Citation Needed - Ben Jonson

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

Benjamin Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637)[2] was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour[3] (1598), Volpone, or The Fox (c. 1606), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry. "He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I." Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

And so I said to the guy in the photo, I said, look, I know how to adjust a VR head strap, okay? This is a product fault. And what did he say? Wait, that's when he started crying. Another one? I know. Dude, can you push?

What? What did he say? He said he tried pushing. Guys, what's going on? What the hell happened to Eli? Yeah, it's his essay. This is his essay? Yeah, I mean, think about it.

What was Eli's last essay? Controversial Modern Art, right, which is what category? I don't know, like a listicle he read. Right, and the one before that was failed products, which is another listicle. So I don't, oh, what do you say in all our essays have a pattern?

What? No, they don't. Book you read, book you read, Bill Bryson, almost every time, then 80s something, and then ancient something. But that's not my, that's my pattern. Yeah. Okay, Mr. Ice Story, Ice Story Explosions,

at least mine has more than three phases. Hey! Guys, guys, that's not the point. What does this have to do with Eli doing whatever this is? So, yeah, Eli has the most complicated pattern of all of us. Uh-oh. Not a compliment. It's pop culture, then conspiracy theory,

then straight applies, mystical, mystical, and then head up his ass, literally. Oh, that's his ass. I was wondering what's going on there. Right, you know, it's hard to tell when he's all curled up with it. So who's his assay about anyway?

The poet Ben Johnson. How come you guys can understand him? Yeah, your podcast with Eli Long enough, you kind of get used to it. Ah, that dress? Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm. He's not starting a podcast where you make fun of fanfictions just so you can understand you

when you have your head up your ass. Mm. Valorous Morrow to the and welcome it Citation did need the podcast whether we choose of the subject read at this single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend it's where experts because this is the internet and Yons how it work if a non That'll be enough of that shit as all I'm so good. no, I'm, I'm gonna be leading this bevy of bars, but I won't be doing it alone. First up, two guys who were sure this was gonna be about the Canadian sprinter, Cecil and he. I really did.

And they said Ben Johnson, I thought someone was calling me a dick in the past tense. And I am going to sadly put away my Carl Lewis, life's size, I figured. What? And also joining us tonight, a guy who thought this was I am going to sadly put away my Carl Lewis life size act bigger And also joining us tonight a guy who thought this was about the American actor stuntman and world champion rodeo cowboy and a guy who didn't realize how many famous Ben Johnson's there were Tom and Eli Well, since I've read through this essay I'm just going to imagine that this is about something interesting like an American actor stuntman a world champion Imagine that this is about something interesting like an American actress not meant a world champion

And as you'll learn tonight now, there's only one Ben Johnson in my heart where it matters. Okay. All right So before we get going I want to remind the listeners that we're in it for the money You know, it's it's fun to hang out with these guys every week But I wouldn't do it if I wasn't getting paid for it. Okay. And we can only do that because of our patrons. So thanks to them. And if you'd like to join their race, be sure to stick around to the end of the show. And with that, other way, tell us, see, so what person plays thing concept phenomenon

on our event? Well, we'll be talking about today. A different Ben Johnson. A different one. And he lied. You presumably read an article or majored in this in college or something like that. Are you ready to feign expertise once more? Feather and a non, no, a feather and a non.

So tell us, Eli, who was Ben Johnson? He was a pretty good poet. He was a decent playwright, a quick-minded critic, a gifted eulogist, a spoiled son of money, and he would probably have been the most famous and successful author of his time if he hadn't had the simultaneously wonderful and terrible luck to be a contemporary of the greatest author of all time, William Shakespeare.

Okay, citation needed. Not even clear, this wrote everything himself. So, why not? I mean, Shakespeare's pretty good, but he's no agatha, Chris. And he must not get carried away. Oh, no. She's so rude. She wrote her whole catalog.

Oh, he cleaned my way. 100% sure of that. I'm not kidding about this second place thing. In his bio on poetryfoundation.org, on Wikipedia and even in his bio on poetry foundation dot org on wikipedia and even in his encyclopedia Britannica entry ben johnson is listed as quote generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist and which is like if my tombstone read here lies Eli Bosnick who was on a podcast with no illusions and even right. Okay.

