The richness and versatility of Jonson's genius cannot be fully appreciated without the study of what is preserved to us of his "masques" and cognate entertainments. He was conscious enough of his success in this direction—"next himself," he said, "only Fletcher and Chapman could write a masque." He introduced, or at least established, the ingenious innovation of the anti-masque, which Schlegel has described as a species of "parody added by the poet to his device, and usually prefixed to the serious entry," and which accordingly supplies a grotesque antidote to the often extravagantly imaginative main conception. Jonson's learning, creative power and humorous ingenuity—combined, it should not be forgotten, with lyrical genius—all found abundant opportuni ties in these productions. The masque was by him thoroughly domesticated in the high places of English literature. He lived long enough to see its poetic masterpiece in Comus.
The Sad Shepherd, of which Jonson left behind him three acts and a prologue, is distinguished among English pastoral dramas by its freshness of tone; it breathes something of the spirit of the greenwood, and is not unnatural even in its supernatural ele ment. The piece, with its charming love-scenes between Robin Hood and Maid Marion, unhappily, remains a fragment.
Though Ben Jonson never altogether recognized the truth of the maxim that the dramatic art has properly speaking no didactic purpose, his long and laborious life was not wasted upon a barren endeavour. In tragedy he added two works of uncommon merit to our dramatic literature. In comedy his aim was higher, his effort more sustained, and his success more solid than were those of any of his fellows. In the subsidiary and hybrid species of the masque, he helped to open a new and attractive though un doubtedly devious path in the field of dramatic literature. His intellectual endowments surpassed those of most of the great Eng lish dramatists in richness and breadth; and in energy of applica tion he probably left them all behind. Inferior to more than one of his fellow-dramatists in the power of imaginative sympathy, he was first among the Elizabethans in the power of observation; and there is point in Barrett Wendell's paradox, that as a drama tist he was not really a poet but a painter. Yet it is less by these gifts, or even by his unexcelled capacity for hard work, than by the true ring of manliness that he will always remain distinguished among his peers.
first folio volume of Jonson's Works (of which title his novel but characteristic use in applying it to plays was at the time much ridiculed) appeared in 1616; the second, professedly pub lished in 1640, is described by Gifford as "a wretched continuation of the first, printed from mss. surreptitiously obtained during his life, or ignorantly hurried through the press after his death, and bearing a variety of dates from 1631 to 1641 inclusive." The works were reprinted in a single folio volume in 1692, in which The New Inn and The Case is Altered were included for the first time, and again in 6 vols. 8vo in 1715. Modern editions are by William Gifford (9 vols.,
1816; often reprinted) ; a complete critical edition in preparation for the Clarendon Press by C. H. Herford and P. Simpson; selections in the Mermaid Series (3 vols., 1893-95), ed. B. Nicholson (re-issue, with pref. by C. H. Herford, 1904). There are numerous critical editions of individual plays, for particulars of which the reader may be referred to the articles on the separate plays in E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (1923), vol. iii.; among these may be mentioned the editions of Every Man in his Humour and Everyman out of his Humour in Nos. 16 and 17 (1905 and 1907) of Bang's Materialien zur Kunde des alten englischen Dramas, by W. Bang and W. W. Greg; some by American scholars in the Yale Studies in English, ed. by A. S. Cook—The Poetaster, ed. H. S. Mallory (19o5) ; The Alchemist, ed. C. M. Hathaway (1903) ; The Devil is an Ass, ed. W. S. Johnson (1905) ; The Staple of News, ed. De Winter (19o5) ; The New Inn, ed. by G. Bremner (1908) ; The Sad Shepherd (with Waldron's con tinuation) has been edited by W. W. Greg for Bang's Materialien zur Kunde des alten englischen Dramas (Louvain, 1905).
The criticisms of Ben Jonson are too numerous for cataloguing here ; among those by eminent Englishmen should be specially men tioned John Dryden's, particularly those in his Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1667-68; revised 1684), and in the preface to An Evening's Love, or the Mock Astrologer (1668), and A. C. Swinburne's Study of Ben Jonson (1889), in which, however, the significance of the Discoveries is misapprehended. See also F. G. Fleay, Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama (1891), i. 311-387, ii. 1-18; C. H. Herford, "Ben Jonson" (art. ;n Dict. Nat. Biog., vol. xxx., 1802) ; A. W. Ward, History of English Dramatic Literature (2nd ed., 1899), ii. 296-407 ; and for a list of early impressions, W. W. Greg, List of English Plays written before 1643 and printed before 1700 (Biblio graphical Society, 190o), pp. 55-58 and supplement 11-15. An important French work on Ben Jonson, both biographical and critical, and containing, besides many translations of scenes and passages, some valuable appendices, to more than one of which reference has been made above, is Maurice Castelain's Ben Johnson, l'homme et l'oeuvre (1907). Among treatises or essays on particular aspects of his literary work may be mentioned Emil Koeppel's Quellenstudien zu den Dramen Ben Jonson's, etc. (1895) ; the same writer's "Ben Jonson's Wirkung auf zeitgenossische Dramatiker," etc., in Angli cistische Forschungen, 20 (1906) ; F. E. Schelling's Ben Jonson and the Classical School (1898) ; and as to his masques, A. Soergel, Die englischen Maskenspiele (1882) and J. Schmidt, "tJber Ben Jonson's Maskenspiele," in Herrig's Archiv, etc., xxvii. 51-91. See also H. Reinsch, "Ben Jonson's Poetik and seine Beziehungen zu Horaz," in Miinchener Beitrage, 16 (1899), and G. Gregory Smith, Ben Jonson (191o) in the English Men of Letters Series. (A. W. WA. ; X.)