JACOBEAN ERA

1
 Important Facts
Elizabethan Era :Nov 17, 1558 – Mar 24, 1603
Shakespear’s era:April 26, 1564-April 23, 1616
Jacobean Era: March 24, 1603 – March 27, 1625
Shakespeare died in April 26, 1564-April 23, 1616

2
 The Jacobean Era

The Jacobean era was the time when James I was King of

England. James I ruled between 1603 and 1625. We call it
the 'Jacobean' era because Jacobus is the Latin version of
the name 'James.'
Jacobean art and culture was heavily influenced by the art
and culture of the Elizabethan era, the time right before the
Jacobean era. It was also influenced by ancient Greece and
Rome.
But the spirit which the works reflect is still like that of
Elizabethan , therefore it would be better to group them
with Elizabethan era’s works.
3
 Ben Jonson: Life and career
Ben Jonson 1573-1637
“Shakespeare’s greatest rival in his later career.”
He was born in 1573
son of a London clergyman, he was educated at Westminster School
under the great scholar William Camden.
There he developed his love of classical learning, but lacking the
resources to continue his education, Jonson was forced to turn to his
stepfather’s trade of bricklaying, a life he “could not endure.”
Worked as: bricklayer- soldier- actor- Playwright.
He wrote masques for the court and enjoyed patronage of James who
made him Court-poet or poet laureate.
(Masque: it is a short dramatic piece or interlude with elaborate scenery,
4music, dance, gods and goddess. It later developed into opera. )
 Ben Jonson: Life and career
He was a great classical scholar, but was proud of his
learning and contemptuous of less learned. He was self
complacent, aggressive, and arrogant. Despite all this he
was admiring disciples known as the ‘sons’ or tribe of Ben’
Although he rose to a position of eminent respectability,
Jonson seems to have been possessed all his life by a
quarrelsome spirit.
Much of his best work emerged out of fierce tensions with
collaborators and contemporaries.
Yet even after a stroke in 1629 left him partially paralyzed
and confined to his home, Jonson continued to write for the
5
stage, and was at work on a new play when he died in 1637.
 Ben Jonson: Life and career
He died in poverty and was buried in Westminster
Abbey.
The short and simple epitaph on his tomb reads: O
Rare BEN JONSON!

6
 Jonson’s writings
In 1616 Ben Jonson published his Works which is a
collection of plays and poems.
Jonson knew and admired both Donne and
Shakespeare and more than any Jacobean belonged to
both of their very different worlds, but in publishing
his Works he laid claim to an altogether higher literary
status.

7
 Jonson’s writings

He was a strict follower of classical patterns and

models. His plays are based on classical models.
He sets himself as reformer of Elizabethan stage
with whose romantic tradition he was wholly out
of sympathies.
Jonsons’ works are divided into groups: his court
masques, historical tragedies, his comedies.

8
 Ben Jonson and Shakespeare
Though he admired Shakespeare, he was a complete antithesis of
Shakespeare.
1. Shakespeare did not theorize about his art and accepted the conditions
of the stage as he found them.
2. Ben Jonson conformed strictly to the rules of classical drama.
3. He observed the three unities of drama; while Shakespeare did not
follow them strictly.
4. He kept tragedy and comedy apart instead of mixing them as
Shakespeare did.
5. He was conscientiously accurate in his historical facts as opposed to
Shakespeare.
6. His two tragedies: Sejanus and Catiline were the result of elaborate
reading and research and are heavily documented, but have nothing to
9
recommended themselves except their documentation.
 1. His comedies are more successful.
Everyman in His Humour (1598)
Volpone (1606) or the Fox
Epicoene (1609)or The Silent Woman
The Alchemist (1610)
the Bartholomew Fair (1614)
2. He was a realist. The world of his comedies is not the
world of romance, but of contemporary LONDON Life.
3. He not only depicts society but he used stage for moral
teaching. Thus, his realism is a kind of didactic realism
10
1. His characterization “is based on the idea that each man is
possessed and governed by some one particular quality or
'master passion 'which may be regarded as backbone of and
central feature of his personality. Jonson seizes upon this
‘master passion’, or ‘humor’ as he calls it, and make a whole
character out of it, with a result that his men and women are
not complex individual, like Shakespeare’s, but rather types;
while reverting to the old morality method, he often labels or
tickets them with the names which are at once indicate their
special “humour” Hudson

11
 Al Chemist
Main characters
Face (Butler)
Lovewit (owner)
Subtle (Alchemist)
Dol Common
Victims
Dapper (require spirit- Faire Queen)
Drugger ( store’s location, door’s location, Philosopher
stone)
Epicure Mammon (philosopher stone)+ Surly

12
 Master Lovewit leaves the city because of plague. His butler,
Jeremy, known as Face to his friends of the underworld, invites
Subtle, a swindler posing as an alchemist, and Dol Common, a
prostitute, to join him in using the house as a base of operations
for their rascally activities.
Dapper wants to learn from the eminent astrologer, Doctor
Subtle, how to win at all games of chance. In the hands of the
two merciless rascals, Dapper is relieved of all his ready cash, in
return for which Subtle predicts that Dapper will have good luck
at the gaming tables. In order to gull Dapper further, Subtle tells
him to return later to confer with the Queen of Fairy, a
mysterious benefactress who can promote Dapper’s worldly
success.

13
 Drugger, an ambitious young druggist who was led on by
Face, is the next victim to enter the house. To his delight,
he learns from Subtle, who speaks mostly in
incomprehensible pharmaceutical and astrological jargon,
that he will have a rich future.
Sir Epicure Mammon, a greedy and lecherous knight,
with his friend Surly, a man versed in the ways of London
confidence men. Having been promised the philosopher’s
stone by Subtle, Mammon has wild visions of transforming
all of his possessions into gold and silver, but he is
completely taken in by the duplicities of Subtle and Face.

14
 In the end, when Lovewit return to his house, all the
other characters abscond the house. Lovewit wins the
hand of Dame Pliant and, in his good humor, forgives
his crafty butler.

15
 Intellect dominates in his comedies
The stories are product of learning rather than creative
power. They lack naturalness and charm.

16