Jonson’s Masque Markets and Problems of Literary Ownership

Books can be owned simultaneously by the author, the merchant, and the purchaser, making it possible, as Lucius Annaeus Seneca observes, “for Titus Livius to receive his own books as a present, or to buy them from Dorus,” a bookseller.1 Ownership of a literary text is thus complicated rather than resolved by its presentation or sale: proprietary interest is multiplied as the text is reproduced, yet the author retains a kind of nonpossessive ownership. This appears to have provided little consolation for Ben Jonson, who complained frequently of losing ownership of his work, explaining that when he “suffer’d . . . [a text] to goe abroad, [he] departed with . . . [his] right” over that text.2 In moving from the realm of scribal publication into print, from gift economy into the marketplace, Jonson, whose society did not yet conceive of authorial rights, apparently surrendered ownership and control of his text to an agent who would oversee its publication.3 Nevertheless, because texts have multiple lives—as works of art and as material objects—Jonson was able to market his work, particularly his masques, in gift and sale economies simultaneously.4 A professional poet at Court, Jonson existed at the center of patronage circles but simultaneously forged ahead with the publication of his works in a new competitive market. His masques provide particularly interesting examples of this approach and highlight complexities of ownership, valuation, and circulation that arose during this time of social and economic flux and that anticipated