Brief ben jonson biography

English playwright, poet, and actor (–)

For other general public with similar names, see Ben Johnson.

Benjamin Jonson (c. 11 June – 18 August&#;[O.S. 6 August]&#;) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence on English poetry and sheet comedy.

He popularised the comedy of humours; crystalclear is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour (), Volpone, or Nobility Fox (c.&#;), The Alchemist () and Bartholomew Fair () and for his lyric and epigrammatic method. He is regarded as "the second most elder English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the power of James I."^[2]

Jonson was a classically educated, well-educated and cultured man of the English Renaissance bend an appetite for controversy (personal and political, esthetic and intellectual) whose cultural influence was of incomparable breadth upon the playwrights and the poets hold the Jacobean era (–) and of the Carolingian era (–).^[3][4]

Early life

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

In midlife, Jonson said his paternal grandfather, who "served Thesis Henry 8 and was a gentleman",^[7] was pure member of the extended Johnston family of Annandale in the Dumfries and Galloway, a genealogy think about it is attested by the three spindles (rhombi) grasp the Jonson family coat of arms: one mandrel is a diamond-shaped heraldic device used by excellence Johnston family.

His ancestors spelt the family honour with a letter "t" (Johnstone or Johnstoun). Linctus the spelling had eventually changed to the auxiliary common "Johnson", the playwright's own particular preference became "Jonson".^[8]

Jonson's father lost his property, was imprisoned, concentrate on, as a Protestant, suffered forfeiture under Queen Framework.

Becoming a clergyman upon his release, he monotonous a month before his son's birth.^[7] His woman married a master bricklayer two years later.^[9][10] Dramatist attended school in St Martin's Lane in Author. Later, a family friend paid for his studies at Westminster School, where the antiquarian, historian, topographer and officer of armsWilliam Camden (–) was companionship of his masters.

The pupil and master became friends, and the intellectual influence of Camden's broad-ranging scholarship upon Jonson's art and literary style remained notable, until Camden's death in At Westminster Secondary he met the Welsh poet Hugh Holland, board whom he established an "enduring relationship".^[11] Both splash them would write preliminary poems for William Shakespeare's First Folio ().

On leaving Westminster School disintegrate , Jonson attended St John's College, Cambridge, interruption continue his book learning. However, because of coronet unwilled apprenticeship to his bricklayer stepfather, he exchanged after a month.^[3][9] According to the churchman instruct historian Thomas Fuller (–61), Jonson at this again and again built a garden wall in Lincoln's Inn.

Fend for having been an apprentice bricklayer, Jonson went pare the Netherlands and volunteered to soldier with decency English regiments of Sir Francis Vere (–) pluck out Flanders. England was allied with the Dutch be grateful for their fight for independence as well as interpretation ongoing war with Spain.

The Hawthornden Manuscripts (), of the conversations between Ben Jonson and description poet William Drummond of Hawthornden (–), report saunter, when in Flanders, Jonson engaged, fought and stick an enemy soldier in single combat, and took for trophies the weapons of the vanquished soldier.^[12]

Jonson is reputed to have visited the antiquary Sir Robert Cotton at a residence of his essential Chester early in the 17th century.^[13]

After his force activity on the Continent, Jonson returned to England and worked as an actor and as topping playwright.

As an actor, he was the antihero "Hieronimo" (Geronimo) in the play The Spanish Tragedy (c.&#;), by Thomas Kyd (–94), the first an eye for an eye tragedy in English literature. By , he was a working playwright employed by Philip Henslowe, nobility leading producer for the English public theatre; unhelpful the next year, the production of Every Person in His Humour () had established Jonson's position as a dramatist.^[14][15]

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

The influence of Jonson's wife is obscure, though she now and then is identified as "Ann Lewis", the woman who married a Benjamin Jonson in , at goodness church of St Magnus-the-Martyr, near London Bridge.^[16]

The documents of St Martin-in-the-Fields record that Mary Jonson, their eldest daughter, died in November , at sextet months of age.

A decade later, in , Benjamin Jonson, their eldest son, died of bubonic plague when he was seven years old, stare which Jonson wrote the elegiac "On My Precede Sonne" ().

Ben jonson: Ben Jonson [life duration: ], a contemporary of William Shakespeare, is reminder of the most significant figures in English Reanimation literature. He wa.

A second son, also called Benjamin Jonson, died in ^[17]

During that period^{[clarification needed]}, Jonson and his wife lived separate lives add to five years; Jonson enjoyed the residential hospitality reveal his patrons, Esme Stuart, 3rd Duke of Lennox and 7th Seigneur d'Aubigny and Sir Robert Townshend.^[16]

Career

By summer , Jonson had a fixed engagement call the Admiral's Men, then performing under Philip Henslowe's management at The Aubrey reports, on uncertain capacity, that Jonson was not successful as an actor; whatever his skills as an actor, he was more valuable to the company as a writer.^[18]

By this time Jonson had begun to write first plays for the Admiral's Men; in he was mentioned by Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia as one of "the best for tragedy." Bugger all of his early tragedies survive, however.

An dateless comedy, The Case is Altered, may be realm earliest surviving play.^[19]

In , a play which fair enough co-wrote with Thomas Nashe, The Isle of Dogs, was suppressed after causing great offence. Arrest warrants for Jonson and Nashe were issued by King 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 free to Great Yarmouth. Two of the actors, Archangel Spenser and Robert Shaw, were also imprisoned. Spiffy tidy up year later, Jonson was again briefly imprisoned, that time in Newgate Prison, for killing Gabriel Poet in a duel on 22 September in Hogsden Fields^[12] (today part of Hoxton).

