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clothes, belief in astrology, the monopoly-system, and the vogue of dueling. Some of these, of course, are merely touched upon. Among the classes satirized are the politician, the money-lender, the lawyer, the courtier, the physician, and the clergyman.

The conventional character of the types and objects satirized in The Magnetic Lady may be seen by a cursory examination of the satiric character-drawing and satiric drama of the early seventeenth century. In the characterwriting of Joseph Hall (1597–1608), Sir Thomas Overbury (1614), and John Earle (1628), we find portrayed characters that are obviously analogues to those in The Magnetic Lady-courtier, flatterer, soldier, tailor, Puritan, mere common lawyer, almanac-maker, hypocrite, precisian, vain-glorious coward in command, roaring boy, domestic chaplain, witless gallant, mere dull physician, alderman, idle gallant, she-precise-hypocrite, handsome hostess, affected man, coward, sordid rich man, etc. Also in the drama, especially that of the first decade of the seventeenth century, are found the same general types of character satirized by Jonson. The works of Middleton, especially, furnish interesting parallels; and the same types are found in Marston, Dekker, and the earlier work of Beaumont and Fletcher. By glancing through the list of dramatis personæ of these plays, one can make out a long list of such personages: Lucre, a rich uncle; Hoard; Moneylove; Glister, a doctor of physic; Purge, an apothecary; gallants; Gallipot, an apothecary; promoters; midwife, nurses, Puritans, and other gossips; Knavesby, a lawyer; a land-captain; a sea-captain; Securitie, a usurer; Bramble, a lawyer; Morecraft, a usurer, etc., etc.

This brief review, and the remarks on the prototypes of the characters, show the conventional character of Jonson's satire. The customs and classes held up to ridicule

or moral reprobation in this, as well as his earlier comedies, are the regular objects of Elizabethan and Jacobean formal satire and the satiric drama. Jonson's distinction consists in vividness, convincingness, and consistency of character-portrayal; in reflective comment, humor, diction, literary allusion, and energy of treatment. While it is not the purpose of this work to consider how far Jonson's satire is a realistic reflection of the times, I may remark in passing that it deals with some abuses which were of a purely temporary or transitory nature. A large proportion of the moral vices attacked-avarice, ambition, flattery, hypocrisy, lust, gluttony, cowardice, stupidity

are the universal evils of human nature; but the office of state-informer, the extravagance of courtcostume, the belief in astrology and alchemy, the monopoly-system, the vogue of dueling, and the ignorance and worldliness of clergymen and physicians, were the peculiar evils of the time. Volpone is a type of avarice, one of the evil passions of human nature. Bobadill is a type of the disbanded soldier, living by his wits, who infested the capital at a certain period of its history. In other words, Jonson was both a classical satirist and an English realist.

F. EXTRACTS FROM THE CRITICS

Ward 1: After The New Inn Jonson produced two further comedies, of which the earlier, The Magnetic Lady or Humours Reconciled, acted, as it would appear, under the latter title, in 1633, seems to have not been wholly unsuccessful. Yet in it we have in truth nothing more than the remnants of Ben Jonson-dry leaves from a nosegay of brighter days. The conception of the piece 1 Hist. Eng. Dram. Lit. 2. 377-8.

is that of assembling a variety of characters, each distinguished by its own 'humour,' round the centre supplied by the dramatic action; but there is nothing magnetic about the lady except the money of her niece, and the humours of the characters in general are described rather than illustrated by the course of the play. In its execution the marks of old age are apparent. Gifford praises the character of Polish, the she-parasite of Lady Loadstone, as an unequalled dramatic picture of the gossiping toadeater'; at all events, this personage is more vigorously drawn than the rest of the Intimes of the Magnetic Lady. The author's undertaking to reconcile' the humours contrasted with one another is indeed carried out in part, but very perfunctorily. Altogether the comedy is by no means devoid of ingenuity; but on the other hand it cannot be pronounced free from coarseness.

