Any credible Shakespeare authorship theory must account for Ben Jonson’s involvement. Jonson surely knew which writer wrote the works he praised as Shakespeare’s. In Discoveries, discussing Shakespeare with the players, he defended his criticism and declared: “I loved the man.”1
His two poems in Shakespeare’s First Folio of 1623 also frame the author for posterity: the address facing the portrait directs readers to the book; the longer tribute celebrates the author and his surviving work. Jonson was likely deeply involved in preparing the Folio, although the extent of his work on the volume remains unknown.2
Jonson’s own folio and its book of epigrams
Seven years earlier, in November 1616, Jonson had published his own collected Workes. This was a different folio: it gathered nine of his plays, court masques and entertainments, and two collections of poetry, Epigrams and The Forest. The epigrams form a distinct collection within the volume, dedicated to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. Their 133 poems include praise of named individuals as well as satire.34
The Epigrammes had also appeared separately before the folio, in an edition dated approximately 1612. The collection was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 15 May that year. Tara L. Lyons’s research supplies evidence of the earlier printed book: Bodleian records list it among books sent for binding on 15 September 1614. Her later study argues that a small octavo edition was circulating as early as 1612. No copy has been recovered, so its full contents cannot be checked.5
Jonson addressed epigrams to both Henry Neville and his former tutor Henry Savile. Epigram XCV (95), “To Sir Henry Savile,” praises Savile’s translation of Tacitus and his account of the interval between Nero and Galba. Epigram CIX (109), “To Sir Henry Nevil,” praises Neville’s character, understanding of honour and approach to public service. The two men thus appear by name in the same book, Savile as a scholar and Neville as the subject of a sustained personal tribute.6
Neville’s eighteen-line poem occupies parts of pages 803 and 804. The image below shows it as printed in the 1616 Workes; the transcription then allows us to read it before turning to its possible connections with Shakespeare’s Sonnets.3
Figure 45.1. Jonson’s complete epigram “To Sir Henry Nevil,” Workes (1616), pp. 803–804. Folger Shakespeare Library image, reproduced in the author’s post. The image preserves the original page break.
The eighteen lines as a whole
Here spelling and punctuation are lightly modernized, while the folio’s “then” in lines 10 and 12 and “States” in line 12 are retained.37
Who now calls on thee, Nevil, is a Muse,
That serves nor fame, nor titles; but doth choose
Where virtue makes them both, and that’s in thee:
Where all is fair, beside thy pedigree.
Thou art not one, seek’st miseries with hope,
Wrestlest with dignities; or feign’st a scope
Of service to the public, when the end
Is private gain, which hath long guilt to friend.
Thou rather striv’st the matter to possess,
And elements of honour, then the dress;
To make thy lent life good against the Fates:
And first to know thine own state, then the States.
To be the same in root thou art in height;
And that thy soul should give thy flesh her weight.
Go on, and doubt not what posterity,
Now I have sung thee thus, shall judge of thee.
Thy deeds unto thy name will prove new wombs,
Whilst others toil for titles to their tombs.
Neville, Donne and Beaumont
Jonson addressed Neville by name, with language recalling a Shakespeare sonnet and an opening resembling his salutations to Donne and Beaumont, two of the greatest writers of their time.
Read the three openings together:
To John Donne, Epigram XXIII
Donne, the delight of Phoebus and each muse,
To Francis Beaumont, Epigram LV
How I do love thee, Beaumont, and thy muse,
To Sir Henry Neville, Epigram CIX
Who now calls on thee, Neville, is a muse
Each opening names the recipient and ends with “muse.” Donne is the Muses’ delight; Beaumont has his own Muse; the Muse calls upon Neville. The last opening also recalls Sonnet 38’s “calls on thee,” examined below.48
The sonnet within the salutation
Sonnet 38 invites its addressee to become the tenth Muse:
Be thou the tenth muse, ten times more in worth
Than those old nine which rhymers invocate;
And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth
Eternal numbers to outlive long date.
