Ben Jonson

• 1. The Bricklayer's Son

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  Benjamin Jonson was born in June 1572, possibly on the 11th day of that month. His father died a single month before his birth after losing property and serving time as a Protestant under Queen Mary. A family friend paid for young Benjamin to attend Westminster School where William Camden taught him. Camden became a close friend who influenced Jonson's literary style until Camden's death in 1623. Jonson left school in 1589 but returned from Cambridge University after only one month due to an apprenticeship with his stepfather. The bricklayer taught him how to build garden walls at Lincoln's Inn while he worked as a laborer.

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• 2. War Of The Theatres

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  Jonson faced legal trouble in September 1598 when he killed actor Gabriel Spenser in a duel at Hogsden Fields. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter but gained leniency by reciting a Bible verse known as the neck-verse. This legal maneuver required him to forfeit all goods and chattels while receiving a Tyburn T brand on his left thumb. During his imprisonment in Newgate Gaol he converted to Catholicism through the influence of Father Thomas Wright. The playwright later engaged in bitter literary feuds with John Marston and Thomas Dekker during the War of the Theatres. Cynthia's Revels satirized both poets while Poetaster attacked them again in 1601. Dekker responded with Satiromastix which caricatured Jonson as boasting about himself and condemning other poets.

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• 3. Court Masques And Patronage

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  James I introduced new demands for masques and entertainments that Jonson quickly adapted to after 1603. He wrote approximately two dozen masques including The Satyr and The Masque of Blackness performed at Apethorpe Palace. In January 1611 Prince Henry appeared in the title role of Oberon, the Faery Prince designed by Inigo Jones. Jonson earned twenty pounds performing a poem at a banquet given by the Merchant Taylors' Company in July 1607. By 1616 he received an annual pension of one hundred marks worth roughly sixty pounds from the royal family. This financial support led some historians to identify him as England's first Poet Laureate even though no formal title was granted. He gave up writing plays for public theaters for a decade to focus on these court commissions.

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• 4. Faith And Recantation

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  Jonson maintained Catholic beliefs throughout his adult life despite growing persecution during religious wars with Spain. His conversion occurred in October 1598 while imprisoned on remand charged with manslaughter. Father Thomas Wright ministered to inmates in London prisons despite being under house arrest ordered by Lord Burghley. In May 1610 King Henry IV of France was assassinated which prompted Jonson to rejoin the Church of England. He demonstrated this renunciation by drinking a full chalice of communion wine at the eucharist ceremony. The exact date of this event remains unknown but his interest in Catholic practice continued until his death. Leading church figures including John Overall Dean of St Paul's tried unsuccessfully to win him back to Protestantism.

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• 5. Shakespeare And The Mermaid

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  William Drummond reported that Jonson scoffed at two absurdities in Shakespeare's plays during their conversations. He criticized a nonsensical line in Julius Caesar and questioned the setting of The Winter's Tale on Bohemia's non-existent seacoast. Drummond also recorded Jonson saying Shakespeare wanted art meaning he lacked technical skill. Thomas Fuller described debates between the two men at the Mermaid Tavern where Shakespeare supposedly outwitted the more learned Jonson. Jonson contributed a poem to Shakespeare's First Folio titled To the Memory of My Beloved the Author. This work helped create the traditional view of Shakespeare as a natural genius who possessed small Latin and less Greek. Jonson concluded that Shakespeare was not of an age but for all time while acknowledging he sometimes needed to be stopped due to his facility.

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• 6. Legacy And Critical Reception

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  Jonson's reputation declined after 1700 when Romantic critics unfairly compared him to Shakespeare. Hazlitt dismissed Jonson's laborious caution while Coleridge found him psychologically superficial despite placing him second only to Shakespeare. Edward Capell offered unqualified rejection calling Jonson's pretensions poor before the Romantic revolution. Swinburne noted that Jonson's flowers had color form variety fertility and vigor but lacked fragrance which meant spontaneity. T.S. Eliot attempted to repudiate charges of arid classicism by analyzing imagination in Jonson's dialogue during the twentieth century. Cambridge University Press published the first new edition of Jonson's complete works in 2012 after sixty years without one. Modern scholars now view him as a transitional figure between declining patronage culture and rising mass media.

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