Ben Johnson: Authority: Criticism.

Richard Dutton. London: Macmillan Press and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.4 pls + xxiii + 249 pp. $49.95. ISBN: n.a.

The subject of this book, Ben Jonson's transitional position as a writer negotiating varieties of different publication venues and varieties of audiences, has been examined elsewhere, notably in Richard Helgerson's Self-Crowned Laureates and David Riggs's Ben Jonson: A Life. Richard Dutton configures this fascinating story in a somewhat more narrow scope, in that he looks only at Jonson's "critical" works, yet while doing so, he provides new glosses on old chestnuts, such as Jonson's quarrel with Inigo Jones, his turn from the stage to court, and his "real" assessment of Shakespeare. Dutton also provides a corrective to the unhistorical outlook promulgated in James D. Redwine's 1970 Ben Jonson's Literary Criticism, as he presents a Jonson whose literary values are very much a pragmatic - and often self-centered - response to particular needs and tensions in his struggle to advance his career and preserve authorial self-autonomy.

Dutton's argument is two-pronged. First he uses Jonson's literary criticism as evidence to argue the emergence of the term "critic," as "one skilful in judging of the qualities and merits of literary or artistic works" (OED, quoted on page x). The second part of Dutton's thesis is that the emergence of the "critic" is related to developments within Jonson's own culture. Dutton's argument here is rather muted, partly because the two strands of the thesis are intertwined and his concentration on Jonson and his writings rarely wanders. In advancing these arguments, Dutton carefully examines the form and context in which each work appeared; he also examines the same for the re-appearance of any of these works. The five chapters of the book trace the movement of the argument: "Chapter 1: The Lone Wolf" particularly scrutinizes notions of authorship, maintaining that the "instability of the 'authority' of the writer" (31) informs Jonson's critical writings as a whole; "Chapter 2: Poet and Critic" focuses on the critical commentary in Jonson's plays, non-dramatic verse, and his self-presentation in his 1616 Works; "Chapter 3: Poet and State" examines how Jonson defined his authority as a writer in relation to service to the monarchy; "Chapter 4: The 'Laws' of Poetry" surveys Jonson's allegiances to various frameworks, classical and contemporary, which prescribed the various structures and functions of "literature"; and finally, "Chapter 5: Jonson and Shakespeare" replays Jonson's various comments about Shakespeare, contextualizing them within the kind of work in which they appear and within the course of Jonson's own career.

An invaluable contribution to Jonson studies is Dutton's careful compilation of "Selected Critical Texts of Jonson." In this substantial appendix, by providing "the order and form" of several critical documents later excised or revised by Jonson, as well as other documents not printed in Jonson's lifetime, Dutton "unfashions" the careful self-presentation orchestrated by Jonson himself through self-censorship and revision of his early works. In so doing, he illuminates the complex and schizophrenic negotiations Jonson managed, as he balanced manuscript, print, and theater cultures, as he straddled the worlds of patronage and the marketplace. Dutton also convincingly reveals the tensions Jonson experienced, both in his critical commentary and in his poems and plays, in producing works which both engaged his audiences in serious matters and entertained them.

Ben Jonson: Authority: Criticism is a valuable book because it redirects our attention from the literary product to the literary process: instead of focusing on Jonson's "classical" form, Dutton asks us to examine cultural conditions which produced Jonson's justifications for this form. In so doing, Dutton thoroughly situates Jonson as a product of his early modern period, as well as a distinctive influence in the shaping of the modern conceptions of "authorship" and "literature."

NANCY A. GUTIERREZ Arizona State University