In the group of playwrights immediately surrounding Shakespeare,[7] who with him were perhaps accustomed to gather in the Mermaid Tavern, were Ben Jonson, Webster, Ford, Beaumont and Fletcher, Chapman, Marston, and Dekker. Among these Jonson was easily the first, both in the quality of his genius and the amount of his work. He was a man of enormous learning, poet laureate, a soldier in Flanders, an actor, and hack writer for Henslowe. He appeared first as a playwright in the late years of the sixteenth century, at the moment when Shakespeare and the romantic comedies were at the height of their popularity. To some extent he was obliged to conform to the prevailing taste; but his natural inclination was toward the classic and regular style rather than toward the romantic; and his "humour" was satirical rather than sentimental.
Jonson's plays fall roughly into three groups: the realistic comedies, the tragedies, and the masques. As a contribution to drama the realistic comedies are most important. Even in his 'prentice work, the two plays The Case is Altered and The Tale of a Tub, it is evident that he was influenced more by classic models than by contemporary fashion. The Case Is Altered is based upon two plays of Plautus and the old familiar theme of the abduction of infants. The action is completed in one place and covers but a single day. Jonson's importance, however, is not owing to this return to the classical form, but to his keenness in portraying contemporaneous types. He took from the Plautine plays some of the most successful stock characters such as Miles Gloriosus (whom he named Captain Bobadil), the spendthrift son, the jealous husband, and so transformed them that they stand forth revived and recreated, as true comic figures belonging to Elizabethan London.[8]
The play Every Man in His Humour (1598) inaugurated the school of realistic comedy, unlike anything which had hitherto appeared on the English stage. It deals not with the passions, but with the follies, the "humours" of mankind. The scene is laid in London, and different sorts of city characters are pictured to the life. The play was the sensation of the hour, and was enacted before the queen by the company to which Shakespeare belonged, and in which he at one time acted.
Jonson was brilliant, but apparently neither genial nor lovable -- indeed he had the reputation of being pompous and arrogant. Though manly and honorable, he seems to have been lacking in sympathy. As a dramatist, he was resourceful in the creation of character and in the invention of comic situations. While for the most part he confined himself to laughing at the more obvious, surface absurdities of society, yet his wit was so keen and his humor so robust as to make a lasting impression upon English drama. He influenced nearly all the writers of the seventeenth century, and his peculiar type of play has persisted on the English speaking stage to the present time.
Bibliography
1. Abrams, M.H. The Norton Anthology. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1993.
2. Adams, Robert. Ben Johnson's Plays and Masques. 1979.
3. Bamborough, J.B. Ben Jonson. Hutchinson University Library, 1970.
4. Burt, Richard. Licensed by Authority: Ben Jonson and the Discourses of Censorship. New York: Cornell University Press, 1993.
5. Butler, Martin. The Selected Plays of Ben Jonson. London: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
6. Magnusson, Magnus. Cambridge Biographical Dictionary. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
7. Eisaman Maus, Katherine. Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984.
8. Evans, C. Robert. Habits of Mind: Evidence and Effects of Ben Jonson's Reading. Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, 1995.
9. Evans, C. Robert. Jonson and the Contexts of His Time. Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, 1994.
10. Hayes, Tom. The Birth of Popular Culture: Ben Jonson, Maid Marian and Robin Hood. Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press, 1992.
11. Haynes, Jonathan. The Social Relations of Jonson's Theatre. London: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
12. Herford, C.H. and Simpson Percy and Evelyn. Ben Jonson. Oxford: Clarendon Press (11 Vols. 8:246), 1952.
13. Jonson, Ben, Cain Tom (Editor). Poetaster (Revels Plays). New York: Manchester University Press, 1996.
14. Jonson, Ben. Three Comedies: Volpone, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.
15. Johnson, A.W. Ben Jonson: Poetry and Architecture (Oxford English Monographs). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
16. Jonson, Ben, Brockbank, Philip (Editor). Volpone. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1976.
17. Kay, David W. Ben Jonson: A Literary Life (Literary Lives). St. Martins Press, 1995.
18. McCanles, Michael. Jonsonian Discriminations: The Humanist Poet and the Praise of True Nobility. Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1992.
19. Maclean, Hugh. Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets. New York: Norton, 1974.
20. Magill. Critical Survey of Poetry-English Lang Series. California: Salem Press, 1992.
21. Riddell, James, Stewart, Stanley. Jonson's Spenser: Evidence and Historical Criticism (Duquesne Studies. Language and Literature, Vol. 18). Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press, 1995.
22. Riggs, David. Ben Jonson: A Life. Harvard University Press, 1989.
23. Smith, Barbara. The Women of Ben Jonson's Poetry: Female Representations in the Non-Dramatic Verse. New York: Scolar Press, 1995.
24. Van den Berg, Sara J. The Action of Ben Jonson's Poetry. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1987
25. Writers of the Restoration and 18th Century. Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, Volume Two. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research International Limited, 1992.
[1] Evans, C. Robert. Habits of Mind: Evidence and Effects of Ben Jonson's Reading. Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, 1995
[2] Jonson, Ben, Brockbank, Philip (Editor). Volpone. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1976.
[3] Riggs, David. Ben Jonson: A Life. Harvard University Press, 1989.
[4] Hayes, Tom. The Birth of Popular Culture: Ben Jonson, Maid Marian and Robin Hood. Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press, 1992
[5] Burt, Richard. Licensed by Authority: Ben Jonson and the Discourses of Censorship. New York: Cornell University Press, 1993
[6] Johnson, A.W. Ben Jonson: Poetry and Architecture (Oxford English Monographs). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
[7] Jonson, Ben, Cain Tom (Editor). Poetaster (Revels Plays). New York: Manchester University Press, 1996.
[8] McCanles, Michael. Jonsonian Discriminations: The Humanist Poet