Ben Jonson (1572-1637), a contemporary of William Shakespeare’s and, like him, a successful playwright, was the son of a minister who died before he was born. His mother married a bricklayer, an honest trade which Ben was destined to follow had he not been educated at one of the many English grammar schools that flourished during the reign of Elizabeth I. At Westminster he studied with the great English humanist and historian, William Camden, receiving instruction in classical languages, literature, and rhetoric.
After brief military service in Europe, Jonson returned to England and joined one of the several theater companies then thriving in the city of London. In addition to acting, he was a prolific playwright, notable especially for his satirical comedies with their fantastical plots, eccentric characters, and wry social commentary. He soon went on to become a successful court dramatist and writer of masques, plays composed particularly for court audiences.
Jonson was what we would call a neo-classicist—a writer whose work is especially indebted to the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. Of the several classical forms he mastered, the epigram is particularly noteworthy. Jonson wrote hundreds of these short poems on a range of topics and in a variety of modes, from cynical and satirical to laudatory, elegiac, and lighthearted (and, not infrequently, combining several stances in a single poem).
The term “epigram” (from the Latin epigramma, meaning literally “inscription”) originally referred to verse inscriptions on sepulchres and other funereal stones. It came to mean any brief poem, typically between two and twelve lines (though some are longer), with a simple rhyme scheme, and characterized by sharp observation, terse, compact expression, and irony that (in Jonson’s case) is by turns outrageous and subtle (and sometimes both). At the heart of each epigram typically is some single witty “conceit,” some ingenious idea around which the entire poem is constructed.
Among Jonson’s favorite topics in the epigrams is the world of the court, both the personae who populate that world and the rules of social and political decorum they learn to master in order to survive (and, hopefully, thrive).
The court is the bureaucracy surrounding the monarch, a network of social and professional relations organized around service to the crown. It is a world of tremendous privilege and affluence, but also of great danger, where sudden shifts of allegiance and changes to the corporate hierarchy are bound to occur. Indeed, being close to the center of power (the king) means access to favor, riches, and influence; but it also increases the potential for professional and/or personal misfortune. Recall Lear’s remarks to Cordelia about “court news”: “Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out” (5.3.14-15).
A courtier, simply put, is a member of this bureaucracy. Because the court structure is hierarchical, the courtier—especially one of inferior rank—is inclined to seek “preferment,” i.e., the king’s favor, by way of promotion to some higher office or title.
The atmosphere of the court, then, is one of pretense, flattery, deception, intrigue, suspicion, paranoia, and fear. Each courtier navigates their way through this treacherous world by networking with other courtiers whose interests complement their own, even as all know that everyone else is a potential enemy.
Everyone, moreover, is fully aware that it’s all a game and that everyone else knows that it’s a game. The trick is never to expose the pretense openly. The successful courtier possesses what one influential Italian treatise on the art of courtship calls sprezzatura (Baldassare Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, or The Book of the Courtier). Difficult to translate, this paradoxical term means something like “studied artlessness,” the ability to act and speak with seemingly effortless ease, hiding the considerable effort devoted to cultivating such appearance.
One might call this kind of social interaction a form of hypocrisy—but only in the literal sense of negotiating the world as if “through a mask” (from the Greek hypocrita or ὑποκριτής, literally an actor on the stage). All forms of social discourse, our own included, proceed by way of such unspoken rules and modes of comportment. But in the world of Jonson’s court, these rules of engagement are sharply delineated and the stakes are often much higher than is the case for other realms of social interaction.
Several of today’s poems are brief but highly effective descriptions of the fawning courtier, the individual who has chosen to enter this world and play by its rules. Doing so means deliberately cultivating a persona, a mode of being in which one seeks to impress others with one’s wit, refined manners and tastes, and family/social connections. Jonson’s portrayals are keenly aware of the precariousness of the courtier’s position—that his or her successes in this realm are always temporary, often brief, and beset always by the fear and exhilaration of knowing that one’s fortunes might at any moment change, for good or for ill.
Examine the imagery of “On Court-Worm” and explain why it is effective. Recall what we did with the Shakespeare sonnets: identify and list all concrete nouns (i.e. those words that refer to things we can apprehend with our senses). Then, split each of those words into the two parts of a metaphor, the vehicle and the tenor. Your list could look like the following. (I've supplied one example):
| Vehicle | Tenor |
| worms | courtiers (as defined above) |
| [vehicle] | [tenor] |
| [vehicle] | [tenor] |
| [vehicle] | [tenor] |
| [vehicle] | [tenor] |
| [vehicle] | [tenor] |
Now, add to the list of concrete nouns any descriptive verbs, adjectives, or adverbs.
The idea here is to read the poem as a mini-allegory of the court. Remember allegory? One useful definition of that term: a set of metaphors which together sustain and amplify some single idea, situation, event, etc. Your list of words split into vehicles and tenors is the stuff of that allegory.
Now, having completed this exercise, comment freely on Jonson’s vision of the court and of this specific kind of courtier. Why these images in particular? Why are they appropriate?
Having attended to the poem’s imagery, let’s consider its sonic properties or sound effects. This is a potentially large topic, so I’ll confine my remarks to a few essential features:
(1) The poem is written in iambic pentameter meaning that each line consists of ten syllables in alternating unstressed and stressed syllables, so five stresses or beats to each line.
(2) When one line ending flows smoothly into the next line without a break or pause, we have enjambment.
(3) When there is a heavy pause or full stop somewhere within the line rather than at the end of the line, we have caesura (which means literally “to cut”).
(4) When the consonant and/or vowel sounds in one word are echoed in a suceeding word or words, we have alliteration. Vowel-sound alliteration is assonance; consonant-sound alliteration is consonance. Vowel-sound alliteration suggests smoothness and grace; whereas consonant sounds suggest varying degrees of harshness, bluntness, emphasis, etc.
Identify instances of these four poetic sound effects in “On Court-Worm.” In what ways do they enhance or complement the meaning? (The name for the study of such sound effects or aural dynamics, in case you are interested, is prosody.)
Not all vivid images are metaphors; many can be read literally. Choose one of the following Jonson poems and offer analysis and commentary. Your remarks may or may not include analysis of metaphors. Be sure to consult the Oxford English Dictionary when uncertain of a word’s meaning.
©Robert Whalen, 2023