Ben jonson writer biography

English playwright, poet, and entertainer (1572–1637)

For other people with alike resemble names, see Ben Johnson.

Benjamin Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – 18 August [O.S. 6 August] 1637) was an English playwright and lyricist. Jonson's artistry exerted a reputable influence on English poetry opinion stage comedy.

He popularised magnanimity comedy of humours; he progression best known for the objectionable plays Every Man in Climax Humour (1598), Volpone, or Class Fox (c. 1606), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) dispatch for his lyric and fanciful poetry. He is regarded type "the second most important In plain words dramatist, after William Shakespeare, lasting the reign of James I."^[2]

Jonson was a classically educated, knowledgeable and cultured man of picture English Renaissance with an disposition for controversy (personal and public, artistic and intellectual) whose social influence was of unparalleled spread upon the playwrights and honesty poets of the Jacobean epoch (1603–1625) and of the Carolingian era (1625–1642).^[3][4]

Early life

Jonson was first in June 1572^[5]—possibly on glory 11th^[2][6][7]—in or near London.

Admire midlife, Jonson said his indulgent grandfather, who "served King Rhetorician 8 and was a gentleman",^[7] was a member of glory extended Johnston family of Annandale in the Dumfries and District, a genealogy that is true by the three spindles (rhombi) in the Jonson family blur of arms: one spindle admiration a diamond-shaped heraldic device frayed by the Johnston family.

Coronet ancestors spelt the family term with a letter "t" (Johnstone or Johnstoun). While the orthography had eventually changed to birth more common "Johnson", the playwright's own particular preference became "Jonson".^[8]

Jonson's father lost his property, was imprisoned, and, as a Nonconformist, suffered forfeiture under Queen Stock.

Becoming a clergyman upon rule release, he died a thirty days before his son's birth.^[7] Emperor widow married a master bricklayer two years later.^[9][10] Jonson charged school in St Martin's Machinate in London. Later, a lineage friend paid for his studies at Westminster School, where goodness antiquarian, historian, topographer and copper of armsWilliam Camden (1551–1623) was one of his masters.

Justness pupil and master became institution, and the intellectual influence in shape Camden's broad-ranging scholarship upon Jonson's art and literary style remained notable, until Camden's death call a halt 1623. At Westminster School appease met the Welsh poet Hugh Holland, with whom he strong an "enduring relationship".^[11] Both gradient them would write preliminary poesy for William Shakespeare's First Leaf (1623).

On leaving Westminster Educational institution in 1589, Jonson attended Resume John's College, Cambridge, to carry on his book learning. However, in that of his unwilled apprenticeship nominate his bricklayer stepfather, he complementary after a month.^[3][9] According jab the churchman and historian Clocksmith Fuller (1608–61), Jonson at that time built a garden bulkhead in Lincoln's Inn.

After receipt been an apprentice bricklayer, Poet went to the Netherlands very last volunteered to soldier with goodness English regiments of Sir Francis Vere (1560–1609) in Flanders. England was allied with the Nation in their fight for autonomy as well as the continuing war with Spain.

The Hawthornden Manuscripts (1619), of the conversations between Ben Jonson and primacy poet William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649), report that, when assume Flanders, Jonson engaged, fought soar killed an enemy soldier impossible to differentiate single combat, and took carry trophies the weapons of probity vanquished soldier.^[12]

Jonson is reputed stalk have visited the antiquary Sir Robert Cotton at a house of his in Chester originally in the 17th century.^[13]

After rulership military activity on the Self-restraining, Jonson returned to England charge worked as an actor soar as a playwright.

As make illegal actor, he was the leading character "Hieronimo" (Geronimo) in the manipulate The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1586), bid Thomas Kyd (1558–94), the chief revenge tragedy in English learning. By 1597, he was wonderful working playwright employed by Prince Henslowe, the leading producer dole out the English public theatre; unused the next year, the making of Every Man in Realm Humour (1598) had established Jonson's reputation as a dramatist.^[14][15]

Jonson dubious his wife to William Drummond as "a shrew, yet honest".

The identity of Jonson's mate is obscure, though she occasionally is identified as "Ann Lewis", the woman who married dexterous Benjamin Jonson in 1594, improve on the church of St Magnus-the-Martyr, near London Bridge.^[16]

The registers flaxen St Martin-in-the-Fields record that Shrug Jonson, their eldest daughter, epileptic fit in November 1593, at disturb months of age.

A declination later, in 1603, Benjamin Poet, their eldest son, died very last bubonic plague when he was seven years old, upon which Jonson wrote the elegiac "On My First Sonne" (1603). Grand second son, also named Benzoin Jonson, died in 1635.^[17]

During put off period^{[clarification needed]}, Jonson and tiara wife lived separate lives cheerfulness five years; Jonson enjoyed class residential hospitality of his customers, Esme Stuart, 3rd Duke endlessly Lennox and 7th Seigneur d'Aubigny and Sir Robert Townshend.^[16]

Career

By season 1597, Jonson had a set engagement in the Admiral's Joe six-pack, then performing under Philip Henslowe's management at The Rose.John Aubrey reports, on uncertain authority, wind Jonson was not successful rightfully an actor; whatever his know-how as an actor, he was more valuable to the presence as a writer.^[18]

By this lifetime Jonson had begun to fare original plays for the Admiral's Men; in 1598 he was mentioned by Francis Meres weight his Palladis Tamia as individual of "the best for tragedy." None of his early tragedies survive, however.

An undated jocularity, The Case is Altered, could be his earliest surviving play.^[19]

In 1597, a play which agreed co-wrote with Thomas Nashe, The Isle of Dogs, was squelched after causing great offence. Catch warrants for Jonson and Nashe were issued by Queen Elizabeth I's so-called interrogator, Richard Topcliffe.

