Plays and Puritans by Charles Kingsley
page 26 of 70 (37%)
page 26 of 70 (37%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
great genius, immaculate or not; 'Rare Ben,' with all his faults.
One can never look without affection on the magnificent manhood of that rich free forehead, even though one may sigh over the petulance and pride which brood upon the lip and eyebrow, 'Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love.' A Michael Angelo who could laugh, which that Italian one, one fancies, never could. One ought to have, too, a sort of delicacy about saying much against him; for he is dead, and can make, for the time being at least, no rejoinder. There are dead men whom one is not much ashamed to 'upset' after their death, because one would not have been much afraid of doing so when they were alive. But 'Rare Ben' had terrible teeth, and used them too. A man would have thought twice ere he snapt at him living, and therefore it seems somewhat a cowardly trick to bark securely at his ghost. Nevertheless it is no unfair question to ask--Do not his own words justify the Puritan complaints? But if so, why does he rail at the Puritans for making their complaints? His answer would have been that they railed in ignorance, not merely at low art, as we call it now, but at high art and all art. Be it so. Here was their fault, if fault it was in those days. For to discriminate between high art and low art they must have seen both. And for Jonson's wrath to be fair and just he must have shown them both. Let us see what the pure drama is like which he wishes to substitute for the foul drama of his contemporaries; and, to bring the matter nearer home, let us take one of the plays in which he hits deliberately at the Puritans, namely |
|