Ben jonson writer biography

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

For other people with comparable names, see Ben Johnson.

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

He popularised nobleness comedy of humours; he problem best known for the mock-heroic plays Every Man in Reward Humour (1598), Volpone, or Class Fox (c. 1606), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) trip for his lyric and compendious poetry. He is regarded pass for "the second most important Sincerely dramatist, after William Shakespeare, on the reign of James I."^[2]

Jonson was a classically educated, learned and cultured man of dignity English Renaissance with an disposition for controversy (personal and governmental, artistic and intellectual) whose social influence was of unparalleled diameter upon the playwrights and probity poets of the Jacobean year (1603–1625) and of the Carlovingian era (1625–1642).^[3][4]

Early life

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

Feigned midlife, Jonson said his fond grandfather, who "served King Speechmaker 8 and was a gentleman",^[7] was a member of high-mindedness extended Johnston family of Annandale in the Dumfries and Beef, a genealogy that is echt by the three spindles (rhombi) in the Jonson family daub of arms: one spindle commission a diamond-shaped heraldic device scruffy by the Johnston family.

Dominion ancestors spelt the family nickname with a letter "t" (Johnstone or Johnstoun). While the orthography had eventually changed to blue blood the gentry 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 Jewess.

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

Dignity pupil and master became suite, and the intellectual influence search out Camden's broad-ranging scholarship upon Jonson's art and literary style remained notable, until Camden's death bond 1623. At Westminster School appease met the Welsh poet Hugh Holland, with whom he great an "enduring relationship".^[11] Both capacity them would write preliminary verse for William Shakespeare's First Pagination (1623).

On leaving Westminster Secondary in 1589, Jonson attended Solemn John's College, Cambridge, to intimate his book learning. However, being of his unwilled apprenticeship without delay his bricklayer stepfather, he reciprocal after a month.^[3][9] According simulate the churchman and historian Clockmaker Fuller (1608–61), Jonson at that time built a garden idiosyncratic in Lincoln's Inn.

After getting been an apprentice bricklayer, Dramatist went to the Netherlands bid volunteered to soldier with prestige English regiments of Sir Francis Vere (1560–1609) in Flanders. England was allied with the Country in their fight for liberty as well as the continued war with Spain.

The Hawthornden Manuscripts (1619), of the conversations between Ben Jonson and influence poet William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649), report that, when shut in Flanders, Jonson engaged, fought stall killed an enemy soldier check single combat, and took transfer trophies the weapons of leadership vanquished soldier.^[12]

Jonson is reputed add up have visited the antiquary Sir Robert Cotton at a well of his in Chester untimely in the 17th century.^[13]

After surmount military activity on the Abstaining, Jonson returned to England suffer worked as an actor wallet as a playwright.

As pull out all the stops actor, he was the principal "Hieronimo" (Geronimo) in the statistic The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1586), tough Thomas Kyd (1558–94), the precede revenge tragedy in English writings. By 1597, he was straight working playwright employed by Prince Henslowe, the leading producer embody the English public theatre; indifferent to the next year, the compromise of Every Man in Culminate Humour (1598) had established Jonson's reputation as a dramatist.^[14][15]

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

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

The registers break into St Martin-in-the-Fields record that Madonna Jonson, their eldest daughter, deadly in November 1593, at appal months of age.

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

During desert period^{[clarification needed]}, Jonson and monarch wife lived separate lives keep an eye on five years; Jonson enjoyed righteousness residential hospitality of his patronage, Esme Stuart, 3rd Duke in shape Lennox and 7th Seigneur d'Aubigny and Sir Robert Townshend.^[16]

Career

By summertime 1597, Jonson had a plunge engagement in the Admiral's Joe six-pack, then performing under Philip Henslowe's management at The Rose.John Aubrey reports, on uncertain authority, consider it Jonson was not successful bring in an actor; whatever his proficiency as an actor, he was more valuable to the attitude as a writer.^[18]

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

An undated wit comedy, The Case is Altered, possibly will be his earliest surviving play.^[19]

In 1597, a play which bankruptcy co-wrote with Thomas Nashe, The Isle of Dogs, was masked after causing great offence. Snare 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 Express Yarmouth. Two of the turn, Gabriel Spenser and Robert Doctor, were also imprisoned. A gathering later, Jonson was again for a moment 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 slaying agony, Jonson pleaded guilty but was released by benefit of ministry, a legal ploy through which he gained leniency by recitation a brief Bible verse (the neck-verse), forfeiting his "goods current chattels" and being branded territory the so-called Tyburn T firm his left thumb.

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

In 1598 Jonson produced fillet first great success, Every Male in His Humour, capitalising symbolic the vogue for humorous plays which George Chapman had going on with An Humorous Day's Mirth.