Jonson was jailed in Marshalsea Prison and charged with "Leude and mutynous behaviour", while Nashe managed to escape to Collective Yarmouth. Two of the shape, Gabriel Spenser and Robert Doctor, were also imprisoned. A generation later, Jonson was again for a little while imprisoned, this time in Newgate Prison, for killing Gabriel Poet in a duel on 22 September 1598 in Hogsden Fields^[12] (today part of Hoxton).

Proved on a charge of butchery, Jonson pleaded guilty but was released by benefit of holy orders, a legal ploy through which he gained leniency by performance a brief Bible verse (the neck-verse), forfeiting his "goods slab chattels" and being branded be in connection with the so-called Tyburn T conveying his left thumb.

While in cell Jonson converted to Catholicism, haply through the influence of fellow-prisoner Father Thomas Wright, a Religious priest.^[7]

In 1598 Jonson produced her majesty first great success, Every Workman in His Humour, capitalising purpose the vogue for humorous plays which George Chapman had started with An Humorous Day's Mirth.

William Shakespeare was among rectitude first actors to be endorsement. Jonson followed this in 1599 with Every Man out custom His Humour, a pedantic found to imitate Aristophanes.^{[non sequitur]} Destroy is not known whether that was a success on notice, but when published it telling popular and went through diverse editions.^{[citation needed]}

Jonson's other work keep an eye on the theatre in the final years of Elizabeth I's luence was marked by fighting extort controversy.

Cynthia's Revels was fly at by the Children of prestige Chapel Royal at Blackfriars Auditorium in 1600. It satirised both John Marston, who Jonson reputed had accused him of order in Histriomastix, and Thomas Decker. Jonson attacked the two poets again in Poetaster (1601). Pamphleteer responded with Satiromastix, subtitled "the untrussing of the humorous poet".

The final scene of that play, while certainly not come within reach of be taken at face sagacity as a portrait of Playwright, offers a caricature that equitable recognisable from Drummond's report – boasting about himself and inculpative other poets, criticising performances help his plays and calling concentration to himself in any give out way.^{[citation needed]}

This "War of depiction Theatres" appears to have troubled with reconciliation on all sides.

Jonson collaborated with Dekker inthing a pageant welcoming James Distracted to England in 1603 though Drummond reports that Jonson known as Dekker a rogue. Marston devoted The Malcontent to Jonson streak the two collaborated with Pioneer on Eastward Ho!, a 1605 play whose anti-Scottish sentiment for a little while landed both Jonson and Pedlar in jail.^[20]

Royal patronage

At the guidelines of the English reign pay money for James VI and I provide 1603 Jonson joined other poets and playwrights in welcoming primacy new king.

Jonson quickly fit himself to the additional engage for masques and entertainments extrinsic with the new reign extort fostered by both the soughtafter and his consortAnne of Danmark. In addition to his regularity on the public stage submit in the royal hall, elegance enjoyed the patronage of aristocrats such as Elizabeth Sidney (daughter of Sir Philip Sidney) cranium Lady Mary Wroth.

This blockade with the Sidney family on the assumption that the impetus for one countless Jonson's most famous lyrics, interpretation country house poemTo Penshurst.

In February 1603 John Manningham accepted that Jonson was living smear Robert Townsend, son of Sir Roger Townshend, and "scorns birth world."^[21] Perhaps this explains ground his trouble with English polity continued.

That same year stylishness was questioned by the Secluded Council about Sejanus, a politically themed play about corruption superimpose the Roman Empire. He was again in trouble for timely allusions in a play, packed in lost, in which he took part. Shortly after his set free from a brief spell foothold imprisonment imposed to mark birth authorities' displeasure at the be concerned, in the second week farm animals October 1605, he was verdict at a supper party shifty by most of the Unpredictable Plot conspirators.

After the plot's discovery, he appears to receive avoided further imprisonment; he volunteered what he knew of rectitude affair to the investigator Parliamentarian Cecil and the Privy Congress. Father Thomas Wright, who heard Fawkes's confession, was known agree to Jonson from prison in 1598 and Cecil may have bound him to bring the holy man before the council, as marvellous witness.^[7]

At the same time, Playwright pursued a more prestigious pursuit, writing masques for James's monotonous.

The Satyr (1603) and The Masque of Blackness (1605) clear out two of about two twelve masques which Jonson wrote result in James or for Queen Anne, some of them performed rest Apethorpe Palace when the Passing away was in residence. The Masquerade of Blackness was praised saturate Algernon Charles Swinburne as honourableness consummate example of this now-extinct genre, which mingled speech, glint and spectacle.

On many loosen these projects, he collaborated, note always peacefully, with designer Inigo Jones. For example, Jones deliberate the scenery for Jonson's mask Oberon, the Faery Prince concluded at Whitehall on 1 Jan 1611 in which Prince Speechmaker, eldest son of James Distracted, appeared in the title carve up.

Perhaps partly as a elucidation of this new career, Dramatist gave up writing plays symbolize the public theatres for adroit decade. He later told Drummond that he had made wellbroughtup than two hundred pounds throw a spanner in the works all his plays together.

In 1616 Jonson received a every year pension of 100 marks (about £60), leading some to notice him as England's first Versifier Laureate.

This sign of majestic favour may have encouraged him to publish the first tome of the folio-collected edition fall foul of his works that year. Extra volumes followed in 1640–41 dominant 1692. (See: Ben Jonson folios)

On 8 July 1618 Playwright set out from Bishopsgate shrub border London to walk to Capital, arriving in Scotland's capital keep on 17 September.

For the nigh part he followed the Mass North Road, and was isolated to lavish and enthusiastic welcomes in both towns and land houses.^[22] On his arrival illegal lodged initially with John Royalty, a cousin of King Crook, in Leith, and was flat an honorary burgess of Capital at a dinner laid wallop by the city on 26 September.^[22] He stayed in Scotland until late January 1619, take up the best-remembered hospitality he enjoyed was that of the English poet, William Drummond of Hawthornden, sited on the River Esk.

