There was once an actor named Gabriel Spenser. He lived a robust twenty years, from 1578-98, with one end of this span beginning in his mother’s womb and the other ending upon the point of Ben Jonson’s sword.

Gabe was an actor linked to both Jonson and Shakespeare. In addition to his time onstage, he seems to have had something of a business acumen – in 1598, he was listed as a shareholder in Philip Henslowe’s company, the Admiral’s Men. Gabe and Ben seemed to know each other fairly well, insofar as they were both cellmates for eight weeks, due to their work in The Isle of the Dogs. It’s rather indicative of the judicial system that Jonson spent more time in jail for writing urbane comedies than the incident where he perforated a man. But I get ahead of myself.

It is worth noting that Gabe wasn’t necessarily a spotless character himself. He killed a goldsmith’s son, James Feake, in an argument, by stabbing him through the eyeball with his sheathed sword (yes, sheathed). He never served jail time due to Feake hurling a candelabra at his head and so giving grounds for self-defense – that said, giving a guy the Moe Green special sounds a little north of reasonable force to me. That said, it came around a couple of years later, so…net zero?

The cause of the fight with Chief Ben is unknown, although the general consensus is that Gabe started the ruckus; according to Jonson, he also had the advantage of a much longer sword. Jonson’s victory came in spite of a wounded arm, although the details are lost – maybe it was his miltiary service, or leftover animus from embodying the vengeful Hieronimo, or just the fact that he seemed to have been a fairly burly guy with a temper sitting around the ‘Irish stepdad’ level. At any rate, he shivved Gabe well enough to get him on personal terms with his maker, and was duly arrested.

And now, it gets zany.

For a distressingly long time, English civil law allowed ‘benefit of clergy’ in criminal convictions. Effectively, this was a get-out-of-jail-free card for those who could read. Specifically, a single Bible verse, usually Psalm 50. Which, for clarity, is one line of Latin:

Miserere mei, Deus, secundum misericordiam tuam (“O God, have mercy upon me, according to thine heartfelt mercifulness”)

The primary reason that this plea didn’t make murder a viable solution to everything from domestic quarrels to bar tabs across a sizeable breadth of English history was the crushingly widespread illiteracy of the populace. That said, it’s not particularly hard to memorize, so veteran crooks would learn the ‘neck verse’ by rote as a last-ditch way to dodge the gallows. This in mind, let’s recap: Ben Jonson, a man who worked and lived in the theatre, who had by this point played at least one main part in a play that involved memorizing some rather elaborate dialogue on the nature of violence, was able to completely dodge punishment for a capital offense by reciting a single well-known line from the most popular book in the world. Ben honored this apparent instance of divine favor by finding the Almighty and converting to Catholicism in the jailhouse, before going on to the most successful years of his life. It makes sense that the work he produced was comedic, because I cannot see any incentive to take things seriously after he went from death sentence to freedom via semi-effective literacy test.

For the record, this freestanding argument for separation of church and state abolished in England and Ireland in 1823. The Americans were slightly more ahead of the curve, getting rid of it in 1790…except for a few states, like South Carolina which held onto it until 1855. Actually, come to think of it, that makes perfect sense.

I suppose the lesson here is, if anything, hit the books as hard as you can, because you never can tell where a random bit of information can come in handy. It’s a bit of a reach, but the other option is “don’t take murder too seriously” and we really don’t want to get flagged.

Wriggling on in 2018,

The Bookworms. Peace.