Ben Jonson  

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 +"If [[poets]] may be divided into two exhaustive but not exclusive classes, — the gods of harmony and creation, the giants of energy and invention, — the supremacy of [[Shakespeare]] among the gods of English verse is not more unquestionable than the supremacy of [[Ben Jonson|Jonson]] among its giants."--''[[A Study of Ben Jonson]]'' (1889) by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 +<hr>
 +Doing a [[filthy]] pleasure is, and short,<br>
 +And done, we straight repent us of the sport.
 +
 +--[[Ben Jonson]] translation of "[[Foeda est in coitu et brevis voluptas]]" by Petronius
 +
 +|}
{{Template}} {{Template}}
-'''Benjamin Jonson''' ([[wikt:circa|c.]] [[11 June]] [[1572]] &ndash; [[6 August]] [[1637]]) was an [[England|English]] [[English Renaissance|Renaissance]] [[dramatist]], [[poet]] and [[actor]]. A contemporary of [[William Shakespeare]], he is best known for his [[satire|satirical]] plays, particularly ''[[Volpone]]'' and ''[[The Alchemist (play)|The Alchemist]]'' which are considered his best, and his lyric poems. A man of vast reading and a seemingly insatiable appetite for controversy, Jonson had an unparalleled breadth of influence on [[Literature in English#Jacobean literature|Jacobean]] and [[Literature in English#Caroline and Cromwellian literature|Caroline]] playwrights and poets.+'''Benjamin Jonson''' (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an [[English playwright]] and poet, whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the [[comedy of humours]]. He is best known for the [[satire|satirical]] plays ''[[Every Man in His Humour]]'' (1598), ''[[Volpone|Volpone, or The Fox]]'' (c. 1606), ''[[The Alchemist (play)|The Alchemist]]'' (1610) and ''[[Bartholomew Fair (play)|Bartholomew Fair]]'' (1614) and for his [[Lyric poetry|lyric]] and [[epigram]]matic poetry. "He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after [[William Shakespeare]], during the reign of [[James VI and I|James I]]."
 + 
 +Jonson was a [[Classics|classically educated]], well-read and cultured man of the [[English Renaissance]] with an appetite for controversy (personal and political, artistic and intellectual) whose cultural influence was of unparalleled breadth upon the playwrights and the poets of the [[Jacobean era]] (1603–1625) and of the [[Caroline era]] (1625–1642).
 + 
 +''[[A Study of Ben Jonson]]'' (London, 1889) is a text by [[Algernon Charles Swinburne]] on [[Ben Jonson]]’s [[scatological]] epigrams.
 +==Jonson's works==
 +===Plays===
 +*''[[A Tale of a Tub (play)|A Tale of a Tub]]'', comedy (c. 1596 revised performed 1633; printed 1640)
 +*''[[The Isle of Dogs (play)|The Isle of Dogs]]'', comedy (1597, with [[Thomas Nashe]]; lost)
 +*''[[The Case is Altered]]'', comedy (c. 1597–98; printed 1609), possibly with [[Henry Porter (playwright)|Henry Porter]] and [[Anthony Munday]]
 +*''[[Every Man in His Humour]]'', comedy (performed 1598; printed 1601)
 +*''[[Every Man out of 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 [[John Marston (poet)|John Marston]] and [[George Chapman]]
 +*''[[Volpone]]'', comedy (c. 1605–06; printed 1607)
 +*''[[Epicoene, or the Silent Woman]]'', comedy (performed 1609; printed 1616)
 +*''[[The Alchemist (play)|The Alchemist]]'', comedy (performed 1610; printed 1612)
 +*''[[Catiline His Conspiracy]]'', tragedy (performed and printed 1611)
 +*''[[Bartholomew Fayre: A Comedy|Bartholomew Fair]]'', comedy (performed 31 October 1614; printed 1631)
 +*''[[The Devil is an Ass]]'', comedy (performed 1616; printed 1631)
 +*''[[The Staple of News]]'', comedy (completed by Feb. 1626; printed 1631)
 +*''[[The New Inn, or The Light Heart]]'', comedy (licensed 19 January 1629; printed 1631)
 +*''[[The Magnetic Lady, or Humors Reconciled|The Magnetic Lady, or Humours Reconciled]]'', comedy (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 (poet)|Thomas Dekker]]
 +*''A Private Entertainment of the King and Queen on May-Day (The Penates)'' (1 May 1604; printed 1616)
 +*''[[The Entertainment at Althorp|The Entertainment of the Queen 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 of Great Britain and Denmark (The Hours)'' (24 July 1606; printed 1616)
 +*''[[The Masque of Beauty]]'' (10 January 1608; printed 1608)
 +*''[[The Masque of Queens]]'' (2 February 1609; printed 1609)
 +*''[[The Hue and 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)<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Scott|first1=Alison V.|title=Marketing Luxury at the New Exchange: Jonson's ''Entertainment at Britain's Burse'' and the Rhetoric of Wonder|journal=Early Modern Literary Studies|date=September 2006|volume=12|issue=2|pages=5.1–19|url=http://purl.oclc.org/emls/12-2/scotluxu.htm|access-date=13 September 2014}}</ref>
