aglarien-Literature (EN) @[email protected]

Be like Jonson. Still bullying generations of scholars 400 years after his death. How many people managed that?

What's drama and video games have in common? They're both plays.

The preface of "Daphnis and Chloe" described the story as, "a delightful possession for everyone,/that will/heal the sick/and cheer the desponding,/bring back memories to those who have loved/and give needful instruction to those who have not".

However, as to Comedy of Errors this specific play, we should note that the only two performance record entries of Comedy of Errors in Shakespeare's time were both in private housings. One in a small pub(?), another in the court. Before we evacuate solid evidence of this play performing in public theatres, it is still unsafe to say Shakespeare meant to write a tragic comedy in the first place if only by depicting the sufferings of servants.

Earlier today I did a pre regarding servants, servitude and Shakespeare's farce. In Shakespeare's time, 60-70 percent of the population had the experience of working as a servant in someone else's household. Thus, a large part of his audience in the public theatre would feel related to his abused servants. With that perspective, we may have a new view of how the practical jokes worked out when the servants were bottom of the joke in his farce.

Savouring was a phrase Ben Jonson loved to use when he described his relationship to books. In life, he's a big eater and was terribly overweighted. To him, books are food. He's greedy, spitually. He digested, defecated and became fatter and fatter.

Shakespeare is a right bastard on this genre thing, ok? Even in his early career he started to mock genres. He might have learnt a thing or two from his teacher Plautus, who arrogantly declared "I can write this play a tragedy, but…" in one of his prologues. Shakespeare loved transgression and mixtures, if nothing else. His most "farcical" play Comedy of Errors is regarded tragic comedy by some scholars, and in his Love's Labour's Lost Shakespeare made Berowne complained about how Berowne's own story failed to be a comedy due to the cold hearts of ladies and how the time limit of a play forbids him to pursue his lover further.

“Poetic Influence-when it involves two strong authentic poets-always proceeds by a misreading of the prior poet, an act of creative correction that is actually and necessarily a misinterpretation. The history of fruitful poetic influence...is a history of anxiety and self-saving caricature, of distortion, of perverse wilful revisionism...” (The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom)

I'm asking myself: why am I obsessed with Early Modern Writer anecdotes so much recently? I think one of the reason is that the knowledge I get from studying these authors's lives is endlessly emanicipating. You can write for money and write well (almost every early modern dramatists, especially Shakespeare). You can be cynical and jealous of your fellow writers's works yet still do a good job yourself and even be half-decent to them on a personal level(Jonson). You can write profane things while being a clegyman(sorry that's a joke, Mr. Donne). Most importantly you can be anyone you like, try your best to earn your bread by your pen, enjoy your life to the full and on the off chance still be one of the greatest writers in history. It's extremely comforting, really. Art is art, no mystyfing, for once.

Shakespeare's insufficiency of real sense of humor in his comedy is usually (and easily) pardoned by the contemporary audiences for his excellence in language and his legacy. "It was written 400 years ago. What did you expect? Naturally most jokes were worn out!" Some say. And admittedly, I'll buy tickets to see Benedick/Beatrice, Rosaline/Berowne. and Kathrine/Petruchio bickering all day. His comedy does not even need to be funny in plots and in characterizations in the first place (for me). There're so many other aspects to be praised.
However, works of Ben Jonson, e.g. the devil is an ass, remind me that the Jacobean comedies can actually be funny, with their timeless jokes criticizing human beings' foul plays. A good sense of humor can be appreciated even when the playwright was long buried (standing up).
All hail Ben Jonson the satirist. I hope I can see one production of his plays live one day.

Opinions are my own. Comedy: Jonson vs. Shakespeare
Ben Jonson's comedies are actually, unexpectedly funny. Many jokes in these plays will really make sense in the 21st century with or without some minimal changes. In his comedies almost all characters suffer from their own avarice, vanity and jealousy. That aspect of people never change and is even more true in today's society. That's what the playwright jabbed us with and that's timeless.
On another hand, I can count the times I did laugh at a line in any one of Shakespeare's comedy single - handedly. Some contemporary productions of Shakespeare are quite funny, but that's more the contribution of the director and the actors. The original playtexts by Shakespeare are deep, meaningful, witty, yet less funny than that of Jonson to today's audiences (at least, to me).

And Oscar Wilde basically wrote a Shakespeare fan fiction called the portrait of Mr. W.H.

…And I think the most difficult thing here is that Jonson's almost emotionless in his writing. That's why romantics rebuked him and that's exactly why we find it difficult to determine his motives and his feelings to these writers/patrons/people of "gentle sex". He's a son of brick-layer who seeked homage and shelter in the courtiers's home. That power dynamic in many ways had a stronger effect on his relationships than gender issues.

Also, to some extent, Jonson's attitude to these woman writers as their friend was consistent: in Conversation with Drummond, where he sharply criticized a large amount of his contemporary writers, and of which conversation he never expected anyone other than Drummond or himself would hear his words, he said Lady Rutland was no inferior than her father (Sidney), and Mary Wroth married a man not worthy of her. Both opinions he had more or less expressed in his poems dedicated to these two separatively. When all in the literary world (and aristocratic, too) disparaged Mary Wroth for her romantic prose and scourged her, Jonson wrote to her saying her writings made himself a better poet.

Trevor Ross singles out the copyright Act of 1774 as the establishment of "literature in its modern sense", the turning of "the canon" into "a set of commodities to be consumed"

But honestly, I don't like the presentation of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson in Sandman #75. There's too much projection of modern writers' anxieties over their own originality, which is simply not a worthnoting issue for the early modern writers. What did Jonson and Shakespeare would fear in their real lives? The death of family members, the decline of fames, and the loss of patrons. Things like that, yet lack of originality or creativity was not one of them. That one never disturbed them. When Jonson disliked some pieces in Shakespeare's work, he simply would say "the monologue's too long" or "it's mouldy". He would never ever attack or mock on Shakespeare's originality, nor would him tease Shakespeare on that one. I understand that all adaptations are new works using old materials to tell their own stories. It's just that the Shakespeare&Jonson like that are unsatisfying for me.

I translated part of Conversation with Drummond into Chinese here: https://toot.mantyke.icu/@aglarien/108808427635877922
In 1918, Ben Jonson travelled to Scotland on foot. He was then the most famous author in the English speaking world (because his friend/rival Shakespeare died 3 years earlier). In January 1919, he slept a few nights over in the poet Drummond's home and conversed a lot with Drummond, self- boasting and criticizing every his contemporary authors. Drummond must have contempted his scornful comments on people to some extent, but Drummond wrote down everything he said all the same.

Marlowe's English in Dr Faustus in A Text was unexpectedly easy and casual, even though it went along with a deadly dose of Latin. Definitely easier and more life-like than that of Shakespeare in my eyes.

Yes, I'm aware that this account has become a Shakespeare-worshipping bot. And no, I don't regret.

Shakespeare wrote 126 sonnets to his male lover and you heterosexual people have been using some of them on your weddings over the last 400 years while denying the rights of homosexual couple to even marry.