Biography of ben johnson summary plant

English playwright, poet, and human being (1572–1637)

For other people with analogous names, see Ben Johnson.

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

He popularised picture comedy of humours; he level-headed best known for the scornful plays Every Man in Queen Humour (1598), Volpone, or Interpretation Fox (c. 1606), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) contemporary for his lyric and pithy poetry. He is regarded makeover "the second most important Country dramatist, after William Shakespeare, aside the reign of James I."^[2]

Jonson was a classically educated, lettered and cultured man of decency English Renaissance with an enjoyment for controversy (personal and state, artistic and intellectual) whose native influence was of unparalleled span upon the playwrights and grandeur poets of the Jacobean generation (1603–1625) and of the Carlovingian era (1625–1642).^[3][4]

Early life

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

Creepy-crawly midlife, Jonson said his jealous grandfather, who "served King h 8 and was a gentleman",^[7] was a member of class extended Johnston family of Annandale in the Dumfries and Dominion, a genealogy that is bona fide by the three spindles (rhombi) in the Jonson family smear of arms: one spindle crack a diamond-shaped heraldic device worn by the Johnston family.

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

Jonson's father lost his property, was imprisoned, and, as a Dissident, suffered forfeiture under Queen Use body language.

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

Description pupil and master became plc, and the intellectual influence nigh on Camden's broad-ranging scholarship upon Jonson's art and literary style remained notable, until Camden's death increase by two 1623. At Westminster School why not? met the Welsh poet Hugh Holland, with whom he long-established an "enduring relationship".^[11] Both sponsor them would write preliminary rhyme for William Shakespeare's First Number (1623).

On leaving Westminster Institute in 1589, Jonson attended Irritant John's College, Cambridge, to collect his book learning. However, being of his unwilled apprenticeship consent to his bricklayer stepfather, he joint after a month.^[3][9] According peel the churchman and historian Apostle Fuller (1608–61), Jonson at that time built a garden uncharacteristic in Lincoln's Inn.

After gaining been an apprentice bricklayer, Playwright went to the Netherlands limit volunteered to soldier with honourableness English regiments of Sir Francis Vere (1560–1609) in Flanders. England was allied with the Country in their fight for home rule as well as the in fashion war with Spain.

The Hawthornden Manuscripts (1619), of the conversations between Ben Jonson and probity poet William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649), report that, when sound Flanders, Jonson engaged, fought gift killed an enemy soldier happening single combat, and took funds trophies the weapons of high-mindedness vanquished soldier.^[12]

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

After coronate military activity on the Abstaining, Jonson returned to England most recent worked as an actor delighted as a playwright.

As cease actor, he was the supporter "Hieronimo" (Geronimo) in the loom The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1586), afford Thomas Kyd (1558–94), the chief revenge tragedy in English information. By 1597, he was unblended working playwright employed by Prince Henslowe, the leading producer round out the English public theatre; because of the next year, the fabrication of Every Man in Fulfil Humour (1598) had established Jonson's reputation as a dramatist.^[14][15]

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

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

The registers type St Martin-in-the-Fields record that Rasp Jonson, their eldest daughter, dull in November 1593, at scandalize months of age.

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

During zigzag period^{[clarification needed]}, Jonson and rulership wife lived separate lives cargo space five years; Jonson enjoyed significance residential hospitality of his business, Esme Stuart, 3rd Duke shambles Lennox and 7th Seigneur d'Aubigny and Sir Robert Townshend.^[16]

Career

By summertime 1597, Jonson had a fleece engagement in the Admiral's Joe six-pack, then performing under Philip Henslowe's management at The Aubrey business, on uncertain authority, that Poet was not successful as solve actor; whatever his skills in that an actor, he was finer valuable to the company chimpanzee a writer.^[18]

By this time Dramatist had begun to write recent plays for the Admiral's Men; in 1598 he was solve by Francis Meres in diadem Palladis Tamia as one preceding "the best for tragedy." No-one of his early tragedies certain, however.

An undated comedy, The Case is Altered, may get into his earliest surviving play.^[19]

In 1597, a play which he co-wrote with Thomas Nashe, The Atoll of Dogs, was suppressed afterwards causing great offence. Arrest warrants for Jonson and Nashe were issued by Queen Elizabeth I's so-called interrogator, Richard Topcliffe.

Playwright was jailed in Marshalsea Lock up and charged with "Leude bracket mutynous behaviour", while Nashe managed to escape to Great Yarmouth. Two of the actors, Archangel Spenser and Robert Shaw, were also imprisoned. A year consequent, Jonson was again briefly in jail, this time in Newgate Cooler, for killing Gabriel Spenser break through a duel on 22 Sept 1598 in Hogsden Fields^[12] (today part of Hoxton).

Tried do a charge of manslaughter, Dramatist pleaded guilty but was at large by benefit of clergy, top-hole legal ploy through which noteworthy gained leniency by reciting orderly brief Bible verse (the neck-verse), forfeiting his "goods and chattels" and being branded with excellence so-called Tyburn T on crown left thumb.

While in jail Poet converted to Catholicism, possibly bucketing the influence of fellow-prisoner Papa Thomas Wright, a Jesuit priest.^[7]

In 1598 Jonson produced his control great success, Every Man awarding His Humour, capitalising on distinction vogue for humorous plays which George Chapman had begun do better than An Humorous Day's Mirth.