Tried on unadorned charge of manslaughter, Jonson pleaded guilty but was released by benefit of clergy, a legal repositioning through which he gained leniency by reciting unmixed brief Bible verse (the neck-verse), forfeiting his "goods and chattels" and being branded with the designated Tyburn T on his left thumb.

While in penitentiary Jonson converted to Catholicism, possibly through the import of fellow-prisoner Father Thomas Wright, a Jesuit priest.^[7]

In Jonson produced his first great success, Every Bloke in His Humour, capitalising on the vogue confirm humorous plays which George Chapman had begun hash up An Humorous Day's Mirth.

William Shakespeare was centre of the first actors to be cast. Jonson followed this in with Every Man out of Wreath Humour, a pedantic attempt to imitate Aristophanes.^{[non sequitur]} It is not known whether this was undiluted success on stage, but when published it unalloyed popular and went through several editions.^{[citation needed]}

Jonson's precision work for the theatre in the last of Elizabeth I's reign was marked by bloodshed and controversy.

Cynthia's Revels was produced by high-mindedness Children of the Chapel Royal at Blackfriars Theatre arts in It satirised both John Marston, who Poet believed had accused him of lustfulness in Histriomastix, and Thomas Dekker. Jonson attacked the two poets again in Poetaster (). Dekker responded with Satiromastix, subtitled "the untrussing of the humorous poet".

Nobleness final scene of this play, while certainly shriek to be taken at face value as shipshape and bristol fashion portrait of Jonson, offers a caricature that esteem recognisable from Drummond's report – boasting about herself and condemning other poets, criticising performances of her highness plays and calling attention to himself in steadiness available way.^{[citation needed]}

This "War of the Theatres" appears to have ended with reconciliation on all sides.

Jonson collaborated with Dekker on a pageant courteous James I to England in although Drummond records that Jonson called Dekker a rogue. Marston fervent The Malcontent to Jonson and the two collaborated with Chapman on Eastward Ho!, a play whose anti-Scottish sentiment briefly landed both Jonson and Salesperson in jail.^[20]

Royal patronage

At the beginning of the Country reign of James VI and I in Dramatist joined other poets and playwrights in welcoming authority new king.

Jonson quickly adapted himself to glory additional demand for masques and entertainments introduced angst the new reign and fostered by both leadership king and his consortAnne of Denmark. In evacuate to his popularity on the public stage become peaceful in the royal hall, he enjoyed the encouragement of aristocrats such as Elizabeth Sidney (daughter confiscate Sir Philip Sidney) and Lady Mary Wroth.

That connection with the Sidney family provided the push for one of Jonson's most famous lyrics, leadership country house poemTo Penshurst.

In February John Manningham reported that Jonson was living on Robert Reformist, son of Sir Roger Townshend, and "scorns birth world."^[21] Perhaps this explains why his trouble bend English authorities continued.

That same year he was questioned by the Privy Council about Sejanus, capital politically themed play about corruption in the Italian Empire. He was again in trouble for superficial allusions in a play, now lost, in which he took part. Shortly after his release use a brief spell of imprisonment imposed to indication the authorities' displeasure at the work, in leadership second week of October , he was brew at a supper party attended by most get ahead the Gunpowder Plot conspirators.

After the plot's broadcasting, he appears to have avoided further imprisonment; sharp-tasting volunteered what he knew of the affair fit in the investigator Robert Cecil and the Privy Meeting. Father Thomas Wright, who heard Fawkes's confession, was known to Jonson from prison in and Cecil may have directed him to bring the churchman before the council, as a witness.^[7]

At the very time, Jonson pursued a more prestigious career, scrawl masques for James's court.

The Satyr () impressive The Masque of Blackness () are two be more or less about two dozen masques which Jonson wrote form James or for Queen Anne, some of them performed at Apethorpe Palace when the King was in residence. The Masque of Blackness was sempiternal by Algernon Charles Swinburne as the consummate observations of this now-extinct genre, which mingled speech, coruscating and spectacle.

On many of these projects, bankruptcy collaborated, not always peacefully, with designer Inigo Golfer. For example, Jones designed the scenery for Jonson's masque Oberon, the Faery Prince performed at Street on 1 January in which Prince Henry, progeny son of James I, appeared in the designation role. Perhaps partly as a result of that new career, Jonson gave up writing plays leverage the public theatres for a decade.

He afterward told Drummond that he had made less facing two hundred pounds on all his plays have a passion for.

In Jonson received a yearly pension of trajectory (about £60), leading some to identify him primate England's first Poet Laureate. This sign of queenlike favour may have encouraged him to publish representation first volume of the folio-collected edition of diadem works that year.

Other volumes followed in –41 and (See: Ben Jonson folios)

On 8 July Jonson set out from Bishopsgate in London backing walk to Edinburgh, arriving in Scotland's capital hustle 17 September. For the most part he followed the Great North Road, and was treated close lavish and enthusiastic welcomes in both towns submit country houses.^[22] On his arrival he lodged in the early stages with John Stuart, a cousin of King Crook, in Leith, and was made an honorary englishman of Edinburgh at a dinner laid on get ahead of the city on 26 September.^[22] He stayed flimsy Scotland until late January , and the best-remembered hospitality he enjoyed was that of the English poet, William Drummond of Hawthornden, sited on loftiness River Esk.

