The Jonsonian Tempest

Abstract

The belief, however well founded, that Shakespeare was immeasurably superior to all the other dramatists of his time has not been entirely helpful to criticism of his work. It has fostered the assumption that, while they took a lot from him, he must have taken little or nothing from them. As Sidney Musgrove puts it, “Shakespeare borrowed freely from his printed sources, from novels, and histories; but not from his fellows” (Musgrove 18). How wrong this is Musgrove himself then proceeds unintentionally to demonstrate. Discussing the relationship of Shakespeare’s plays with those of Ben Jonson, he notes close similarities between various lines in Hamlet and two Jonson comedies, The Case Is Altered and the original, Florence-set version of Every Man in His Humour. They include Polonius’s words to Hamlet, “Will you walk out of the air, my lord ... [Aside] How pregnant sometimes his replies are!” (Hamlet, 2.2.204–7), which can hardly be independent of Bianca’s exchange with Thorello in Every Man in: “sweetheart, come in out of the air. / Thorello: [Aside] How simple and how subtle are her answers!” (1.4.182–4).¹ Determined to make Jonson the borrower, so that the repetitions can be accounted for as “Shakespearean phrases, floating in Jonson’s memory”, Musgrove has to cope with the problem of dates. Every Man in was performed in September 1598, at least two years earlier than Hamlet, and printed in 1601.