Jonson, Ben(jamin)

Jonson, Ben(jamin) (1572–1637), English poet and playwright, contemporary and friend of Shakespeare, and like him despised by the University Wits for not having been educated at Oxford or Cambridge. In 1598 his first play Every Man in His Humour was produced, Shakespeare playing Kno'well. It was followed by Every Man out of His Humour (1599) and Cynthia's Revels (1600), performed by the Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars. They also appeared in The Poetaster (1601), in which Jonson vented his spleen on several of his contemporaries. In 1605 he collaborated with Chapman and Marston in Eastward Ho!, whose satirical references to James I's Scottish policy caused the authors to be sent to prison, where Jonson had already spent some time for his part in a lost play The Isle of Dogs (1597). He also found himself in trouble with the authorities over his tragedy Sejanus (1603), which was considered ‘seditious’ though it dealt with Roman rather than English history. A more peaceful period resulted in some of his best plays, among them four comedies of deception and gullibility: Volpone, or, The Fox (1606), Epicoene; or, The Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), whose Abel Drugger provided many actors, including Garrick and Guinness, with a splendidly comic part, and Bartholomew Fair (1614), whose slight plot links a number of scenes portraying a typical London crowd on holiday. All these have been many times revived. Jonson's later plays, after an absence from the stage of 10 years, were less successful and have not been seen again. Jonson, an excellent poet, wrote between 1605 and 1612 the texts of eight masques given at Court with scenery and effects by Inigo Jones.