The English bourgeois revolution of the seventeenth century was of great importance for developing the poetic movement. It took place in the form of a confrontation between supporters of the Royalist King Charles I and supporters of the Roundhead parliament. The Puritan struggle against the established church grew into a broad revolutionary movement. As a result, establishing new social and economic relations began, and the class struggle intensified. The growth of the people’s liberation movement and the contradictions of the emerging bourgeois society, already making themselves felt, reflected in literature, determined the political acuteness of the work of the English poets of the 17th century.
The work of the greatest of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Ben Johnson, differs from the main direction of the English Renaissance drama. None of the Elizabethan playwrights is as detailed as Ben Johnson. He was «a man of great erudition», even in that age of learning (Lecky 78). Ben Johnson liked to talk about himself with friends and fans. He loved the fierce literary arguments at the famous Mermaid Tavern. He promptly made sure that his work reached posterity in good condition.
The bitter epitaph On my first daughter, like the poem On my first song, is written by Johnson on his children’s death. Ben had three children, and he buried them all. Benjamin died in his eighth year of the plague; a second son of the same name died in 1635. This epitaph refers to the death of his daughter Mary, who lived only six months (Landis 228). This is one of the few poems where true feeling breaks out instead of bitter satire. Behind the deliberate restraint of emotions, there is a genuine bitterness of grief.
This tragic poem is the cry of a father’s soul for a lost daughter. With the help of means of expression, he gives the work a sad note. His daughter is gone, but his father still remembers her and does not stop loving her. Johnson puts her memory in the form of an epitaph, the lines of which «cause tears and awe» (Buuruma and Heffernan 305). Coming to the cemetery, Johnson thus accepts that death is inevitable, submitting to fate, and admits that only his daughter’s body remains in this world, and the soul is already in another world.
Calling little Mary the daughter of their youth, Johnson uses a metaphor because along with the girl, his youth, his soul, which was not beaten by life, died. He emphasizes the child’s purity, calling her «a heavenly gift» and mentioning that «she passed away innocent» (Butler and Rickard 34). Johnson is religious, and, like Abraham, who is ready to give his son to God despite pain and sorrow, the father comforts himself with what God has passed, and therefore has the right to take away. He opposes his daughter’s pure soul to her fleshly birth (Daniel 167). Childlike innocence is equated with untouched nature-gentle earth.
Johnson was not only a good satirist but also a great lyric poet. His poems touch the core, especially the epitaph dedicated to the daughter who passed away so early. Reading it, you immediately remember your loved ones and relatives who are no longer there. This poem teases the memory and returns exactly those memorable moments that the departed person left in our memory. Such epitaphs make people think about the meaning of life, its transience. On my first daughter is significant work, as it can affect parents whose relatives and especially children are still alive.
Works Cited
Butler, M., & Rickard, J. (Eds.). (2020). Ben Jonson and Posterity. London, England: Cambridge University Press.
Buuruma, Rachel, and Laura Heffernan. “Conclusion: The Past We Need Now.” A New History for Literary Study, 2020, pp. 300 -310.
Juan, Daniel. “Resurrection, Dualism, and Legal Personhood: Bodily Presence in Ben Jonson Fate of the Flesh.” Fate of the Flesh, 2021, pp. 148 -180.
Landis, J. “The Allure of Joy and Female Criminals in Early Modern English City Comedy.” Journal of Early Modern Studies, vol. 1, no. 10, 2021, pp. 213-231.
Lecky, Katarzyna. “Jonson’s Broken Compasses and Bit Parts.” Pocket Maps and Public Poetry in the English Renaissance, 2019, pp. 60-91.