Jonson’s opening brings the significant words into still closer contact:
Who now calls on thee, Neville, is a muse
James Leyland and James Goding drew attention to this comparison in their 2018 book Who Will Believe My Verse?.9 Jonson puts Neville’s name between “calls on thee” and “muse.” The sonnet promises verse that will outlive its age; Jonson’s epigram ends by entrusting Neville’s name to posterity.
The combination is distinctive. An EarlyPrint search for the calling phrase followed within fifteen words by “muse” returned only Jonson’s 1616 Workes and three witnesses of Shakespeare’s Sonnets.10 In the sonnet the addressee is invited to become a Muse; in the epigram the Muse calls upon Neville.1112
Sonnet 29: the inward measure of a man
A second sonnet contributes a different correspondence. In Sonnet 29, the speaker’s dissatisfaction with his condition becomes envy of other men’s advantages:
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Jonson’s Neville is distinguished from the man who seeks misery through hope and invents a public scope for private gain:
Thou art not one, seek’st miseries with hope,
Wrestlest with dignities; or feign’st a scope
Of service to the public, when the end
Is private gain, which hath long guilt to friend.
Thou rather striv’st the matter to possess,
And elements of honour, then the dress;
Both poems make hope and scope their third distinct rhyme group: lines 5 and 7 of the sonnet, lines 5 and 6 of the epigram. A second pair appears in Sonnet 29’s opening quatrain:
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Jonson’s Epigram CIX, lines 11–12, reverses the pair:
To make thy lent life good against the Fates:
And first to know thine own state, then the States.
Sonnet 29 has state/fate; Jonson has Fates/States. The rhyme comparison treats the related noun forms together.1314
The sonnet’s “friends possessed” also corresponds to Jonson’s “guilt to friend” and “matter to possess”: both passages bring those words into a discussion of status and dissatisfaction.
Public service in Neville’s own words
Neville’s letter to Ralph Winwood of 16 February 1603/4 makes Jonson’s portrait more particular. Answering his correspondent’s advice about advancement, Neville sets out the terms on which he understands service:
I hold it the duty of every honest man to dedicate his life to those ends, more than to his private contentment. But withal I think it may satisfy any man’s conscience that he shuns not service imposed; and I hold no man bound to seek employments.
He later describes his immediate responsibility as attending “the care of my private state and family,” while leaving “the care of public affairs” to those entrusted with them. These phrases occur within an account of his own circumstances, including his exclusion from the honours he might otherwise seek. At the close, he accepts Winwood’s wish for his advancement if those with power judge him worthy.15
Jonson likewise distinguishes “service to the public” from “private gain,” and “thine own state” from “the States.” Neville’s letter gives those contrasts a personal setting: service was a duty, but seeking office was not an obligation.15
When was Neville’s epigram written?