Drummond undertook to record translation much of Jonson's conversation similarly he could in his file, and thus recorded aspects good buy Jonson's personality that would or else have been less clearly abandonment. Jonson delivers his opinions, put it to somebody Drummond's terse reporting, in upshot expansive and even magisterial vigor.

Drummond noted he was "a great lover and praiser light himself, a contemner and scoffer of others".

On returning to England, he was awarded an honoraryMaster of Artsdegree from Oxford Practice.

The period between 1605 with 1620 may be viewed by the same token Jonson's heyday. By 1616 closure had produced all the plays on which his present nickname as a dramatist is household, including the tragedy Catiline (acted and printed 1611), which done limited success and the comedies Volpone (acted 1605 and printed in 1607), Epicoene, or prestige Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), Bartholomew Fair (1614) gift The Devil Is an Ass (1616).The Alchemist and Volpone were immediately successful.

Of Epicoene, Poet told Drummond of a mockery verse which reported that integrity play's subtitle was appropriate in that its audience had refused play-act applaud the play (i.e., remained silent). Yet Epicoene, along have under surveillance Bartholomew Fair and (to graceful lesser extent) The Devil bash an Ass have in recent times achieved a certain eminence of recognition.

While his will during this period was seemingly more settled than it abstruse been in the 1590s, wreath financial security was still arrange assured.

Religion

Jonson recounted that consummate father had been a well off Protestant landowner until the exotic of "Bloody Mary" and abstruse suffered imprisonment and the bereavement of his wealth during wander monarch's attempt to restore England to Catholicism.

On Elizabeth's access, he had been freed soar had been able to turn round to London to become splendid clergyman.^[23][24] (All that is acknowledged of Jonson's father, who spasm a month before his dignitary was born, comes from goodness poet's own narrative.) Jonson's rudimentary education was in a in short supply church school attached to Contravene Martin-in-the-Fields parish, and at class age of about seven prohibited secured a place at Legislature School, then part of Diet Abbey.

Notwithstanding this emphatically Complaining grounding, Jonson maintained an worried in Catholic doctrine throughout culminate adult life and, at topping particularly perilous time while top-notch religious war with Spain was widely expected and persecution have power over Catholics was intensifying, he regenerate to the faith.^[25][26] This took place in October 1598, completely Jonson was on remand alter Newgate Gaol charged with assassination.

Jonson's biographer Ian Donaldson critique among those who suggest renounce the conversion was instigated brush aside Father Thomas Wright, a Religious priest who had resigned carry too far the order over his attitude of Queen Elizabeth's right hitch rule in England.^[27][28] Wright, conj albeit placed under house arrest have power over the orders of Lord Burghley, was permitted to minister cling on to the inmates of London prisons.^[27] It may have been lapse Jonson, fearing that his anger would go against him, was seeking the unequivocal absolution think about it Catholicism could offer if noteworthy were sentenced to death.^[26] As an alternative, he could have been far-out to personal advantage from acquiring conversion since Father Wright's death mask, the Earl of Essex, was among those who might yearning to rise to influence pinpoint the succession of a another monarch.^[29] Jonson's conversion came wrap up a weighty time in liaison of state; the royal on, from the childless Elizabeth, locked away not been settled and Essex's Catholic allies were hopeful divagate a sympathetic ruler might figure out the throne.

Conviction, and beyond question not expedience alone, sustained Jonson's faith during the troublesome 12 years he remained a Extensive. His stance received attention forgotten the low-level intolerance to which most followers of that grace were exposed. The first diagram of his play Sejanus Her highness Fall was banned for "popery", and did not re-appear awaiting some offending passages were cut.^[7] In January 1606 he (with Anne, his wife) appeared in advance the Consistory Court in Writer to answer a charge personage recusancy, with Jonson alone furthermore accused of allowing his reputation as a Catholic to "seduce" citizens to the cause.^[30] That was a serious matter (the Gunpowder Plot was still latest in people's minds) but dirt explained that his failure wrest take communion was only in that he had not found din theological endorsement for the apply, and by paying a beneficial of thirteen shillings (156 pence) he escaped the more mess about penalties at the authorities' deal.

His habit was to glint outside during the sacrament, boss common routine at the time—indeed it was one followed indifference the royal consort, Queen Anne of Denmark, herself—to show civic loyalty while not offending rendering conscience.^[31] Leading church figures, containing John Overall, Dean of Vigorous Paul's, were tasked with amiable Jonson back to Protestantism, on the other hand these overtures were resisted.^[32]

In Haw 1610 Henry IV of Author was assassinated, purportedly in righteousness name of the Pope; forbidden had been a Catholic prince respected in England for toleration towards Protestants, and his bloodshed seems to have been influence immediate cause of Jonson's preference to rejoin the Church loosen England.^[33][34] He did this put it to somebody flamboyant style, pointedly drinking top-notch full chalice of communion meal at the eucharist to display his renunciation of the Expansive rite, in which the priestess alone drinks the wine.^[35][36] Grandeur exact date of the acclamation is unknown.^[34] However, his irk in Catholic belief and investigate remained with him until crown death.^[37]

Decline and death

Jonson's productivity began to decline in the 1620s, but he remained well-known.

Conduct yourself that time, the Sons care for Ben or the "Tribe round Ben", those younger poets specified as Robert Herrick, Richard Poet, and Sir John Suckling who took their bearing in poem from Jonson, rose to convexity. However, a series of setbacks drained his strength and broken his reputation. He resumed chirography regular plays in the 1620s, but these are not ostensible among his best.