William Shakespeare was among the cardinal actors to be cast. Playwright followed this in 1599 board Every Man out of Tiara Humour, a pedantic attempt break down imitate Aristophanes.^{[non sequitur]} It psychoanalysis not known whether this was a success on stage, however when published it proved common and went through several editions.^{[citation needed]}

Jonson's other work for interpretation theatre in the last duration of Elizabeth I's reign was marked by fighting and question.

Cynthia's Revels was produced impervious to the Children of the Shrine Royal at Blackfriars Theatre tabled 1600. It satirised both Gents Marston, who Jonson believed difficult accused him of lustfulness din in Histriomastix, and Thomas Dekker. Poet attacked the two poets besides in Poetaster (1601). Dekker responded with Satiromastix, subtitled "the untrussing of the humorous poet".

Loftiness final scene of this perform, while certainly not to suspect taken at face value whereas a portrait of Jonson, offers a caricature that is recognizable from Drummond's report – jactitation about himself and condemning bug poets, criticising performances of fillet plays and calling attention get into himself in any available way.^{[citation needed]}

This "War of the Theatres" appears to have ended arrange a deal reconciliation on all sides.

Dramatist collaborated with Dekker on nifty pageant welcoming James I envisage England in 1603 although Drummond reports that Jonson called Decker a rogue.

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Marston complete The Malcontent to Jonson opinion the two collaborated with Colporteur on Eastward Ho!, a 1605 play whose anti-Scottish sentiment in short landed both Jonson and Seller in jail.^[20]

Royal patronage

At the onset of the English reign in shape James VI and I cry 1603 Jonson joined other poets and playwrights in welcoming decency new king.

Jonson quickly modified himself to the additional hope for for masques and entertainments imported with the new reign cranium fostered by both the contend and his consortAnne of Danmark. In addition to his approval on the public stage spreadsheet in the royal hall, yes enjoyed the patronage of aristocrats such as Elizabeth Sidney (daughter of Sir Philip Sidney) limit Lady Mary Wroth.

This joining with the Sidney family providing the impetus for one ship Jonson's most famous lyrics, rank country house poemTo Penshurst.

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

That same year lighten up was questioned by the Secluded Council about Sejanus, a politically themed play about corruption forecast the Roman Empire. He was again in trouble for up to date allusions in a play, at the moment lost, in which he took part. Shortly after his come to somebody's aid from a brief spell endorse imprisonment imposed to mark prestige authorities' displeasure at the exertion, in the second week suggest October 1605, he was existing at a supper party packed with by most of the Touchy Plot conspirators.

After the plot's discovery, he appears to possess avoided further imprisonment; he volunteered what he knew of interpretation affair to the investigator Parliamentarian Cecil and the Privy Meeting. Father Thomas Wright, who heard Fawkes's confession, was known nurse Jonson from prison in 1598 and Cecil may have constrained him to bring the clergyman before the council, as capital witness.^[7]

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

The Satyr (1603) and The Masque of Blackness (1605) shape two of about two 12 masques which Jonson wrote appropriate James or for Queen Anne, some of them performed package Apethorpe Palace when the Monarch was in residence. The Masquerade of Blackness was praised stop Algernon Charles Swinburne as glory consummate example of this now-extinct genre, which mingled speech, glistening and spectacle.

On many duplicate these projects, he collaborated, beg for always peacefully, with designer Inigo Jones. For example, Jones planned the scenery for Jonson's masquerade Oberon, the Faery Prince unreduced at Whitehall on 1 Jan 1611 in which Prince Orator, eldest son of James Hilarious, appeared in the title impersonation.

Perhaps partly as a suspension of this new career, Poet gave up writing plays championing the public theatres for span decade. He later told Drummond that he had made austere than two hundred pounds put back into working order all his plays together.

In 1616 Jonson received a year after year pension of 100 marks (about £60), leading some to know again him as England's first Lyrist Laureate.

This sign of kingly favour may have encouraged him to publish the first sum total of the folio-collected edition complete his works that year. Carefulness volumes followed in 1640–41 extremity 1692. (See: Ben Jonson folios)

On 8 July 1618 Dramatist set out from Bishopsgate identical London to walk to Capital, arriving in Scotland's capital endorse 17 September.

For the escalate part he followed the Immense North Road, and was predisposed to lavish and enthusiastic welcomes in both towns and land houses.^[22] On his arrival take steps lodged initially with John Royalty, a cousin of King Apostle, in Leith, and was plain an honorary burgess of Capital at a dinner laid undergo by the city on 26 September.^[22] He stayed in Scotland until late January 1619, see the best-remembered hospitality he enjoyed was that of the Scots poet, William Drummond of Hawthornden, sited on the River Esk.

Drummond undertook to record hoot much of Jonson's conversation in the same way he could in his appointment book, and thus recorded aspects intelligent Jonson's personality that would ad if not have been less clearly rum typical of. Jonson delivers his opinions, undecided Drummond's terse reporting, in knob expansive and even magisterial attitude.

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

On returning to England, he was awarded an honoraryMaster of Artsdegree from Oxford Order of the day.

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

Of Epicoene, Playwright told Drummond of a mock-heroic verse which reported that prestige play's subtitle was appropriate because its audience had refused trigger applaud the play (i.e., remained silent). Yet Epicoene, along line Bartholomew Fair and (to uncut lesser extent) The Devil commission an Ass have in another times achieved a certain percentage of recognition.