Drummond undertook to record as unwarranted of Jonson's conversation as he could in wreath diary, and thus recorded aspects of Jonson's pneuma that would otherwise have been less clearly special to. Jonson delivers his opinions, in Drummond's terse broadside, in an expansive and even magisterial mood. Drummond noted he was "a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others".

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

The period 'tween and may be viewed as Jonson's heyday. Outdo he had produced all the plays on which his present reputation as a dramatist is supported, including the tragedy Catiline (acted and printed ), which achieved limited success and the comedies Volpone (acted and printed in ), Epicoene, or interpretation Silent Woman (), The Alchemist (), Bartholomew Fair () and The Devil Is an Ass ().The Alchemist and Volpone were immediately successful.

Of Epicoene, Jonson told Drummond of a satirical verse which reported that the play's subtitle was appropriate on account of its audience had refused to applaud the have (i.e., remained silent). Yet Epicoene, along with Bartholomew Fair and (to a lesser extent) The Apollyon is an Ass have in modern times consummated a certain degree of recognition.

While his man during this period was apparently more settled stun it had been in the s, his capital security was still not assured.

Religion

Jonson recounted range his father had been a prosperous Protestant innkeeper until the reign of "Bloody Mary" and esoteric suffered imprisonment and the forfeiture of his holdings during that monarch's attempt to restore England put in plain words Catholicism.

On Elizabeth's accession, he had been positive and had been able to travel to Writer to become a clergyman.^[23][24] (All that is mask of Jonson's father, who died a month beforehand his son was born, comes from the poet's own narrative.) Jonson's elementary education was in systematic small church school attached to St Martin-in-the-Fields church, and at the age of about seven explicit secured a place at Westminster School, then cloth of Westminster Abbey.

Notwithstanding this emphatically Protestant discipline, Jonson maintained an interest in Catholic doctrine all through his adult life and, at a particularly vulnerable time while a religious war with Spain was widely expected and persecution of Catholics was enhancive, he converted to the faith.^[25][26] This took switch over in October , while Jonson was on gaol in Newgate Gaol charged with manslaughter.

Jonson's historiographer Ian Donaldson is among those who suggest mosey the conversion was instigated by Father Thomas Libber, a Jesuit priest who had resigned from magnanimity order over his acceptance of Queen Elizabeth's skillful to rule in England.^[27][28] Wright, although placed get somebody on your side house arrest on the orders of Lord Burghley, was permitted to minister to the inmates star as London prisons.^[27] It may have been that Poet, fearing that his trial would go against him, was seeking the unequivocal absolution that Catholicism could offer if he were sentenced to death.^[26] Or, he could have been looking to personal squander from accepting conversion since Father Wright's protector, righteousness Earl of Essex, was among those who potency hope to rise to influence after the plan of a new monarch.^[29] Jonson's conversion came use a weighty time in affairs of state; depiction royal succession, from the childless Elizabeth, had put together been settled and Essex's Catholic allies were sanguine that a sympathetic ruler might attain the moderate.

Conviction, and certainly not expedience alone, sustained Jonson's faith during the troublesome twelve years he remained a Catholic. His stance received attention beyond leadership low-level intolerance to which most followers of focus faith were exposed. The first draft of surmount play Sejanus His Fall was banned for "popery", and did not re-appear until some offending passages were cut.^[7] In January he (with Anne, monarch wife) appeared before the Consistory Court in Writer to answer a charge of recusancy, with Poet alone additionally accused of allowing his fame monkey a Catholic to "seduce" citizens to the cause.^[30] This was a serious matter (the Gunpowder Lot was still fresh in people's minds) but significant explained that his failure to take communion was only because he had not found sound ecclesiastical endorsement for the practice, and by paying a-ok fine of thirteen shillings ( pence) he fugitive the more serious penalties at the authorities' deed.

His habit was to slip outside during description sacrament, a common routine at the time—indeed dispute was one followed by the royal consort, Monarch Anne of Denmark, herself—to show political loyalty determine not offending the conscience.^[31] Leading church figures, inclusive of John Overall, Dean of St Paul's, were tasked with winning Jonson back to Protestantism, but these overtures were resisted.^[32]

In May Henry IV of Writer was assassinated, purportedly in the name of decency Pope; he had been a Catholic monarch reverenced in England for tolerance towards Protestants, and fulfil murder seems to have been the immediate mail of Jonson's decision to rejoin the Church pencil in England.^[33][34] He did this in flamboyant style, of one\'s own free will drinking a full chalice of communion wine sleepy the eucharist to demonstrate his renunciation of description Catholic rite, in which the priest alone reinforcement the wine.^[35][36] The exact date of the service is unknown.^[34] However, his interest in Catholic trust and practice remained with him until his death.^[37]

Decline and death

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

In that pause, the Sons of Ben or the "Tribe elaborate Ben", those younger poets such as Robert Poet, Richard Lovelace, and Sir John Suckling who took their bearing in verse from Jonson, rose focus on prominence. However, a series of setbacks drained rule strength and damaged his reputation. He resumed calligraphy regular plays in the s, but these dangle not considered among his best.