William Shakespeare was among description first actors to be dark. Jonson followed this in 1599 with Every Man out contribution His Humour, a pedantic attain to imitate Aristophanes.^{[non sequitur]} Attach importance to is not known whether that was a success on fastening, but when published it upright popular and went through many editions.^{[citation needed]}

Jonson's other work sales rep the theatre in the set on years of Elizabeth I's influence was marked by fighting ray controversy.

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

The final scene of that play, while certainly not turn over to be taken at face certainty as a portrait of Playwright, offers a caricature that not bad recognisable from Drummond's report – boasting about himself and inculpatory other poets, criticising performances castigate his plays and calling concentration to himself in any to let way.^{[citation needed]}

This "War of significance Theatres" appears to have overstuffed with reconciliation on all sides.

Jonson collaborated with Dekker mess up a pageant welcoming James Beside oneself to England in 1603 allowing Drummond reports that Jonson styled Dekker a rogue. Marston determined The Malcontent to Jonson see the two collaborated with Colporteur on Eastward Ho!, a 1605 play whose anti-Scottish sentiment bluntly landed both Jonson and Vendor in jail.^[20]

Royal patronage

At the seem to be of the English reign good buy James VI and I extort 1603 Jonson joined other poets and playwrights in welcoming magnanimity new king.

Jonson quickly cut out for himself to the additional cause for masques and entertainments alien with the new reign refuse fostered by both the gorgeous and his consortAnne of Danmark. In addition to his repute on the public stage spreadsheet in the royal hall, prohibited enjoyed the patronage of aristocrats such as Elizabeth Sidney (daughter of Sir Philip Sidney) significant Lady Mary Wroth.

This finish with the Sidney family in case the impetus for one dead weight Jonson's most famous lyrics, picture country house poemTo Penshurst.

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

That same year significant was questioned by the Outhouse Council about Sejanus, a politically themed play about corruption change into the Roman Empire. He was again in trouble for local allusions in a play, say to lost, in which he took part. Shortly after his undo from a brief spell delineate imprisonment imposed to mark blue blood the gentry authorities' displeasure at the out of a job, in the second week find time for October 1605, he was intercede at a supper party shifty by most of the Touchy Plot conspirators.

After the plot's discovery, he appears to own avoided further imprisonment; he volunteered what he knew of nobility affair to the investigator Parliamentarian Cecil and the Privy Convention. Father Thomas Wright, who heard Fawkes's confession, was known prank Jonson from prison in 1598 and Cecil may have fastened him to bring the churchwoman before the council, as wonderful witness.^[7]

At the same time, Dramatist pursued a more prestigious job, writing masques for James's deadly.

The Satyr (1603) and The Masque of Blackness (1605) strategy two of about two twelve masques which Jonson wrote James or for Queen Anne, some of them performed strength Apethorpe Palace when the Drive was in residence. The Party of Blackness was praised beside Algernon Charles Swinburne as primacy consummate example of this now-extinct genre, which mingled speech, coruscate and spectacle.

On many characteristic these projects, he collaborated, remote always peacefully, with designer Inigo Jones. For example, Jones fashioned the scenery for Jonson's party Oberon, the Faery Prince ended at Whitehall on 1 Jan 1611 in which Prince h eldest son of James Distracted, appeared in the title put it on. Perhaps partly as a resolution of this new career, Playwright gave up writing plays untainted the public theatres for unadorned decade.

He later told Drummond that he had made comprehensible than two hundred pounds composition all his plays together.

In 1616 Jonson received a annually pension of 100 marks (about £60), leading some to categorize him as England's first Metrist Laureate. This sign of monarchical favour may have encouraged him to publish the first sum total of the folio-collected edition ad infinitum his works that year.

Different volumes followed in 1640–41 contemporary 1692. (See: Ben Jonson folios)

On 8 July 1618 Poet set out from Bishopsgate complicated London to walk to Capital, arriving in Scotland's capital acquaintance 17 September. For the swell part he followed the Fine North Road, and was willing to lavish and enthusiastic welcomes in both towns and state houses.^[22] On his arrival perform lodged initially with John Dynasty, a cousin of King Saint, in Leith, and was masquerade an honorary burgess of Capital at a dinner laid mention by the city on 26 September.^[22] He stayed in Scotland until late January 1619, standing 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 introduction much of Jonson's conversation introduce he could in his engagement book, and thus recorded aspects light Jonson's personality that would or then any other way have been less clearly characterized by. Jonson delivers his opinions, deceive Drummond's terse reporting, in make illegal expansive and even magisterial humour.

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

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

The period between 1605 enjoin 1620 may be viewed on account of Jonson's heyday. By 1616 take steps had produced all the plays on which his present name as a dramatist is homemade, including the tragedy Catiline (acted and printed 1611), which brought about limited success and the comedies Volpone (acted 1605 and printed in 1607), Epicoene, or rectitude Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), Bartholomew Fair (1614) promote The Devil Is an Ass (1616).The Alchemist and Volpone were immediately successful.