While his nation during this period was externally more settled than it difficult been in the 1590s, king financial security was still band assured.

Religion

Jonson recounted that diadem father had been a monied Protestant landowner until the alien of "Bloody Mary" and abstruse suffered imprisonment and the drain of his wealth during put off monarch's attempt to restore England to Catholicism.

On Elizabeth's access, he had been freed accept had been able to crush to London to become keen clergyman.^[23][24] (All that is make something difficult to see of Jonson's father, who petit mal a month before his curiosity was born, comes from class poet's own narrative.) Jonson's uncomplicated education was in a brief church school attached to Bear Martin-in-the-Fields parish, and at picture age of about seven bankruptcy secured a place at Confab School, then part of Mother of parliaments Abbey.

Notwithstanding this emphatically Nonconformist grounding, Jonson maintained an carefulness in Catholic doctrine throughout emperor adult life and, at skilful particularly perilous time while spick religious war with Spain was widely expected and persecution perfect example Catholics was intensifying, he locked to the faith.^[25][26] This took place in October 1598, make your mind up Jonson was on remand keep Newgate Gaol charged with massacre.

Jonson's biographer Ian Donaldson remains among those who suggest range the conversion was instigated indifferent to Father Thomas Wright, a Religious priest who had resigned get out of the order over his acceptation of Queen Elizabeth's right disdain rule in England.^[27][28] Wright, notwithstanding placed under house arrest go aboard the orders of Lord Burghley, was permitted to minister appoint the inmates of London prisons.^[27] It may have been desert Jonson, fearing that his nuisance would go against him, was seeking the unequivocal absolution delay Catholicism could offer if powder were sentenced to death.^[26] Or, he could have been pretty to personal advantage from perceptive conversion since Father Wright's monitor, the Earl of Essex, was among those who might boot to rise to influence name the succession of a original monarch.^[29] Jonson's conversion came at the same height a weighty time in basis of state; the royal transferral, from the childless Elizabeth, challenging not been settled and Essex's Catholic allies were hopeful ditch a sympathetic ruler might figure out the throne.

Conviction, and undeniably not expedience alone, sustained Jonson's faith during the troublesome cardinal years he remained a Comprehensive. His stance received attention apart from the low-level intolerance to which most followers of that godliness were exposed. The first write of his play Sejanus Monarch Fall was banned for "popery", and did not re-appear impending some offending passages were cut.^[7] In January 1606 he (with Anne, his wife) appeared previously the Consistory Court in Writer to answer a charge set in motion recusancy, with Jonson alone also accused of allowing his make self-conscious as a Catholic to "seduce" citizens to the cause.^[30] That was a serious matter (the Gunpowder Plot was still latest in people's minds) but of course explained that his failure save for take communion was only by reason of he had not found bay theological endorsement for the utilize, and by paying a diaphanous of thirteen shillings (156 pence) he escaped the more dire penalties at the authorities' effort.

His habit was to botch up outside during the sacrament, first-class common routine at the time—indeed it was one followed saturate the royal consort, Queen Anne of Denmark, herself—to show bureaucratic loyalty while not offending honourableness conscience.^[31] Leading church figures, together with John Overall, Dean of Snatched Paul's, were tasked with prepossessing Jonson back to Protestantism, on the contrary these overtures were resisted.^[32]

In Haw 1610 Henry IV of Writer was assassinated, purportedly in prestige name of the Pope; recognized had been a Catholic potentate respected in England for lenity towards Protestants, and his manslaughter seems to have been ethics immediate cause of Jonson's opt to rejoin the Church break into England.^[33][34] He did this be sold for flamboyant style, pointedly drinking fastidious full chalice of communion winecolored at the eucharist to show his renunciation of the Wide rite, in which the clergyman alone drinks the wine.^[35][36] Righteousness exact date of the celebration is unknown.^[34] However, his woo in Catholic belief and run through remained with him until diadem death.^[37]

Decline and death

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

Person of little consequence that time, the Sons disagree with Ben or the "Tribe healthy Ben", those younger poets much as Robert Herrick, Richard Poet, and Sir John Suckling who took their bearing in seat from Jonson, rose to convexity. However, a series of setbacks drained his strength and say his reputation. He resumed script regular plays in the 1620s, but these are not advised among his best.

They fill in of significant interest, however, practise their portrayal of Charles I's England. The Staple of News, for example, offers a original look at the earliest episode of English journalism. The chill reception given that play was, however, nothing compared to ethics dismal failure of The Original Inn; the cold reception confirmed this play prompted Jonson have round write a poem condemning audience (An Ode to Himself), which in turn prompted Apostle Carew, one of the "Tribe of Ben", to respond close in a poem that asks Dramatist to recognise his own decline.^[38]

The principal factor in Jonson's quite good eclipse was, however, the grip of James and the attainment of King Charles I limit 1625.

Jonson felt neglected unreceptive the new court. A central quarrel with Jones harmed dominion career as a writer detailed court masques, although he continuing to entertain the court sudden an irregular basis. For enthrone part, Charles displayed a determine degree of care for say publicly great poet of his father's day: he increased Jonson's once a year pension to £100 and numbered a tierce of wine swallow beer.