So you want us to change that? Cause that's what I'm doing. It's too late. It's carved. It's literally carved into stones. So in the high stakes world of English dramatists, there's no room for second place. Thank you. Tom's getting the stakes here.

All right. Before we get to Shakespeare, unlike the rest of history, let's spend a second on Ben. First things first, Ben came for money. Johnson claimed that his grandfather served King Henry the eighth and was a gentleman, a fact that Wikipedia affirms for us by assuring us the quote, that is attested by the three spindles, Rambeye, in the Johnson Family Code of Arms. One spindle is a diamond-shaped heraldic device

used by the Johnson Family, and quote, okay, so maybe I'm naive, but if you're trying to convince me somebody came from money, the existence of a family code of arms, does the fucking trick? Okay, diamond-shaped heraldic brawm-by spindles or no?

Yeah, okay, I'm there, Noah, but also I would love to see other coats of arms for the non-rich, just like a hub cap with a palm all and a bud-like crossing over one another. And then, it's like a motto floating in the banner across the bottom. Just reads like, carny's now, carny's forever. But it's Latin. Sure. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, is that a Spud's Mackenzie rampant? Side note, they're in Cecil had the same family, Cresti. So side note, there is no consistent spelling of Ben Johnson's name, which can I say rules when you spell like I do. But yeah, because John is tough one. That's a really tough one. Yes, it is. As silent son of John. Anyways, throughout history and even in his own record, he spells it Johnson, Johnson, Johnson,

Johnston, so you can pick your favorite. So anyway, gentlemen of the quarter, not Johnson's birth father was a Protestant, which meant that when Queen Mary rose to power, he was sent to prison. And they took away all the shit. And when he was released, it was as a clergyman. But he died a month before baby Ben was born. That's a dick move. Thank you. Yeah.

I should add here that no historian has ever found like hard evidence of Ben's mother or his father. I'm pretty sure he didn't have one. That's just what Ben always said, which may or may not be true, but he also may have been making up for the fact that his mother's second husband was definitely a middle class bricklayer and we have lots of proof of that. Now, it would be wrong.

Nothing wrong with being a bricklayer, even though the middle-class in Elizabethan England was a lot wealthier than what we mean by middle-class today. But as we'll later discuss, a tremendous amount of Johnson's identity and pride was wrapped up in being a noble men of good blood and good education and good upbringing. So you can see why he might fib. Yeah, fun fact, another variation of Johnson or Johnson is actually Santos. It's in a language that he invented. Oh.

Oh. And actually Ben Johnson's mom died in 9-11. So they just like, we're just very sad. Yeah, exactly, who's to say? And the good education part is at least true. Ben Johnson attended school in St. Martin's Lane in London, and then later a family friend paid for his studies at West

Minster School, where he befriended antiquarian historian, topographer, and officer of arms, William Camden, who the nerds in our audience will recognize as the author of Britannia, the first co-ro graphical study of the British Isles and Ireland. A side note, co-ro breathy is an almost extinct genre of literature that I cannot recommend enough if you have mental illness like me, because it's just lovely and soothing and absolutely nothing happens in it. Just people, people used to just go to Ohio, describe what they saw, do their best in a map, and that was a fucking book. It's the best.

It's a really hard to read. He majored in travel blogging. Right now, wait, wait just want to note that Eli wrote himself, fanatic pronunciations spelled differently. I know. He did. He did. I need it. I need to be one sentence apart. Yeah. One sentence apart. Anyway, from Westminster, Johnson went to Cambridge, but much to his shame he had to drop out early to take over his stepfather's profession, laying bricks which were made out of poop, for nobody ever went anywhere and therefore no of erode any delightful books about what everything looked like. As I gaze upon the melancholy rouse abouts of British-

Shut the fuck up! And lay the goddamn shit bruh! What are you doing? Are you of British shut the fuck up. And what are the goddamn shit bruh? What are you doing? Are you writing? You're the worst. Could he just done what everyone else trying to be a writer does? Like get a real job, never really writing.

