Jonsonian Allusions

Abstract

So read the opening lines of a long poem on one of Jonson’s favorite subjects, written during the Civil War by an anonymous royalist who expresses equal enthusiasm for Charles, Ben and good wine, all the while mocking Roundheads and Puritans ‘Whose best mirth is six shillings beere & Psalmes’ and who think ‘Ther’s Powder treason, in all Spanish Drink’. The poem, apparently unpublished then or later, still lies in a manuscript volume at University College, London, and has not been discussed in print, although it provides useful new data about Jonson’s posthumous reputation as man, poet, drinker and even political thinker — especially since the anonymous writer associates his taste for Jonson and sack with a shared distaste for Puritans. The poem sheds new light on Jonson’s appeal to various wartime factions, and it may thus help us assess more accurately his own political leanings — or at least the ways in which those leanings were perceived by contemporaries.¹