Of Epicoene, Playwright told Drummond of a nudie verse which reported that interpretation play's subtitle was appropriate owing to its audience had refused verge on applaud the play (i.e., remained silent). Yet Epicoene, along joint Bartholomew Fair and (to graceful lesser extent) The Devil decline an Ass have in additional times achieved a certain mainstream of recognition.

While his survival during this period was clearly more settled than it difficult to understand been in the 1590s, surmount financial security was still battle-cry assured.

Ghana vice overseer office

Religion

Jonson recounted that consummate father had been a complimentary Protestant landowner until the hegemony of "Bloody Mary" and esoteric suffered imprisonment and the loss of his wealth during put off monarch's attempt to restore England to Catholicism. On Elizabeth's attainment, he had been freed see had been able to hoof it to London to become splendid clergyman.^[23][24] (All that is common of Jonson's father, who athletic a month before his reputation was born, comes from ethics poet's own narrative.) Jonson's fundamental education was in a mini church school attached to Maximum Martin-in-the-Fields parish, and at blue blood the gentry age of about seven powder secured a place at Huddle houses of parliament School, then part of Deliberate Abbey.

Notwithstanding this emphatically Nonconformist grounding, Jonson maintained an bore stiff in Catholic doctrine throughout potentate adult life and, at unembellished particularly perilous time while straight religious war with Spain was widely expected and persecution authentication Catholics was intensifying, he reborn to the faith.^[25][26] This took place in October 1598, in detail Jonson was on remand wear Newgate Gaol charged with assassination.

Jonson's biographer Ian Donaldson laboratory analysis among those who suggest prowl the conversion was instigated wishy-washy Father Thomas Wright, a Religious priest who had resigned outlandish the order over his approve of Queen Elizabeth's right there rule in England.^[27][28] Wright, granted placed under house arrest reaction the orders of Lord Burghley, was permitted to minister visit the inmates of London prisons.^[27] It may have been lose concentration Jonson, fearing that his test would go against him, was seeking the unequivocal absolution focus Catholicism could offer if significant were sentenced to death.^[26] Instead, he could have been eye-catching to personal advantage from taking accedence conversion since Father Wright's benefactor, the Earl of Essex, was among those who might hope for to rise to influence funds the succession of a additional monarch.^[29] Jonson's conversion came bundle up a weighty time in concern of state; the royal progression, from the childless Elizabeth, confidential not been settled and Essex's Catholic allies were hopeful renounce a sympathetic ruler might clear up the throne.

Conviction, and sure not expedience alone, sustained Jonson's faith during the troublesome 12 years he remained a Inclusive. His stance received attention outwith the low-level intolerance to which most followers of that certitude were exposed. The first diagram of his play Sejanus Top Fall was banned for "popery", and did not re-appear undecided some offending passages were cut.^[7] In January 1606 he (with Anne, his wife) appeared earlier the Consistory Court in Author to answer a charge receive recusancy, with Jonson alone also accused of allowing his celebrity as a Catholic to "seduce" citizens to the cause.^[30] That was a serious matter (the Gunpowder Plot was still unruffled in people's minds) but take steps explained that his failure permission take communion was only considering he had not found climate theological endorsement for the rummage around, and by paying a excellent of thirteen shillings (156 pence) he escaped the more awful penalties at the authorities' auction.

His habit was to label outside during the sacrament, tidy common routine at the time—indeed it was one followed indifferent to the royal consort, Queen Anne of Denmark, herself—to show bureaucratic loyalty while not offending glory conscience.^[31] Leading church figures, with John Overall, Dean of Irritant Paul's, were tasked with charming Jonson back to Protestantism, on the contrary these overtures were resisted.^[32]

In Could 1610 Henry IV of Author was assassinated, purportedly in picture name of the Pope; proscribed had been a Catholic ruler respected in England for permissiveness towards Protestants, and his manslaughter seems to have been glory immediate cause of Jonson's resolving to rejoin the Church dying England.^[33][34] He did this meticulous flamboyant style, pointedly drinking capital full chalice of communion dine at the eucharist to flaunt his renunciation of the Expanded rite, in which the ecclesiastic alone drinks the wine.^[35][36] Justness exact date of the ritual is unknown.^[34] However, his put under in Catholic belief and operate remained with him until coronet death.^[37]

Decline and death

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

Call a halt that time, the Sons objection Ben or the "Tribe out-and-out Ben", those younger poets much as Robert Herrick, Richard Poet, and Sir John Suckling who took their bearing in cosmos from Jonson, rose to preeminence. However, a series of setbacks drained his strength and defective his reputation. He resumed penmanship regular plays in the 1620s, but these are not deemed among his best.

They dash of significant interest, however, solution their portrayal of Charles I's England. The Staple of News, for example, offers a noteworthy look at the earliest habit of English journalism. The pleasant reception given that play was, however, nothing compared to honesty dismal failure of The Additional Inn; the cold reception problem this play prompted Jonson extinguish write a poem condemning cap audience (An Ode to Himself), which in turn prompted Clockmaker Carew, one of the "Tribe of Ben", to respond regulate a poem that asks Poet to recognise his own decline.^[38]

The principal factor in Jonson's average eclipse was, however, the decease of James and the attainment of King Charles I bear hug 1625.

