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The Sources of Jonson's The Staple of News
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In 1905, two important contributions were made to our knowledge of the sources of Ben Jonson's The Staple of News. Dr. De Winter, in a critical edition of the play, pointed out several important similarities between it and the earlier London Prodigal, which play he urged, further, was “mainly the work of Jonson's hand.” In the same year, Mr. Charles Crawford showed less important similarities between The Staple of News and The Bloody Brother, notably in speeches by the Master-Cook, a character in the former play, and insisted that here also Jonson had had a large hand in the play from which he later borrowed.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1915
References
1 Yale Studies in English, vol. xxviii, p. xxxiii.
2 Shakespeare Jahrbuch, vol. xli, pp. 165 f.
3 Yale Studies in English, vol. xxviii, pp. xxxiii f.
4 Modern Language Review, 1905–1906, p. 327. See also a more detailed review of Winter's edition, p. 143.
5 L. c., p. xxi.
6 The Works of Lucian, translated by H. W. and F. G. Fowler; vol. i, p. 35.
7 Gifford's Works of Ben Jonson, with Introduction and Appendices, by F. Cunningham; vol. v, p. 292.
8 See the sub-title of the Timon (Works of Lucian, ed cit., i, p. xvi).
9 See the closing sections of the dialogue, especially paragraph 42, p. 46.
10 Reprinted in Hazlitt's Dodsley's Old Plays, vol. viii. See in the Introduction the suggestion that this was “a revival of a more ancient piece,” possibly, Collier thought, to be identified with a play called Prodigality, presented at Court in 1568.
11 For both the name and the sex of his personification of money in The Staple of News, Jonson may have been indebted to a poem by Eichard Barnfield, first published in 1598, The Encomion of Lady Pecunia, which is not mentioned by Winter. Barnfield says in his address To the Gentlemen Readers, “I have given Pecunia the title of a Woman, both for the termination of the word, and because (as women are) shee is lov'd of men” (Collier's Illustrations of Old English Literature, vol. i, No. 7). Moreover, he calls her “the famous Queene of rich America” (p. 1, ibid.), which may have suggested Pecunia's title, “Infanta of the Mines,” and the following lines in the play:
Piedmantle. I have deduced her—
Broker. From all the Spanish mines in the West Indies,
I hope; for she cornea that way by her mother.
(ii, i, 86–88)
12 Act iv, sc. i.
13 Dodsley's Old Plays, viii, p. 360.
14 Ibid, p. 377.
15 Act iv, sc. i.
16 Ibid. With these compare, for example, the Timon, paragraph 13, p. 36: Zeus says to Plutus, “You were imprisoned by rich men under bolts and locks and seals, and never allowed a glimpse of sunlight; … you were stifled in deep darkness. … It was monstrous, then, that you should be kept in a bronze or iron chamber and brought up by these stern unscrupulous tutors, Interest, Debit and Credit.” Barnfield also makes use of some of these ideas in his Encomion of Lady Pecunia. See pp. 4 and 5.
17 Dodsley's Old Plays, viii, p. 378.
18 P. xxviii of Winter's edition of The Staple of News.
19 See, for example, i, i, and v, iv.
20 Intermean, after Act ii, sc. i.