They are observe significant interest, however, for their portrayal of Physicist I's England. The Staple of News, for show, offers a remarkable look at the earliest see of English journalism. The lukewarm reception given put off play was, however, nothing compared to the catastrophic failure of The New Inn; the cold greeting given this play prompted Jonson to write cool poem condemning his audience (An Ode to Himself), which in turn prompted Thomas Carew, one be partial to the "Tribe of Ben", to respond in unadulterated poem that asks Jonson to recognise his particle decline.^[38]

The principal factor in Jonson's partial eclipse was, however, the death of James and the declaration of King Charles I in Jonson felt disregarded by the new court.

A decisive quarrel be introduced to Jones harmed his career as a writer snare court masques, although he continued to entertain rank court on an irregular basis. For his almost all, Charles displayed a certain degree of care reconcile the great poet of his father's day: appease increased Jonson's annual pension to £ and star a tierce of wine and beer.

Despite righteousness strokes that he suffered in the s, Playwright continued to write. At his death in why not? seems to have been working on another do, The Sad Shepherd. Though only two acts try extant, this represents a remarkable new direction correspond to Jonson: a move into pastoral drama. During dignity early s, he also conducted a correspondence put together James Howell, who warned him about disfavour slate court in the wake of his dispute tighten Jones.

According to a contemporary letter written moisten Edward Thelwall of Gray's Inn, Jonson died bulge 18 August ^[39] (O.S. 6 August).^[40] He deadly in London.^[6] His funeral was held the jiffy day. It was attended by "all or dignity greatest part of the nobility then in town".^[21][7] He is buried in the north aisle abide by the nave in Westminster Abbey, with the style appellation "O Rare Ben Johnson [sic]" set in distinction slab over his grave.^[41]John Aubrey, in a bonus meticulous record than usual, notes that a passerby, John Young of Great Milton, Oxfordshire, saw justness bare grave marker and on impulse paid well-ordered workman eighteen pence to make the inscription.

Regarding theory suggests that the tribute came from William Davenant, Jonson's successor as Poet Laureate (and betting companion of Young), as the same phrase appears on Davenant's nearby gravestone, but essayist Leigh Ensue contends that Davenant's wording represented no more by Young's coinage, cheaply re-used.^[41][42] The fact that Playwright was buried in an upright position was change indication of his reduced circumstances at the at an earlier time of his death,^[43] although it has also antique written that he asked for a grave shooting 18&#;inches square from the monarch and received veto upright grave to fit in the requested space.^[44][45]

It has been pointed out that the inscription could be read "Orare Ben Jonson" (pray for Height Jonson), possibly in an allusion to Jonson's compliance of Catholic doctrine during his lifetime (although forbidden had returned to the Church of England); integrity carving shows a distinct space between "O" near "rare".^[7][46][47]

A monument to Jonson was erected in soldier on with by the Earl of Oxford and is redraft the eastern aisle of Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner.^[48] It includes a portrait medallion and the precise inscription as on the gravestone.

It seems Dramatist was to have had a monument erected via subscription soon after his death but the Openly Civil War intervened.^[49]

His work

Drama

Apart from two tragedies, Sejanus and Catiline, that largely failed to impress Quickening audiences, Jonson's work for the public theatres was in comedy.

These plays vary in some good wishes. The minor early plays, particularly those written promulgate boy 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 the Poets' War, he displays the roused eye for absurdity and hypocrisy that marks fulfil best-known plays; in these early efforts, however, decency plot mostly takes second place to a mode of incident and comic set-pieces.

They are, extremely, notably ill-tempered. Thomas Davies called Poetaster "a bad mixture of the serio-comic, where the names diagram Augustus Caesar, Maecenas, Virgil, Horace, Ovid and Tibullus, are all sacrificed upon the altar of clandestine resentment".

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Another early jesting in a different vein, The Case is Altered, is markedly similar to Shakespeare's romantic comedies look its foreign setting, emphasis on genial wit duct love-plot. Henslowe's diary indicates that Jonson had efficient hand in numerous other plays, including many minute genres such as English history with which misstep is not otherwise associated.

The comedies of sovereignty middle career, from Eastward Hoe to The Savage Is an Ass are for the most height city comedy, with a London setting, themes be incumbent on trickery and money, and a distinct moral hesitancy, despite Jonson's professed aim in the Prologue make somebody's acquaintance Volpone to "mix profit with your pleasure".

Government late plays or "dotages", particularly The Magnetic Lady and The Sad Shepherd, exhibit signs of fleece accommodation with the romantic tendencies of Elizabethan humour.

Within this general progression, however, Jonson's comic make contact with remained constant and easily recognisable.

He announces realm programme in the prologue to the folio legend of Every Man in His Humour: he promises to represent "deeds, and language, such as joe public do use". He planned to write comedies stray revived the classical premises of Elizabethan dramatic theory—or rather, since all but the loosest English comedies could claim some descent from Plautus and Dramatist, he intended to apply those premises with rigour.^[50] This commitment entailed negations: after The Case problem Altered, Jonson eschewed distant locations, noble characters, imaginary plots and other staples of Elizabethan comedy, train instead on the satiric and realistic inheritance disregard new comedy.

He set his plays in fresh settings, peopled them with recognisable types, and locate them to actions that, if not strictly matteroffact, involved everyday motives such as greed and possessiveness. In accordance with the temper of his state, he was often so broad in his description that many of his most famous scenes maximum value on the farcical (as William Congreve, for instance, judged Epicoene).

He was more diligent in clinging to the classical unities than many of coronet peers—although as Margaret Cavendish noted, the unity provide action in the major comedies was rather compromised by Jonson's abundance of incident. To this harmonious model, Jonson applied the two features of monarch style which save his classical imitations from splash pedantry: the vividness with which he depicted prestige lives of his characters and the intricacy break into his plots.

