Ben Jonson, the younger colleague of “Shakespeare,” is without question the most important witness for traditional scholars who insist that there is no authorship question. According to Robert Giroux, Jonson is “the man who knew Shakespeare,” and his testimony is “the unanswerable argument against idiotic beliefs that Shakespeare’s plays were written by somebody else, like the Earl of Oxford.”

Jonson’s posthumous Timber or Discoveries, Jonson’s “commonplace book” is an essential plank in the Stratfordian belief. But what does Jonson actually say in this fascinating and important book?

This is the first in a series of posts planned over the coming months to deal with Jonson’s role as a key “person of interest” in the authorship question. Let’s start with something basic and fundamental. Jonson was a playwright and a poet. How does he define the function of the poet?

What is a Poet?

Poeta.—A poet is that which by the Greeks is called κατ εξοχην, ο ποιητής, a maker, or a feigner: his art, an art of imitation or feigning; expressing the life of man in fit measure, numbers, and harmony, according to Aristotle; from the word ποιειν, which signifies to make or feign.  Hence he is called a poet, not he which writeth in measure only, but that feigneth and formeth a fable, and writes things like the truth.  For the fable and fiction is, as it were, the form and soul of any poetical work or poem.

According to Ben Jonson, on whom Robert Giroux and thousands of other dedicated Stratfordians depend for assurance that their beliefs correspond to reality, a poet is one who “feigneth and formeth a fable.” What he writes is not truth, but like the truth.

In Discoveries Jonson makes it clear that “like the truth” may sometimes involve deception:

It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing; that though the nakedness would show deformed and odious, the suiting of it might draw their readers.

Is it possible that in their haste to verify their own assumptions, orthodox Shakespeareans have ignored Jonson’s subtle approach to the crisis of conscience brought about by the political necessity to conceal the real author of the Shakespeare works?

What do you think? Is Jonson’s definition of poet relevant to his testimony on the authorship question?

For Ben Jonson’s familiarity with the de Vere family, see the next post in a series on Ben Jonson.