Balti state university a. Russo chair of english philology

Ben Jonson 
(1572 – 1637) 
Ben Jonson was an actor, a playwright, poet, scholar, critic, translator, man of letters, the 
head of the first “Literary school” in England. 
Ben Jonson did so many different things in the literary world of the early 17
th
century and 
made use of so many different styles” that he can be called a giant of a man. 
Jonson‟s life was tough and turbulent. He was educated at Westminster School by the great 
classical scholar William Camden. He joined the army and fought with the Spaniards. During his 
career of an actor and playwright Ben Jonson killed a fellow actor in a duel, and escaped 
punishment only by pleading “Benefit of Clergy”, offering his help to the court as he could read 
and write and in such a way. Later on Jonson became the unofficial literary dictator of London, 
the king‟s pensioned poet and a favourite of the court.
The first of his great plays was Every Man is His Humour, in which W. Shakespeare 
performed in the leading role. It was the first so called “comedies of humours” in which the 
ruling passions of men were exposed to satiric interpretation. His classical tragedy Sejamus 
(1603) has not been much liked because of its gloomy mood and static character, but Volpone 
(1606), and the Alchemist (1610) are the two supreme satiric comedies of the English stage. Both 
have been repeatedly adapted and modernized. In 1605 Jonson began writing for the court a 
series of masques, involving allegory, complimenting the king or the queen. 
In 1616 he published a splendid collection of Works, a body of poetry to which he kept 
adding up to the end of his life. He wrote several devotions, poems and plays. Now let us enjoy 
some of Ben Jonson‟s poetry:
Ben Jonson 
To John Donne 
Donne, the delight of Poebus and each Muse, 
Who, to thy one, all other brains refuse, 
Whose every work, of thy most early wit, 
Came forth example and remains so yet; 
Longer a knowing than most wits do live, 
And which no affection prais enough can give. 
To it thy language, letters, arts best life, 
Which might with half mankind maintain a strife. 
All, which I meant to praise, and yet I would, 

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69 
69 
But leave, because I cannot, as I should.
(1616) 
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