Author
Ben Jonson
1572-1637
English playwright, poet and actor of Shakespeare's time, known for satirical comedies such as Volpone and The Alchemist and for lyric poems that younger poets took as their model.
Born Benjamin Jonson.
Ben Jonson was born in June 1572, in or near London. By his own account his father, a clergyman, died a month before he was born, and his mother later married a master bricklayer. A family friend paid for him to attend Westminster School, where the scholar William Camden taught him and became his friend. He went on to Cambridge but returned after a month to an apprenticeship with his stepfather, then served as a soldier in Flanders.
Back in England he worked as an actor and playwright. He was jailed in 1597 over the play The Isle of Dogs, and in 1598 he killed the actor Gabriel Spenser in a duel, gaining release by benefit of clergy. That same year Every Man in His Humour made his name, with Shakespeare among its first actors. Under James I he wrote about two dozen court masques, and in 1616 he was granted a yearly royal pension.
His comedies of 1605-1616, the plays on which his reputation rests, are mostly set in London and turn on trickery and money. The Alchemist (1610) was an immediate success, and Coleridge claimed it had one of the three most perfect plots in literature.
After James I died in 1625 Jonson felt neglected at court, and he suffered strokes, though he kept writing. He died in London in 1637 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Younger poets called themselves his 'sons' or his 'tribe', and his best lyrics, such as 'On My First Sonne' and 'To Celia', have remained current since.
Sources: wikipedia.org
