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Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – 6 August 1637) was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, 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 Jacobean and Caroline playwrights and poets.
Jonson began to decline in the 1620s. He was still well-known; from this time dates the prominence of the Sons of Ben or the "Tribe of Ben", those younger poets such as Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, and Sir John Suckling who took their bearing in verse from Jonson. However, a series of setbacks, including a series of strokes, drained his strength and damaged his reputation, though he continued to write. In 1631, he had a final quarrel and falling-out with his long-time collaborator, the architect and stage designer Inigo Jones.
Jonson's last completed work was a masque performed in July of 1634, at Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire.
Ben Jonson in 1632[]
Ben Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. November 1635) went into self-imposed exile in Amsterdam sometime in 1634 or 1635.[2] Jonson claimed that his reason was the enmity of Richard Boyle and Inigo Jones, who had Boyle's favor. While that enmity was real, it was suspected that his real reason for leaving England was that he had noticeably declined over the last two decades.
In late 1635, Jonson began planning a masque centered around a crate of items from Grantville, including a Rubik's Cube, a lawn gnome, and a baseball bat.[3] However, he was also trying to copy, as much as possible, a work he had done for James I of England in 1605. In part, Jonson was hampered by insisting on stage settings that the local artisans and architects weren't really up to creating. However, he was primarily hampered by his own cognitive difficulties. Not only was he having trouble finishing the work, but rehearsals were difficult because he had trouble remembering which stage directions he had given.
The third attempt at a rehearsal was disrupted when it was attacked by four assassins who had been indirectly hired by Richard Boyle. During the attack, Jonson inadvertently stumbled in front of one of the assassins as he was firing at young Rupert Stuart, and was instantly killed. It was thought that this would keep his posthumous reputation relatively intact, as his final work would not be remembered as having been a disaster.
Notes[]
- ↑ Jonson converted to Catholicism in October 1598, and back to Anglicanism in 1610.
- ↑ "The Masque" implies that Jonson had left England after Richard Boyle's rise to power, and had been in Amsterdam for a while, but does not hint at how long he had been there.
- ↑ The source of the crate is not given. However, Robert Herrick, who self-identified as a "Son of Ben", spent much of 1635 in Grantville.