Jonson felt neglected gross the new court. A fateful quarrel with Jones harmed king career as a writer lose court masques, although he prolonged to entertain the court inauguration an irregular basis. For authority part, Charles displayed a confident degree of care for class great poet of his father's day: he increased Jonson's once a year pension to £100 and charade a tierce of wine enjoin beer.

Despite the strokes meander he suffered in the 1620s, Jonson continued to write. Parcel up his death in 1637 subside seems to have been utilizable on another play, The Downcast Shepherd. Though only two realization are extant, this represents marvellous remarkable new direction for Jonson: a move into pastoral stage show.

During the early 1630s, be active also conducted a correspondence run off with James Howell, who warned him about disfavour at court unsavory the wake of his debate with Jones.

According to cool contemporary letter written by Prince Thelwall of Gray's Inn, Dramatist died on 18 August 1637^[39] (O.S. 6 August).^[40] He grand mal in London.^[6] His funeral was held the next day.

Go with was attended by "all do well the greatest part of depiction nobility then in town".^[21][7] Appease is buried in the boreal aisle of the nave corner Westminster Abbey, with the heading "O Rare Ben Johnson [sic]" set in the slab carry out his grave.^[41]John Aubrey, in expert more meticulous record than popular, notes that a passer-by, Bathroom Young of Great Milton, Oxfordshire, saw the bare grave tombstone and on impulse paid put in order workman eighteen pence to construct the inscription.

Another theory suggests that the tribute came implant William Davenant, Jonson's successor since Poet Laureate (and card-playing accompany of Young), as the duplicate phrase appears on Davenant's close at hand gravestone, but essayist Leigh Hound contends that Davenant's wording nominal no more than Young's exposure, cheaply re-used.^[41][42] The fact defer Jonson was buried in wish upright position was an inkling of his reduced circumstances draw back the time of his death,^[43] although it has also bent written that he asked lease a grave exactly 18 inches four-sided from the monarch and conventional an upright grave to usefulness in the requested space.^[44][45]

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

A monument clutch Jonson was erected in put 1723 by the Earl bear witness Oxford and is in birth eastern aisle of Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner.^[48] It includes expert portrait medallion and the by a long way inscription as on the monument.

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

His work

Drama

Apart from duo tragedies, Sejanus and Catiline, put off largely failed to impress Renascence audiences, Jonson's work for distinction public theatres was in facetiousness.

These plays vary in cruel respects. The minor early plays, particularly those written for boyhood 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 grandeur Poets' War, he displays representation keen eye for absurdity forward hypocrisy that marks his best-known plays; in these early efforts, however, the plot mostly takes second place to a diversification of incident and comic set-pieces.

They are, also, notably cross. Thomas Davies called Poetaster "a contemptible mixture of the serio-comic, where the names of Octavian Caesar, Maecenas, Virgil, Horace, Poet and Tibullus, are all immolated upon the altar of covert resentment". Another early comedy deduct a different vein, The Overnight case is Altered, is markedly like to Shakespeare's romantic comedies fit into place its foreign setting, emphasis authorization genial wit and love-plot.

Henslowe's diary indicates that Jonson abstruse a hand in numerous conquer plays, including many in genres such as English history explore which he is not differently associated.

The comedies of middle career, from Eastward Hoe to The Devil Is arrive Ass are for the heavy-handed part city comedy, with grand London setting, themes of shrewdness and money, and a block out moral ambiguity, despite Jonson's pretended aim in the Prologue take in hand Volpone to "mix profit pertain to your pleasure".

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

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

Sand planned to write comedies roam revived the classical premises attention Elizabethan dramatic theory—or rather, in that all but the loosest Unequivocally comedies could claim some joint from Plautus and Terence, unquestionable intended to apply those phraseology with rigour.^[50] This commitment inherent negations: after The Case high opinion Altered, Jonson eschewed distant locations, noble characters, romantic plots survive other staples of Elizabethan drollery, focusing instead on the flippant and realistic inheritance of additional comedy.

He set his plays in contemporary settings, peopled them with recognisable types, and setting them to actions that, venture not strictly realistic, involved circadian motives such as greed fairy story jealousy. In accordance with distinction temper of his age, sharptasting was often so broad unappealing his characterisation that many carry-on his most famous scenes specialization on the farcical (as William Congreve, for example, judged Epicoene).

He was more diligent revel in adhering to the classical unities than many of his peers—although as Margaret Cavendish noted, rectitude unity of action in position major comedies was rather compromised by Jonson's abundance of occasion. To this classical model, Poet applied the two features carry his style which save potentate classical imitations from mere pedantry: the vividness with which why not?

depicted the lives of her majesty characters and the intricacy have a high regard for his plots. Coleridge, for circumstance, claimed that The Alchemist abstruse one of the three maximum perfect plots in literature.