 +*''[[The Speeches at Prince Henry's Barriers]]'', or ''The Lady of the Lake'' (6 January 1610; printed 1616)
 +*''[[Oberon, the Faery Prince]]'' (1 January 1611; printed 1616)
 +*''[[Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly]]'' (3 February 1611; printed 1616)
 +*''[[Love Restored]]'' (6 January 1612; printed 1616)
 +*''A Challenge at Tilt, at a Marriage'' (27 December 1613/1 January 1614; printed 1616)
 +*''The Irish Masque at Court'' (29 December 1613; printed 1616)
 +*''[[Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists]]'' (6 January 1615; printed 1616)
 +*''[[The Golden Age Restored]]'' (1 January 1616; printed 1616)
 +*''[[Christmas, His Masque]]'' (Christmas 1616; printed 1641)
 +*''[[The Vision of Delight]]'' (6 January 1617; printed 1641)
 +*''[[Lovers Made Men]]'', or ''The Masque of Lethe,'' or ''The Masque at Lord Hay's'' (22 February 1617; printed 1617)
 +*''[[Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue]]'' (6 January 1618; printed 1641) The masque was a failure; Jonson revised it by placing the anti-masque first, turning it into:
 +*''[[For the Honour of Wales]]'' (17 February 1618; printed 1641)
 +*''[[News from the New World Discovered in the Moon]]'' (7 January 1620: printed 1641)
 +*''The Entertainment at Blackfriars, or The Newcastle Entertainment'' (May 1620?; MS)
 +*''[[Pan's Anniversary|Pan's Anniversary, or The 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 Vindicated to Himself and to His Honours]]'' (19 January 1623; printed 1623)
 +*''[[Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion]]'' (26 January 1624; printed 1624)
 +*''The Masque of Owls at 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|Chloridia: Rites to Chloris and Her 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), including ''To Penshurst''
 +*''On My First Sonne'' (1616), [[elegy]]
 +*''A Discourse of Love'' (1618)
 +*[[John Barclay (poet)|Barclay]]'s ''[[Argenis]]'', translated by Jonson (1623)
 +*''The Execration against Vulcan'' (1640)
 +*[[Ars Poetica (Horace)|''Horace's Art of Poetry'']], translated by Jonson (1640), with a [[commendatory verse]] by [[Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury|Edward Herbert]]
 +*''Underwood'' (1640)
 +*''English Grammar'' (1640)
 +*''Timber, or Discoveries made upon men and matter, as they have flowed out of his daily readings, or had their reflux to his peculiar 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 he famously quipped on the manner in which language became a measure of the speaker or writer:
 + 
 +{{quote|Language most shows a man: Speak, that I may see thee. It springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man’s form or likeness so true as his speech. Nay, it is likened to a man; and as we consider feature and composition in a man, so words in language; in the greatness, aptness, sound structure, and harmony of it.|Ben Jonson, 1640 (posthumous)<ref>Jonson, B., "Discoveries and Some Poems," Cassell & Company, 1892.</ref>}}
 + 
 +As with other English Renaissance dramatists, a portion of Ben Jonson's literary output has not survived. In addition to ''[[The Isle of Dogs (play)|The Isle of Dogs]]'' (1597), the records suggest these lost plays as wholly or partially Jonson's work: ''Richard Crookback'' (1602); ''Hot Anger Soon Cold'' (1598), with Porter and [[Henry Chettle]]; ''Page of Plymouth'' (1599), with Dekker; and ''Robert II, King of Scots'' (1599), with Chettle and Dekker. Several of Jonson's masques and entertainments also are not extant: ''The Entertainment at Merchant Taylors'' (1607); ''The Entertainment at Salisbury House for James I'' (1608); and ''The May Lord'' (1613–19).
 + 
 +Finally, there are questionable or borderline attributions. Jonson may have had a hand in ''[[Rollo Duke of Normandy|Rollo, Duke of Normandy, or The Bloody Brother]]'', a play in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators. The comedy ''[[The Widow (play)|The Widow]]'' was printed in 1652 as the work of [[Thomas Middleton]], Fletcher and Jonson, though scholars have been intensely sceptical about Jonson's presence in the play. A few attributions of anonymous plays, such as ''[[The London Prodigal]]'', have been ventured by individual researchers, but have met with cool responses.<ref>Logan and Smith, pp. 82–92</ref>
 + 
 + 
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"If poets may be divided into two exhaustive but not exclusive classes, — the gods of harmony and creation, the giants of energy and invention, — the supremacy of Shakespeare among the gods of English verse is not more unquestionable than the supremacy of Jonson among its giants."--A Study of Ben Jonson (1889) by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Doing a filthy pleasure is, and short,
And done, we straight repent us of the sport.

