Jonson, Ben (1572–1637)

JONSON, BEN (1572–1637)

JONSON, BEN (1572–1637), English playwright and poet. A highly influential dramatist of Jacobean London and the court of his day, Jonson was a colorful character of early theater history. His plays communicate much about the vicissitudes of life for those who shared the playwright's time and place. Jonson's father was a clergyman; his death a month before Jonson's birth was to affect the play-wright's early life, for Jonson's mother soon married a master bricklayer, Robert Brett. Jonson was educated at Westminster School, where the antiquary William Camden, who was the master, became his intellectual inspiration. It is not certain, however, how long Jonson remained at school. According to the Scottish poet William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649), friend and recorder of his conversations, Jonson was "taken" from Westminster and began an apprenticeship in bricklaying. He left London briefly to serve as a soldier in the Low Countries, but by 1594 he had returned. He married, and in 1595 he entered the Tylers and Bricklayers Company.

Soon after this he was writing and performing as an actor with the Earl of Pembroke's Men. In 1597 the company got into trouble for presenting The Isle of Dogs (now lost), a seditious play that Jonson finished for Thomas Nashe, and subsequently they had to disband. Jonson was constantly at odds with the authorities. In 1598, the same year that he produced his highly successful comedy, Every Man in His Humour, for Shakespeare's company, the Chamberlain's Men, he killed an actor called Gabriel Spencer in a duel. When arraigned for the offense, he successfully pleaded "benefit of clergy"—that is, he escaped a hanging due to his ability to read. While in prison for this offense, he became a Catholic, though he reverted to the Protestant faith twelve years later.

Jonson was frequently punished for the subject matter of his plays, which were often interpreted as being too satirically interested in national or court politics. In response to his tragedy Sejanus His Fall, performed at the Globe in 1603 and published in 1605, he was suspected of portraying the political crimes of Robert Devereux, the earl of Essex. He was jailed in 1605 with George Chapman (1559–1634) and possibly John Marston (c. 1575–1634), collaborators with him on the London satire, Eastward Ho!, because it alluded to King James I's acceptance of payments for knighthoods. Despite these troubles, Jonson always seemed to emerge unharmed, and ultimately he excelled within the context of court entertainment. This is borne out by the success of his many masques, written for members of the court to perform. Some of these were produced in collaboration with the designer and architect Inigo Jones (1573–1652). In 1616 he was given a royal pension that was similar, in today's terms, to being granted the post of "poet laureate" in England. Thereafter he styled himself "the King's Poet."

His principal dramatic works, other than those already mentioned, include satirical pieces like Cynthia's Revels (1600) and Poetaster (1601)—both contributing to a perceived dialogue among the playwrights, or what has been called "the war of the theaters" played out between Jonson, Marston, and Thomas Dekker. Other satires include Every Man Out of His Humour (1599), Epicene, or the Silent Woman (1609), The Devil Is an Ass (1616), and the rumbustuously carnivalesque Bartholomew Fair (1614). The most famous of the playwright's works are undoubtedly Volpone, or the Fox (1606) and The Alchemist (1610), which are regularly produced on the stage to this day.

Jonson also wrote poetry including his Epigrams and a selection called The Forrest. These were published in his collected Works of 1616. Another selection of verse called Underwoods was published in a collection in 1640. This also included Timber; or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter, a prose work that comprised some personal musings on texts he had read. Jonson is best remembered for plays that, while showing his audience the world in which they lived, drew heavily on classical influences. These sources were often noted in the margins of Jonson's published works—nowhere more so than in the collection that he himself put together, the folio of 1616. Never before had there been such a publication, which included dramatic works written in English, and it was this endeavor that probably inspired the production of Shakespeare's First Folio of plays in 1623. Jonson demonstrated perceptiveness and foresight concerning the universal nature of Shakespeare's work when he wrote in a prefatory poem to his dead friend's collection that Shakespeare's plays were "not of an age, but for all time!" Jonson's plays belonged to early modern London and to England's court, and therefore to his age.

In 1623, Jonson suffered the catastrophe of seeing many of his papers burned in a fire. Although he continued to write into the Caroline period, he never regained the favor he had once won at court. In 1628 this extraordinary personality suffered a paralytic stroke, and he died in 1637 plagued by ill health and financial insecurity. He is buried in Westminster Abbey under a tombstone bearing the inscription, "O rare Ben Jonson."

See also Drama: English ; English Literature and Language ; Shakespeare, William .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Jonson, Ben. The Poetaster, or, The Arraignment; Sejanus, His Fall; The Devil Is an Ass, The New Inn, or, The Light Heart. Edited by Margaret Jane Kidnie. Oxford and New York, 2000.

——. Three Comedies: Volpone, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair. Michael Jamieson, ed. London and New York, 1966.

Jonson, Ben, George Chapman, and John Marston. Eastward Ho! Edited by C. G. Petter. London and New York, 1994. Originally published London, 1973.

Secondary Sources

Kay, W. David. Ben Jonson: A Literary Life. Basingstoke, U.K., and London, 1995.

Shakespeare, William. The First Folio of Shakespeare. Prepared by Charles Hinman; 2nd ed. New York and London, 1996.

Eva Griffith