I think past the rough graph stage and then spill put words Smith in your online bio. Whoa. There's an amusing story from this period, which is almost certainly not true, that during his time as a mason, Johnson built the Garden Wall at Lincoln's Inn. So Lincoln's Inn is a fancy boy lawyer bar and has been for a very long time. According to the story, Johnson would overhear the arguments from outside, get distracted

from his work, and head inside the bar to join the debate. As a result, he didn't finish the wall until a month after it was due and he was not paid for his work. He was, however, offered admission to the club. Okay. I think it's adorable that you still feel the need to tell us that the thing you're about to say probably isn't true. It's cute.

This is what it is. Now, to be fair to Ben Johnson, if you are a shit brick layer, you're only going to be able to get one, maybe two bricks a day if you're lucky. So from there, Johnson joined the military where England was helping the Dutch rebellions, the Spanish, while serving, he killed the Spanish soldier in single combat and took his swords as trophies. This would not be the poet's last murder. Shortly after he returned to England, Johnson was married.

Johnson rarely wrote about his wife describing her to one friend as, quote, a shrew yet honest. His first child, the daughter. Yeah, not a super loving guy. His first child, a daughter died at six months old. Their son died at age seven of the plague about which Johnson wrote the heart breaking and beautiful poem on my first son, which true story I intended to include in this essay is like a

Look how good he is writing poetry, but I'm a crazy person and I can't read it out loud or even to myself without hysterically sobbing in the middle of our comedy podcast. So I'll just leave it for our audience to check out. Okay, so I went and I read that poem that he loved talking about. And yeah, okay, it's really sad, it's pretty beautiful. But right before the end, he rhymes, Here, Doth lie with peace of hoet try and I laugh for a while. So the Johnson had one more child who also passed away, though it's not clear at what age and it appears that Johnson and his wife lived apart for the rest of their lives.

Now, a few books speculate that this is because he began an affair with a daughter of a dook he was living with, but Johnson attributed the separation to the loss of their children, saying in the letter he wrote that, quote, hearts had mended yet not together. And a shitty that he didn't write poems for the other dead kids. He did not know. Okay, on that topic, no, a fun fact. I wrote my first son, a children's book with him as the central character, and then I

had it illustrated and custom bound. And then eight years later, when my second child was born, I bought him some Lego. Sure. And the second kids happier with the leg. Sure, the leg. I can see that. Anyway, it's after the military that he decides he's going to be an actor and a playwright.

And it is here that he will find his life's work as well as one extremely talented pain in the ass. All right, well, there you have it, folks. Eventually, something is going to happen. And with that, it's your ass. Jesus Christ. We'll take a quick break for a little apropos of nothing. You knew who I was when you married me. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Ben, Ben? Ben, are you here? Yep, yeah, hey, hey, well, how's it going?

Oh, terrible, Ben. I am hit with Melon Folio once again. Right, yeah, sorry to hear that, man. So like, wow. What's, uh, what's bugging you? My lady's sonnet to the dark lady. It has received no reply. Yeah, that's probably because you published it publicly, and also she's married. Oh, being I appreciate your comforts. You always know just what to say. Cool. Yeah, no problem.

Well, you probably got to go, right? Oh, no, no, no, no. I keep my for you to read my newest play. I call it hamlet. Oh Like after your son. No, no, my son is called hamnet. This is hamlet. Will you read it? Yeah, yeah sure man. I'll read it But I actually have a mask coming out this week. I don't know how much time I'll have but yeah Please you must read it and tell me what you think of it.

Fine, yeah, I'll read it. Oh, speaking of the court, did I ever tell you about the time that you described the English court wrong, but they liked your play so much that they did it that way from now on. Yeah, you've mentioned that like a bunch of times. Yeah, then of that story. Ben, mm-hmm. Yeah, well, what's up? Will you say nice things about me if I die.

