5 - Jonson's satiric styles

Summary

'Well I will scourge those apes;

And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror,

As large as is the stage whereon we act:

Where they shall see the time's deformity

Anatomized in every nerve, and sinew,

With constant courage and contempt of fear.

'(Every Man out of bis Humour, Grex after the Second Sounding, 117-22)

On June 1, 1599 Archbishop Whitgift and Bishop Bancroft denounced and proscribed a range of recent works by, among others, Thomas Nashe, Gabriel Harvey, John Marston, Joseph Hall and Thomas Middleton. Many of these described themselves as “snarling” or “biting” satires, and the Bishops ban specifically required “That no Satires or Epigrams be printed hereafter.” Yet later that year Ben Jonson produced Every Man out of his Humour and called it a “comicall satyre”: the label figures prominently in the entry of the play in the Stationers' Register (April 8, 1600) and on the title page of the quarto printed shortly afterwards, the first of his plays in print. It is a gesture typical of the young Jonson, who seems to challenge authority by openly writing in a mode that had been proscribed.