The surviving text was published in 1616, after Neville’s death on 10 July 1615. Whether the lost collection of about 1612 contained CIX is unknown.165
Colin Burrow, following F. G. Fleay, proposes Neville’s secretaryship campaign in 1612 as the occasion, but this remains conjectural. Jonson’s use elsewhere of direct address to the dead, and of tombs and “lent” life in poems to the living, leaves the question open.17
Notes and sources
Ben Jonson, Discoveries, ed. Lorna Hutson, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online, lines 468–482, text and commentary. The work was printed in 1641. Jonson’s personal knowledge is the historical judgement drawn here from his testimony; the passage does not identify Neville as Shakespeare.↩︎
Jonson, “To the Reader” and “To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Master William Shakespeare, And What He Hath Left Us”, ed. Colin Burrow, Cambridge Edition, complete poems and commentary. Both were first printed in Shakespeare’s 1623 Folio. The short poem faced the Droeshout engraving. The view that Jonson was very deeply involved in preparing the volume is the interpretation advanced here; neither the poems nor these editorial accounts establish the extent of his editorial or organizational work.↩︎
Jonson, The Workes of Benjamin Jonson (London: William Stansby, 1616), pp. 803–804, page-image witness. The full CIX quotation modernizes spelling, capitalization and punctuation, while retaining “then” at lines 10 and 12 and the unapostrophized “States” at line 12. The first-line comparisons use the Cambridge edition instead, as specified in note 4. On the volume as a collection of plays and other writings, see Ian Donaldson, “Note on folio title-page (1616)”, Cambridge Edition. The context supports the importance of Jonson’s selection; it does not mean that plays first became literature in 1616.↩︎
Ben Jonson, Epigrams, ed. Colin Burrow, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online, XXIII, LV and CIX, text and commentary. These opening comparisons follow Burrow’s modern text, with typographic apostrophes normalized; bold type is editorial emphasis. CIX’s opening differs in spelling and punctuation from the lightly modernized folio text printed above, not in the phrase being compared. Jonson’s second Donne poem, XCVI, opens “Who shall doubt, Donne, whe’er I a poet be, / When I dare send my Epigrams to thee?” Its question brings together the addressee, poetic identity and “thee”; the closer verbal comparison with Sonnet 38 is CIX’s “calls on thee” and “muse.” See also Epigrams XXIII, lines 1–10.↩︎
Tara L. Lyons, “New Evidence for Ben Jonson’s Epigrammes (ca. 1612) in Bodleian Library Records,” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 114, no. 3 (2020): 343–364, article. The Bodleian evidence establishes an earlier printed collection; it does not identify CIX among its contents. See also Tara L. Lyons, “Reading a Lost Book: Ben Jonson’s Epigrammes (c.1612) and Disposable Authorship,” English Literary Renaissance 53.1 (2023), pp. 1–34, DOI. The publisher’s abstract, consulted here, describes an octavo edition circulating as early as 1612; the full 2023 article has not been consulted for this revision.↩︎
Ben Jonson, Epigrams XCV, “To Sir Henry Savile,” in Colin Burrow’s Cambridge edition, poem and commentary. The poem praises both the translation and Savile’s historical supplement; CIX is the address to Neville reproduced here.↩︎
Jonson, Epigrams CIX, commentary to line 12. The folio has “then”; Burrow prefers “than,” governed by “rather” in line 9. He observes that most modernized editions retain “then” at line 12. The folio’s unapostrophized “States” does not by itself establish a plural sense: Burrow reads “the State’s,” with the possessive referring back to “state.” The printed forms and the editorial interpretation are distinguished here. The main text retains the folio’s “then”; Burrow’s reading makes the preference comparative, while “then” at line 12 can place self-knowledge before statecraft.↩︎
Jonson, Epigrams XLIII, “To Robert, Earl of Salisbury,” in Burrow’s edition. Four of the 133 epigrams end their first line with “muse”: XXIII (Donne), XLIII (Cecil), LV (Beaumont), CIX (Neville). Cecil’s opening is different: “What need hast thou of me, or of my muse”. “My muse” explicitly means Jonson’s own Muse, not Cecil’s. The poem turns back towards Jonson’s reputation: Cecil’s name may add fame to Jonson’s book, and Jonson calls himself “not the worst” of poets. Its professed modesty thus includes self-congratulation and a defence of Jonson’s freedom from flattery.↩︎
James Leyland and James Goding, Who Will Believe My Verse? The Code in Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2018), p. 11, page preview. The approximate composition date proposed there is not treated as established.↩︎