I'm gonna tell people you were like 12 guys. What? I mean, yeah, yep. And we're back when we last left off a 17th century British guy was. So you like, um, I assume he starts doing historically significant shit at this point. Alright, so Ben's back in England. He's got the blood of a spaniard fresh on his hands and his first big roles in actor is fittingly in a play called the Spanish tragedy by William Kidd. Fun fact, the Spanish tragedy, at least according to Wikipedia, is the first revenge tragedy in English literature. Okay, you know, heath's fun facts are just way more fun. Thank you.

I wish those things were good. Either way, it lands in my job as a playwright and actor in residence with a company called The Admiral's Men. But he wasn't writing for them long when he caused a scandal. In 1597, he and Thomas Nash wrote a satirical play called The Isle of Dogs. Now, not much is known about this play.

It's sound and it's brought to town. No. I love this. This is what I did all through college with other bees. And then I sold toys and now I'm here. I'm excited. I get an apartment in New York. You have to let me be excited. It's all I have. Anyways, not much is known about the play,

except it probably satirized the eponymous Isle of Dogs, which was the nickname for a small peninsula on which the Queen's counselors very famously met to discuss her business. Whoever it made fun of, the monarchy came down on it hard, throwing Johnson and three of the actors into jail for almost a year for writing slash performing it. Okay, so that seems like a harsh punishment to a playwright and actress, but as a person who's had to watch a Ben Shapiro movie for forward. I feel like we need to see the fucking play before how we decide how justified this was, right?

And if that's not juicy enough for you, a year after their release, Johnson killed one of the actors he was imprisoned with in a duel. Now, historians disagree on what they were dueling over. My bet is, hey man, your play got me sent to jail for a year. But either way, Johnson killed the guy all the way dead. And he was, of course, charged with manslaughter.

But he escaped charges with one legal trick. I cannot believe his real called the benefit of clergy. What's the benefit of clergy? So the benefit of clergy was... Eli wants the benefit of clergy. Thank as far as the benefit of clergy. Thank you all about since you asked, I'm gonna go into it. Benefit of clergy was,

as far as I can tell, a legal loophole that allowed priests to get out of primes by basically saying like, hey, I'm a priest, there's gold fringe on the throne or whatever, I can only stand trial and it includes the ask for court. Okay, so refri- We're just for a steal, refri-for-forlesiastical. Okay, so refer for ever.

Yeah, it's refer. Yeah. We're still the test to prove that you weren't just, you know, trying to get away with murder is that you had to read from the Bible and Latin since, of course, only clergymen could know Latin. So Johnson just shows up in a priest row, gives up all his world we belongings. No, he did brands a T on his thumb, says some Latin and they let him go. Okay, just circling back to the human branding real quick that Eli said really

fast and just moved on. That's a real thing they did. They'd brand a letter on your hand so nobody could use that one simple trick with the clergy thing more than once. So even the legal system of 1597 was like, yeah, you're all a bunch of liars and religions dumb, but you can have one free murder, I guess, but I'm not. Look, thinking it or not, Johnson stuck to the bit and remained a Catholic for the rest of his life. Anyway, blood of an actor, freshly washed off his hands, it's time for Johnson's big break as a playwright. With every man in his humor, a comedy about people trying to fuck each other, kill each other, his they're filled with too much of different kinds of bile.

It ends, I shit you not, with a judge sentencing everyone to calm the fuck down. It's a weird moment when much of different kinds of bile. It ends, shit, you're not, with a judge sentencing everyone to calm the fuck down. It's a weird moment when you hit that threshold of bile and you go from fucking to murder, like as a transitional of a sudden. It's been so long, both people hit the market at the same time, I'd imagine. That's like fucking crazy, right?

Sure. I get it though, I didn't have enough wicking chicks to know that there is a volume of shit where you go from wanting to fuck to wanting to murder. So like I get it. I can check out psychologically. So with that synopsis, I am beginning to understand why there's such a wide golf though between best and second best playwright of the Elizabethan era. Yeah. Like Carl Lewis. So Ben Johnson.