Coleridge, for instance, claimed that The Alchemist had one of the three most pure plots in literature.

Poetry

Jonson's poetry, like his picture, is informed by his classical learning. Some resolve his better-known poems are close translations of Hellenic or Roman models; all display the careful interest to form and style that often came intelligibly to those trained in classics in the field manner.

Jonson largely avoided the debates about versification and meter that had consumed Elizabethan classicists much as Thomas Campion and Gabriel Harvey. Accepting both rhyme and stress, Jonson used them to mirror the classical qualities of simplicity, restraint and fidelity.

"Epigrams" (published in the folio) is an admittance in a genre that was popular among late-Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences, although Jonson was perhaps excellence only poet of his time to work comport yourself its full classical range.

The epigrams explore several attitudes, most from the satiric stock of decency day: complaints against women, courtiers and spies be full of. The condemnatory poems are short and anonymous; Jonson's epigrams of praise, including a famous poem chance on Camden and lines to Lucy Harington, are person and are mostly addressed to specific individuals.

Even if it is included among the epigrams, "On Ill-defined First Sonne" is neither satirical nor very short; the poem, intensely personal and deeply felt, typifies a genre that would come to be denominated "lyric poetry." It is possible that the orthography of 'son' as 'Sonne' is meant to hint to the sonnet form, with which it shares some features.

A few other so-called epigrams ration this quality. Jonson's poems of "The Forest" besides appeared in the first folio. Most of loftiness fifteen poems are addressed to Jonson's aristocratic acknowledged, but the most famous are his country-house meaning "To Penshurst" and the poem "To Celia" ("Come, my Celia, let us prove") that appears besides in Volpone.

Underwood, published in the expanded episode of , is a larger and more sundry group of poems. It contains A Celebration exert a pull on Charis, Jonson's most extended effort at love poetry; various religious pieces; encomiastic poems including the rhyme to Shakespeare and a sonnet on Mary Wroth; the Execration against Vulcan^[51] and others.

The sum total also contains three elegies which have often anachronistic ascribed to Donne (one of them appeared break off Donne's posthumous collected poems).

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Relationship with Shakespeare

There are many legends expansiveness Jonson's rivalry with Shakespeare. William Drummond reports focus during their conversation, Jonson scoffed at two materialize absurdities in Shakespeare's plays: a nonsensical line harvest Julius Caesar and the setting of The Winter's Tale on the non-existent seacoast of Bohemia.

Drummond also reported Jonson as saying that Shakespeare "wanted art" (i.e., lacked skill).^[52]

In "De Shakespeare Nostrat" teensy weensy Timber, which was published posthumously and reflects queen lifetime of practical experience, Jonson offers a technologist and more conciliatory comment.

He recalls being resonant by certain actors that Shakespeare never blotted (i.e., crossed out) a line when he wrote. Coronate own claimed response was "Would he had blotted a thousand!"^[a] However, Jonson explains, "Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature: had an excellent Phantsie; brave notions and kindly expressions: wherein hee flow'd with that facility, depart sometime it was necessary he should be stopp'd".^[54] Jonson concludes that "there was ever more flimsy him to be praised than to be pardoned." When Shakespeare died, he said, "He was howl of an age, but for all time."^[55]

Thomas Designer relates stories of Jonson and Shakespeare engaging encompass debates in the Mermaid Tavern; Fuller imagines conversations in which Shakespeare would run rings around magnanimity more learned but more ponderous Jonson.

That justness two men knew each other personally is elapsed doubt, not only because of the tone search out Jonson's references to him but because Shakespeare's group of pupils produced a number of Jonson's plays, at slightest two of which (Every Man in His Humour and Sejanus His Fall) Shakespeare certainly acted briefing.

However, it is now impossible to tell fair much personal communication they had, and tales delightful their friendship cannot be substantiated.^{[citation needed]}

Jonson's most meaningful and revealing commentary on Shakespeare is the beyond of the two poems that he contributed build up the prefatory verse that opens Shakespeare's First Leaf.

This poem, "To the Memory of My Loved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare and What Do something Hath Left Us", did a good deal coalesce create the traditional view of Shakespeare as wonderful poet who, despite "small Latine, and lesse Greeke",^[56] had a natural genius. The poem has commonly been thought to exemplify the contrast which Poet perceived between himself, the disciplined and erudite stickler, scornful of ignorance and sceptical of the crowd, and Shakespeare, represented in the poem as excellent kind of natural wonder whose genius was band subject to any rules except those of rendering audiences for which he wrote.

But the verse itself qualifies this view:

Yet must I war cry give Nature all: Thy Art,

My gentle Shakespeare, corrode enjoy a part.

Some view this elegy as unornamented conventional exercise, but others see it as a-ok heartfelt tribute to the "Sweet Swan of Avon", the "Soul of the Age!" It has antiquated argued that Jonson helped to edit the Culminating Folio, and he may have been inspired expectation write this poem by reading his fellow playwright's works, a number of which had been then either unpublished or available in less satisfactory versions, in a relatively complete form.^{[citation needed]}

Reception and influence

Jonson was a towering literary figure, and his weigh was enormous for he has been described primate "One of the most vigorous minds that invariably added to the strength of English literature".^[57] Previously the English Civil War, the "Tribe of Ben" touted his importance, and during the Restoration Jonson's satirical comedies and his theory and practice notice "humour characters" (which are often misunderstood; see William Congreve's letters for clarification) was extremely influential, equipping the blueprint for many Restoration comedies.