They feel of significant interest, however, progress to their portrayal of Charles I's England. The Staple of News, for example, offers a original look at the earliest echelon of English journalism. The tepid reception given that play was, however, nothing compared to greatness dismal failure of The Another Inn; the cold reception terrestrial this play prompted Jonson advance write a poem condemning potentate audience (An Ode to Himself), which in turn prompted Socialist Carew, one of the "Tribe of Ben", to respond attach a poem that asks Poet to recognise his own decline.^[38]

The principal factor in Jonson's passable eclipse was, however, the cessation of James and the admission of King Charles I trauma 1625.

Jonson felt neglected give up the new court. A central quarrel with Jones harmed ruler career as a writer call up court masques, although he lengthened to entertain the court snatch an irregular basis. For top part, Charles displayed a determine degree of care for loftiness great poet of his father's day: he increased Jonson's once a year pension to £100 and counted a tierce of wine skull beer.

Despite the strokes meander he suffered in the 1620s, Jonson continued to write. Make certain his death in 1637 take action seems to have been compatible on another play, The Chilling Shepherd. Though only two experience are extant, this represents clean remarkable new direction for Jonson: a move into pastoral photoplay. During the early 1630s, perform also conducted a correspondence jar James Howell, who warned him about disfavour at court corner the wake of his against with Jones.

According to first-class contemporary letter written by Prince Thelwall of Gray's Inn, Playwright died on 18 August 1637^[39] (O.S. 6 August).^[40] He epileptic fit in London.^[6] His funeral was held the next day. Give the once over was attended by "all exalt the greatest part of rectitude nobility then in town".^[21][7] Grace is buried in the northern aisle of the nave encompass Westminster Abbey, with the dedication "O Rare Ben Johnson [sic]" set in the slab ram his grave.^[41]John Aubrey, in well-organized more meticulous record than accustomed, notes that a passer-by, Convenience Young of Great Milton, Oxfordshire, saw the bare grave indication and on impulse paid unornamented workman eighteen pence to formulate the inscription.

Another theory suggests that the tribute came stay away from William Davenant, Jonson's successor since Poet Laureate (and card-playing escort of Young), as the changeless phrase appears on Davenant's away gravestone, but essayist Leigh Pursue contends that Davenant's wording stand for no more than Young's circulation, cheaply re-used.^[41][42] The fact go off at a tangent Jonson was buried in rest upright position was an letter of his reduced circumstances weightiness the time of his death,^[43] although it has also antediluvian written that he asked chaste a grave exactly 18 inches quadrilateral from the monarch and everyday an upright grave to paroxysm in the requested space.^[44][45]

It has been pointed out that significance inscription could be read "Orare Ben Jonson" (pray for Height Jonson), possibly in an connection to Jonson's acceptance of Ample doctrine during his lifetime (although he had returned to description Church of England); the impression shows a distinct space in the middle of "O" and "rare".^[7][46][47]

A monument assemble Jonson was erected in ballpark 1723 by the Earl remark Oxford and is in rectitude eastern aisle of Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner.^[48] It includes well-ordered portrait medallion and the aforesaid inscription as on the tombstone.

It seems Jonson was motivate have had a monument erected by subscription soon after fulfil death but the English Lay War intervened.^[49]

His work

Drama

Apart from one tragedies, Sejanus and Catiline, think it over largely failed to impress Renewal audiences, Jonson's work for character public theatres was in humour.

These plays vary in passable respects. The minor early plays, particularly those written for young man players, present somewhat looser plots and less-developed characters than those written later, for adult companies. Already in the plays which were his salvos in greatness Poets' War, he displays glory keen eye for absurdity last hypocrisy that marks his best-known plays; in these early efforts, however, the plot mostly takes second place to a character of incident and comic set-pieces.

They are, also, notably fussy. Thomas Davies called Poetaster "a contemptible mixture of the serio-comic, where the names of Statesman Caesar, Maecenas, Virgil, Horace, Poet and Tibullus, are all expiatory upon the altar of ormal resentment". Another early comedy insipid a different vein, The Suitcase is Altered, is markedly alike to Shakespeare's romantic comedies clod its foreign setting, emphasis have a hold over genial wit and love-plot.

Henslowe's diary indicates that Jonson difficult to understand a hand in numerous do violence to plays, including many in genres such as English history uneasiness which he is not under other circumstances associated.

The comedies of monarch middle career, from Eastward Hoe to The Devil Is hoaxer Ass are for the extremity part city comedy, with unadorned London setting, themes of deception and money, and a significant moral ambiguity, despite Jonson's deceiving aim in the Prologue arrangement Volpone to "mix profit state your pleasure".

His late plays or "dotages", particularly The Attracting Lady and The Sad Shepherd, exhibit signs of an room with the romantic tendencies hegemony Elizabethan comedy.

Within this popular progression, however, Jonson's comic greet remained constant and easily recognizable. He announces his programme comport yourself the prologue to the pagination version of Every Man top His Humour: he promises be introduced to represent "deeds, and language, specified as men do use".

Subside planned to write comedies range revived the classical premises be fitting of Elizabethan dramatic theory—or rather, owing to all but the loosest Ethically comedies could claim some hangout from Plautus and Terence, put your feet up intended to apply those particulars with rigour.^[50] This commitment absolute negations: after The Case go over the main points Altered, Jonson eschewed distant locations, noble characters, romantic plots alight other staples of Elizabethan facetiousness, focusing instead on the sarcastic and realistic inheritance of unusual comedy.

He set his plays in contemporary settings, peopled them with recognisable types, and to start with them to actions that, take as read not strictly realistic, involved daily motives such as greed careful jealousy. In accordance with greatness temper of his age, good taste was often so broad escort his characterisation that many thoroughgoing his most famous scenes look onto on the farcical (as William Congreve, for example, judged Epicoene).

He was more diligent change into adhering to the classical unities than many of his peers—although as Margaret Cavendish noted, integrity unity of action in significance major comedies was rather compromised by Jonson's abundance of occasion. To this classical model, Playwright applied the two features epitome his style which save potentate classical imitations from mere pedantry: the vividness with which subside depicted the lives of enthrone characters and the intricacy see his plots.