Exactly. So it was in that play that Johnson cast a young actor and want to be played right by the name of William Shakespeare. Who will get back to in a moment. So next few years of his life, Ben Johnson was the drama. Am I the drama? No. Ben Johnson was the drama. And that's what began one of my favorite periods in literary history. The War of the Theatre.

It was basically where Ben Johnson and a bunch of other famous playwrights at the time wrote mean so-called satirical plays about each other back and forth for three years. Okay, I love how fucking excited Eli is about this entire story. And Eli, I will tell you again, as I've said many times, if you wanna make your Twitter into a musical, I'm 100% on board. I love that idea and I'm with you.

You know, an endless series of inside jokes aimed at no one outside the scant view with nothing better to do, but involve themselves in the petty squabbles of the Fluff, poof elite. Actually, I understand Eli's love of this guy. I miss that. Thank you.

Tom's getting it. So, I would love to go into the details on the back and forth in the word theaters because they are delicious, but sadly, my coworkers informed me that they would be legally required to wed you me to death if I do. So I will skip them. The point is the whole thing ends with a truce. When the new king, James I, rises to power and a whole bunch of playwright jobs at the court open up.

We're still wedging you over the suss. I just, we're not, we're not, it's not going to be to death now, but I just want, I want to be clear about that. Side note for those you wondering, Shakespeare didn't ever really get sucked into the war of theaters, primarily because he was just starting out, but he did comment on it. In Hamlet, Rosenkrantz and Gildenstern make obvious reference to this drama, which they summarize by saying, quote, oh, there has been much throwing about of brains.

End quote. Now we rely on the NFL to do that. He... Oh, man. Anyway, this truce goes really well for Johnson and he quickly becomes King James the first favorite playwright. Specifically, he writes a lot of masks for the King's consort and of Denmark. For those of you who don't know, you're like, what's a mask?

I'm glad you asked. For those of you who don't know, masks are like the tiktoks of plays Lot of musical numbers and spectacle cool not a lot of plot a lot of spyware a lot of spies But Johnson is graded him and he wrote a bunch in fact in 1616 Johnson started receiving a yearly pension of a hundred marks leading many to call him England's first poet, Gloria. Well, TikTok, Gloria, right? We got a podcasting fellowship. Let's relax. It's a legitimate job, Mom. I mean, I mean, Heath. Heath. I mean, Heath, Mom and Dad, sorry, I mean Noah. I was talking to you.

There was a time in history when poets were the rock stars of that age, but that was also the time when the bricks were made of shit. So I guess you take what you can get. Yeah. Yeah. But just because he was in with the king, didn't mean he still wasn't getting into trouble. Despite the king's favor, Johnson went to jail for a satirical play. Again, he had several more plays shut down over controversy, and he got in a lot of trouble for attending

a dinner with and later providing state's evidence against the leader of the gunpowder plot, Guy Fawkes. Okay. I think I have mixed feelings on that. Like,'m all about anti-fascist resistance, but also every single person I've ever met with like a guy Fox mask or a t-shirt with that. Yeah. They told me about the Fed being a Ponzi scheme within like 10 seconds to talk.

So like I want some of them in jail at least. Yeah. I used to have that picture, it's my profile picture. Got it. Anyway. Yeah. Between have to have that picture. It's my profile picture. Got it. Anyway, yeah. Between 1605 and 1620. Johnson does his greatest work.

This is when he writes the plays that you've maybe, maybe heard of. No. Vulpone. Nope. And the alchemist. Nope. Well, a bunch of other ones, including one I had never heard of

until I was writing this essay called The Devil is an Ass. Yeah, they've never heard of these plays. writing this essay called the devil is an ass. Yeah, they've never they've never heard of these plays. I'm just going to go ahead and tell you, Eli, literally no one listening has ever heard of those. What are you going to email from Eli's mom? You know, she won the lead Bennett Hopkins award. And they don't just give that out. If you haven't read Ben Johnson's plays, see it out. You're hoping for one later. Anyway, he's so famous.

