# The Works of Ben Jonson/Volume 6/The Sad Shepherd/Act 2 Scene 2

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Whal.
I cannot compliment my predecessor either on the taste or judgment displayed in this summary, which is drawn up somewhat in the formal style of Vellum. The gravity with which he ventures to conjecture a circumstance which Jonson himself had expressly affirmed, is of a ludicrous cast; but indeed Whalley appears inconsequential and confused'throughout. Jonson had already "feasted the public forty years;" this brings down the date of the Sad Shepherd to 1636; yet the critic imagines that the conclusion of it might have perished when his study was burnt, which took place r at least a dozen years before; since Howell, in a letter writer on the appearance of the Magnetic Lady, reminds Jonson that he had prevented his study from taking fire, and alludes to the former accident, in which his papers perished, as of a remote date.
The next conjecture, namely that Jonson might have left this drama unfinished on account of the ungenerous treatment which the Faithful Shepherdess experienced on its first appearance, is incredibly wild: that pastoral was brought out in 1610, perhaps before, and not heard of again till 1633, when it was acted at court, so that Jonson, after suffering the terrors of its expulsion from the stage to hang over him near thirty years, must have been finally overcome by them, just as the play had acquired a certain degree of favour, and appeared again on the stage. But how little does Whalley seem to know of Jonson! He was not a man to regulate his expectations of good or ill success by the fate of any other person; and though he might, and, in fact, ​did express his indignation at the audience who witnessed the fall of his friend's piece, he was far more likely to brave the censure of what he calls "the many-headed bench," than to be deterred by it from following his example.
I know not, however, why such clamour should be raised against those who disapproved of the Faithful Shepherdess. As a poem it is insufferably tedious, and as a drama of action, its heaviness can only be equalled by its want of art. The lyric part of it indeed, (that which is most easily written) is highly poetical, and there is occasionally great beauty in the language of Clorin; but the genius of the author may be said to come in and go out with the Satyr. The whining and the wanton lovers, who appear, "vent their folly," and vanish in succession, without order, connection, or apparent purpose, would exhaust all the patience of good humour itself. Add to this, that the supernatural parts of the story (the holy well, &c.) are foreign from our native and traditionary superstitions, and can therefore excite little emotion, or interest, in any perceptible degree, the faith and feelings of the spectator.
In the Sad Shepherd, (written, as the judicious Mr. Weber positively assures us, "in emulation of Fletcher's poem, but far short of it,") there is nothing of this. With equal felicity and judgment, Jonson has resorted to the agency of witches, with which all were familiar, and which all were prepared to receive, without hesitation. The thoughts are natural and elegant, the style appropriate, the language inexpressibly beautiful, and, in some detached passages, worthy of the highest praise: the various turns of fortune too, though surprising, are yet probable, and according to the established creed; and the persons of the drama supported with the characteristic discrimination of the author's golden days.
Whalley believes that this drama was left unfinished by the author: I can scarcely think that we should have found a prologue to it, in that case; a prologue, too, which manifestly refers to a piece ready for representation. On the margin of his copy, he observes, from Mr. Waldron, that lord Falkland seems to confirm his opinion in some lines on Jonson's death, first printed in the Jonsonius Virbius.
But this is merely an allusion to the poet's own words, in the prologue:
​I lament with Whalley, and with every reader of taste, that the whole of the Sad Shepherd has not reached us. That it was completed, I have little doubt; its mutilated state is easily accounted for by the confusion which followed the author's death. Into whose hands his papers fell, as he left, apparently, no will, nor testamentary document of any kind, cannot now be told; perhaps, into those of the woman who resided with him, as his nurse, or some of her kin; but they were evidently careless or ignorant, and put his manuscripts together in a very disorderly manner, losing some, and misplacing others. Had they handed down to us the Sad Shepherd in its complete state, we should have possessed a poem, which might have been confidently opposed to the proudest effort of dramatic genius that time has yet bequeathed us.
THE FALL OF MORTIMER.
​The Fall of Mortimer.] This fragment, the last draught of Jonson's quill, appears in the folio, 1640. It seems to have been overlooked at first, and is awkwardly shuffled in among the poetry at the end of the volume. The title page has this motto from Horace:
Et docuit magnumque loqui, nitique cothurno.
Hor. Art. Poetic.
and at the conclusion, we have "Left Unfinished;" a memorandum, that seems to confirm the conjecture hazarded on the Sad Shepherd, of which the abrupt termination is followed by no such notice.
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