Ben Jonson on Father Thomas Wright

Abstract

This article reassesses Ben Jonson's relationship to the Roman-Catholic priest and missionary Thomas Wright (c. 1561–1623). Wright plays two roles in critical accounts of Jonson's life and works: first as the spiritual mentor who probably worked Jonson's conversion in 1598, second as the dedicatee of one of Jonson's only six extant sonnets. My article applies literary analysis to the sonnet Jonson wrote for Wright in order to show that it signals negative feelings for the priest. This recognition is important to Jonson studies for two reasons. It contributes the first extended literary analysis of an artful poem by Jonson. In addition, it raises questions about the tendency of much recent scholarship to explain various aspects of Jonson's life and works by reference to his religion. In contrast to this recent religious turn stands an older narrative about Jonson as a secular individualist largely indifferent to the supernatural. By revealing Jonson to be struggling against a figure central to his spiritual biography, I suggest a middle ground between these two narratives in which the secularizing aspects of Jonson's thought are enmeshed with, rather than opposed to, the religious aspects emphasized by recent scholarship.