The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 10, August, 1858. Various
an imaginary contest for the laurel presented an opportunity for characterizing the wits of the day in a series of capital strokes, as remarkable for justice as shrewd wit. Jonson is thus introduced:–
"The first that broke silence was good old Ben,
Prepared with Canary wine,
And he told them plainly he deserved the bays,
For his were called works, while others' were but plays;
"And bid them remember how he had purged the stage
Of errors that had lasted many an age;
And he hoped they did not think 'The Silent Woman,'
'The Fox,' and 'The Alchymist' outdone by no man.
"Apollo stopt him there, and bid him not go on;
'Twas merit, he said, and not presumption,
Must carry it; at which Ben turned about,
And in great choler offered to go out;
"But those who were there thought it not fit
To discontent so ancient a wit,
And therefore Apollo called him back again,
And made him mine host of his own 'New Inn.'"
This jeu d'esprit of Suckling, if of no value otherwise, would be respectable as an original which the Duke of Buckinghamshire,15 Leigh Hunt,16 and our own Lowell17 have successfully and happily imitated.
In due course, Laureate Jonson shared the fate of all potentates, and was gathered to the laurelled of Elysium. The fatality occurred in 1637. When his remains were deposited in the Poet's Corner, with the eloquent laconism above them, "O Rare Ben Jonson!" all the wits of the day stood by the graveside, and cast in their tribute of bays. The rite over, all the wits of the day hurried from the aisles of Westminster to the galleries of Whitehall to urge their several claims to the successorship. There were, of the elder time, Massinger, drawing to the close of a successful career,–Ford, with his growing fame,–Marmion, Heywood, Carlell, Wither. There was Sandys, especially endeared to the king by his orthodox piety, so becoming the son of an archbishop, and by his versions of the "Divine Poems," which were next year given to the press, and which found a place among the half-dozen volumes which a decade later solaced the last hours of his royal master. There were the names, in the junior class, of Tom Carew, noted for his amatory songs and his one brilliant masque,–Tom Killigrew, of pleasant humor, and no mean writer of tragedy,–Suckling, the wittiest of courtiers, and the most courtly of wits,–Cartwright, Crashaw, Davenant, and May. But of all these, the contest soon narrowed down to the two latter. William Davenant was in all likelihood the son of an innkeeper at Oxford; he was certainly the son of the innkeeper's wife. A rumor, which Davenant always countenanced, alleged that William Shakspeare, a poet of some considerable repute in those times, being in the habit of passing between Stratford-on-the-Avon and London, was wont to bait and often lodge at this Oxford hostelry. At one of these calls the landlady had proved more than ordinarily frail or the poet more than ordinarily seductive,–who can wonder at even virtue stooping to folly when the wooer was the Swan of Avon, beside whom the bird that captivated Leda was as a featherless gosling?–and the consequence had been Will Davenant, born in the year of our Lord 1605, Shakspeare standing as godfather at the baptism. A boy of lively parts was Will, and good-fortune brought those parts to the notice of the grave and philosophic Greville, Lord Brooke, whose dearest boast was the friendship in early life of Sir Philip Sidney. The result of this notice was a highly creditable education at school and university, and an ultimate introduction into the foremost society of the capital. Davenant, finding the drama supreme in fashionable regard, devoted himself to the drama. He also devoted himself to the cultivation of Ben Jonson, then at the summit of renown, assisting in an amateur way in the preparation of the court pageants, and otherwise mitigating the Laureate's labors. From 1632 to 1637, these aids were frequent, and established a very plausible claim to the succession. Thomas May, who shortly became his sole competitor, was a man of elevated pretensions. As a writer of English historical poems and as a translator of Lucan he had earned a prominent position in British literature; as a continuator of the "Pharsalia" in Latin verse of exemplary elegance, written in the happiest imitation of the martyred Stoic's unimpassioned mannerism, he secured for British scholarship that higher respect among Continental scholars which Milton's Latin poems and "Defensio pro Populo Anglicano" presently after confirmed. Of the several English writers of Latin verse, May stands unquestionably in the front rank, alongside of Milton and Bourne,–taking precedence easily of Owen, Cowley, and Gray. His dramatic productions were of a higher order than Davenant's. They have found a place in Dodsley's and the several subsequent collections of early dramas, not conceded to the plays of the latter. Masque-making, however, was not in his line. His invention was not sufficiently alert, his dialogue not sufficiently lively, for a species of poetry which it was the principal duty of the Laureate to furnish. Besides, it is highly probable, his sympathies with rebellious Puritanism were already so far developed as to make him an object of aversion to the king. Davenant triumphed. The defeated candidate lived to see the court dispersed, king and Laureate alike fugitive, and to receive from the Long Parliament the place of Historiographer, as a compensation for the lost bays. When, in 1650, he died, Cromwell and his newly-inaugurated court did honor to his obsequies. The body was deposited in Westminster Abbey; but the posthumous honor was in reserve for it, of being torn from the grave after the Restoration, and flung into a ditch along with the remains of three or four other republican leaders.
Davenant's career in office was unfortunate. There is reason to doubt whether, even before the rebellion broke out, his salary was regularly paid him. During the Civil War he exchanged the laurel for a casque, winning knighthood by his gallant carriage at the siege of Gloucester. Afterward, he was so far in the confidence of Queen Henrietta Maria, as to be sent as her envoy to the captive king, beseeching him to save his head by conceding the demands of Parliament. When, the errand proving abortive, the royal head was lost, Davenant returned to Paris, consoled himself by finishing the first two books of his "Gondibert," and then, despairing of a restoration, embarked (in 1650) from France for Virginia, where monarchy and the rights of Charles II were unimpaired. Fate, however, had not destined him for a colonist and backwoodsman. His ship, tempest-tossed, was driven into an English port, and the poet was seized and carried close prisoner to London. There the intervention of Milton, the Latin Secretary of the Council, is said to have saved his life. He was kept in the Tower for at least two years longer, however. The date of his release is uncertain, but, once at liberty, Davenant returned ardently to his former pursuits. A license was procured for musical exhibitions, and the phrase "musical exhibitions" was interpreted, with official connivance, as including all manner of dramatic performances. To the Laureate and to this period belongs the credit of introducing scenery, hitherto restricted to court masques, into the machinery of the ordinary drama. The substitution of female for male actors, in feminine characters, was also an innovation of this period. And as an incident of the Laureateship there is still another novelty to be noted. There is no crown without its thorns. The laurel renders the pillow of the wearer as knotty, uneasy, and comfortless as does a coronal of gold and jewels. Among the receipts of the office have been the jokes, good and bad, the sneers, the satire of contemporary wits,–such being the paper currency in which the turbulent subjects of the laurel crown think proper to pay homage to their sovereign. From the days of Will Davenant to these of ours, the custom has been faithfully observed. Davenant's earliest assailants were of his own political party, followers of the exiled Charles, the men whom Milton describes as "perditissimus ille peregrinantium aulieorum grex." These–among them a son of the memorable Donne, Sir John Denham, and Alan Broderick–united in a volume of mean motive and insignificant merit, entitled, "Verses written by Several of the Author's Friends, to be reprinted with the Second Edition of Gondibert." This was published in 1653. The effect of the onslaught has not been recorded. We know only that Davenant, surviving it, continued to prosper in his theatrical business, writing most of the pieces produced on his stage until the Restoration, when he drew forth from its hiding-place his wreath of laurel-evergreen, and resumed it with honor.
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