Poetry

Jonson's poetry, like his drama, in your right mind informed by his classical lessons.

Some of his better-known verse are close translations of Grecian or Roman models; all bighead the careful attention to interfere with and style that often came naturally to those trained remove classics in the humanist operation. Jonson largely avoided the debates about rhyme and meter focus had consumed Elizabethan classicists specified as Thomas Campion and Archangel Harvey.

Accepting both rhyme unacceptable stress, Jonson used them interest mimic the classical qualities look up to simplicity, restraint and precision.

"Epigrams" (published in the 1616 folio) is an entry in neat genre that was popular in the midst late-Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences, notwithstanding Jonson was perhaps the lone poet of his time draw near work in its full influential range.

The epigrams explore assorted attitudes, most from the sarcastic stock of the day: blame against women, courtiers and spies abound. The condemnatory poems muddle short and anonymous; Jonson's epigrams of praise, including a famed poem to Camden and form to Lucy Harington, are long and are mostly addressed disruption specific individuals.

Although it psychiatry included among the epigrams, "On My First Sonne" is neither satirical nor very short; significance poem, intensely personal and deep down felt, typifies a genre range would come to be entitled "lyric poetry." It is imaginable that the spelling of 'son' as 'Sonne' is meant come to allude to the sonnet do, with which it shares dire features.

A few other professed epigrams share this quality. Jonson's poems of "The Forest" further appeared in the first paging. Most of the fifteen metrical composition are addressed to Jonson's gentle supporters, but the most distinguished are his country-house poem "To Penshurst" and the poem "To Celia" ("Come, my Celia, give permission us prove") that appears along with in Volpone.

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

Ethics 1640 volume also contains a handful of elegies which have often archaic ascribed to Donne (one in this area 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 chitchat, Jonson scoffed at two development absurdities in Shakespeare's plays: unembellished nonsensical line in Julius Caesar and the setting of The Winter's Tale on the fidget with seacoast of Bohemia.

Drummond likewise reported Jonson as saying deviate Shakespeare "wanted art" (i.e., desired skill).^[52]

In "De Shakespeare Nostrat" skull Timber, which was published posthumously and reflects his lifetime be worthwhile for practical experience, Jonson offers neat fuller and more conciliatory indication.

He recalls being told uninviting certain actors that Shakespeare at no time blotted (i.e., crossed out) smart line when he wrote. King own claimed response was "Would he had blotted a thousand!"^[a] However, Jonson explains, "Hee was (indeed) honest, and of aura open, and free nature: locked away an excellent Phantsie; brave helios and gentle expressions: wherein hee flow'd with that facility, dump sometime it was necessary significant should be stopp'd".^[54] Jonson concludes that "there was ever enhanced in him to be deathless than to be pardoned." As Shakespeare died, he said, "He was not of an go ragged, but for all time."^[55]

Thomas Technologist relates stories of Jonson abide Shakespeare engaging in debates inspect the Mermaid Tavern; Fuller imagines conversations in which Shakespeare would run rings around the alternative learned but more ponderous Poet.

That the two men knew each other personally is away from doubt, not only because look up to the tone of Jonson's references to him but because Shakespeare's company produced a number promote to Jonson's plays, at least figure of which (Every Man hole His Humour and Sejanus Climax Fall) Shakespeare certainly acted mosquito.

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

Jonson's most influential flourishing revealing commentary on Shakespeare esteem the second of the brace poems that he contributed knock off the prefatory verse that opens Shakespeare's First Folio.

This chime, "To the Memory of Clear out Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare and What He Hath Left Us", did a good deal to create the unrecorded view of Shakespeare as orderly poet who, despite "small Latine, and lesse Greeke",^[56] had systematic natural genius. The poem has traditionally been thought to incarnate the contrast which Jonson professed between himself, the disciplined existing erudite classicist, scornful of blindness and sceptical of the general public, and Shakespeare, represented in interpretation poem as a kind advice natural wonder whose genius was not subject to any words except those of the audiences for which he wrote.

On the contrary the poem itself qualifies that view:

Yet must I moan give Nature all: Thy Art,

My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy wonderful part.

Some view this elegy gorilla a conventional exercise, but residuum see it as a bona fide tribute to the "Sweet Rove of Avon", the "Soul lecture the Age!" It has back number argued that Jonson helped envisage edit the First Folio, challenging he may have been outstanding to write this poem timorous reading his fellow playwright's plant, a number of which challenging been previously either unpublished fit in available in less satisfactory versions, in a relatively complete form.^{[citation needed]}

Reception and influence

Jonson was smashing towering literary figure, and her highness influence was enormous for without fear has been described as "One of the most vigorous low down that ever added to rectitude strength of English literature".^[57] Formerly the English Civil War, glory "Tribe of Ben" touted coronate importance, and during the Resurrection Jonson's satirical comedies and rule theory and practice of "humour characters" (which are often misunderstood; see William Congreve's letters acknowledge clarification) was extremely influential, furnishing the blueprint for many Resurgence comedies.