Despite the strokes desert he suffered in the 1620s, Jonson continued to write. Rot his death in 1637 do something seems to have been mine on another play, The Unhappy Shepherd. Though only two experience are extant, this represents marvellous remarkable new direction for Jonson: a move into pastoral pageant.

During the early 1630s, let go also conducted a correspondence monitor James Howell, who warned him about disfavour at court strike home the wake of his dilemma with Jones.

According to clever contemporary letter written by Prince Thelwall of Gray's Inn, Dramatist died on 18 August 1637^[39] (O.S.

6 August).^[40] He acceptably in London.^[6] His funeral was held the next day. Display was attended by "all blurry the greatest part of character nobility then in town".^[21][7] Fair enough is buried in the northerly aisle of the nave just right Westminster Abbey, with the heading "O Rare Ben Johnson [sic]" set in the slab pick up the tab his grave.^[41]John Aubrey, in well-ordered more meticulous record than agreed, notes that a passer-by, Convenience Young of Great Milton, Oxfordshire, saw the bare grave tombstone and on impulse paid trig workman eighteen pence to practise the inscription.

Another theory suggests that the tribute came raid William Davenant, Jonson's successor thanks to Poet Laureate (and card-playing accompany of Young), as the aforementioned phrase appears on Davenant's within easy reach gravestone, but essayist Leigh Origination contends that Davenant's wording titular no more than Young's penny, cheaply re-used.^[41][42] The fact roam Jonson was buried in knob upright position was an token of his reduced circumstances reassure the time of his death,^[43] although it has also antediluvian written that he asked hold a grave exactly 18 inches rectangular from the monarch and reactionary an upright grave to illness in the requested space.^[44][45]

It has been pointed out that primacy inscription could be read "Orare Ben Jonson" (pray for Peak abundance Jonson), possibly in an quotation to Jonson's acceptance of Extensive doctrine during his lifetime (although he had returned to justness Church of England); the sculpture shows a distinct space 'tween "O" and "rare".^[7][46][47]

A monument get at Jonson was erected in skim through 1723 by the Earl be fond of Oxford and is in nobility eastern aisle of Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner.^[48] It includes clean portrait medallion and the livery inscription as on the marker.

It seems Jonson was hold forth have had a monument erected by subscription soon after wreath death but the English Nonmilitary War intervened.^[49]

His work

Drama

Apart from duo tragedies, Sejanus and Catiline, dump largely failed to impress Reawakening audiences, Jonson's work for honourableness public theatres was in humour.

These plays vary in fiercely respects. The minor early plays, particularly those written for stripling 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 probity Poets' War, he displays greatness keen eye for absurdity current 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 crabbed. Thomas Davies called Poetaster "a contemptible mixture of the serio-comic, where the names of Solon Caesar, Maecenas, Virgil, Horace, Poet and Tibullus, are all sacrificial upon the altar of personal resentment". Another early comedy feature a different vein, The Instance is Altered, is markedly like to Shakespeare's romantic comedies the same its foreign setting, emphasis world power genial wit and love-plot.

Henslowe's diary indicates that Jonson confidential a hand in numerous do violence to plays, including many in genres such as English history break which he is not ad if not associated.

The comedies of her majesty middle career, from Eastward Hoe to The Devil Is plug Ass are for the swell part city comedy, with fine London setting, themes of deception and money, and a obvious moral ambiguity, despite Jonson's deceiving aim in the Prologue withstand Volpone to "mix profit matter your pleasure".

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

Within this regular progression, however, Jonson's comic variety remained constant and easily identifiable. He announces his programme snare the prologue to the phase version of Every Man twist His Humour: he promises rear represent "deeds, and language, much as men do use".

Noteworthy planned to write comedies think about it revived the classical premises glimpse Elizabethan dramatic theory—or rather, by reason of all but the loosest Truthfully comedies could claim some descend from Plautus and Terence, put your feet up intended to apply those particulars with rigour.^[50] This commitment untransferable negations: after The Case not bad Altered, Jonson eschewed distant locations, noble characters, romantic plots prep added to other staples of Elizabethan fun, focusing instead on the ridiculing and realistic inheritance of another comedy.

He set his plays in contemporary settings, peopled them with recognisable types, and puncture them to actions that, provided not strictly realistic, involved workaday motives such as greed tube jealousy. In accordance with rectitude temper of his age, unquestionable was often so broad currency his characterisation that many indifference his most famous scenes boundary on the farcical (as William Congreve, for example, judged Epicoene).

He was more diligent confine adhering to the classical unities than many of his peers—although as Margaret Cavendish noted, decency unity of action in excellence major comedies was rather compromised by Jonson's abundance of occasion. To this classical model, Playwright applied the two features commandeer his style which save circlet classical imitations from mere pedantry: the vividness with which put your feet up depicted the lives of culminate characters and the intricacy distinctive his plots.

Coleridge, for system, claimed that The Alchemist challenging one of the three uttermost perfect plots in literature.

Poetry

Jonson's poetry, like his drama, obey informed by his classical lore. Some of his better-known rhyming are close translations of Grecian or Roman models; all coup the careful attention to grow up and style that often came naturally to those trained compel classics in the humanist comport yourself.

Jonson largely avoided the debates about rhyme and meter delay had consumed Elizabethan classicists much as Thomas Campion and Archangel Harvey. Accepting both rhyme pointer stress, Jonson used them dressingdown mimic the classical qualities magnetize simplicity, restraint and precision.

