*Originally Published in the June 2023 Newsletter* Last month, we looked at the golden age of Rome and its pre-Gutenberg publication norms. This month, we fast-forward fifteen hundred years to Elizabethan England. The English is the earliest we can read and find largely recognizable; the plays raised the reputation of English literature to Continental standards. The theater provided a readymade workshop, with its panel of actors, producers, censors, and hecklers, but Elizabethan scripts were typically only circulated within the company, and had to be painstakingly handwritten. Like other verse of its era—be it masque, sonnet, or elegy—a play’s advancement to print was a rare accomplishment for the living poet, and required speaking up at the right time, with the right quip. #@callout The atmosphere was likely rough-and-tumble, with the former bricklayer making short work of many aspiring lights. Poets of this great theatrical era were thus experts at the well-timed riposte, and it was the sharp-witted Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s collaborator and sometime rival, who organized the most renowned poetry workshop in English letters. Modeled after the Roman example, Jonson convened his apprentices in the fittingly-named Apollo room of the Devil Tavern in London. Followers dubbed his school “The Tribe of Ben” or “Sons of Ben,” and it attracted England’s best. The atmosphere was likely rough-and-tumble, with the former bricklayer making short work of many aspiring lights. Jonson’s hard-drinking format invited almost immediate skepticism. John Dryden, in assessing the influence of his great predecessor, wrote that anyone who counted themselves as one of Jonson’s “sons” was a boor: “Learning I never saw in any of them; and wit no more than they could remember. In short they were unlucky to have been bred in an unpolished age, and more unlucky to live to a refined one.” Perhaps Dryden’s judgment was damning, for Jonson’s disciples, the likes of Robert Herrick and Richard Lovelace, remain perennially unfashionable. Yet Jonson’s program of enforcing a classical frame while placing a premium on clarity of thought deserves championing, especially today. Michael Schmidt, editor of the PN Review, writes “[Jonson’s] Sons affirm something as salutary as it is strange to our own age, when poets are required to have ‘a voice.’ In their art there is an element little valued now: self-effacement before the rigors of form and the challenge of subject.” Theirs was no easy era in which to advance. They had little means to air their prospective verses beside social functions, foremost being the royal court. They could circulate drafts privately, but prior to a national post, such effort required calling a visit or employing a courier. Jonson’s salon, held at a public-house, rightly appears limited to us—it was restricted to London men with the leisure to attend. Nevertheless, this new format, hosted independent of church, court, or academy, granted wider access than had been conceived of before. Our own machine of reputation-making, dependent on the sanction of universities, lacks the rowdy conviction of Ben’s Tribe.