Argument.

“The players often mention it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his writing; whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, ‘Would he had blotted a thousand.’” ~ B. Jonson

“The world did not say to her as it said to them, Write if you choose; it makes no difference to me. The world said with a guffaw, Write? What’s the good of your writing?” ~ V. Woolf.

Poor Ben’s been shunted aside a little bit to share research space with some other early modern dramatists in my dissertation! With the headlong dash of MA and PhD coursework  it seems ages ago that I was making up my poorly-typed honours thesis on Ben’s Caroline drama, or my many-times-proofread MA thesis on boy actors (with Jonson’s plays occupying half the pages). Thinking about Celia in Jonson’s Volpone started off my dissertation on sexual violence in early modern comedy (still in the hazy “thinking about” stage — hey, it’s only comps year!), but he’s going to be among the likes of John Marston, Philip Massinger (especially Massinger), George Chapman, and Francis Beaumont. There may even be some Shakespeare in there (iwis!).

But Supervisor-mum and I are working on a Jonson-related volume (all about The Alchemist), and Jonson’s still the only dramatist I can draw with any sort of resemblance, so the URL stays the same, and this little corner of the internet remains Ben-centric. Which, of course, continues to justify my obnoxious sharing of feline photos (of the Jonsonian cats, Cynthia and Lady Jane Pawlet the Marchioness of Winton) whenever I want to procrastinate.

Not that I need a reason to procrastinate.

23 July 2011 ~ Hamilton