Background
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson was born around June 11, 1572, in Westminster, London, about a month after the death of his father.
Actor critic dramatist comic poet
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson was born around June 11, 1572, in Westminster, London, about a month after the death of his father.
Ben Jonson received his formal education at Westminster School, where he studied under the renowned scholar William Camden.
Also Jonson received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Oxford University.
Benjamin did not continue his schooling, probably because his stepfather forced him to engage in the more practical business of bricklaying. The trade did not please him in the least, and he joined the army, serving in Flanders. In 1592 he returned to England.
By 1597 Benjamin was in London, the center of dramatic activity, and had begun writing plays for the theatrical manager Philip Henslowe. In what is probably his first piece of dramatic writing. The Isle of Dogs, Jonson ran afoul of the law. The play (which has not survived) was judged to be a "lewd" work containing "seditious and slanderous matter," and Jonson was imprisoned. The following year Jonson killed a fellow actor in a duel in the Fields at Shoreditch and was tried at Old Bailey for murder. He escaped the gallows only by pleading benefit of clergy. During his subsequent imprisonment he converted to Roman Catholicism only to convert back to Anglicanism over a decade later, in 1610. He was released forfeit of all his possessions, and with a felon's brand on his thumb.
In the same year Jonson's first major work, Every Man in His Humour, was performed by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, with Shakespeare taking the lead role. This play stands as a model of the "comedy of humors," in which each character's behavior is dictated by a dominating whim or affectation. It is also a very cleverly constructed play. His next play, Every Man Out of His Humour (1599), was less successful. Every Man Out of His Humour and Cynthia's Revels (1600) were satirical comedies displaying Jonson's classical learning and his interest in formal experiment.
Jonson's explosive temperament and conviction of his superior talent gave rise to "War of the Theatres". In The Poetaster (1601), he satirized other writers, chiefly the English dramatists Thomas Dekker and John Marston. Eventually, the writers patched their feuding; in 1604 Jonson collaborated with Dekker on The King's Entertainment and with Marston and George Chapman on Eastward Ho.
Jonson's next play, the classical tragedy Sejanus, His Fall (1603), based on Roman history and offering an astute view of dictatorship, again got Jonson into trouble with the authorities. Jonson was called before the Privy Council on charges of "popery and treason". Jonson did not, however, learn a lesson, and was again briefly imprisoned for controversial views ("something against the Scots") espoused in Eastward Ho (1604). These two incidents jeopardized his emerging role as court poet to King James I. Having converted to Catholicism, Jonson was also the object of deep suspicion after the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes (1605).
In 1605, Jonson began to write masques for the entertainment of the court. The earliest of his masques, The Satyr was given at Althorpe, and Jonson seems to have been appointed Court Poet shortly after. The masques displayed his erudition, wit, and versatility and contained some of his best lyric poetry. Masque of Blacknesse (1605) was the first in a series of collaborations with Inigo Jones, noted English architect and set designer. This collaboration produced masques such as The Masque of Owles, Masque of Beauty (1608), and Masque of Queens (1609), which were performed in Inigo Jones' elaborate and exotic settings. These masques ascertained Jonson's standing as foremost writer of masques in the Jacobean era. The collaboration with Jones was finally destroyed by intense personal rivalry.
Jonson's enduring reputation rests on the comedies written between 1605 and 1614. The first of these, Volpone, or The Fox (performed in 1605-1606, first published in 1607) is often regarded as his masterpiece. The play, though set in Venice, directs its scrutiny on the rising merchant classes of Jacobean London. The following plays, Epicoene: or, The Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614) are all peopled with dupes and those who deceive them. Jonson's keen sense of his own stature as author is represented by the unprecedented publication of his Works, in folio, in 1616. He was appointed as poet laureate and rewarded a substantial pension in the same year.
In 1618, when he was about forty-five years old, Jonson set out for Scotland, the home of his ancestors and made the journey entirely by foot. After his return, Jonson received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Oxford University and lectured on rhetoric at Gresham College, London.
The comedy The Devil is an Ass (1616) had turned out to be a comparative flop. This may have discouraged Jonson, for it was nine years before his next play, The Staple of News (1625), was produced. Instead, Jonson turned his attention to writing masques. Jonson's later plays The New Inn (1629) and A Tale of a Tub (1633) were not great successes, described harshly, but perhaps justly by Dryden as his "dotages."
Jonson was appointed City Chronologer of London in 1628, the same year in which he suffered a severe stroke. His loyal friends kept him company in his final years and attended the King provided him some financial comfort. Jonson died on August 6, 1637 and was buried in Westminster Abbey under a plain slab on which was later carved the words, "O Rare Ben Jonson!" His admirers and friends contributed to the collection of memorial elegies, Jonsonus virbius, published in 1638. Jonson's last play, Sad Shepherd's Tale, was left unfinished at his death and published posthumously in 1641.
Quotations:
"Success produces confidence; confidence relaxes industry, and negligence ruins the reputation which accuracy had raised."
"He knows not his own strength that has not met adversity."
"Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need."
"There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear."
On November 14, 1594, Benjamin "Ben" Jonson married Anne Lewis. The couple had two children.