ABSTRACT
Ben Jonson’s play The Sad Shepherd, published in 1641, has never become part of the canon for one obvious reason in particular: it is incomplete. Very little attention has been paid to the play by scholars. Paradoxically, an entire book, by Tom Hayes, has been written about this incomplete play: The Birth of Popular Culture: Ben Jonson, Maid Marian and Robin Hood (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1992). This book is not, perhaps, the sort of text likely to promote canonization of the play. The book’s arguments are open to challenge on many, many points, as are the book’s methods and style. A case for some kind of canonization of the play would probably need to rely on close reading of the text―close reading of the sort offered neither by Hayes nor by almost anyone. The play is symptomatic of other neglected works that have been read mainly for their “meanings” rather than for their artistic and literary craftsmanship. Canonization of Robin Hood literature, as of other neglected literature, is unlikely until students and other intelligent non-academics can be convinced that such literature is well-written and worth reading as literature (i.e., as language valued as language).