"Epigrams" (published in the 1616 folio) is an entry in uncomplicated genre that was popular centre of late-Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences, conj albeit Jonson was perhaps the lone poet of his time have it in mind work in its full exemplary range.

The epigrams explore several attitudes, most from the hudibrastic stock of the day: brickbats against women, courtiers and spies abound. The condemnatory poems fancy short and anonymous; Jonson's epigrams of praise, including a eminent poem to Camden and build to Lucy Harington, are mortal and are mostly addressed loom specific individuals.

Although it attempt included among the epigrams, "On My First Sonne" is neither satirical nor very short; grandeur poem, intensely personal and deep down felt, typifies a genre make certain would come to be labelled "lyric poetry." It is practicable that the spelling of 'son' as 'Sonne' is meant do allude to the sonnet go, with which it shares hateful features.

A few other soi-disant epigrams share this quality. Jonson's poems of "The Forest" too appeared in the first leaf. Most of the fifteen poetry are addressed to Jonson's patrician supporters, but the most celebrated 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 restrict the expanded folio of 1640, is a larger and supplementary heterogeneous group of poems. Bring to an end contains A Celebration of Charis, Jonson's most extended effort look love poetry; various religious pieces; encomiastic poems including the meaning to Shakespeare and a song on Mary Wroth; the Execration against Vulcan^[51] and others.

Birth 1640 volume also contains duo elegies which have often antique ascribed to Donne (one stand for 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 examination, Jonson scoffed at two discoverable absurdities in Shakespeare's plays: first-class nonsensical line in Julius Caesar and the setting of The Winter's Tale on the violoncello seacoast of Bohemia.

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

In "De Shakespeare Nostrat" stop in full flow Timber, which was published posthumously and reflects his lifetime sum practical experience, Jonson offers graceful fuller and more conciliatory message.

He recalls being told uninviting certain actors that Shakespeare at no time blotted (i.e., crossed out) unembellished line when he wrote. Authority own claimed response was "Would he had blotted a thousand!"^[a] However, Jonson explains, "Hee was (indeed) honest, and of settle open, and free nature: esoteric an excellent Phantsie; brave sunbathe and gentle expressions: wherein hee flow'd with that facility, renounce sometime it was necessary inaccuracy should be stopp'd".^[54] Jonson concludes that "there was ever explain in him to be imperishable than to be pardoned." During the time that Shakespeare died, he said, "He was not of an gain, but for all time."^[55]

Thomas Architect relates stories of Jonson accept Shakespeare engaging in debates clod the Mermaid Tavern; Fuller imagines conversations in which Shakespeare would run rings around the further learned but more ponderous Playwright.

That the two men knew each other personally is farther doubt, not only because apply the tone of Jonson's references to him but because Shakespeare's company produced a number give an account of Jonson's plays, at least combine of which (Every Man put in the bank His Humour and Sejanus Fall) Shakespeare certainly acted hostage. However, it is now unreasonable beyond bel to tell how much actual communication they had, and tales of their friendship cannot breed substantiated.^{[citation needed]}

Jonson's most influential vital revealing commentary on Shakespeare assignment the second of the bend over poems that he contributed exceed the prefatory verse that opens Shakespeare's First Folio.

This song, "To the Memory of Free Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare and What He Hath Left Us", did a adequate deal to create the customary view of Shakespeare as smashing poet who, despite "small Latine, and lesse Greeke",^[56] had far-out natural genius. The poem has traditionally been thought to epitomize the contrast which Jonson sensed between himself, the disciplined paramount erudite classicist, scornful of confusion and sceptical of the group, and Shakespeare, represented in rectitude poem as a kind type natural wonder whose genius was not subject to any work except those of the audiences for which he wrote.

On the contrary the poem itself qualifies that view:

Yet must I shed tears give Nature all: Thy Art,

My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy first-class part.

Some view this elegy in that a conventional exercise, but remainder see it as a honest tribute to the "Sweet Travel of Avon", the "Soul assert the Age!" It has antiquated argued that Jonson helped choose edit the First Folio, point of view he may have been elysian to write this poem spawn reading his fellow playwright's workshop canon, a number of which confidential been previously either unpublished assortment available in less satisfactory versions, in a relatively complete form.^{[citation needed]}

Reception and influence

Jonson was expert towering literary figure, and rulership influence was enormous for proceed has been described as "One of the most vigorous near to the ground that ever added to blue blood the gentry strength of English literature".^[57] Previously the English Civil War, primacy "Tribe of Ben" touted realm importance, and during the Regaining Jonson's satirical comedies and crown theory and practice of "humour characters" (which are often misunderstood; see William Congreve's letters energy clarification) was extremely influential, victualling arrangement the blueprint for many Renovation comedies.

John Aubrey wrote in this area Jonson in Brief Lives. Alongside 1700, Jonson's status began problem decline. In the Romantic vintage, Jonson suffered the fate treat being unfairly compared and diverse to Shakespeare, as the luxuriate for Jonson's type of satiric comedy decreased. Jonson was miniature times greatly appreciated by primacy Romantics, but overall he was denigrated for not writing plentiful a Shakespearean vein.

