Ben Jonson's Head

Abstract

I'M TRYING TO IMAGINE what it might mean to buy a book Ben Johnson's Head in Thredneedle-street in 1656. I stumble upon this shop sign in reading a list of plays available in print--a list published at end of The Old Law, a play attributed on its title page to Middleton, Rowley, and Massinger. Advertised as An Exact and perfect CATALOGUE of all PLAIES that were ever printed; together, with all Authors names; and what are Comedies, Histories, and Interludes, Masks, Pastorels, Tragedies,(1) and running to sixteen pages and 622 titles, this list groups plays alphabetically by title and includes a column noting genre of each play--comedy, tragedy, interlude, masque--by abbreviation (C, T, I, M), and a column that sometimes attributes authorship. All these Plaies, catalogue promises, you may either have at Signe of Adam and Eve, in Little Britain; or, at Ben Johnson's Head in Thredneedle-street, over against Exchange.(2) The Jonson's Head was sign for Robert Pollard's shop from 1655 until at least 1658;(3) a later list, published in 1661 by Francis Kirkman, advertises as one of its locations for buying and selling of plays the John Fletchers Head.(4) I want to ask what it means to place a playwright's head on a shop sign--to sell under its sign, or to read it, in an advertisement or in street. What kind of sign do these head signs represent? Part of an answer lies in formatting of play catalogues themselves. As they emerge in 1650s, '60s, and '70s, catalogues seem to me to trace rising (though still tentative) importance of authorship as a visible category for organizing printed drama. To extent that they engage authorship (and they do so to different degrees), catalogues seem not as interested in consistency with even other available printed attributions as they are in promoting a growing interest in plays associated with recognizable names.(5) The first extant list, published with The Careless Sheperdes in 1656, is organized to facilitate locating plays alphabetically by title, with occasional authorial identifications following in italics. There is no separate column for authors.(6) The Old Law catalogue likewise lists plays alphabetically by title, with a column for genre, and then a column with more frequent notation of authorship in italics.(7) A 1661 list--Francis Kirkman's initial effort, published in an old interlude--places an author column first (Names of Authors), but continues to arrange/group plays alphabetically by title (Names of Playes).(8) In layout of Kirkman's page, authorship is thus marked more prominently than in earlier catalogues, but title remains organizing principle. Kirkman's second list, published with a translation of Corneille's Nicomede in 1671, uses same column arrangement, but in its Advertisement to Reader, publisher bestows great attention on what he calls the placing of names, which system he presents as an innovation.(9) Kirkman explains that in 1671 catalogue he has grouped plays of most prolific playwrights together at beginning of each letter in alphabetical list of titles: Although I took care and pains in my last Catalogue to place Names in some methodical manner, yet I have now proceeded further in a better method, having thus placed them. First, I begin with Shakespear, who hath in all written forty eight. Then Beaumont and Fletcher fifty two, Johnson fifty, Shirley thirty eight, Heywood twenty five, Middleton and Rowley twenty seven, Massenger sixteen, Chapman seventeen, Brome seventeen, and D'Avenant fourteen; so that these ten have written in all, 304. The rest have every one written under ten in number, and therefore I pass them as they were in old Catalogue.(10) Kirkman's system is a significant innovation in emergence of dramatic author as a category: at moment of an emergent bibliophilic culture interested in collection of printed drama,(11) he becomes absorbed in discovering/producing authors who have a discernible, definable corpus--writers whose plays can be grouped. …

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