Getting the “Vapours”: The Performance of Wit

Comic by Tom Gauld

In poetic homage, Francis Beaumont wrote of Ben Jonson:

Methinks the little wit I had is lost
Since I saw you; for wit is like a rest
Held up at tennis, which men do the best
With the best gamesters
Mr. Francis Beaumont's Letter to Ben Jonson, ca. 1608-1610

About fifty years later, John Dryden made the pithy remark:

In reading Shakespeare, we often meet passages so congenial to our nature and feelings, that, beautiful as they are, we can hardly help wondering why they did not occur to ourselves; in studying Jonson, we have often to marvel how his conceptions could have occurred to any human being.
An Essay of Dramatic Poets Works, 1668

As you have discovered this week while reading Bartholomew Fair, following Jonson’s language, euphemisms, and citational references, both classical and local, is no small achievement. As we noted in our discussion of the Induction, Jonson’s acerbic satire does not spare anyone (perhaps not even the playwright himself); he is famous for besting anyone in games of wit. In his drama, this often comes across as irony, since the words that indict his character types tend to come from their own mouths. Your job this week is to kill one of his bitter jokes by explaining it.

Frontispiece to The Wits or Sport upon Sport (London, 1662). Attributed to Francis Kirkman.

Please select a particularly “biting” passage in which a character unwittingly reveals something embarrassing, unpleasant, or unfortunate about him- or herself. Because Jonson’s lampooning often has many layers, you can feel free to take up what interests you most about his critique: cultural, political, theatrical, religious, ideological, personal (etc. etc.). All that is required is that you explain some dimension of a character’s speaking at his or her own expense.