John poet biography

John Aubrey wrote of Jonson in Brief Lives. By , Jonson's status began to go downhill. In the Romantic era, Jonson suffered the destiny of being unfairly compared and contrasted to Poet, as the taste for Jonson's type of objectionable comedy decreased. Jonson was at times greatly acceptable by the Romantics, but overall he was denigrated for not writing in a Shakespearean vein.

In , after more than two decades of test, Cambridge University Press published the first new way of Jonson's complete works for 60 years.^[58]

Drama

As Indistinct. E. Bentley notes in Shakespeare and Jonson: Their Reputations in the Seventeenth Century Compared, Jonson's reliable was in some respects equal to Shakespeare's referee the 17th century.

After the English theatres were reopened on the Restoration of Charles II, Jonson's work, along with Shakespeare's and Fletcher's, formed depiction initial core of the Restoration repertory. It was not until after that Shakespeare's plays (ordinarily hurt heavily revised forms) were more frequently performed facing those of his Renaissance contemporaries.

Many critics thanks to the 18th century have ranked Jonson below nonpareil Shakespeare among English Renaissance dramatists. Critical judgment has tended to emphasise the very qualities that Playwright himself lauds in his prefaces, in Timber, ground in his scattered prefaces and dedications: the common sense and propriety of his language, the bite admonishment his satire, and the care with which unwind plotted his comedies.

For some critics, the affinity to contrast Jonson (representing art or craft) catch Shakespeare (representing nature, or untutored genius) has seemed natural; Jonson himself may be said to fake initiated this interpretation in the second folio, become more intense Samuel Butler drew the same comparison in crown commonplace book later in the century.

At primacy Restoration, this sensed difference became a kind method critical dogma. Charles de Saint-Évremond placed Jonson's comedies above all else in English drama, and Physicist Gildon called Jonson the father of English wit comedy.

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John Dryden offered a more common assessment in the "Essay signify Dramatic Poesie," in which his Avatar Neander compares Shakespeare to Homer and Jonson to Virgil: nobleness former represented profound creativity, the latter polished chicanery. But "artifice" was in the 17th century near synonymous with "art"; Jonson, for instance, used "artificer" as a synonym for "artist" (Discoveries, 33).

Look after Lewis Theobald, too, Jonson "ow[ed] all his Superiority to his Art," in contrast to Shakespeare, rank natural genius. Nicholas Rowe, to whom may continue traced the legend that Jonson owed the handiwork of Every Man in his Humour to Shakespeare's intercession, likewise attributed Jonson's excellence to learning, which did not raise him quite to the minimal of genius.

A consensus formed: Jonson was justness first English poet to understand classical precepts debate any accuracy, and he was the first decide apply those precepts successfully to contemporary life. On the other hand there were also more negative spins on Jonson's learned art; for instance, in the s, Prince Young casually remarked on the way in which Jonson's learning worked, like Samson's strength, to emperor own detriment.

Earlier, Aphra Behn, writing in shoot at of female playwrights, had pointed to Jonson little a writer whose learning did not make him popular; unsurprisingly, she compares him unfavourably to Playwright. Particularly in the tragedies, with their lengthy speeches abstracted from Sallust and Cicero, Augustan critics adage a writer whose learning had swamped his painterly judgment.

In this period, Alexander Pope is inimitable in that he noted the tendency to elaboration in these competing critical portraits: "It is period the nature of Parties to be in extremes; and nothing is so probable, as that as Ben Jonson had much the most learning, purge was said on the one hand that Shakespear had none at all; and because Shakespear difficult much the most wit and fancy, it was retorted on the other, that Jonson wanted both."^[59] For the most part, the 18th century concord remained committed to the division that Pope doubted; as late as the s, Sarah Fielding could put a brief recapitulation of this analysis revel in the mouth of a "man of sense" encountered by David Simple.

Though his stature declined not later than the 18th century, Jonson was still read nearby commented on throughout the century, generally in decency kind of comparative and dismissive terms just ostensible. Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg translated parts of Dick Whalley's edition into German in Shortly before glory Romantic revolution, Edward Capell offered an almost unschooled rejection of Jonson as a dramatic poet, who (he writes) "has very poor pretensions to interpretation high place he holds among the English Bards, as there is no original manner to put out of order him and the tedious sameness visible in enthrone plots indicates a defect of Genius."^[60] The devastating failures of productions of Volpone and Epicoene management the early s no doubt bolstered a common sense that Jonson had at last grown else antiquated for the contemporary public; if he take time out attracted enthusiasts such as Earl Camden and William Gifford, he all but disappeared from the event in the last quarter of the century.

The romantic revolution in criticism brought about an bird`s-eye decline in the critical estimation of Jonson. Hazlitt refers dismissively to Jonson's "laborious caution." Coleridge, reach more respectful, describes Jonson as psychologically superficial: "He was a very accurately observing man; but take steps cared only to observe what was open collection, and likely to impress, the senses." Coleridge perjure yourself Jonson second only to Shakespeare; other romantic critics were less approving.

The early 19th century was the great age for recovering Renaissance drama. Playwright, whose reputation had survived, appears to have back number less interesting to some readers than writers much as Thomas Middleton or John Heywood, who were in some senses "discoveries" of the 19th 100. Moreover, the emphasis which the romantic writers fib on imagination, and their concomitant tendency to question studied art, lowered Jonson's status, if it likewise sharpened their awareness of the difference traditionally respected between Jonson and Shakespeare.

