THE CURRENT CHAPTER surveys the literary relationship between William Cavendish, Earl (later Duke) of Newcastle, and the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson; it also considers Jonson’s literary influence on Cavendish’s daughters Jane and Elizabeth and on his second wife Margaret. Among all of Cavendish’s patron-client relationships, it is worth singling out that with Jonson for several reasons. First, it was extremely long-lived, conceivably dating from 1610 when the 16-year-old Cavendish was one of fifty-eight challengers at Prince Henry’s Barriers (for which Jonson would write an Arthurian entertainment) and continuing until Jonson’s death in 1637. Second, it was very productive on Jonson’s side, leading to a number of direct commissions as well as other texts that seem to bear Cavendish’s influence. And finally, as the chapters by Matthew Steggle and Richard Wood have already demonstrated, it had a pervasive and enduring effect on Cavendish’s own writing: he repeatedly alluded to Jonson right up to The Triumphant Widow, staged at Dorset Garden in 1674. This chapter is divided into four sections: the first considers Jonson’s oeuvre in light of his relationship with Cavendish; the second, Jonson’s influence on Cavendish; and the third and fourth, the presence of Jonson in the writings of Jane, Elizabeth, and Margaret Cavendish.

Ben Jonson

It is impossible to know what contact, if any, Cavendish had with Jonson on the occasion of Prince Henry’s Barriers or on that of A Challenge at Tilt over the 1613–1614 Christmas season. However, by the summer of 1618 he knew Jonson sufficiently well not only to offer him hospitality at Welbeck for six nights during his celebrated “Foot Voyage” to Scotland but also to give him authority over the household during a period of absence, “commanding his steward and all the rest of the officers to obey [Jonson] in all things.” The recently discovered account of this walk written by an unnamed companion of Jonson is a productive place to begin the current survey.