EarlyPrint, public BlackLab collection. Queries of 4 September 2026: the consecutive lemma sequence call / on / thou returned 350 hits in 216 records; the forward muse restriction with 0–15 intervening tokens returned four hits in four records; the reverse restriction returned three. Records: TCP A04632 (Jonson, 1616), A12043 and A12044 (Sonnets, 1609), A12034 (Shakespeare’s Poems, 1640). The search does not establish uniqueness beyond its corpus, annotations and defined wording.↩︎
Shakespeare, Sonnet 38, lines 5–14; Jonson, Epigrams LV, lines 1–10. The shared rhyme pairs worth/forth and me/thee occur at LV 3–4 and 9–10, and Sonnet 38 9–11 and 5–7 respectively. The broader relation of praise and creative indebtedness is the chapter’s comparative reading, not a claim of a newly proved source. Beaumont’s poem and Sonnet 38 both turn praise back towards the person who inspires or supplies it; this subsidiary comparison is retained here rather than developed as a second literary analysis in the chapter.↩︎
Jonson, The Underwood, ed. Burrow, XIV, “An Epistle to Master John Selden,” lines 79–86, text and commentary. It supplies a contextual tenth-muse comparison, not the exact “calls on thee” phrase. The headnote records its first appearance with Selden’s Titles of Honour in 1614. The broader conceit of a tenth Muse is not by itself the distinctive wording being compared.↩︎
Shakespeare, Sonnet 29, complete poem; Jonson, CIX, lines 5–12. Fates/States and state/fate are related forms, not identical printed word-pairs.↩︎
Across all 133 epigrams and 154 sonnets, only ten poem-pairings share two rhyme pairs when related noun forms are normalized. CIX and Sonnet 29 are among them; their hope/scope pair also occupies the same numbered rhyme group in each poem. Robert Parry’s twenty-four-line Passion XXVII in Sinetes Passions (1597) also combines hope/scope and state/fate. The pairing is therefore not exclusive, though Jonson and Shakespeare still share its positional and ethical relations. Parry’s publication date establishes neither Sonnet 29’s composition date nor borrowing from Parry by either poet. New descriptive comparison of Burrow’s 133 Epigrams and Folger’s 154 Sonnets. The sequences contain 1,612 and 2,155 verse lines respectively. Explicit rhyme schemes produce 812 and 1,079 line-pair records, including triplets and the exceptional forms of Sonnets 99 and 126. With possessives removed and the declared noun-form normalization, 19,837 comparisons share no pair, 635 share one, ten share two, and none shares three. Without noun normalization, the corresponding counts are 19,868, 605 and nine; CIX/Sonnet 29 then shares only hope/scope. Distinct paired terminal words are counted, not acoustic identity or every occurrence of a repeated pair. Robert Parry, Sinetes Passions upon His Fortunes (London: Thomas Purfoot for William Holme, 1597), Passion XXVII, EEBO–TCP A09044. Hope/scope ends lines 2 and 4; state/fate ends lines 8 and 10.↩︎
Neville to Ralph Winwood, London, 16 February 1603 [1604 with the year beginning on 1 January], in Memorials of Affairs of State, collected from Sir Ralph Winwood’s papers, ed. Edmund Sawyer, vol. II (London, 1725), p. 17, printed letter. Its final willingness to receive advancement qualifies any account of Neville as indifferent to office. There is no evidence that Jonson read this letter. Quotations from Winwood modernize spelling, capitalization and light punctuation while preserving vocabulary, syntax and meaning; editorial emphasis is added. The correspondences do not preserve an identical order.↩︎
Andrew Thrush, “NEVILLE, Sir Henry I (1564–1615)”, in The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1604–1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris (2010), complete biography and relevant notes. It supplies the death date and the prolonged secretaryship campaign. The proposed specific occasion for CIX in Burrow’s headnote remains conjectural.↩︎
Jonson, Epigrams XXXIII, the complete six-line poem following the epitaph on Sir John Roe; The Forest XII and III, complete poems and relevant headnotes, ed. Colin Burrow. XII’s headnote dates the New Year’s gift to 1600 and records that its addressee and her husband had died by the 1616 publication. Its Muse, tombs and wombs provide a parallel to CIX’s language of preservation without dating CIX. III closes by joining country service to the conception of life as lent. The dating of these occasions follows the edition. XXXIII addresses the dead Roe as “thou”; The Forest XII addresses the living Countess of Rutland with Muse/tomb/womb language, while III calls life “a thing but lent.” These parallels cannot decide whether CIX was composed before or after Neville’s death.↩︎