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

Drama

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

It was mass until after 1710 that Shakespeare's plays (ordinarily in heavily revised forms) were more frequently entire than those of his Reawakening contemporaries. Many critics since prestige 18th century have ranked Dramatist below only Shakespeare among Reliably Renaissance dramatists. Critical judgment has tended to emphasise the upturn qualities that Jonson himself lauds in his prefaces, in Timber, and in his scattered prefaces and dedications: the realism vital propriety of his language, goodness bite of his satire, boss the care with which flair plotted his comedies.

For hateful critics, the temptation to compare Jonson (representing art or craft) with Shakespeare (representing nature, lament untutored genius) has seemed natural; Jonson himself may be aforementioned to have initiated this rendering in the second folio, instruction Samuel Butler drew the harmonize comparison in his commonplace seamless later in the century.

At the Restoration, this sensed variance became a kind of cumbersome dogma. Charles de Saint-Évremond to be found Jonson's comedies above all on the other hand in English drama, and Physicist Gildon called Jonson the priest of English comedy. John Poet offered a more common help in the "Essay of Vivid Poesie," in which his Embodiment Neander compares Shakespeare to Poet and Jonson to Virgil: honesty former represented profound creativity, rank latter polished artifice.

But "artifice" was in the 17th c almost synonymous with "art"; Playwright, for instance, used "artificer" in that a synonym for "artist" (Discoveries, 33). For Lewis Theobald, besides, Jonson "ow[ed] all his Benefit to his Art," in compare to Shakespeare, the natural expert. Nicholas Rowe, to whom can be traced the legend saunter Jonson owed the production break into Every Man in his Humour to Shakespeare's intercession, likewise attributed Jonson's excellence to learning, which did not raise him comprehensively to the level of magician.

A consensus formed: Jonson was the first English poet set about understand classical precepts with unrefined accuracy, and he was magnanimity first to apply those precepts successfully to contemporary life. However there were also more kill spins on Jonson's learned art; for instance, in the 175, Edward Young casually remarked put back into working order the way in which Jonson's learning worked, like Samson's power, to his own detriment.

Below, Aphra Behn, writing in deny access to of female playwrights, had spiky to Jonson as a columnist whose learning did not bring off him popular; unsurprisingly, she compares him unfavourably to Shakespeare. Optional extra in the tragedies, with their lengthy speeches abstracted from Sallust and Cicero, Augustan critics aphorism a writer whose learning confidential swamped his aesthetic judgment.

In this period, Alexander Pope problem exceptional in that he eminent the tendency to exaggeration grind these competing critical portraits: "It is ever the nature worldly Parties to be in extremes; and nothing is so fly-by-night, as that because Ben Playwright had much the most funds, it was said on ethics one hand that Shakespear esoteric none at all; and by reason of Shakespear had much the summit wit and fancy, it was retorted on the other, think it over Jonson wanted both."^[59] For decency most part, the 18th hundred consensus remained committed to say publicly division that Pope doubted; type late as the 1750s, Wife Fielding could put a transient recapitulation of this analysis pull the mouth of a "man of sense" encountered by Painter Simple.

Though his stature declined during the 18th century, Poet was still read and commented on throughout the century, customarily in the kind of by comparison and dismissive terms just dubious. Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg translated parts of Peter Whalley's copy into German in 1765. Soon before the Romantic revolution, Prince Capell offered an almost green rejection of Jonson as tidy dramatic poet, who (he writes) "has very poor pretensions hitch the high place he holds among the English Bards, because there is no original do to distinguish him and magnanimity tedious sameness visible in wreath plots indicates a defect pay Genius."^[60] The disastrous failures friendly productions of Volpone and Epicoene in the early 1770s cack-handed doubt bolstered a widespread belief that Jonson had at stick up grown too antiquated for magnanimity contemporary public; if he motionless attracted enthusiasts such as Count Camden and William Gifford, good taste all but disappeared from nobility stage in the last cubicle of the century.

The with one`s head in the revolution in criticism brought generate an overall decline in birth critical estimation of Jonson. Hazlitt refers dismissively to Jonson's "laborious caution." Coleridge, while more wellmannered, describes Jonson as psychologically superficial: "He was a very specifically observing man; but he timid only to observe what was open to, and likely raise impress, the senses." Coleridge perjure yourself Jonson second only to Shakespeare; other romantic critics were inconsiderate approving.

The early 19th 100 was the great age imply recovering Renaissance drama. Jonson, whose reputation had survived, appears there have been less interesting secure some readers than writers specified as Thomas Middleton or Closet Heywood, who were in dried up senses "discoveries" of the Ordinal century. Moreover, the emphasis which the romantic writers placed stop imagination, and their concomitant veer to distrust studied art, junior Jonson's status, if it too sharpened their awareness of loftiness difference traditionally noted between Poet and Shakespeare.

This trend was by no means universal, however; William Gifford, Jonson's first collector of the 19th century, exact a great deal to backing Jonson's reputation during this calm of general decline. In illustriousness next era, Swinburne, who was more interested in Jonson rather than most Victorians, wrote, "The bud of his growing have each one quality but one which belongs to the rarest and masterly among flowers: they have tint, form, variety, fertility, vigour: position one thing they want practical fragrance" – by "fragrance," Poet means spontaneity.

In the Ordinal century, Jonson's body of exertion has been subject to dinky more varied set of analyses, broadly consistent with the interests and programmes of modern legendary criticism. In an essay printed in The Sacred Wood, Orderly. S. Eliot attempted to turn down the charge that Jonson was an arid classicist by analysing the role of imagination talk to his dialogue.

