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Catiline and the Nature of Jonson's Tragic Fable
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Although the principal subject of this paper is Ben Jonson's second tragedy, Catiline His Conspiracy (1611), a good deal of what I have to say is equally applicable to his earlier and somewhat more ambitious Sejanus His Fall (1603). The two plays are alike in many ways. For one thing, neither of them has ever been popular. Even among professed admirers, very few have been willing to praise them as highly as Jonson thought they deserved to be praised, and fewer still have seen any genuine tragedy in them. In fact, most criticism, favorable as well as unfavorable, has centered on such interesting but essentially peripheral matters as Jonson's use of the Senecan ghost and chorus (in Catiline), his portrayal of character, his reconstruction of the Roman scene, and, of course, his rhetoric. Discussions of Jonson's plots have scarcely gone beyond the problem of identifying his sources, and almost no one has touched upon the question of whether any real importance attaches to the use he made of those sources. This would not be particularly surprising, perhaps, if we were dealing with some competent journeyman, like Thomas Heywood for example, whose selection and use of sources is a matter of mainly academic interest; but in Jonson we have a playwright who not only aimed at something more than a popularly successful play but also set unusually great store by authenticity of fable—or “truth of argument,” as he called it—where tragedy was concerned (Works, IV, 350). His manipulation of material, therefore, especially at points where the disagreement of authoritative sources about a major issue forced him to make a choice, becomes a matter of considerable interest. It is certainly of interest to the historian, for it shows the sort of interpretation of history an intelligent and well-informed classical student of the seventeenth century might reasonably hold. My point, however, is that it is also a matter of literary interest. It can be shown, I think, that Jonson's ordering of his fable, rightly understood, gives the clue to why and how he expected these plays to be judged as tragedies rather than merely as serious history plays. In other words, it lets one see the conception of tragic drama that he worked by.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1954
References
1 Citations from Jonson in my text are to Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson, 10 vols. (Oxford, 1925-50)—hereafter referred to as Works. Sejanus and Catiline appear in Vols. iv and v respectively.
2 See the discussion of sources in Works, x, 117-119, and passim in the notes to the play, pp. 121-161.
3 See Ellen M. T. Duffy, “Ben Jonson's Debt to Renaissance Scholarship in Sejanus and Catiline,” MLR, xlii (1947), 24-30.
4 In preparing this paper, I have used the Loeb ed. of Sallust's works, trans. J. C. Rolfe (London, 1920).
5 This was the view of most Stoics; see Eduard Zeller, The Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, trans. O. J. Reichel (London, 1892), pp. 249 ff.
6 Sulla's soliloquy, which opens the play, may be taken as a dramatic representation of one of Catiline's motives as given in Bellum Catilinae v.6; and the scene in Fulvia's boudoir (all of Act ii) is worked up from bare suggestions in Bellum Catilinae xxiii-xxv. Sallust mentions the rumor of a blood-drinking episode (ibid., xxii) but admits that he has no proof that it ever took place.
7 Jonson also makes considerable use of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Catilinarian orations, the Pro Sulla, the Pro Murena, and the Pro Caelio. His borrowings from Cicero, however, are designed mainly to give authority to Cicero's own speeches. For a convenient tabulation of these borrowings, see Catiline ed. Lynn Harold Harris, Yale Studies in Eng., liii (New Haven, 1916), p. xx.
8 Cato the Younger, xxii. Plutarch makes it clear, however, that even here Caesar had his ultimate goal of absolute rule in mind. North translates the passage as follows: “Caesar being an excellent spoken man, and that rather desired to nourish than to quench any such stirrs or seditions in the Common-wealth, being fit for his purpose long determined of, made an Oration full of sweet pleasant words.” Lives of the Noble Grecians & Romans (Cambridge, 1676), p. 644.
9 See my “The Significance of Ben Jonson's First Requirement for Tragedy,” SP, xlix (1952), 195-213.
10 He does not, e.g., shuffle events, introduce patent anachronisms, or irresponsibly invent parts of the action to suit his purposes. In fact, Jonson's sequence of events does not differ materially from that in the account by M. Cary, Cambridge Ancient History (1932), ix, 491-504.
11 Imago Civilis Julii Caesaris, in The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding et al. (London, 1858-59), vi, 337. The tone of Bacon's portrait is aptly illustrated by the following selection (Spedding's trans., p. 342): “He sought reputation and fame not for themselves, but as instruments of power. By natural impulse therefore, not by any moral guiding, he aspired rather to possess it than to be thought worthy of it: a thing which gave him favour with the people, who had no dignity of their own; but with the nobles and great persons, who wished also to preserve their own dignity, procured him the reputation of covetousness and boldness. Wherein assuredly they were not far from the truth.”
12 Plutarch's recognition that Caesar was a threat to the commonwealth almost from the outset of his career is illustrated by the following observation near the beginning of his Caesar (trans. North, ed. cit., p. 592): “… he ever kept a good board, and fared well at his Table, and was very liberal besides: the which indeed did advance him forward, and brought him in estimation with the people. His enemies judging that this favour of the common people would soon quail, when he could no longer hold out that charge and expence, suffered him to run on, till by little and little he was grown to be of great strength and power. But in fine, when they had thus given him the bridle to grow to this greatness, and that they could not then pull him back, though indeed in sight it would turn to the destruction of the whole state and Commonwealth of Rome: too late they found, that there is not so little a beginning of any thing, but continuance of time will soon make it strong, when through contempt there is no impediment to hinder the greatness.” Dio's general opinion of Caesar follows the same line; of Caesar's unscrupulousness he writes: “… he showed himself perfectly ready to serve and flatter everybody, even ordinary persons, and shrank from no speech or action in order to get possession of the objects for which he strove.”—Roman History, xxxvii.37, trans. Earnest Cary, Loeb Classical Library (1914), iii, 159. Suetonius, of course, goes farther than either Plutarch or Dio toward establishing Caesar's complete lack of scruple, moral or otherwise; see especially Divus Iulius, lii, lxxvi. Harris (p. xix) has asserted that Suetonius was Jonson's principal source for the character of Caesar; but Jonson could have found all he needed for that in Plutarch.
13 “The Nature of the Conflict in Jonson's Sejanus,” Vanderbilt Studies in the Humanities, i (1951), 197-219.
14 Cf. Shakespeare's representation of this point of low ebb among the forces for good in King Lear iv.