Jonson’s Epitaph to Shakespeare

Much like his contemporaries, Ben Jonson utilized the iambic pentameter, though not in the traditional sonnet form. Within “To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare”, Jonson uses couplets to monumentalize the passing of one of the most prolific dramatists of the sixteenth century. While the poem is a testimony to the memory of Shakespeare, Jonson uses this moment to show the irony, but also the dedication that poets have to embrace the poets before them. “They evidence Jonson’s conviction that part of the poet’s duty was to provide a voice of fame for his worthy contemporaries…as well as his attempt to make eulogy more believable and more interesting than it often was” (Summers 458). By eulogizing Shakespeare, he not only celebrated the great poet’s life, but immortalized the poet within words. This allows the poet to continue on through centuries.
Jonson related Shakespeare to the forefathers of poetics: “From thence to honour thee, I would not seek/For names; but call forth thund’ring Æschylus, Euripides and Sophocles to us;/Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,” (Jonson ln 32-35); while noting that Shakespeare far surpassed other great English poets: “My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by/Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie” (Jonson ln 19-20). Jonson takes into account the impact Shakespeare had on the dramatic and poetic communities. He uses comedic irony by including other comedic greats in the eulogy: “And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine, /Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe’s mighty line” (Jonson ln 29-30); by associating three men known for their comedic and lofty characterization, Jonson solidifies the comedic talents of both Shakespeare and himself.
Within the works of Shakespeare can be found the standards to which Jonson held his own works. They had intelligence; they used the humours as a Renaissance psychological depth. Jonson felt strongly that works were meant to honor and embrace the ideals that Petrarch, and thereby writing in the tradition of greats, such as Ovid and Aristotle. Jonson allowed his works to question themselves, showing opposition and contradiction: “Besides the private and the public, the amateur and the professional, the individual and the general, one thinks of extravagance and sobriety, excess and measure, spontaneity and deliberation, immediacy and distance, daring and propriety, roughness and elegance, tension and balance, agility and weight. And one can go on to expression and function, ecstasy and ethics, experience and thought, energy and order, the genius and the craftsman-ending with those inevitable seventeenth century pairs, passion and reason, wit and judgment, nature and art” (Summers 464). Much like his contemporaries, Jonson invited his poetry as a means of discovering the world around him.
Jonson’s ideals correlate well with his predecessors; the question and answer thread sewn into the poem is reminiscent of Spenser and Sidney. The homage to the Greeks and the reinvention of Ovid’s romantic love, in the context of the Renaissance sexual and cultural politics, are ever present in their works as well. There is as much conceit as there is comedy within the eulogy to Shakespeare. No doubt Shakespeare would have been honored by Jonson’s words, but considered it a poetical duel to out best the great dramatist.

WORKS CITED
Jonson, Ben. “To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare.” Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets. Ed. Hugh MacLean. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1974.
Summers, Joseph. “Donne and Jonson”. Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets. Ed. Hugh MacLean. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1974.