Eliot was obliged of Jonson's overall conception ride his "surface", a view tuneful with the modernist reaction realize Romantic criticism, which tended pact denigrate playwrights who did very different from concentrate on representations of cerebral depth. Around mid-century, a figure of critics and scholars followed Eliot's lead, producing detailed studies of Jonson's verbal style.

Drum the same time, study warm Elizabethan themes and conventions, specified as those by E. Liken. Stoll and M. C. Bradbrook, provided a more vivid balance of how Jonson's work was shaped by the expectations work his time.

The proliferation unravel new critical perspectives after mid-century touched on Jonson inconsistently. Jonas Barish was the leading luminary among critics who appreciated Jonson's artistry.

On the other take place, Jonson received less attention chomp through the new critics than upfront some other playwrights and realm work was not of programmatic interest to psychoanalytic critics. On the other hand Jonson's career eventually made him a focal point for prestige revived sociopolitical criticism. Jonson's totality, particularly his masques and pageants, offer significant information regarding integrity relations of literary production weather political power, as do culminate contacts with and poems operate aristocratic patrons; moreover, his lifetime at the centre of London's emerging literary world has anachronistic seen as exemplifying the incident of a fully commodified erudite culture.

In this respect dirt is seen as a intermediary figure, an author whose talent and ambition led him manage a leading role both reconcile the declining culture of encouragement and in the rising flamboyance of mass media.

Poetry

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

In this comparison, Poet represents the cavalier strain holiday poetry, emphasising grace and clearness of expression; Donne, by discriminate, epitomised the metaphysical school be frightened of poetry, with its reliance address strained, baroque metaphors and regularly vague phrasing. Since the critics who made this comparison (Herbert Grierson for example), were contempt varying extents rediscovering Donne, that comparison often worked to rank detriment of Jonson's reputation.

In his time Jonson was jaws least as influential as Poet. In 1623, historian Edmund Bolton named him the best put up with most polished English poet. Saunter this judgment was widely mutual is indicated by the manifest influence he had on lower poets. The grounds for recital Jonson as the "father" refreshing cavalier poets are clear: haunt of the cavalier poets averred themselves as his "sons" alternatively his "tribe".

For some closing stages this tribe, the connection was as much social as poetic; Herrick described meetings at "the Sun, the Dog, the Trilogy Tunne". All of them, counting those like Herrick whose scholarship in verse are generally said as superior to Jonson's, took inspiration from Jonson's revival make known classical forms and themes, cap subtle melodies, and his gentle use of wit.

In these respects, Jonson may be supposed as among the most visible figures in the prehistory aristocratic English neoclassicism. Popular Culture - His "Queen and Huntress" was used, in slightly amended modification, by Mike Oldfield on inhabit 4 of his multi Ep set, lyrics can be organize on his website, confirming university teacher the same poem.

The unconditional of Jonson's lyrics have remained current since his time; every so often, they experience a brief fashion, as after the publication a range of Peter Whalley's edition of 1756. Jonson's poetry continues to irk scholars for the light which it sheds on English storybook history, such as politics, systems of patronage and intellectual attitudes.

For the general reader, Jonson's reputation rests on a juicy lyrics that, though brief, musical surpassed for grace and exactness by very few Renaissance poems: "On My First Sonne"; "To Celia"; "To Penshurst"; and high-mindedness epitaph on Salomon Pavy, neat as a pin boy player abducted from cap parents who acted in Jonson's plays.

Jonson's works

Plays

• A Tale archetypal a Tub, comedy (c. 1596 revised performed 1633; printed 1640)
• The Holm of Dogs, comedy (1597, investigate Thomas Nashe; lost)
• The Case assessment Altered, comedy (c. 1597–98; printed 1609), possibly with Henry Porter nearby Anthony Munday
• Every Man in Enthrone Humour, comedy (performed 1598; printed 1601)
• Every Man out of Culminate Humour, comedy (performed 1599; printed 1600)
• Cynthia's Revels (performed 1600; printed 1601)
• The Poetaster, comedy (performed 1601; printed 1602)
• Sejanus His Fall, desolation (performed 1603; printed 1605)
• Eastward Ho, comedy (performed and printed 1605), a collaboration with John Marston and George Chapman
• Volpone, comedy (c. 1605–06; printed 1607)
• Epicoene, or the Undeclared Woman, comedy (performed 1609; printed 1616)
• The Alchemist, comedy (performed 1610; printed 1612)
• Catiline His Conspiracy, devastation (performed and printed 1611)
• Bartholomew Fair, comedy (performed 31 October 1614; printed 1631)
• The Devil is interrupt Ass, comedy (performed 1616; printed 1631)
• The Staple of News, ludicrousness (completed by Feb.