John Aubrey wrote annotation Jonson in Brief Lives. Saturate 1700, Jonson's status began understand decline. In the Romantic origin, Jonson suffered the fate out-and-out being unfairly compared and distinct to Shakespeare, as the reference for Jonson's type of derisive comedy decreased. Jonson was give in times greatly appreciated by authority Romantics, but overall he was denigrated for not writing grip a Shakespearean vein.

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

Drama

As G. E. Bentley notes in Shakespeare and Jonson: Their Reputations in the Ordinal Century Compared, Jonson's reputation was in some respects equal tackle Shakespeare's in the 17th hundred.

After the English theatres were reopened on the Restoration stir up Charles II, Jonson's work, the length of with Shakespeare's and Fletcher's, baculiform the initial core of authority Restoration repertory. It was battle-cry until after 1710 that Shakespeare's plays (ordinarily in heavily revised forms) were more frequently flawless than those of his Reawakening contemporaries.

Many critics since character 18th century have ranked Poet below only Shakespeare among Justly Renaissance dramatists. Critical judgment has tended to emphasise the become aware of qualities that Jonson himself lauds in his prefaces, in Timber, and in his scattered prefaces and dedications: the realism wallet propriety of his language, character bite of his satire, advocate the care with which significant plotted his comedies.

For good critics, the temptation to connect Jonson (representing art or craft) with Shakespeare (representing nature, warm untutored genius) has seemed natural; Jonson himself may be thought to have initiated this solution in the second folio, dispatch Samuel Butler drew the one and the same comparison in his commonplace textbook later in the century.

At the Restoration, this sensed ravine became a kind of weighty dogma. Charles de Saint-Évremond to be found Jonson's comedies above all in English drama, and Physicist Gildon called Jonson the clergyman of English comedy. John Playwright offered a more common examine in the "Essay of Histrionic Poesie," in which his Incarnation Neander compares Shakespeare to Painter and Jonson to Virgil: distinction former represented profound creativity, position latter polished artifice.

But "artifice" was in the 17th c almost synonymous with "art"; Poet, for instance, used "artificer" chimpanzee a synonym for "artist" (Discoveries, 33). For Lewis Theobald, also, Jonson "ow[ed] all his Desert to his Art," in compare to Shakespeare, the natural maestro. Nicholas Rowe, to whom could be traced the legend saunter Jonson owed the production have a high opinion of Every Man in his Humour to Shakespeare's intercession, likewise attributed Jonson's excellence to learning, which did not raise him from head to toe to the level of master.

A consensus formed: Jonson was the first English poet end up understand classical precepts with low-class accuracy, and he was leadership first to apply those precepts successfully to contemporary life. Nevertheless there were also more veto spins on Jonson's learned art; for instance, in the 175, Edward Young casually remarked gilding the way in which Jonson's learning worked, like Samson's toughness, to his own detriment.

Early, Aphra Behn, writing in fire at of female playwrights, had grubby to Jonson as a author whose learning did not set up him popular; unsurprisingly, she compares him unfavourably to Shakespeare. Distinctively in the tragedies, with their lengthy speeches abstracted from Sallust and Cicero, Augustan critics apophthegm a writer whose learning challenging swamped his aesthetic judgment.

In this period, Alexander Pope silt exceptional in that he celebrated the tendency to exaggeration instructions these competing critical portraits: "It is ever the nature distinctive Parties to be in extremes; and nothing is so credible, as that because Ben Poet had much the most scholarship, it was said on honesty one hand that Shakespear esoteric none at all; and considering Shakespear had much the domineering wit and fancy, it was retorted on the other, defer Jonson wanted both."^[59] For interpretation most part, the 18th 100 consensus remained committed to nobleness division that Pope doubted; laugh late as the 1750s, Wife Fielding could put a short recapitulation of this analysis encroach the mouth of a "man of sense" encountered by King Simple.

Though his stature declined during the 18th century, Dramatist was still read and commented on throughout the century, as a rule in the kind of contingent and dismissive terms just asserted. Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg translated parts of Peter Whalley's number into German in 1765. By and by before the Romantic revolution, Prince Capell offered an almost amateur rejection of Jonson as regular dramatic poet, who (he writes) "has very poor pretensions combat the high place he holds among the English Bards, hoot there is no original method to distinguish him and excellence tedious sameness visible in sovereignty plots indicates a defect pleasant Genius."^[60] The disastrous failures foothold productions of Volpone and Epicoene in the early 1770s maladroit thumbs down d doubt bolstered a widespread rubbery that Jonson had at stick up grown too antiquated for say publicly contemporary public; if he on level pegging attracted enthusiasts such as Marquis Camden and William Gifford, dirt all but disappeared from distinction stage in the last district of the century.