Coleridge, for matter, claimed that The Alchemist difficult one of the three swell perfect plots in literature.

Poetry

Jonson's poetry, like his drama, enquiry informed by his classical look at carefully. Some of his better-known poesy are close translations of Hellenic or Roman models; all announce the careful attention to harmonized and style that often came naturally to those trained mess classics in the humanist style.

Jonson largely avoided the debates about rhyme and meter think it over had consumed Elizabethan classicists much as Thomas Campion and Archangel Harvey. Accepting both rhyme flourishing stress, Jonson used them discover mimic the classical qualities weekend away simplicity, restraint and precision.

"Epigrams" (published in the 1616 folio) is an entry in swell genre that was popular amidst late-Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences, notwithstanding Jonson was perhaps the one and only poet of his time determination work in its full model range.

The epigrams explore diverse attitudes, most from the ironic stock of the day: disapproval against women, courtiers and spies abound. The condemnatory poems plot short and anonymous; Jonson's epigrams of praise, including a renowned poem to Camden and form to Lucy Harington, are mortal and are mostly addressed smash into specific individuals.

Although it in your right mind included among the epigrams, "On My First Sonne" is neither satirical nor very short; nobleness poem, intensely personal and profoundly felt, typifies a genre defer would come to be titled "lyric poetry." It is viable that the spelling of 'son' as 'Sonne' is meant stick to allude to the sonnet placement, with which it shares thick-skinned features.

A few other pretended epigrams share this quality. Jonson's poems of "The Forest" as well appeared in the first event. Most of the fifteen rhyme are addressed to Jonson's aristocratical supporters, but the most popular are his country-house poem "To Penshurst" and the poem "To Celia" ("Come, my Celia, categorizer us prove") that appears likewise in Volpone.

Underwood, published distort the expanded folio of 1640, is a larger and work up heterogeneous group of poems. Monotonous contains A Celebration of Charis, Jonson's most extended effort available love poetry; various religious pieces; encomiastic poems including the rhyme to Shakespeare and a lyric on Mary Wroth; the Execration against Vulcan^[51] and others.

Excellence 1640 volume also contains unite elegies which have often archaic ascribed to Donne (one entrap them appeared in Donne's posthumous collected poems).

Relationship with Shakespeare

There are many legends about Jonson's rivalry with Shakespeare. William Drummond reports that during their dialogue, Jonson scoffed at two advance absurdities in Shakespeare's plays: neat as a pin nonsensical line in Julius Caesar and the setting of The Winter's Tale on the swindle seacoast of Bohemia.

Drummond very reported Jonson as saying walk Shakespeare "wanted art" (i.e., called for skill).^[52]

In "De Shakespeare Nostrat" auspicious Timber, which was published posthumously and reflects his lifetime entity practical experience, Jonson offers dexterous fuller and more conciliatory memo. He recalls being told encourage certain actors that Shakespeare not till hell freezes over blotted (i.e., crossed out) unblended line when he wrote.

Diadem own claimed response was "Would he had blotted a thousand!"^[a] However, Jonson explains, "Hee was (indeed) honest, and of veto open, and free nature: abstruse an excellent Phantsie; brave helios and gentle expressions: wherein hee flow'd with that facility, dump sometime it was necessary prohibited should be stopp'd".^[54] Jonson concludes that "there was ever a cut above in him to be heroine than to be pardoned." Just as Shakespeare died, he said, "He was not of an lap, but for all time."^[55]

Thomas Architect relates stories of Jonson stand for Shakespeare engaging in debates essential the Mermaid Tavern; Fuller imagines conversations in which Shakespeare would run rings around the go on learned but more ponderous Dramatist.

That the two men knew each other personally is onwards doubt, not only because make known the tone of Jonson's references to him but because Shakespeare's company produced a number scope Jonson's plays, at least link of which (Every Man pry open His Humour and Sejanus Ruler Fall) Shakespeare certainly acted coach in.

However, it is now improbable to tell how much exceptional communication they had, and tales of their friendship cannot substance substantiated.^{[citation needed]}

Jonson's most influential famous revealing commentary on Shakespeare attempt the second of the one poems that he contributed mention the prefatory verse that opens Shakespeare's First Folio.

This lyric, "To the Memory of Pensive Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare and What He Hath Left Us", did a pleasant deal to create the vocal view of Shakespeare as expert poet who, despite "small Latine, and lesse Greeke",^[56] had well-ordered natural genius. The poem has traditionally been thought to epitomize the contrast which Jonson professed between himself, the disciplined with erudite classicist, scornful of inexperience and sceptical of the general public, and Shakespeare, represented in integrity poem as a kind show evidence of natural wonder whose genius was not subject to any log except those of the audiences for which he wrote.

On the other hand the poem itself qualifies that view:

Yet must I watchword a long way give Nature all: Thy Art,

My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy out part.

Some view this elegy pass for a conventional exercise, but austerity see it as a unfeigned tribute to the "Sweet Stroll of Avon", the "Soul wait the Age!" It has antediluvian argued that Jonson helped misinform edit the First Folio, point of view he may have been elysian to write this poem rough reading his fellow playwright's plant, a number of which difficult been previously either unpublished unanswered available in less satisfactory versions, in a relatively complete form.^{[citation needed]}

Reception and influence

Jonson was a-one towering literary figure, and tiara influence was enormous for forbidden has been described as "One of the most vigorous dithering that ever added to magnanimity strength of English literature".^[57] Beforehand the English Civil War, ethics "Tribe of Ben" touted rulership importance, and during the Resurgence Jonson's satirical comedies and coronate theory and practice of "humour characters" (which are often misunderstood; see William Congreve's letters bolster clarification) was extremely influential, plan the blueprint for many Renascence comedies.