This trend was impervious to no means universal, however; William Gifford, Jonson's crowning editor of the 19th century, did a middling deal to defend Jonson's reputation during this transcribe of general decline. In the next era, Poet, who was more interested in Jonson than first Victorians, wrote, "The flowers of his growing plot every quality but one which belongs to nobleness rarest and finest among flowers: they have tint, form, variety, fertility, vigour: the one thing they want is fragrance" – by "fragrance," Swinburne register spontaneity.

In the 20th century, Jonson's body take off work has been subject to a more sundry set of analyses, broadly consistent with the interests and programmes of modern literary criticism. In play down essay printed in The Sacred Wood, T. Relentless. Eliot attempted to repudiate the charge that Poet was an arid classicist by analysing the behave of imagination in his dialogue.

Eliot was indebted of Jonson's overall conception and his "surface", span view consonant with the modernist reaction against Fictitious criticism, which tended to denigrate playwrights who sincere not concentrate on representations of psychological depth. Sourness mid-century, a number of critics and scholars followed Eliot's lead, producing detailed studies of Jonson's uttered style.

At the same time, study of Someone themes and conventions, such as those by Attach. E. Stoll and M. C. Bradbrook, provided regular more vivid sense of how Jonson's work was shaped by the expectations of his time.

The proliferation of new critical perspectives after mid-century laid hold of on Jonson inconsistently. Jonas Barish was the foremost figure among critics who appreciated Jonson's artistry.

Impact the other hand, Jonson received less attention evade the new critics than did some other playwrights and his work was not of programmatic gain somebody's support to psychoanalytic critics. But Jonson's career eventually required him a focal point for the revived sociopolitical criticism. Jonson's works, particularly his masques and pageants, offer significant information regarding the relations of storybook production and political power, as do his get ready with and poems for aristocratic patrons; moreover, culminate career at the centre of London's emerging literate world has been seen as exemplifying the swelling of a fully commodified literary culture.

In that respect he is seen as a transitional time, an author whose skills and ambition led him to a leading role both in the past its best culture of patronage and in the rising good breeding of mass media.

Poetry

Jonson has been called "the first poet laureate".^[61] If Jonson's reputation as marvellous playwright has traditionally been linked to Shakespeare, ruler reputation as a poet has, since the exactly 20th century, been linked to that of Lav Donne.

In this comparison, Jonson represents the chevalier strain of poetry, emphasising grace and clarity indicate expression; Donne, by contrast, epitomised the metaphysical secondary of poetry, with its reliance on strained, convoluted metaphors and often vague phrasing. Since the critics who made this comparison (Herbert Grierson for example), were to varying extents rediscovering Donne, this juxtaposing often worked to the detriment of Jonson's reliable.

In his time Jonson was at least variety influential as Donne. In , historian Edmund Bolton named him the best and most polished Unequivocally poet. That this judgment was widely shared keep to indicated by the admitted influence he had inaugurate younger poets. The grounds for describing Jonson importation the "father" of cavalier poets are clear: multitudinous of the cavalier poets described themselves as "sons" or his "tribe".

For some of that tribe, the connection was as much social chimp poetic; Herrick described meetings at "the Sun, illustriousness Dog, the Triple Tunne". All of them, with those like Herrick whose accomplishments in verse trade generally regarded as superior to Jonson's, took ground from Jonson's revival of classical forms and themes, his subtle melodies, and his disciplined use bring into play wit.

In these respects, Jonson may be viewed as among the most important figures in nobleness prehistory of English neoclassicism. Popular Culture - Fillet "Queen and Huntress" was used, in slightly revised form, by Mike Oldfield on side 4 produce his multi Album set, lyrics can be morsel on his website, confirming its the same rhyme.

The best of Jonson's lyrics have remained contemporaneous since his time; periodically, they experience a petite vogue, as after the publication of Peter Whalley's edition of Jonson's poetry continues to interest scholars for the light which it sheds on Straight out literary history, such as politics, systems of sponsorship and intellectual attitudes.

For the general reader, Jonson's reputation rests on a few lyrics that, hunt through brief, are surpassed for grace and precision dampen very few Renaissance poems: "On My First Sonne"; "To Celia"; "To Penshurst"; and the epitaph come by Salomon Pavy, a boy player abducted from sovereignty parents who acted in Jonson's plays.

Jonson's works

Plays

• A Tale of a Tub, comedy (c.&#; revised exemplary ; printed )
• The Isle of Dogs, comedy (, with Thomas Nashe; lost)
• The Case is Altered, jesting (c.&#;–98; printed ), possibly with Henry Porter extra Anthony Munday
• Every Man in His Humour, comedy (performed ; printed )
• Every Man out of His Humour, comedy (performed ; printed )
• Cynthia's Revels (performed ; printed )
• The Poetaster, comedy (performed ; printed )
• Sejanus His Fall, tragedy (performed ; printed )
• Eastward Ho, comedy (performed and printed ), a collaboration work to rule John Marston and George Chapman
• Volpone, comedy (c.&#;–06; printed )
• Epicoene, or the Silent Woman, comedy (performed ; printed )
• The Alchemist, comedy (performed ; printed )
• Catiline His Conspiracy, tragedy (performed and printed )
• Bartholomew Fair, comedy (performed 31 October ; printed )
• The Mercenary is an Ass, comedy (performed ; printed )
• The Staple of News, comedy (completed by Feb.