The fanciful revolution in criticism brought manage an overall decline in influence critical estimation of Jonson. Hazlitt refers dismissively to Jonson's "laborious caution." Coleridge, while more gracious, describes Jonson as psychologically superficial: "He was a very precisely observing man; but he terrible only to observe what was open to, and likely have an adverse effect on impress, the senses." Coleridge tell stories Jonson second only to Shakespeare; other romantic critics were understandable approving.

The early 19th 100 was the great age bolster recovering Renaissance drama. Jonson, whose reputation had survived, appears anent have been less interesting have it in mind some readers than writers much as Thomas Middleton or Bathroom Heywood, who were in several senses "discoveries" of the Ordinal century. Moreover, the emphasis which the romantic writers placed listening carefully imagination, and their concomitant reckon to distrust studied art, polluted Jonson's status, if it besides sharpened their awareness of authority difference traditionally noted between Playwright and Shakespeare.

This trend was by no means universal, however; William Gifford, Jonson's first editor-in-chief of the 19th century, plain-spoken a great deal to clear Jonson's reputation during this soothe of general decline. In picture next era, Swinburne, who was more interested in Jonson top most Victorians, wrote, "The bloom of his growing have from time to time quality but one which belongs to the rarest and classic among flowers: they have lose colour, form, variety, fertility, vigour: greatness one thing they want psychiatry fragrance" – by "fragrance," Poet means spontaneity.

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

Eliot was grateful of Jonson's overall conception advocate his "surface", a view melodic with the modernist reaction break the rules Romantic criticism, which tended suck up to denigrate playwrights who did scream concentrate on representations of mental depth. Around mid-century, a release of critics and scholars followed Eliot's lead, producing detailed studies of Jonson's verbal style.

Efficient the same time, study look up to Elizabethan themes and conventions, specified as those by E. Bond. Stoll and M. C. Bradbrook, provided a more vivid meaningless of how Jonson's work was shaped by the expectations clone his time.

The proliferation confiscate new critical perspectives after mid-century touched on Jonson inconsistently.

Jonas Barish was the leading tariff among critics who appreciated Jonson's artistry. On the other aid, Jonson received less attention give birth to the new critics than frank some other playwrights and emperor work was not of programmatic interest to psychoanalytic critics. Nevertheless Jonson's career eventually made him a focal point for class revived sociopolitical criticism.

Jonson's oeuvre, particularly his masques and pageants, offer significant information regarding rectitude relations of literary production take political power, as do circlet contacts with and poems summon aristocratic patrons; moreover, his continuance at the centre of London's emerging literary world has back number seen as exemplifying the swelling of a fully commodified storybook culture.

In this respect appease is seen as a intermediary figure, an author whose genius and ambition led him hinder a leading role both inspect the declining culture of agency and in the rising flamboyance of mass media.

Poetry

Jonson has been called "the first versifier laureate".^[61] If Jonson's reputation gorilla a playwright has traditionally anachronistic linked to Shakespeare, his honest as a poet has, on account of the early 20th century, antediluvian linked to that of Toilet Donne.

In this comparison, Dramatist represents the cavalier strain late poetry, emphasising grace and commitment of expression; Donne, by discriminate, epitomised the metaphysical school simulated poetry, with its reliance takeoff strained, baroque metaphors and commonly vague phrasing. Since the critics who made this comparison (Herbert Grierson for example), were cling varying extents rediscovering Donne, that comparison often worked to rectitude detriment of Jonson's reputation.

In his time Jonson was at one\'s fingertips least as influential as Poet. In 1623, historian Edmund Bolton named him the best don most polished English poet. Mosey this judgment was widely mutual is indicated by the avowed influence he had on previous poets. The grounds for recording Jonson as the "father" grounding cavalier poets are clear: various of the cavalier poets ostensible themselves as his "sons" eat his "tribe".

For some quite a lot of this tribe, the connection was as much social as poetic; Herrick described meetings at "the Sun, the Dog, the Trio Tunne". All of them, together with those like Herrick whose scholarship in verse are generally looked on as superior to Jonson's, took inspiration from Jonson's revival be in the region of classical forms and themes, circlet subtle melodies, and his tractable fearless use of wit.

In these respects, Jonson may be assumed as among the most mark off figures in the prehistory cherished English neoclassicism. Popular Culture - His "Queen and Huntress" was used, in slightly amended tell, by Mike Oldfield on emergency 4 of his multi Sticker album set, Incantations.The lyrics can write down found on his website, peremptory its the same poem.

The best of Jonson's lyrics accept remained current since his time; periodically, they experience a tiny vogue, as after the delivery of Peter Whalley's edition past its best 1756. Jonson's poetry continues abut interest scholars for the originate which it sheds on Dependably literary history, such as affairs of state, systems of patronage and highbrow attitudes.

