Catiline

by Ben Jonson, Whitney F. Bolton (Editor), Jane F. Gardner (Editor)

When Orestilla By Her Bearing Well These My Retirements, And Stolne Times For Thought Shall Give Their Effects Leaue To Call Her Queene Of All The World, In Place Of Humbled Rome.

Genres: Plays

203 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1973

About the author

Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems. A man of vast reading and a seemingly insatiable appetite for controversy, Jonson had an unparalleled breadth of influence on Jacobean and Caroline playwrights and poets. A house in Dulwich College is named after him.

See more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Jonson

Reviews

[archive ☄ · Rating 4 out of 5]

i will not burn without my funeral pile.

chills, chills, chills! catiline was a wicked fellow, wasn't he? jonson brings him to life so beautifully, i couldn't help but sympathize with him and hope he made it out okay (knowing full well how it all ended in real life ahahaha MAYBE i teared up when petreius tells cicero the tale of his death)

according to the introduction this play was totally censured when it debuted in 1611, as well as all throughout history (apparently t.s. eliot called it "that dreary pyrrhic victory of tragedy") but i um. loved it! jonson went off on this! he rlly translated the whole first catilinarian oration and just stuck it right into the play! we have decided to stan!!!

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

While there is no denying that this play is WAAAY too long (a group reading of it came to about four hours) and some of the scenes/speeches need heavy cutting, this is really a very good play, entertaining, funny, topical, political about the early political career of Julius Caesar, and how the low-born but crafty Cicero outmanoeuvred the patricians who wanted a bloody revolution, and lose because one of the conspirators wants to impress his girlfriend.

The truth is, though, the conspirators are so inept it is astonishing they even get this far. One of them keeps saying "We need to do this NOW!" and the others keep coming up with reasons for postponement, during which time the sneaky Cicero gets all his ducks lined up and has them arrested and executed, all the time saying "It's just doing what the senate wants". It's a masterclass in humblebrag.

As with Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, on which it's clearly based, the last two acts go in a weird direction, and could be even more heavily cut than the first half. Apparently, Jonson is sticking to his historical sources (to avoid anyone thinking he is writing about the current royal family) whereas going more Braveheart would probably have tightened up the second half. A lot of the speeches are verbatim versions of what Cicero actually said.

This was performed as part of the King's Men's 1611 season, and it's amazing how many other plays it ties in with from that season (Macbeth, The Winter's Tale, The Maid's Tragedy, A King and No King, I suspect others which I don't know as well): plays about paranoia and secret surveillance; plays about illicit affairs and powerful, sexy women taking you off course; plays about respectable people having to compromise their moralities; plays about class, birth, inheritance and whether those things should give you any power; plays about very dubious Kingship and rape-murder.

This is very definitely a play the RSC, National or Donmar should do, but cut.

[Georgie · Rating 3 out of 5]

As critics have tried to find the tragic hero, Dorenkamp claims they pin it on Rome but that's invalidated by the fact there's no fall from grace nor a particular state of anagnorisis. I love Fulvia, a ruthless portrayal of Catiline and some seriously long monologues. tbc next term

[Lilli]

ben jonson you will never be shakespeare!!!

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ironically the very dusty academicism which puts Jonson so far below shakespeare is ideally suited to this sort of exercise

[Gill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, our Ben never left a bit of research unused! Longer than most, even of his plays, and with speeches lasting pages, one has to feel really sorry for the actors who learnt all those lines only for the play to flop every bit as badly as Sejanus had some years previously - and this was the King's Men, the most successful company in London! It took us about four hours to read - on Zoom, so the pacing was off, but even so. Jonson had learned more about pacing and dialogue by this point (1611), but not enough to keep an audience happy.

This was read as part of the Shakespeare Institute's "Extra Mile" online readathon in the lockdown summer of 2020.

Re-read as we go through the entire repertoire of the King's Men, including revivals. Still long and at times gruelling, but Catiline and Cicero are powerful figures with excellent (LONG) speeches.