Swinburne1: The higher genius of Ben Jonson as a comic poet was yet once more to show itself in one brilliant flash of parting splendour before its approaching sunset. No other of his works would seem to have met with such all but universal neglect as The Magnetic Lady; I do not remember to have ever seen it quoted or referred to, except once by Dryden, who in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy cites from it an example of narrative substituted for action, where one comes out from dinner, and relates the quarrels and discorders of it, to save the undecent appearance of them on the stage, and to abbreviate the story.' And yet any competent spectator of its opening scenes must have felt a keen satisfaction at the apparent revival of comic power and renewal of the dramatic instinct so lamentably enfeebled and eclipsed on the last occasion of a new play from the same hand. The first act is full of brilliant satirical description and humorous analysis of humours: the commentator Compass, to whom 1 Study of Ben Jonson, pp. 81-3.

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we owe these masterly summaries of character, is an excellent counterpart of that reasonable man' who so constantly reappears on the stage of Molière to correct with his ridicule or control by his influence the extravagant or erratic tendencies of his associates. Very few examples of Jonson's grave and deliberate humour are finer than the ironical counsel given by Compass to the courtly fop whom he dissuades from challenging the soldier who has insulted him, on the ground that the soldier

has killed so many

As it is ten one to one his turn is next;

You never fought with any, less, slew any;

And therefore have the (fairer) hopes before you.

The rest of the speech, with all that follows to the close of the scene, is no less ripe and rich in sedate and ingenious irony. There is no less admirable humour in the previous discourse of the usurer in praise of wealth-especially as being the only real test of a man's character :

For, be he rich, he straight with evidence knows

Whether he have any compassion

Or inclination unto virtue, or no:

Where the poor knave erroneously believes

If he were rich he would build churches, or
Do such mad things.

Most of the characters are naturally and vigorously drawn in outline or in profile: Dame Polish is a figure well worthy the cordial and lavish commendation of Gifford : and the action is not only original and ingenious, but during the first four acts at any rate harmonious and amusing. The fifth act seems to me somewhat weaker; but the interludes are full of spirit, good humour, and good sense.

Aronstein1: Das ist die nicht gerade sehr erfreuliche Handlung, die, wenn auch nicht ohne ermüdende Längen 1 Ben Jonson, pp. 225–6.

und Episoden, doch während der ersten vier Akte ziemlich lebhaft fortschreitet, im fünften Akte allerdings sich nur mühsam ihrem Ende zuschleppt.

Die Charaktere sind zum Teil in der Anlage nicht übel. Jonsons umfassende Menschenkenntnis und scharfe Beobachtungsgabe verleugnen sich auch hier nicht. Gifford lobt nicht mit Unrecht den Charakter der Frau Polish, die er,,die vollkommenste Darstellung einer geschwätzigen Schmarotzerin nennt, deren die englische Bühne sich rühmen kann." Swinburne sieht überhaupt in diesem Stücke ein Wiederaufleben der komischen Kraft Ben Jonsons und findet besonders den Charakter des Compass sehr gelungen, den er ein ausgezeichnetes Gegenstück zu dem Raisonneur bei Molière nennt. In Wirklichkeit fehlt allen diesen Charakteren, ob der Dichter sich nun auf dichterische Vorbilder stützt, wie in dem Arzt und Geistlichen, die Chaucers Frere und Physician in den Canterbury-Geschichten nachgeahmt sind, oder ob er aus eigener Beobachtung schöpft, die Frische, der Humor, das Leben. Das Skelett und die äusseren Umrisse sind scharf gesehen, aber die schöpferische Phantasie vermag diesen nicht mehr Leben einzuhauchen. Nur die Reflexion und Satire, die lehrhafte Absichtlichkeit sind geblieben. So löst denn gerade dieses Stück, dessen Bau den alten Theaterpraktiker und dessen scharfe und geistvolle Sprache den hochgebildeten, denkenden Dichter nicht verleugnen, bei dem Leser und Verehrer Jonsons mehr wie eins der früheren traurig-pathetische Gefühle aus. Die alte dramatische Kraft ist erloschen, und nur unter dem Zwange äusserer Not kehrt der alte und kranke Dichter zur Bühne zurück, ohne doch etwas anderes als ein Zerrbild seiner früheren Leistungen vollbringen zu können.

Castelain 1 Ce qu'il faut encore louer dans cette comédie, comme dans celle qui précède, c'est la façon 1 Ben Jonson, PP. 443–4.

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