On Inductions

Abstract

The prologue to Jonson’s last play, The Sad Shepherd, opens with a characteristic flourish. There is a reminder of the dramatist’s forty-year-long career in the theatre fitting ‘fables for your finer ears’. Then comes what at first sounds like a humble apology until the phrasing takes an unexpected turn:

Although at first he scarce could hit the bore,

Yet you, with patience harkening more and more,

At length have grown up to him …

It is a skilfully delivered, back-handed compliment; elderly theatregoers aware of the development of Jonson’s career over three reigns and of the range of styles of comedy that he had mastered would have been amused at this witty insistence on one abiding feature in his work: his provocative attitude to audiences, demanding that they cease to hanker after the conventional and bring to an engagement with his plays a wholly open mind. As the prologue continues, Jonson builds on this initial strategy of surprise: we are informed that the play is in the pastoral tradition and are introduced to the main character, the sad shepherd, who ‘passeth silently over the stage’ mourning his ‘lost love’, whom he supposes drowned. That would seem to have completed the Prologue’s customary business and, with a final couplet expressing hope that the play pleases, he leaves the stage — only to bounce back in immediately with a far less ingratiating tone to justify Jonson’s decision to mix pastoral with mirth in the ensuing action.