ABSTRACT

So begins one of the numerous tributes to Jonson written after his death. That event set in motion the combination of strenuous eulogy and misdirected hagiography that still conspires to make Jonson the greatest English writer almost never read. 'Alas that bard, that glorious bard is dead!' lamented his admirers. Reverently they crept about the feet of this colossus, the 'King of English poetry', invoking the magnitude of his achievement in terms of uncritical adulation . 'Great Jonson' appeared at last in the roles he had so persistently sought, those of consummate artist, towering classicist and custodian of the sacred flame, the poet-didact who had 'taught the ruder age I To speak by grammar, and reformed the stage':

So great his art, that much which he did write Gave the wise wonder, and the crowd delight. 1

So great was Jonson's art, his elegists urged, that he was for his own and later ages a source and oracle, 'to whose most rich and fruitful head we owe I The purest streams of language which can flow'.