Jonson, Ben (1572-1637), was an English playwright and poet. For nearly 100 years after his death, his reputation and influence on English drama at least equaled that of his friend William Shakespeare.
Jonson worked carefully, often spending two years writing a play. He was proud of his Greek and Latin learning and severely criticized other playwrights of his day, including Shakespeare, for errors and carelessness he saw in their writing. In 1616, Jonson became the first playwright to prepare an edition of his own works for publication. He thus advanced the claim of the drama to serious consideration as literature. According to legend, Jonson was also the center of a literary “club” at the Mermaid Tavern in London. Other members may have included Sir Walter Raleigh and playwrights Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. Historians doubt whether this club really existed.
Jonson’s first important play was Every Man in His Humour (1598). It is a realistic and satiric comedy of London life in which each character is motivated by a single humour (tendency) determined, it was then thought, by fluids within the body. In Jonson’s later satiric comedies—Volpone (1606), The Silent Woman (1609), and The Alchemist (1610)—the humours are generally an aspect of universal human failings, such as greed, ignorance, or superstition.
Jonson wrote more than 30 masques and entertainments for the courts of Kings James I and Charles I. Some of his best poetry appears in these spectacles (see Masque). Jonson’s poetry was influenced by Roman writers, especially Horace. Jonson’s most famous song, “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes,” shows his classical style with its deceptively simple form and vocabulary. His superb epitaph on the death of his 7-year-old son shows the same skill used to ease his deep grief.
Benjamin Jonson was born on June 11, 1572, probably in Westminster (now part of London). He died on Aug. 6, 1637.
See also Song: To Celia.
