THIS WEEK'S GREAT DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 184, 6 August 1927, Page 8

THIS WEEK'S GREAT DAY.

AUGUST 6.—-DEATH OF BEN

JONSON.

(By CHARLES COX WAY.)

Two hundred and ninety years ago, on August (5, 1637, B;.'u Jon son, the famous dramatist, died at the age of 64. He was born in London in 1573, two months after the death of his father, and was educated at Westminster School, which he was able to attend by the generosity of William Camden, one of the most illustrious headmasters of that historic school. When he was two years old his mother married again, her second husband being a master bricklayer, and when Jonson left school he was apprenticed to his stepfather, but lie soon tired of bricklaying and joined the army. He distinguished himself in the Low Countries during the war with the Spaniards, and he was only nineteen when he returned to England and became an actor. He made his first appearance at the Kosc Theatre in Southwark, where he remained for several years, but he failed to achieve any success as a player, although he proved a most valuable member of the company owing to his great gifts as a dramatist and instructor. • In ir>9B, when he was imprisoned for having killed a fellow player in a duel, the most popular of his numerous plaj's was produced. This was "Every Man in His Humour," in which Shakespeare played a part, and its great and lasting success placed Jonson in the front rank of the Elizabethan dramatists. Five years later he wrote a Court masque, which was presented in honour of the accession of James I. and which gained for him the favour and patronage of the new monarch. Jonson's plays had done much to lift the Elizabethan stage out of the rut of melodrama into the more refined atmosphere of pure comedy, but they proved too clever and too for the vitiated taste introduced into England by the Stuart King and his dissolute associates, and his later successes were confined almost entirely to masques, in the writing of which he excelled his many brilliant contemporaries. In 1004 he collaborated in a play, Ho," in which certain references to Scotland offended the King, and Jonson was sentenced to have his ears and nose slit, but he escaped with a brief imprisonment, and in the following year he was suspected of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot, but succeeded in clearing himself. Although Jonson commanded the goodwill and admiration of the most intellectual men of his day and was a personal friend of such geniuses as Sir Waiter Raleigh and Shakespeare, his bluntness and contempt of pijblic opinion involved him in frequent trouble and disgrace, and his career was a checkered one. In his later years he fell on evil times, and for some time prior to his death was poor and bedridden. Jonson was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, and, in accordance with his own wish, was buried in an upright position. He chose this novel form of interment so that he might be standing on his feet on the Last Day and would thus be able to climb out of his grave quickly and secure a front place to view the Resurrection and .Judgment of the World. When on his deathbed lie was told that he would be given a resting place in Westminster Abbey, and he then stated that it would be a pity to waste six feet of the historic ground for his remains, and pointed out that if he was buried upright he would only require eighteen inches of space. In 1793, which was 156 years at <r Jonson's burial, a new grave was being dug in the vicinity of his resting place when a round ball rolled to the sexton's.feet. This proved to be the head of the famous dramatist in a wonderful etatc of preservation, with his great mats v'. v>\ !••■'■■ -till alive.