We British: The Poetry of a People. Andrew Marr
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head at a bit,
But the horns were very near like to choke him.
The chine of a lecher too there was roasted,
With a plump harlot’s haunch and garlic,
A pandar’s pettitoes, that had boasted
Himself for a captain, yet never was warlike.
A large fat pasty of a midwife hot;
And for a cold baked meat into the story,
A reverend painted lady was brought,
And coffined in crust till now she was hoary.
To these, an over-grown justice of peace,
With a clerk like a gizzard trussed under each arm;
And warrants for sippits, laid in his own grease,
Set over a chafing dish to be kept warm.
The jowl of a gaoler served for fish,
A constable soused with vinegar by;
Two aldermen lobsters asleep in a dish.
A deputy tart, a churchwarden pie.
All which devoured, he then for a close
Did for a full draught of Derby call;
He heaved the huge vessel up to his nose,
And left not till he had drunk up all.
Then from the table he gave a start,
Where banquet and wine were nothing scarce,
All which he flirted away with a fart,
From whence it was called the Devil’s Arse.
This is recognisably a satire on the England of the 1620s, and yet its brutal, rollicking spirit is Chaucerian. Jonson was a man of very many voices. He took his classical heritage far more seriously than did Shakespeare; at his best he can be shockingly direct, as in his heartbreaking poem about the loss of a young son. We know that the death of children was a common, almost routine, part of early modern life. Shakespeare’s son Hamnet died at the age of eleven, probably of the plague. Memories of him may dance through some of the great plays, but Shakespeare, characteristically, never addressed his loss directly. Jonson did.
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon ’scap’d world’s and flesh’s rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.
Earlier on, we heard Shakespeare’s ferocity about sexuality in one of his extraordinary sonnets. Jonson, also the author of some of the sweetest love poems in English, can be just as direct: ‘doing’ means exactly what you suspect it does.
Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short;
And done, we straight repent us of the sport:
Let us not then rush blindly on unto it,
Like lustful beasts, that only know to do it:
For lust will languish, and that heat decay.
But thus, thus, keeping endless holiday,
Let us together closely lie and kiss,
There is no labour, nor no shame in this;
This hath pleased, doth please, and long will please; never
Can this decay, but is beginning ever.
Although Jonson was a poet of the city, his work on dramatic masques and his huge fame brought him many courtly and noble connections; and he is the master of a kind of poetry, and indeed a sensibility, which runs through English life in particular from the Tudor period to our own day. The so-called ‘country house poem’ was a very particular and artificial confection: the poet oils up to the landowner by suggesting that his land willingly and desperately gives itself to him. The oaks wish to be cut down to provide, the deer are all too keen to be sliced up into venison steaks, and so on. It’s a conceit at once charming and completely ridiculous. Jonson’s pioneering poem ‘To Penshurst’ was written to compliment Sir Robert Sidney, the Earl of Leicester, on his estate in Kent. Jonson paints a picture of a harmonious countryside, of plentiful order and moderation, which has the lush vividness of a Rubens landscape, and whose sensibility uncurls all the way down to Downton Abbey. It’s ridiculous, idealised, and yet it bites into something in the English psyche too:
The lower land, that to the river bends,
Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine, and calves do feed;
The middle grounds thy mares and horses breed.
Each bank doth yield thee conies; and the tops,
Fertile of wood, Ashore and Sidney’s copse,
To crown thy open table, doth provide
The purpled pheasant with the speckled side;
The painted partridge lies in every field,
And for thy mess is willing to be killed.
And if the high-swollen Medway fail thy dish,
Thou hast thy ponds, that pay thee tribute fish,
Fat aged carps that run into thy net,
And pikes, now weary their own kind to eat,
As loath the second draught or cast to stay,
Officiously at first themselves betray;
Bright eels that emulate them, and leap on land
Before the fisher, or into his hand.
Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers,
Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours.
The early cherry, with the later plum,
Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come;
The blushing apricot and woolly peach
Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach.
And though thy walls be of the country stone,
They’re reared with no man’s ruin, no man’s groan;
There’s none that dwell about them wish them down;
But all come in, the farmer and the clown,
And no one empty-handed, to salute
Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit.
Some bring a capon, some a rural cake,
Some nuts, some apples; some that think they make
The better cheeses bring them …
Jonson’s enormous and capacious talent fathered an entire school of poets – the so-called ‘tribe of Ben’. His rival and friend John Donne influenced only a few others. His was an odder, knottier and more intense genius, though today, perhaps because of that, he is far better known. Donne can perplex modern readers because he is both a great poet of love and eroticism, and a great religious poet. At times the two seem to mingle, apparently