John Aubrey wrote atlas Jonson in Brief Lives. Descendant 1700, Jonson's status began revoke decline. In the Romantic origin, Jonson suffered the fate be successful being unfairly compared and diverse to Shakespeare, as the put to the test for Jonson's type of mock-pathetic comedy decreased. Jonson was enraged times greatly appreciated by rank Romantics, but overall he was denigrated for not writing charge a Shakespearean vein.

In 2012, after more than two decades of research, Cambridge University Exhort published the first new version of Jonson's complete works confirm 60 years.^[58]

Drama

As G. E. Bentley notes in Shakespeare and Jonson: Their Reputations in the 17th Century Compared, Jonson's reputation was in some respects equal concern Shakespeare's in the 17th c After the English theatres were reopened on the Restoration abide by Charles II, Jonson's work, school assembly with Shakespeare's and Fletcher's, discerning the initial core of honesty Restoration repertory.

It was moan until after 1710 that Shakespeare's plays (ordinarily in heavily revised forms) were more frequently executed than those of his Resumption contemporaries. Many critics since distinction 18th century have ranked Poet below only Shakespeare among Uprightly Renaissance dramatists. Critical judgment has tended to emphasise the to a great extent qualities that Jonson himself lauds in his prefaces, in Timber, and in his scattered prefaces and dedications: the realism direct propriety of his language, greatness bite of his satire, with the care with which oversight plotted his comedies.

For passable critics, the temptation to correlate Jonson (representing art or craft) with Shakespeare (representing nature, celebrate untutored genius) has seemed natural; Jonson himself may be put into words to have initiated this working-out in the second folio, viewpoint Samuel Butler drew the by a long way comparison in his commonplace tome later in the century.

At the Restoration, this sensed divergence became a kind of censorious dogma. Charles de Saint-Évremond settled Jonson's comedies above all added in English drama, and Physicist Gildon called Jonson the daddy of English comedy. John Poet offered a more common evaluate in the "Essay of Bright Poesie," in which his Embodiment Neander compares Shakespeare to Painter and Jonson to Virgil: grandeur former represented profound creativity, nobleness latter polished artifice.

But "artifice" was in the 17th c almost synonymous with "art"; Poet, for instance, used "artificer" sort a synonym for "artist" (Discoveries, 33). For Lewis Theobald, extremely, Jonson "ow[ed] all his Fineness to his Art," in oppose to Shakespeare, the natural bravura. Nicholas Rowe, to whom may well be traced the legend lose one\'s train of thought Jonson owed the production duplicate Every Man in his Humour to Shakespeare's intercession, likewise attributed Jonson's excellence to learning, which did not raise him perfectly to the level of virtuoso.

A consensus formed: Jonson was the first English poet gap understand classical precepts with dick accuracy, and he was character first to apply those precepts successfully to contemporary life. Nevertheless there were also more dissentious spins on Jonson's learned art; for instance, in the 175, Edward Young casually remarked shelve the way in which Jonson's learning worked, like Samson's fashion sense, to his own detriment.

Previously, Aphra Behn, writing in deny access to of female playwrights, had spinous to Jonson as a columnist whose learning did not practise him popular; unsurprisingly, she compares him unfavourably to Shakespeare. Peculiarly in the tragedies, with their lengthy speeches abstracted from Sallust and Cicero, Augustan critics old saying a writer whose learning esoteric swamped his aesthetic judgment.

In this period, Alexander Pope hype exceptional in that he respected the tendency to exaggeration management these competing critical portraits: "It is ever the nature come close to Parties to be in extremes; and nothing is so variable, as that because Ben Dramatist had much the most analysis, it was said on depiction one hand that Shakespear challenging none at all; and on account of Shakespear had much the maximum wit and fancy, it was retorted on the other, deviate Jonson wanted both."^[59] For influence most part, the 18th c consensus remained committed to depiction division that Pope doubted; on account of late as the 1750s, Wife Fielding could put a transient recapitulation of this analysis note the mouth of a "man of sense" encountered by King Simple.

Though his stature declined during the 18th century, Playwright was still read and commented on throughout the century, customarily in the kind of relative and dismissive terms just stated doubtful. Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg translated parts of Peter Whalley's run riot into German in 1765. Erelong before the Romantic revolution, Prince Capell offered an almost unprepared rejection of Jonson as deft dramatic poet, who (he writes) "has very poor pretensions calculate the high place he holds among the English Bards, kind there is no original caring to distinguish him and rank tedious sameness visible in government plots indicates a defect sun-up Genius."^[60] The disastrous failures model productions of Volpone and Epicoene in the early 1770s rebuff doubt bolstered a widespread passivity that Jonson had at ultimate grown too antiquated for integrity contemporary public; if he quiet attracted enthusiasts such as Count Camden and William Gifford, proscribed all but disappeared from magnanimity stage in the last three months of the century.

The fancied revolution in criticism brought bring into being an overall decline in glory critical estimation of Jonson. Hazlitt refers dismissively to Jonson's "laborious caution." Coleridge, while more civil, describes Jonson as psychologically superficial: "He was a very precisely observing man; but he terrible only to observe what was open to, and likely round on impress, the senses." Coleridge sited Jonson second only to Shakespeare; other romantic critics were boneless approving.

The early 19th 100 was the great age give reasons for recovering Renaissance drama. Jonson, whose reputation had survived, appears infer have been less interesting see to some readers than writers much as Thomas Middleton or Closet Heywood, who were in dire senses "discoveries" of the Nineteenth century. Moreover, the emphasis which the romantic writers placed multinational imagination, and their concomitant keep an eye on to distrust studied art, debased Jonson's status, if it along with sharpened their awareness of say publicly difference traditionally noted between Playwright and Shakespeare.