--Ben Jonson translation of "Foeda est in coitu et brevis voluptas" by Petronius

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Benjamin Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet, whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours. He is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone, or The Fox (c. 1606), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry. "He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I."

Jonson was a classically educated, well-read and cultured man of the English Renaissance with an appetite for controversy (personal and political, artistic and intellectual) whose cultural influence was of unparalleled breadth upon the playwrights and the poets of the Jacobean era (1603–1625) and of the Caroline era (1625–1642).

A Study of Ben Jonson (London, 1889) is a text by Algernon Charles Swinburne on Ben Jonson’s scatological epigrams.

Contents

[edit]

Jonson's works

[edit]

Plays

[edit]

Masques

[edit]

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 Art of Poetry, translated by Jonson (1640), with a commendatory verse by Edward Herbert
  • Underwood (1640)
  • English Grammar (1640)
  • Timber, or Discoveries made upon men and matter, as they have flowed out of his daily readings, or had their reflux to his peculiar 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 he famously quipped on the manner in which language became a measure of the speaker or writer:

Template:Quote

As with other English Renaissance dramatists, a portion of Ben Jonson's literary output has not survived. In addition to The Isle of Dogs (1597), the records suggest these lost plays as wholly or partially Jonson's work: Richard Crookback (1602); Hot Anger Soon Cold (1598), with Porter and Henry Chettle; Page of Plymouth (1599), with Dekker; and Robert II, King of Scots (1599), with Chettle and Dekker. Several of Jonson's masques and entertainments also are not extant: The Entertainment at Merchant Taylors (1607); The Entertainment at Salisbury House for James I (1608); and The May Lord (1613–19).

Finally, there are questionable or borderline attributions. Jonson may have had a hand in Rollo, Duke of Normandy, or The Bloody Brother, a play in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators. The comedy The Widow was printed in 1652 as the work of Thomas Middleton, Fletcher and Jonson, though scholars have been intensely sceptical about Jonson's presence in the play. A few attributions of anonymous plays, such as The London Prodigal, have been ventured by individual researchers, but have met with cool responses.<ref>Logan and Smith, pp. 82–92</ref>



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