Ben Jonson

"Whilst that for which all virtue now is sold, And almost every vice — almighty gold."

"Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room; Thou art a monument, without a tomb, And art alive still, while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read, and praise to give."

"For if I thought my judgment were of years, I should commit thee surely with thy peers, And tell how far thou didst our Lily outshine, Or sporting Kyd, or Marlow's mighty line. And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek, From thence to honour thee, I will not seek For names…"

"'Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not of an age, but for all time! And all the muses still were in their prime, When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm! Nature herself was proud of his designs, And joy'd to wear the dressing of his lines! Which were so richly spun, and woven so sit, As, since she will vouchsafe no other wit."

"Yet must I not give nature all: thy art, My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part. For though the poet's matter nature be, His art doth give the fashion. And that he Who casts to write a living line, must sweat, (Such as thine arc) and strike the second heat Upon the muses anvil; turn the fame, And himself with it, that he thinks to frame; Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn, For a good poet's made, as well as born. And such wert thou. Look how the father's face Lives in his issue, even so the race Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines In his well-turned, and true filed lines: In each of which he seems to shake a lance, As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance."

"Sweet swan of Avon! what a sight it were To see thee in our water yet appear, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, That so did take Eliza, and our James. But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere Advanc'd, and made a constellation there! Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage, Or influence, chide, or cheer the drooping stage, Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night, And despairs day, but for thy volumes light."

"I now think, Love is rather deaf, than blind, For else it could not be, That she, Whom I adore so much, should so slight me, And cast my love behind."

"Where dost thou careless lie, Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps, doth die; And this security, It is the common moth, That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both."

"Rhyme, the rack of finest wits, That expresseth but by fits, True conceit, Spoiling senses of their treasure, Cozening judgement with a measure, But false weight. Wresting words from their true calling; Propping verse, for fear of falling To the ground. Jointing syllables, drowning letters, Fastening vowels, as with fetters They were bound!"

"Still may syllabes jar with time, Still may reason war with rhyme, Resting never!"

"Those that merely talk and never think, That live in the wild anarchy of drink."

"It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make man better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log, dry, bald and sere: A lily of a day, Is fairer far, in May, Although it fall, and die that night; It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see, And in short measures life may perfect be."

"The voice so sweet, the words so fair, As some soft chime had stroked the air; And, though the sound were parted thence, Still left an echo in the sense."

"Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing."

"A good life is a main argument."

"It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature."

"A cripple in the way out-travels a footman or a post out of the way."

"He is a narrow-minded man, that affects a triumph in any glorious study; but to triumph in a lie, and a lie themselves have forged, is frontless. Folly often goes beyond her bounds; but Impudence knows none."

"It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing."

"I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted a thousand"."

"I loved the man and do honor his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any."

"They say princes learn no art truly, but the art of horsemanship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom."

"Greatness of name in the father oft-times overwhelms the son; they stand too near one another. The shadow kills the growth: so much, that we see the grandchild come more and oftener to be heir of the first."

"Though the most be players, some must be spectators."

"Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks..."

"One, though he be excellent and the chief, is not to be imitated alone; for never no imitator ever grew up to his author; likeness is always on this side truth. Yet there happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking; his language (where he could spare or pass by a jest) was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end."

"Lady: How do's it fit? wilt come together? Prudence: Hardly. Lad: Thou must make shift with it. Pride feels no Pain."

"I never thought an angry person valiant: Virtue is never aided by a vice."

"That Shakespeare wanted Art."

"He cursed Petrarch for redacting verses to sonnets, which he said were like that tyrant's bed, where some who were too short were racked, others too long cut short."

"That Donne himself, for not being understood, would perish."

"Shakespeare, in a play, brought in a number of men saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where there is no sea by some 100 miles."

"He saw in a vision his eldest son (then a child and at London) appear unto him with the mark of a bloody cross on his forehead, as if it had been cutted with a sword, at which amazed he prayed unto God, and in the morning he came to Mr. Camden's chamber to tell him, who persuaded him it was but an apprehension of his fantasy at which he should not be disjected; in the meantime comes there letters from his wife of the death of that boy in the plague. He appeared to him (he said) of a manly shape, and of that growth that he thinks he shall be at the resurrection."

"He hath consumed a whole night in lying looking to his great toe, about which he hath seen Tartars and Turks, Romans and Carthaginians, fight in his imagination."

"His opinion of verses. That he wrote all his first in prose, for so his master Camden had learned him.That verses stood by sense without either colours or accent; which yet other times he denied."

"A gentleman reading a poem that began withWhere is that man that never yet did hear Of fair Penelope, Ulysses' queen?[Jonson] calling his cook, asked if he had ever heard of her, who answering "No," demonstrate to him Lo, there the man that never yet did hear Of fair Penelope, Ulysses' queen."

"When Ben Jonson presented a masque entitled "News from the New World," his new world was not the newly found continent of North America, but the new world of science, the world revealed by the telescope of Galileo."

"With the death of Ben Jonson and the beginning of the civil troubles the great literary society that had met at the Mermaid and the Devil Taverns was dissolved, and London saw no real literary society again until the time of Pope and Swift."

"Those who have most deeply studied Jonson and most truly felt his power, will hesitate the longest before pronouncing a decisive judgment on the place he occupies among the foremost poets of our literature. One thing, however, can be considered as certain in any estimate which we may form. His throne is not with the Olympians but with the Titans; not with those who share the divine gifts of creative imagination and inevitable instinct, but with those who compel our admiration by their untiring energy and giant strength of intellectual muscle. What we most marvel at in his writings, is the prodigious brain-work of the man, the stuff of constant and inexhaustible cerebration they contain. Moreover, we shall not be far wrong in saying that, of all the English poets of the past, he alone, with Milton and Gray, deserves the name of a great and widely learned scholar."

"Trink mir nur mit den Augen zu, // mein Blick tut dir Bescheid; // und bleibt ein Kuß für mich im Glas, // den Wein ich gerne meid'."