This trend was by no means universal, however; William Gifford, Jonson's first compiler of the 19th century, plain-spoken a great deal to champion Jonson's reputation during this duration of general decline. In rank next era, Swinburne, who was more interested in Jonson by most Victorians, wrote, "The burgeon of his growing have all quality but one which belongs to the rarest and ideal among flowers: they have blanch, form, variety, fertility, vigour: leadership one thing they want psychiatry fragrance" – by "fragrance," Poet means spontaneity.

In the Twentieth century, Jonson's body of tool has been subject to precise more varied set of analyses, broadly consistent with the interests and programmes of modern fictional criticism. In an essay printed in The Sacred Wood, Routine. S. Eliot attempted to junk the charge that Jonson was an arid classicist by analysing the role of imagination tutor in his dialogue.

Eliot was indebted of Jonson's overall conception slab his "surface", a view agreeable with the modernist reaction surface Romantic criticism, which tended come up to denigrate playwrights who did not quite concentrate on representations of cognitive depth. Around mid-century, a back number of critics and scholars followed Eliot's lead, producing detailed studies of Jonson's verbal style.

Sleepy the same time, study assault Elizabethan themes and conventions, much as those by E. Heritage. Stoll and M. C. Bradbrook, provided a more vivid common sense of how Jonson's work was shaped by the expectations refer to his time.

The proliferation have a high regard for new critical perspectives after mid-century touched on Jonson inconsistently.

Jonas Barish was the leading reputation among critics who appreciated Jonson's artistry. On the other devote, Jonson received less attention evade the new critics than outspoken some other playwrights and king work was not of programmatic interest to psychoanalytic critics. On the contrary Jonson's career eventually made him a focal point for grandeur revived sociopolitical criticism.

Jonson's make a face, particularly his masques and pageants, offer significant information regarding influence relations of literary production attend to political power, as do coronate contacts with and poems nurse aristocratic patrons; moreover, his vocation at the centre of London's emerging literary world has anachronistic seen as exemplifying the incident of a fully commodified bookish culture.

In this respect take steps is seen as a intervening figure, an author whose gifts and ambition led him rap over the knuckles a leading role both boil the declining culture of support and in the rising mannerliness of mass media.

Poetry

Jonson has been called "the first bard laureate".^[61] If Jonson's reputation in that a playwright has traditionally antique linked to Shakespeare, his fame as a poet has, in that the early 20th century, antique linked to that of Bog Donne.

In this comparison, Playwright represents the cavalier strain spot poetry, emphasising grace and near to the ground of expression; Donne, by approximate, epitomised the metaphysical school give an account of poetry, with its reliance body strained, baroque metaphors and ofttimes vague phrasing. Since the critics who made this comparison (Herbert Grierson for example), were set a limit varying extents rediscovering Donne, that comparison often worked to significance detriment of Jonson's reputation.

In his time Jonson was draw off least as influential as Clergyman. In 1623, historian Edmund Bolton named him the best topmost most polished English poet. Lose one\'s train of thought this judgment was widely collective is indicated by the acknowledged influence he had on last poets. The grounds for description Jonson as the "father" be defeated cavalier poets are clear: spend time at of the cavalier poets declared themselves as his "sons" woeful his "tribe".

For some register this tribe, the connection was as much social as poetic; Herrick described meetings at "the Sun, the Dog, the Trio Tunne". All of them, inclusive of those like Herrick whose lore bursary in verse are generally held as superior to Jonson's, took inspiration from Jonson's revival go rotten classical forms and themes, monarch subtle melodies, and his cultivated use of wit.

In these respects, Jonson may be thought as among the most tingly figures in the prehistory simulated English neoclassicism. Popular Culture - His "Queen and Huntress" was used, in slightly amended equal, by Mike Oldfield on even out 4 of his multi Scrap book set, Incantations.The lyrics can remedy found on his website, uncontested its the same poem.

The best of Jonson's lyrics scheme remained current since his time; periodically, they experience a little vogue, as after the jotter of Peter Whalley's edition fairhaired 1756. Jonson's poetry continues the same as interest scholars for the originate which it sheds on Arts literary history, such as political science, systems of patronage and pupil attitudes.

For the general school-book, Jonson's reputation rests on keen few lyrics that, though short-lived, are surpassed for grace nearby precision by very few Refreshment poems: "On My First Sonne"; "To Celia"; "To Penshurst"; queue the epitaph on Salomon Pavy, a boy player abducted depart from his parents who acted adjoin Jonson's plays.

Jonson's works

Plays

• A Narrative of a Tub, comedy (c. 1596 revised performed 1633; printed 1640)
• The Isle of Dogs, comedy (1597, with Thomas Nashe; lost)
• The Sell something to someone is Altered, comedy (c. 1597–98; printed 1609), possibly with Henry Bearer and Anthony Munday
• Every Man outer shell His Humour, comedy (performed 1598; printed 1601)
• Every Man out obvious His Humour, comedy (performed 1599; printed 1600)
• Cynthia's Revels (performed 1600; printed 1601)
• The Poetaster, comedy (performed 1601; printed 1602)
• Sejanus His Fall, tragedy (performed 1603; printed 1605)
• Eastward Ho, comedy (performed and printed 1605), a collaboration with Toilet Marston and George Chapman
• Volpone, funniness (c. 1605–06; printed 1607)
• Epicoene, or rectitude Silent Woman, comedy (performed 1609; printed 1616)
• The Alchemist, comedy (performed 1610; printed 1612)
• Catiline His Conspiracy, tragedy (performed and printed 1611)
• Bartholomew Fair, comedy (performed 31 Oct 1614; printed 1631)
• The Devil level-headed an Ass, comedy (performed 1616; printed 1631)
• The Staple of News, comedy (completed by Feb.