He goes on national tour, be in a famous guy. Like he's not writing, he's not reading or anything. He's just shown up places and people feed him and give him money and ask him questions. Yeah, he's a travel blogger. And at that point in history, it was pretty easy to get to parts unknown. Yeah. So, this is also when he cements his reputation here as a bit of a crank, or as his contemporary would put it, quote, a great lover and in praise of himself a contempt and scorner of

others. And almost nobody made him crankier than a young upstart who he'd given his first goddamn break. William Shakespeare. Now, who's William Shakespeare? Maybe you leave. Now, look, I'm not here to try to

convince you how good Shakespeare was, but I do want to help you see how good Shakespeare was from Ben Johnson's perspective, okay? The characters in Ben Johnson and everybody else's plays at the time are named like Will Don and bad farts and don't trust this guy, he's a Jew and they come on stage and they're like, oh, I have too much black fire. I am angry and then they get stabbed by God with a sword. It's not the subtle and it's not very good. Sounds like the book heath wanted catcher in the ride to be actually.

Oh, okay. Thank you, Cecil. Exactly. So like if Holden's in the middle of harassing a bartender or like whining about the stake at his fancy preps and then God literally just side tackles him and stabs him with a sword the end amazing. But that could happen any moment in that book. I'd be like this is what I'm right.

You are right. It would be amazing. Well the point is nobody was doing that yet. John Lennon was still alive. He just writes about people, right? Like the characters are still epic and they're still funny and sad and powerful and awful, but they're also recognizable human beings.

And crazy is this sounds to a modern audience that is used to it. William Shakespeare's the first playwright to write about the experience of being a person. And he does it in verse. He invents the human experience as we know it with his hands tied behind his back, popping on one foot to a rhythm only he can hear.

And that is cool as shit. If you're not the most popular playwright of the time and fully aware of how fucking good the competition is. You're not Ben Johnson, Yeah, that's right. Well, maybe we should point out that Shakespeare like he just made up fucking words. That's cheating. That's technically cheating. He's just making words up left and right. He had also not for nothing, but again, just listen to what Eli said there. The bar here for being a great writer was set at right stories about people rather than like cartoons. That was the big

innovation. Yeah. Bricks were made a poop, Tom. It was the earlier time. The other thing you have to understand about Ben Johnson's frustration and jealousy is that Shakespeare is pop entertainment. Right. He wasn't allowed to write masks for the court. He wrote plays, plays meant for giant theaters, where most of the people were eating oysters and drinking beer and pissing right where they were standing. Like, really?

You know how the fast and the furious movies aren't the greatest works in the English language? Ah! All right, look, I know that movies are technically considered literature, but I do want to point out that with rare exception, no, they fucking aren't. Exactly, okay, exactly, yeah.

So I also do not know how those aren't the greatest works in English literature. I'm not generally considered the greatest works in English literature. Well, here's Ben Johnson, showing up to fast 10, and it's fucking hamlet, and the poor people are like, woo, fast-end. And poor Ben Johnson's like,

fuck, it's fucking hamlet. So there's been past his prime, living off the favor of at this point, the king's dad, and watching William Fuckin Shakespeare, this kid who he had hired for his first part, pulled the pinnacle of art just fucking out of his ass. You know how long it took Shakespeare to write Romeo and Juliet? Two weeks. Two weeks. He had hired for his first part, pull the pinnacle of art, just fucking out of his ass.

You know how long it took Shakespeare to write Romeo and Juliet, two weeks. Two weeks? It's two weeks to get over. Oh shit. Wow. Yeah, it's me, they both end in tragedy too. So.

