Memory of My Beloved Master William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us," in which he writes: "Thou art a monument without a tomb, / and art alive still, while thy book doth live / and we have wits to read, and praise to give." (22-24) Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth argue in Ben Jonson Revised that Jonson published his Works as a compilation chiefly as a bid for literary permanence, to counter "the ephemerality of theatrical production." Plays had, until then, usually only seen print in badly edited quartos. Publication like that which Jonson attempted was reserved for serious literary works, and after the move Jonson was "roundly ridiculed for his presumption." Nevertheless, it appears to have worked, and it set a precedent for similar publications, including that of William Shakespeare's plays in 1623. [38] Jonson, for his part, appears to have little problem with bids for immortality: "If divers men seek fame or honour by divers ways; so both be honest, neither is to be blamed: but they that seek immortality, are not only worthy of love, but of praise." (Discoveries, 145-147)
This issue of longevity, in fact, ranks next to utility as another major difference Jonson might have seen between journalism and poetry. News loses its currency quickly -- it is an inherently ephemeral form, and Jonson makes a point of this in The Staple of News. Therein, Cymbal explains his preference for writing news out by hand, rather than printing it, saying: "We not forbid that any news be made / But that't be printed; for when news is printed, / It leaves, sir, to be news." (I.v.47-49) There is good reason Jonson's works are easier to come by than old news pamphlets, and Voss homes in on it: "Pamphlets from this period did not survive because they were not intended to." In short, newsbooks were read and thrown out much like today's newspapers, but in an era without microfiche. [39]
The chief differences between Jonson's poetic tradition and that of the nascent news industry, then, boils down to two (admittedly broad) issues: utility and longevity. But Jonson reserves some of his attacks for the news printer's target audience, too, which he satires perhaps more consistently than the news producers themselves. The issue of audience must be dealt with separately from the news sources, and counts as a third major separation.
Taken together, Jonson's works show that he viewed the audience as two distinct sets of people: those who understood or gained by his works, who could differentiate between intelligent works and drivel; and those who did not. He makes this distinction clear in his note "To the Readers" from The Alchemist, writing: "If thou beest more, thou art an understander, and then I trust thee. If thou art one that takest up, and but a pretender, beware of what hands thou receivest thy commodity." (1-4) Although in his early works he expresses hope that the latter group will see the error of its ways, by the end of his career it seems as though he has largely given up on them.
Jonson's most obvious attacks on the gossips and armchair politicians who comprise this audience appear in four works: Volpone, where they are embodied in the character of Sir Politic Would-be; The Staple of News, where they are represented by the customers of act III and the Gossips during Intermeans; the "Ode to Himself," which he appended to The New Inn, and which attacks the audience directly; and Epigram 92, "The New Cry," which mocks the amateur statesman. The way Jonson represents such characters parallels his formula for the gulls his rogue-heroes routinely pluck: they are deserving of satire because they allow themselves to be deceived; they are accomplices to their own ignorance.
In works of fiction, they are comic figures. Sir Politic Would-be of Volpone, on hearing the news that a whale had blocked shipping traffic in an English river, concludes it must have been sent by Spain. (II.i.44-51) He pretends to be so knowledgable on matters of state and secret plots that Peregrine (the rogue with whom he is matched) prompts him with a piece of a false story and watches Sir Politic elaborate on it as though it were true. Peregrine responds with an aside, followed by false flattery: "This Sir Politic will be ignorant of nothing. / -- It seems, sir, you know all." (II.i.98-99.) Later in the play, Peregrine exposes him as a fraud.
The gossips and customers of The Staple of News are just as hungry for intelligence as Sir Politic, and just as absurd. A customer blesses the bearer of good tidings as though the reporter were responsible for it (as well he might have been). During the Intermeans, four gossips -- Censure, Mirth, Tattle, and Expectation -- sit on the sidelines and bemoan having to watch "fables of false news" (Intermean III, 55). During the gaps, they regale each other with news of the sort they prefer: idle and fanciful gossip. Their expectations are made clear as early as the Induction, when gossip Tattle tells Prologue to make sure the play's news is "fresh" and "untainted." (25-26) Yet they appear more concerned about the flavor of their news than its nourishment. Tattle boasts:
[. . . .] But whether it were true or no, we gossips are bound to believe it an't be once and afoot. How should we entertain the time else, or find ourselves in fashionable discourse for all companies, if we do not credit all and make more of it in the reporting?
(Intermean III, 37-41)
Jonson, however, does not stop at fictitious portrayals of the foolish audience member or amateur statesman; he addresses them directly. The "Ode to Himself," composed after his play The New Inn was ill received, reveals frustration with his audience, griping that their "palate's with the swine" (20):
Come leave the loathed stage,
And the more loathsome age;
Where pride and impudence, in faction knit,
Usurp the chair of wit!