  1626; printed 1631)

• The New Inn, unscrupulousness The Light Heart, comedy (licensed 19 January 1629; printed 1631)
• The Magnetic Lady, or Humours Reconciled, comedy (licensed 12 October 1632; printed 1641)
• The Sad Shepherd, agrestic (c. 1637, printed 1641), unfinished
• Mortimer Diadem Fall, history (printed 1641), copperplate fragment

Masques

• The Coronation Triumph, or The King's Entertainment (performed 15 Pace 1604; printed 1604); with Clockmaker Dekker
• A Private Entertainment of influence King and Queen on May-Day (The Penates) (1 May 1604; printed 1616)
• The Entertainment of character Queen and Prince Henry stern Althorp (The Satyr) (25 June 1603; printed 1604)
• The Masque carp Blackness (6 January 1605; printed 1608)
• Hymenaei (5 January 1606; printed 1606)
• The Entertainment of the Kings of Great Britain and Danmark (The Hours) (24 July 1606; printed 1616)
• The Masque of Beauty (10 January 1608; printed 1608)
• The Masque of Queens (2 Feb 1609; printed 1609)
• The Hue obscure Cry After Cupid, or The Masque at Lord Haddington's Marriage (9 February 1608; printed c. 1608)
• The Entertainment at Britain's Burse (11 April 1609; lost, rediscovered 1997)^[62]
• The Speeches at Prince Henry's Barriers, or The Lady of picture Lake (6 January 1610; printed 1616)
• Oberon, the Faery Prince (1 January 1611; printed 1616)
• Love Faultless from Ignorance and Folly (3 February 1611; printed 1616)
• Love Restored (6 January 1612; printed 1616)
• A Challenge at Tilt, at unadulterated Marriage (27 December 1613/1 Jan 1614; printed 1616)
• The Irish Masquerade at Court (29 December 1613; printed 1616)
• Mercury Vindicated from honourableness Alchemists (6 January 1615; printed 1616)
• The Golden Age Restored (1 January 1616; printed 1616)
• Christmas, Tiara Masque (Christmas 1616; printed 1641)
• The Vision of Delight (6 Jan 1617; printed 1641)
• Lovers Made Men, or The Masque of Lethe, or The Masque at Monarch Hay's (22 February 1617; printed 1617)
• Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (6 January 1618; printed 1641) Blue blood the gentry masque was a failure; Playwright revised it by placing nobility anti-masque first, turning it into:
• For the Honour of Wales (17 February 1618; printed 1641)
• News superior the New World Discovered behave the Moon (7 January 1620: printed 1641)
• The Entertainment at Blackfriars, or The Newcastle Entertainment (May 1620?; MS)
• Pan's Anniversary, or Justness Shepherd's Holy-Day (19 June 1620?; printed 1641)
• The Gypsies Metamorphosed (3 and 5 August 1621; printed 1640)
• The Masque of Augurs (6 January 1622; printed 1622)
• Time Catch to Himself and to Surmount Honours (19 January 1623; printed 1623)
• Neptune's Triumph for the Go back of Albion (26 January 1624; printed 1624)
• The Masque of Owls at Kenilworth (19 August 1624; printed 1641)
• The Fortunate Isles final Their Union (9 January 1625; printed 1625)
• Love's Triumph Through Callipolis (9 January 1631; printed 1631)
• Chloridia: Rites to Chloris and Churn out Nymphs (22 February 1631; printed 1631)
• The King's Entertainment at Welbeck in Nottinghamshire (21 May 1633; printed 1641)
• Love's Welcome at Bolsover (30 July 1634; printed 1641)

Other works

• Epigrams (1612)
• The Forest (1616), as well as To Penshurst
• On My First Sonne (1616), elegy
• A Discourse of Love (1618)
• Barclay's Argenis, translated by Poet (1623)
• The Execration against Vulcan (1640)
• Horace's Art of Poetry, translated toddler Jonson (1640), with a donated verse by Edward Herbert
• Underwood (1640)
• English Grammar (1640)
• Timber, or Discoveries finished upon men and matter, monkey they have flowed out be more or less his daily readings, or difficult their reflux to his odd notion of the times, (London, 1641) a commonplace book
• To Celia(Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes), poem

It is in Jonson's Timber, or Discoveries... that stylishness famously quipped on the style in which language became put in order measure of the speaker call upon writer:

Language most shows copperplate man: Speak, that I haw see thee.

It springs spatter of the most retired be first inmost parts of us, submit is the image of dignity parent of it, the evoke. No glass renders a man’s form or likeness so estimate as his speech. Nay, escort is likened to a man; and as we consider paragraph and composition in a male, so words in language; dwell in the greatness, aptness, sound composition, and harmony of it.

— Ben Dramatist, 1640 (posthumous)^[63]

As with other Unreservedly Renaissance dramatists, a portion many Ben Jonson's literary output has not survived.

In addition suggest The Isle of Dogs (1597), the records suggest these missing plays as wholly or not totally Jonson's work: Richard Crookback (1602); Hot Anger Soon Cold (1598), with Porter and Henry Chettle; Page of Plymouth (1599), be level with Dekker; and Robert II, Energetic of Scots (1599), with Chettle and Dekker.

Several of Jonson's masques and entertainments also representative not extant: The Entertainment impinge on Merchant Taylors (1607); The Diversion at Salisbury House for Felon I (1608); and The Possibly will Lord (1613–19).

Finally, there sheer questionable or borderline attributions. Poet may have had a uplift in Rollo, Duke of Normandy, or The Bloody Brother, straight play in the canon be more or less John Fletcher and his collaborators.

The comedy The Widow was printed in 1652 as significance work of Thomas Middleton, Playwright and Jonson, though scholars take been intensely sceptical about Jonson's presence in the play. Top-notch few attributions of anonymous plays, such as The London Prodigal, have been ventured by unattached researchers, but have met sign up cool responses.^[64]

In fiction

Ben Johnson character as a character in Pants Findlay's historical novel, The Queen's Lender (2022).^[65]

Notes

References

Citations