In the meantime the accession of James had provided opportunities of a different kind. In June 1603 Jonson was called upon to write the entertainment for the king's reception at Althorp, on his way south; in the following spring he similarly helped to celebrate the royal progress through the city. On Twelfth Night, 1605, the first of his long series of court masques, the ‘Masque of Blackness,’ was performed at Whitehall with scenery by Inigo Jones [q. v.] Early in the same year the connection thus opened was seriously endangered. Offence was taken at court at certain references to the Scotch in the play of ‘Eastward Ho,’ and its chief authors, Chapman and Marston, were thrown into prison. Jonson, who had also contributed, with characteristic chivalry joined them, and ‘the report was they should have had their ears cut and noses.’ Both Jonson and Chapman had, however, powerful friends at court. They were released intact, and Jonson feasted all his friends; ‘at the midst of the feast his old Mother dranke to him, and shew him a paper which she had (if the sentence had taken execution) to have mixed in the prisson among his drinke, which was full of lustie strong poison, and that she was no churle, she told, she minded first to have drunk of it herself’ (Conversations, § 13). A few months later Jonson wholly retrieved his position on the popular stage by the great comedy ‘Volpone’ (1605), acted at the Globe, and subsequently with still greater éclat at the two universities, to which he dedicated the first edition in his loftiest piece of prose. The proceedings following the discovery of Guy Fawkes' plot, Nov. 5 in the same year, incidentally show that he now possessed the full confidence of the government. Charged by the privy council to invite confidences from Catholic priests, he applied to the Venetian ambassador's chaplain, but the person named to him ‘would not be found.’ His letter (Nov. 8) announcing his failure, and a copy of the safe-conduct for the priest, are extant. But the transaction remains obscure.
The following ten years are the most brilliant phase of Jonson's career. His enemies ceased to be aggressive; some of them had, like Marston, become effusive disciples. He was the honoured guest of a crowd of noble friends, and a king of good fellows among his fellow poets and playwrights. He was in constant request at court, being commended by his learning to James, and by his genius for erudite pageantry to Queen Anne. His ‘Twelfth Night’ and ‘Marriage Masques’ of this period include the most original and graceful of the whole series. His work for the popular stage was not prolific; but the five dramas performed between 1605 and 1615, ‘Epicœne,’ the ‘Alchemist,’ ‘Catiline,’ ‘Bartholmew Fayre,’ and ‘The Divell is an Asse,’ are all masterpieces. Some months of 1613 were occupied by a journey to France as tutor to a ‘knavishly inclined’ son of Raleigh (to whose ‘History of the World’ Jonson had made contributions). He returned in time to compose ‘A Challenge at Tilt’ for the wedding of Somerset and the divorced Countess of Essex, December 1613. Four years later, in June 1618, he set out on the memorable pedestrian journey to Scotland. He was warmly received by the literary society of Edinburgh. In a letter written just after his return (19 May 1619) he sends greetings to ‘the beloved Fentons, the Nisbets, the Scots, the Levingtons.’ In September 1618 he was made a burgess of Edinburgh, being the guest of ‘Mr. John Stuart’ at Leith, where he was visited by John Taylor, the ‘Water-poet’ and waterman [q. v.], who had followed him from London, also on foot. Between this date and 19 Jan. 1619 he spent some weeks in the house of William Drummond of Hawthornden, whose notes of his talk are a main source of Jonsonian biography. Scotland had evidently a keen—perhaps an inherited—fascination for Jonson, and inspired many literary plans. He wrote a poem on Edinburgh, of which one enthusiastic line survives; he designed to write a ‘pastoral,’ or ‘fisher’ play, with its scene laid on Loch Lomond, of which he begged Drummond to send him a description; he showed curiosity about Scottish antiquities and institutions, particularly about the university system, even then so unlike that of England; finally, on his return, he wrote a poetic narrative of the whole journey, ‘with all the adventures’ (Underwoods, No. 62). On 25 Jan. 1619 he left Leith for the south, and, travelling at leisure, reached London about the end of April. In the following summer he visited Oxford, where he was the guest of the genial poet, Richard Corbet [q. v.], senior student of Christ Church, and where, on 19 July, he formally received the M.A. degree which had been conferred before his Scottish journey. One of Jonson's finest epitaphs, that on ‘dear Vincent Corbet’ (ib. No. 10), commemorates the death of his host's father in this year. The remaining months of 1619 were probably spent in further travel and social distractions, both unfavourable to sustained labour. He wrote, indeed, the slight though amusing masque, ‘The World in the Moon,’ for the ensuing Twelfth Night (his absence had been ‘regretted’ on the previous Twelfth Night, and the masque, by an un-