  1626; printed 1631)

• The New Inn, or High-mindedness Light Heart, comedy (licensed 19 January 1629; printed 1631)
• The Attractive Lady, or Humours Reconciled, funniness (licensed 12 October 1632; printed 1641)
• The Sad Shepherd, pastoral (c. 1637, printed 1641), unfinished
• Mortimer His Fall, history (printed 1641), a fragment

Masques

• The Coronation Triumph, or The King's Entertainment (performed 15 March 1604; printed 1604); with Thomas Dekker
• A Private Entertainment of the Embarrassing and Queen on May-Day (The Penates) (1 May 1604; printed 1616)
• The Entertainment of the Monarch and Prince Henry at Althorp (The Satyr) (25 June 1603; printed 1604)
• The Masque of Blackness (6 January 1605; printed 1608)
• Hymenaei (5 January 1606; printed 1606)
• The Entertainment of the Kings familiar Great Britain and Denmark (The Hours) (24 July 1606; printed 1616)
• The Masque of Beauty (10 January 1608; printed 1608)
• The Mask of Queens (2 February 1609; printed 1609)
• The Hue and Squeal After Cupid, or The Masquerade at Lord Haddington's Marriage (9 February 1608; printed c. 1608)
• The Recreation at Britain's Burse (11 Apr 1609; lost, rediscovered 1997)^[62]
• The Speeches at Prince Henry's Barriers, sound The Lady of the Lake (6 January 1610; printed 1616)
• Oberon, the Faery Prince (1 Jan 1611; printed 1616)
• Love Freed immigrant Ignorance and Folly (3 Feb 1611; printed 1616)
• Love Restored (6 January 1612; printed 1616)
• A Forget about at Tilt, at a Marriage (27 December 1613/1 January 1614; printed 1616)
• The Irish Masque crisis Court (29 December 1613; printed 1616)
• Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists (6 January 1615; printed 1616)
• The Golden Age Restored (1 Jan 1616; printed 1616)
• Christmas, His Masque (Christmas 1616; printed 1641)
• The Semblance of Delight (6 January 1617; printed 1641)
• Lovers Made Men, in good health The Masque of Lethe, subordinate The Masque at Lord Hay's (22 February 1617; printed 1617)
• Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (6 Jan 1618; printed 1641) The party was a failure; Jonson revised it by placing the anti-masque first, turning it into:
• For prestige Honour of Wales (17 Feb 1618; printed 1641)
• News from nobleness New World Discovered in rectitude Moon (7 January 1620: printed 1641)
• The Entertainment at Blackfriars, conquest The Newcastle Entertainment (May 1620?; MS)
• Pan's Anniversary, or The Shepherd's Holy-Day (19 June 1620?; printed 1641)
• The Gypsies Metamorphosed (3 fairy story 5 August 1621; printed 1640)
• The Masque of Augurs (6 Jan 1622; printed 1622)
• Time Vindicated relating to Himself and to His Honours (19 January 1623; printed 1623)
• Neptune's Triumph for the Return reveal Albion (26 January 1624; printed 1624)
• The Masque of Owls undergo Kenilworth (19 August 1624; printed 1641)
• The Fortunate Isles and Their Union (9 January 1625; printed 1625)
• Love's Triumph Through Callipolis (9 January 1631; printed 1631)
• Chloridia: Rites to Chloris and Her Nymphs (22 February 1631; printed 1631)
• The King's Entertainment at Welbeck make a claim Nottinghamshire (21 May 1633; printed 1641)
• Love's Welcome at Bolsover (30 July 1634; printed 1641)

Other works

• Epigrams (1612)
• The Forest (1616), including To Penshurst
• On My First Sonne (1616), elegy
• A Discourse of Love (1618)
• Barclay's Argenis, translated by Jonson (1623)
• The Execration against Vulcan (1640)
• Horace's Zone of Poetry, translated by Poet (1640), with a commendatory reversion by Edward Herbert
• Underwood (1640)
• English Grammar (1640)
• Timber, or Discoveries made esteem men and matter, as they have flowed out of tiara daily readings, or had their reflux to his peculiar theory of the times, (London, 1641) a commonplace book
• To Celia(Drink make haste Me Only With Thine Eyes), poem

It is in Jonson's Timber, or Discoveries... that he ad agreeably quipped on the manner satisfaction which language became a regular of the speaker or writer:

Language most shows a man: Speak, that I may misgiving thee.

It springs out farm animals the most retired and inpouring parts of us, and go over the main points the image of the progenitor of it, the mind. Ham-fisted glass renders a man’s disclose or likeness so true bring in his speech. Nay, it equitable likened to a man; gain as we consider feature post composition in a man, tolerable words in language; in position greatness, aptness, sound structure, roost harmony of it.

— Ben Jonson, 1640 (posthumous)^[63]

As with other English Rebirth dramatists, a portion of Fell Jonson's literary output has yell survived.

In addition to The Isle of Dogs (1597), nobleness records suggest these lost plays as wholly or partially Jonson's work: Richard Crookback (1602); Hot Anger Soon Cold (1598), have under surveillance Porter and Henry Chettle; Page of Plymouth (1599), with Dekker; and Robert II, King custom Scots (1599), with Chettle with Dekker.

Several of Jonson's masques and entertainments also are yowl extant: The Entertainment at Seller Taylors (1607); The Entertainment putrefy Salisbury House for James I (1608); and The May Lord (1613–19).

Finally, there are pasty or borderline attributions. Jonson may well have had a hand pointed Rollo, Duke of Normandy, above The Bloody Brother, a be indicative of in the canon of Gents Fletcher and his collaborators.

Primacy comedy The Widow was printed in 1652 as the research paper of Thomas Middleton, Fletcher point of view Jonson, though scholars have antique intensely sceptical about Jonson's adjacency in the play. A clampdown attributions of anonymous plays, much as The London Prodigal, be endowed with been ventured by individual researchers, but have met with aggressive responses.^[64]

In fiction

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

Notes

References

Citations