Run on and rage, sweat, censure and condemn;
They were not made for thee, less thou for them. (1-4; 9-10)
"The New Cry," in turn, describes a population of rapidly proliferating armchair politicians, each weaned on news pamphlets, who speculate and comment on affairs of state and pretend to understandings they do not have. Jonson remarks at the poem's close that the statesmen "contemn us too, / That know not so much state, wrong, as they do." (40-41)
It is not terribly surprising that the amateur statesmen irked Jonson. Scholars generally describe him as fully invested in the concept of himself as public poet and advisor to the ruling class. As a professional writer of masques for King James I and poems for nobility, he had access to ears the amateurs could only dream of, according to Summers and Pebworth:
Certainly access to court provided him the opportunity to study at close hand the ruling class whom he undertook to counsel in his poetry. [. . . .] In his nondramatic poetry, he addressed familiarly some of the most powerful men and women of his age, usually tactfully, but sometimes boldly offering counsel. [40]
As a self-appointed mentor to society and advisor to kings, Jonson must have felt he was a better-read and more educated voice of wisdom than the pamphlet-dependent pretenders he saw around him. He might well have blamed the news pamphlets for catering to them, or, at any rate, for providing them fodder for their speculations. At the same time, the news industry was churning out ephemeral articles of dubious truth and utility, stories which could not effectively confront domestic political issues. Taken together, these points form the underpinnings of Jonson's case against the emerging news culture.
What appear to be obvious differences -- that one deals with fact, the other fiction, or that one is performed while the other is only written -- fall apart on closer examination. As shown above, Jonson's works were often based on real events, and news stories sometimes dealt with entirely fictitious monster sightings. Jonson's work, meanwhile, was probably meant more for reading than performance, judging from his nondramatic poetry, his bid for literary stature by publishing his works, and his comments about "the loathed stage." The newsbooks, as noted above by Voss, read like stage plays and often appear in verse. Aside from concerns of social utility, longevity, and audience, there was little to separate Jonson from the journalist.
Nevertheless, it is important not to take these criticisms of the emerging news industry any farther than Jonson himself might have. It is a fair conclusion, given the high topicality of his works, that Jonson read and absorbed at least as much news -- indeed, the same news -- as the voracious readers he mocked. He was also, in effect, as much of an amateur statesmen as his targets in "The New Cry." (Although, in both cases, he probably considered himself a more discerning, educated, and discriminating reader of intelligences.) Jonson's attacks on the news media should be viewed as what they probably were, and what most of his other attacks of this sort were: criticisms of the worst behavior that the industry and its consumers had to offer. Jonson, after all, prided himself on criticizing behavior, not people -- neither specifically, nor as a general class. Pennyboy Canter in The Staple of News might well have been speaking for the author when he said, following his act IV unveiling: "For these shall never have that plea against me, / Or color of advantage, that I hate / Their callings, but their manners and their vices." (IV.iv.136-139)
[1] With the exception of quotes from The Staple of News and the main body of Volpone, play, masque, and poem citations use the following sources: Ben Jonson, The Works of Ben Jonson, with a biographical memoir by William Gifford, New Ed., (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1879). Literature Online, vers. 01.8, Oct. 2001, ProQuest Information and Learning Co., 23-25 Nov. 2001. <http://lion.chadwyck.com>.
[2] M. A. Shaaber, Some Forerunners of the Newspaper in England, (New York: Octagon Books, 1966) 314.
[3] Ben Jonson, The Staple of News, ed. Anthony Parr (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988) 152-3. All citations with respect to this play use this edition.
[4] Mark Z. Muggli, "Ben Jonson and the Business of News," Studies in English Literature 32.2 (1992): 329.
[5] Paul J. Voss, "The Unfortunate Theater of France: Shakespeare, Marlowe, and the Elizabethan News Quarto, 1589-1593," diss., University of California, Riverside, 1995, 87-89.
[6] Shaaber 142-144.
[7] Voss 3-6.
[8] Voss 44, 62.
[9] Voss 36-40; 111.
[10] Muggli 323.
[11] Voss 219. The chief publisher of these quartos was John Wolfe, a devout Protestant.
[12] Voss 87-89.
[13] Voss 58.
[14] Shaaber 138.
[15] Erik Linklater, Ben Jonson and King James, (1931; London: Jonathan Cape, 1938) 19-23.
[16] "The Beginnings of English Journalism: Gainsford and the Corantos," The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An encyclopedia in eighteen volumes, ed. by A.W. Ward, A.R. Waller, W.P. Trent, J. Erskine, S.P. Sherman, and C. Van Doren, vol. 7 (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1907-21) <http://www.bartleby.com/217/1501.html>.
[17] Shaaber 311-17.
[18] Muggli 330.
[19] Shaaber 316-18.
[20] Muggli 323.
[21] References for Volpone, except for the dedication (which comes from The Works of Ben Jonson, above) use M.H. Abrams, et al, ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 6th ed., vol. 1 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1993) 1129-1217.
[22] Voss 39.
[23] Shaaber 15; 142-4.
[24] Muggli 326-7; 330.
[25] Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984) 50.
[26] B. N. DeLuna, Jonson's Romish Plot: A Study of Catiline and its Historical Context, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967) 31-32.
[27] Frances Teague, "Jonson and the Gunpowder Plot," Ben Jonson Journal: Literary Contexts in the Age of Elizabeth, James and Charles, 5 (1998): 249-52.
[28] Linklater 156.
[29] Linklater 156.
[30] Robert C. Evans, Jonson and the Contexts of His Time, (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1994) 45-48.
[31] Evans 53, 58.
[32] Evans 54.
[33] Shaaber 29.
[34] Patterson 57.
[35] DeLuna 29.
[36] Shaaber 138.
[37] Shaaber 290-91.
[38] Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth, Ben Jonson Revised, (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1999) 14-16.
[39] Voss 46.
[40] Summers and Pebworth 15.
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