Ah. Okay, also, I'm not loving that. I'm the fucking Ben Johnson of my work life. That's not great for me. Right now, just emotionally. Except I'm actually way less talented and successful fucking Ben Johnson of my work life. That's not great for me right now just emotionally Except I'm actually way less talented and successful the Ben Johnson I'm not even the Ben Johnson of my work life. He you haven't You haven't killed anybody or been thrown in jail for a skeptic rad headline yet

So like in some ways you're the you're more six exactly huh? Thank you Ben Johnson is watching this and we know because he writes people letters, he's thinking someone's gonna fucking notice this kid who I have not been very nice to is the next big thing. Hell, even the idiots with the oysters trying not to piss on their shoes are starting to notice and then Shakespeare dies. The problem solves itself. Ben's career is saved and the world moves on, or at least it would have if it hadn't been for the heroism of Ben Johnson. See, that

was a folio. Thank you. Back then, there were very few if any scripts of place, right? If a playwright got famous enough, the court or a wealthy patron would commission something called a folio, okay? Where you would literally re-higher the actors from the play, become say their lines, so someone who knew how to write, but write it down and print it out. But again, very few playwrights had this privilege, right? One, because having anyone write anything was expensive as fuck, and if it was a famous enough playwright, these were probably the most famous actors of the day, right? So imagine having to rehire Al Pacino and Robert Jinerro so that there was

any written record of the movie Heat. That's what had to be done, and nobody was going to do it for William Shakespeare. Okay. Heat was pretty good, but you went with heat instead of the God fucking too. Right. Right. Or, or, or righteous kill. Keep. Come on. He.

When I was an ass. Well, I am so confused, Eli. It's 1597, right? And then a playwright does what? Like, imagines a play in his head and then memorizes his imagining and then teaches the words to each actor by himself and then they memorize it doesn't start off written So the play doesn't really not so fun fun fact it actually what happens is the playwright He has one copy that he writes, but most of it isn't like all the way written.

What he does is he goes to people and he's like, hey, you know, we have the little like rhyming bopby bopby bopby bopby. He goes to them sometimes not in order and he's like bopby bopby bopby bopby and they're like, all right, bopby bopby bopby bopby. And he goes to the next guy and he's like bopby bopby bopby bopby and that's how they memorize it. There's no scripts. There's nothing in hand.

He just fucking bopby bopby set them until they all hide in the play. Yeah, you put like he has the script, but yeah, but he doesn't make other copies like he doesn't let anyone else like spycraft. Exactly. If you had the script, you could just steal it. Do your own production. I am big spycraft. Cool. Go ahead. Well, I'm glad you bring that up because so the question is, why doesn't Shakespeare have a folio, right? And the first reason is that Shakespeare died suddenly and young. The second reason is that a kind of sort of spy craft record of his work already existed called a quarter. Now, a quarter was when you didn't hire Robert De Niro to come tell you what he said in heat. You'd hire background extras in that diner scene to tell you what they heard Robert De Niro

say in heat. And as you can imagine, Cordo versions of Shakespeare's plays. Polly O. Yes. For example, this is Hamlet's famous to be or not to be speech according to the quartet. Whoa, to be or not to be, I, there's the point to die, to sleep. Is that all? I, all, no, to sleep, to dream. I, Mary, there it goes. Take a quatch.

That's amazing. Okay, I think we should make a quartet of us reconstructing Atlas shrug. Absolutely. It's a pirate. Exactly. There you go. I'm most curious to hear Cecil do the Boston lady voice as the recounting of Atlas shrug. Exactly.

And I have to point out that fucking train my own fucking other fucking like the tunnel. Frankly, fucking coffee mix. I don't know these names. I mean, fucking sense. And that would have been all the record we had of Shakespeare, if it hadn't been for Ben Johnson. See, despite a lifetime defined by his ego and his jealousy, Johnson is instrumental in putting Shakespeare's folio together. He connects two of the publishers and give in some to work together. He provides funding from his own salary, which is not huge at that point. He contributes a poem as the introduction and heavily pressures the new King Charles to toss in a couple bucks to his distribution.

I want to be clear. I actually think Wikipedia and historians and generally do a really bad job of conveying how important Johnson was to the construction of the first folio. And there are good reasons for this. He's not one of the publishers or the actors that did the actual recitation and writing of the work, and that was the majority of the work.

But he put their asses in the room. Anyways, there's a book at Ben Johnson in a life by Ian Donaldson. It's not a perfect book. It's got a lot of bullshit in it. That's why it was my main source. But I do think he leaves out a very good case for how instrumental in the folio Johnson was that other historians have overlooked. Okay.

