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Sunday, October 15, 2023

Richard Martin as Ben Jonson's Lawyer.

In this series:


On 9 Feb., 1597-8, when last we stopped in at the Middle Temple, John Davies had beaten Richard Martin over the head with a bastinado, in respect of having felt the sting of the latter's famous wit, and been “expelled never to return.” Some four years later, on 30 Oct., 1601 , he was “restored” after “He pronounced his submission All Saints' Day at the Cup-board in the Hall, immediately before dinner,...” and he apologized to Martin.

We took the opportunity, then, to introduce Davies who is something of a famous 17th century poet. Now we turn to Martin who, while less well known that Davies, also appears to effect in the historical record. According to Hutchinson's Temple biography:

MARTIN, RICHARD. 1570—1618.

Admitted 7 November, 1587.

Son and heir of William Martin of Exeter. Born at Otterton, Devon, in 1570. At Oxford, where he was educated, he was noted as a " disputant." He seems to have carried his propensity and ability in this way with him to the Temple, for in 1591 he was temporarily expelled from the Society for exciting a riot. To his indulgence in raillery and invective may probably be attributed a violent attack upon him in the Middle Temple Hall by his fellow barrister. Sir John Davies (q.v.), for which offence the latter was expelled from the Society and disbarred... In 1601 he was returned member for Barnstaple, called to the Bar in 1602, and from 1604 to 1611 represented Christchurch. In 1612-3 he organized a Masque in the Hall in honour of the Princess Elizabeth's marriage, and was Lent Reader in 1615. In 1618 he became Recorder of London, but died 31 Oct. of the same year, and was buried in the Temple Church. He was a friend of Selden and Ben Jonson. He was admitted to the Temple from New Inn.1

Regardless that most of his life was likely taking place outside of the Temple from the time he was elected to parliament, he was certainly taking the prerogative of continuing to occupy his rooms and receive his meals there. This is confirmed by the fact that he served as “reader” during at least one holiday period in 1615.

Outside of the Temple Martin had a reputation, duly earned, of being a hail-fellow-well-met type. He was a witty and highly entertaining friend and drinking partner. Even when his genuinely grieving friend Hugh Holland wrote an epitaph upon him he could not help including

Oriens cadente sole, sol ortu cadens2

Surely he smiled as he wrote it knowing the Martin would have gotten a laugh out of it.

Another encomium appeared in 1616 written by a far more famous figure than Holland. The Jonson First Folio edition of the play Poetaster included the following dedication.

TO THE

VIRTUOUS, AND MY WORTHY FRIEND,

MR. RICHARD MARTIN.

SIR,

A THANKFUL man owes a courtesy ever; the unthankful but when he needs it. To make mine own mark appear, and shew by which of these seals 1 am known, I send you this piece of what may live of mine; for whose innocence, as for the author's, you were once a noble and timely undertaker to the greatest justice of this kingdom.

The original Poetaster first played in 1601. Jonson, always the diligent self-promoter, had a quarto of the play published in 1602, before a legal complaint that had been filed was resolved.

History remembers one product in it of Jonson's wit in particular. In it appeared the lines:

Horace. Aye. Please it great Caesar, I have pills about me

(Mixt with the whitest kind of ellebore)

Would give him a light vomit; that should purge

His braine, and stomack of those tumorous heates:

Might I have leave to minister unto him.

The joke is that, after taking the pills, the character Crispinus (who represents the poet and playwright John Marston), will regurgitate the ridiculous words to which he is so attached in his works. The pills begin to take effect:

Crispinus. O—barmy froth—

Caesar. What’s that?

Cris. —Puffy—inflate—turgidous—ventositous.

This goes on with many more turgidous words brought up directly out of the works of Marston.

The joke seems to have succeeded and been turned on Jonson himself. Shortly after Jonson penned it the following rejoinder appeared in the anonymous play Return from Parnassus.

O that Ben Ionson is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace giving the Poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him beray his credit3

Many guesses have been put forward as to what "purge" Shakespeare gave his fellow. In my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof I have pointed out that Jonson was called before a magistrate to answer the charge of libelous material in his play.

Sometime before the 1616 folio edition of the play Jonson added a long dialogue intended to rebut the accusation to his public — in particular, to the friends he so carefully cultivated among the nobility. First we learn what they (his common detractors) say thus avoiding any statement of the actual charge.

they say you tax’d The Law, and Lawyers; Captaines; and the Players By their particular names.

This is so patently not the case that it cannot have been any part of the matter before the court. All the characters were named after ancient Romans. All of their personalities were drawn from members of the London literati. No actual names were used.

More to the point, we learn further down that his representation of someone among the London literati, whom he portrayed as Ovid, was the specific matter.

Indeed, I brought in Ovid,

Chid by his angry father, for neglecting

The study of their lawes, for poetry :

And I am warranted by his owne words.

This, too, is disingenuous. Ovid is introduced as he is composing the lines Shakespeare used as the motto to his then infamous poem Venus and Adonis. Act IV, Scene ix, in the play is a take-off on the balcony scene from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet with Ovid supplying the place of Romeo. The outcome of the famous couple's love affair, however, is not romantic death scenes. Instead the two are exiled from court after the fashion of Edward de Vere and Anne Vavasour in the infamous scandal that saw Vere cast-off as a favorite of Queen Elizabeth.

I submit that there can be little doubt that the libel charge was the "purge," mentioned in The Return from Parnassus, that Shakespeare gave to Jonson. It is the only perfect fit. The latter's attorney in the matter was our Mr. Richard Martin to whom the play would be dedicated, in 1616, in appreciation for his having managed to have the matter dismissed as literary London looked on.



1 Hutchinson, John. A Catalogue of Notable Middle Templars (1902), 158-9.

2 Rising with the setting sun, setting as it rose

3 Anonymous. The Returne from Parnassus: Or the Scourge of Simony (1602). IV.iii.


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