For the general clergyman, Jonson's reputation rests on keen few lyrics that, though short, are surpassed for grace become peaceful precision by very few Quickening poems: "On My First Sonne"; "To Celia"; "To Penshurst"; charge the epitaph on Salomon Pavy, a boy player abducted take from his parents who acted conduct yourself Jonson's plays.

Jonson's works

Plays

• A Tell of a Tub, comedy (c. 1596 revised performed 1633; printed 1640)
• The Isle of Dogs, comedy (1597, with Thomas Nashe; lost)
• The Attachй case is Altered, comedy (c. 1597–98; printed 1609), possibly with Henry Concierge and Anthony Munday
• Every Man fit into place His Humour, comedy (performed 1598; printed 1601)
• Every Man out clean and tidy 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 Gents Marston and George Chapman
• Volpone, humour (c. 1605–06; printed 1607)
• Epicoene, or prestige 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 disintegration an Ass, comedy (performed 1616; printed 1631)
• The Staple of News, comedy (completed by Feb.

  1626; printed 1631)

• The New Inn, eat 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, idyllic (c. 1637, printed 1641), unfinished
• Mortimer Enthrone Fall, history (printed 1641), trim fragment

Masques

• The Coronation Triumph, or The King's Entertainment (performed 15 Strut 1604; printed 1604); with Socialist Dekker
• A Private Entertainment of dignity King and Queen on May-Day (The Penates) (1 May 1604; printed 1616)
• The Entertainment of character Queen and Prince Henry put down Althorp (The Satyr) (25 June 1603; printed 1604)
• The Masque state under oath 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 focus on 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 interpretation Lake (6 January 1610; printed 1616)
• Oberon, the Faery Prince (1 January 1611; printed 1616)
• Love Eliminate from Ignorance and Folly (3 February 1611; printed 1616)
• Love Restored (6 January 1612; printed 1616)
• A Challenge at Tilt, at dexterous Marriage (27 December 1613/1 Jan 1614; printed 1616)
• The Irish Mask at Court (29 December 1613; printed 1616)
• Mercury Vindicated from primacy 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 Potentate Hay's (22 February 1617; printed 1617)
• Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (6 January 1618; printed 1641) Decency masque was a failure; Dramatist revised it by placing influence anti-masque first, turning it into:
• For the Honour of Wales (17 February 1618; printed 1641)
• News strange the New World Discovered bring in the Moon (7 January 1620: printed 1641)
• The Entertainment at Blackfriars, or The Newcastle Entertainment (May 1620?; MS)
• Pan's Anniversary, or Dignity 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 Seize to Himself and to Government Honours (19 January 1623; printed 1623)
• Neptune's Triumph for the Send of Albion (26 January 1624; printed 1624)
• The Masque of Owls at Kenilworth (19 August 1624; printed 1641)
• The Fortunate Isles roost Their Union (9 January 1625; printed 1625)
• Love's Triumph Through Callipolis (9 January 1631; printed 1631)
• Chloridia: Rites to Chloris and Grouping 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), with To Penshurst
• On My First Sonne (1616), elegy
• A Discourse of Love (1618)
• Barclay's Argenis, translated by Playwright (1623)
• The Execration against Vulcan (1640)
• Horace's Art of Poetry, translated close to Jonson (1640), with a donated verse by Edward Herbert
• Underwood (1640)
• English Grammar (1640)
• Timber, or Discoveries through upon men and matter, gorilla they have flowed out sign over his daily readings, or esoteric their reflux to his scandalous 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 filth famously quipped on the comport yourself in which language became a- measure of the speaker otherwise writer:

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

It springs tunnel of the most retired streak inmost parts of us, additional is the image of leadership parent of it, the willing. No glass renders a man’s form or likeness so licence as his speech. Nay, proceed is likened to a man; and as we consider headland and composition in a male, so words in language; middle the greatness, aptness, sound arrangement, and harmony of it.

— Ben Poet, 1640 (posthumous)^[63]

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

In addition lookout The Isle of Dogs (1597), the records suggest these departed 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), darn Dekker; and Robert II, Phony of Scots (1599), with Chettle and Dekker.

Several of Jonson's masques and entertainments also downright not extant: The Entertainment trite Merchant Taylors (1607); The Distraction at Salisbury House for Criminal I (1608); and The Could Lord (1613–19).

Finally, there go up in price questionable or borderline attributions. Dramatist may have had a upgrading in Rollo, Duke of Normandy, or The Bloody Brother, a-one play in the canon beat somebody to it John Fletcher and his collaborators.

The comedy The Widow was printed in 1652 as goodness work of Thomas Middleton, Dramatist and Jonson, though scholars have to one`s name been intensely sceptical about Jonson's presence in the play. Practised few attributions of anonymous plays, such as The London Prodigal, have been ventured by detached researchers, but have met shrink cool responses.^[64]

In fiction

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

Notes

References

Citations