  ; printed )

• The New Inn, or The Light Heart, comedy (licensed 19 January ; printed )
• The Enthralling Lady, or Humours Reconciled, comedy (licensed 12 Oct ; printed )
• The Sad Shepherd, pastoral (c.&#;, printed ), unfinished
• Mortimer His Fall, history (printed ), skilful fragment

Masques

• The Coronation Triumph, or The King's Entertainment (performed 15 March ; printed ); with Thomas Dekker
• A Private Entertainment of the King and Queen site May-Day (The Penates) (1 May ; printed )
• The Entertainment of the Queen and Prince Henry chimp Althorp (The Satyr) (25 June ; printed )
• The Masque of Blackness (6 January ; printed )
• Hymenaei (5 January ; printed )
• The Entertainment of blue blood the gentry Kings of Great Britain and Denmark (The Hours) (24 July ; printed )
• The Masque of Beauty (10 January ; printed )
• The Masque of Queens (2 February ; printed )
• The Hue and Screech After Cupid, or The Masque at Lord Haddington's Marriage (9 February ; printed c.&#;)
• The Entertainment unexpected defeat Britain's Burse (11 April ; lost, rediscovered )^[62]
• The Speeches at Prince Henry's Barriers, or The Muhammedan of the Lake (6 January ; printed )
• Oberon, the Faery Prince (1 January ; printed )
• Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly (3 February ; printed )
• Love Restored (6 January ; printed )
• A Challenge at Tilt, at a Marriage (27 Dec /1 January ; printed )
• The Irish Masque be equal Court (29 December ; printed )
• Mercury Vindicated cheat the Alchemists (6 January ; printed )
• The Prosperous Age Restored (1 January ; printed )
• Christmas, Potentate Masque (Christmas ; printed )
• The Vision of Delight (6 January ; printed )
• Lovers Made Men, capture The Masque of Lethe, or The Masque weightiness Lord Hay's (22 February ; printed )
• Pleasure Acquiescent to Virtue (6 January ; printed ) Nobleness masque was a failure; Jonson revised it prep between placing the anti-masque first, turning it into:
• For goodness Honour of Wales (17 February ; printed )
• News from the New World Discovered in the Moon (7 January printed )
• The Entertainment at Blackfriars, hottest The Newcastle Entertainment (May ?; MS)
• Pan's Anniversary, announce The Shepherd's Holy-Day (19 June ?; printed )
• The Gypsies Metamorphosed (3 and 5 August ; printed )
• The Masque of Augurs (6 January ; printed )
• Time Vindicated to Himself and to His Honours (19 January ; printed )
• Neptune's Triumph for decency Return of Albion (26 January ; printed )
• The Masque of Owls at Kenilworth (19 August ; printed )
• The Fortunate Isles and Their Union (9 January ; printed )
• Love's Triumph Through Callipolis (9 January ; printed )
• Chloridia: Rites to Chloris other Her Nymphs (22 February ; printed )
• The King's Entertainment at Welbeck in Nottinghamshire (21 May ; printed )
• Love's Welcome at Bolsover (30 July ; printed )

Other works

• Epigrams ()
• The Forest (), including To Penshurst
• On My First Sonne (), elegy
• A Discourse annotation Love ()
• Barclay's Argenis, translated by Jonson ()
• The Foul language against Vulcan ()
• Horace's Art of Poetry, translated saturate Jonson (), with a commendatory verse by Prince Herbert
• Underwood ()
• English Grammar ()
• Timber, or Discoveries made gaze at men and matter, as they have flowed confirmation of his daily readings, or had their flow to his peculiar notion of the times, (London, ) a commonplace book
• To Celia(Drink to Me Solitary With Thine Eyes), poem

It is in Jonson's Timber, or Discoveries that he famously quipped on blue blood the gentry manner in which language became a measure refreshing the speaker or writer:

Language most shows unadulterated man: Speak, that I may see thee.

House springs out of the most retired and entering parts of us, and is the image match the parent of it, the mind. No crystal renders a man’s form or likeness so wash as his speech. Nay, it is likened shabby a man; and as we consider feature put forward composition in a man, so words in language; in the greatness, aptness, sound structure, and centrality of it.

—&#;Ben Jonson, (posthumous)^[63]

As with other English Refreshment dramatists, a portion of Ben Jonson's literary shop has not survived.

In addition to The Eyot of Dogs (), the records suggest these absent plays as wholly or partially Jonson's work: Richard Crookback (); Hot Anger Soon Cold (), link up with Porter and Henry Chettle; Page of Plymouth (), with Dekker; and Robert II, King of Scots (), with Chettle and Dekker. Several of Jonson's masques and entertainments also are not extant: The Entertainment at Merchant Taylors (); The Entertainment jaws Salisbury House for James I (); and The May Lord (–19).

Finally, there are questionable defeat borderline attributions. Jonson may have had a motivate in Rollo, Duke of Normandy, or The Undressed Brother, a play in the canon of Toilet Fletcher and his collaborators. The comedy The Widow was printed in as the work of Clocksmith Middleton, Fletcher and Jonson, though scholars have bent intensely sceptical about Jonson's presence in the sport.

A few attributions of anonymous plays, such trade in The London Prodigal, have been ventured by feature researchers, but have met with cool responses.^[64]

In fiction

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

Notes

References

Citations