I didn't, when I said I wasn't going to wedge you to death, I didn't know you had an opinion on this. Okay. I just want to say that I was conditional. It's fair. It's fair. And see this to me is what makes Ben Johnson so heroic and tragic and worthy of our attention, not just because he was a great poet in his own way, but great as he was, he recognized that he was lucky enough to share something better than what he could do with all of us. And I'm going to leave you, ironically, with a quote from Ben Johnson's most red and best known work, his poem about his friend William Shakespeare that served as the introduction to the folio. Well, triumph my Britain thou hast one to show

to whom all scenes of Europe homage O. He was not of an age, but for all time, and all the muses still were in their prime. Feels like Shakespeare would have nailed that rhyme scheme a little bit better there, but yeah. So if you had a summarize, what you learned in one sentence, what would it be? I'm not writing down Noah's shit.

You assholes do it. I'm not doing that. I'm gonna shit you guys. Go lead it. He did get AABB at least. You had a lion, Poetry. Yeah, right. He's done worse.

Are you ready for the quiz, Eli? I am prepared. All right, Eli, which of the following is a true thing about Shakespeare's first folio? Hey, in 1998, a British guy named Raymond Scott stole one of the 230 known copies in the entire world from the Durham University Library in England. B. He originally just took some other stuff from that library, but the first folio was basically just like sitting out in a gas station DVD rack in the little library. So he went back a few minutes later and took that first folio to. See, he sat on the book

for years, but then he saw that another copy sold for about $3 million. So he tried to sell his stolen copy in 2010, despite every single known video being meticulously detailed and tracked for centuries. They have it like down to the millimeter of width and length and every little note and difference. Making it the single dumbest book you could possibly steal despite that huge price tag. D, he tried to hide the identity of the stolen Durham University copy by tearing out a few pages like an F- Wow.

E, when he took it to get appraised in Washington, D.C. all the experts, like within seconds, we're like, yeah, this is stolen Durham Folio with three pages turned out. It's very obvious, that's exactly what on it is. F, when questioned by police, he made up a story that he just flew in from Cuba, where his friend, who was Fidel Castro's bodyguard, named Danny, Danny the fucking bodyguard of Fidel Castro.

I didn't hear it. I heard it the folio and gave it to Rayman and the sky. What was that? G, the police were like, you're obviously lying. You flew in from Heathrow. We can check on that. You're dumb. Or H, Raymond Scott died in jail.

H, Raymond Scott died in jail. Where he deserved to be forever. You bring him back. I was actually I all of the kind of has to be that, but also H. So I like Eli. We know Shakespeare was a horrible racist, which of his plays had to have a change in title. So it could be performed for future audiences. Hey, the Jewish merchants, a menace,

be as you write it, see. I asked it. A mid-summer white supreme or D. That actually works. Mid-summer white rhymes with night and then supreme. Okay, forget it. Whatever it didn't hit. Whatever, we're, whatever, it didn't hit, whatever. We're moving on D, the blaming of the joke.

Oh, I gotta go with all of the above. Oh, you are correct, horrible racist. Yay. All right, Eli. It's a question, little. Left, the old one, the big bad wolf shows up to hoff and puff and blow your house down What should you hope that your house is made up? Hey straw

B sticks see Shit Break shit. I don't really see what that's to do with the essay, but see the shit, is it shit? He got his... Shit, it is, it is in fact. Nope, wait.

Yeah, no it is. I see like this, because he's gonna win the shit. It is shit. Eli wins. All right. Eli wins. Brown and... Once you get to Eli, you are the winner

and you get to decide who next week's essayist is. I want, no one to write an essay. All right, fine. So for Tom, he's Eli and C. So I've no a thank you for hanging out with, right fine. So for Tom Heath Eli and Cecil I have no a thank you for hanging out with us today. We're gonna be back next week by then I'll be an expert on something else between now and then you can check out Tom and Eli on Dear old dads and you can listen to me. Heath and Eli watch really bad movies that got off of movies We also do other shit too, so check the website and shit

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That's not important. Don't worry about it.