The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Jonson, Ben

Born June 11, 1573, in London; died there Aug. 6, 1637. English playwright, poet, and drama theoretician.

Jonson studied at Westminster School. His first comedy was The Case Is Altered (1597; published 1609). He collaborated with Marston and Chapman on the comedy Eastward Ho! (1605), which contained political allusions for which the authors were arrested. In 1616, Jonson edited a collection of his works. In the prologue to the plays he disputed the creative principles of his contemporaries, including his friend Shakespeare. He demanded conformity to the conditions of everyday life in the plot and a linear depiction of characters.

In the comedies Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Every Man out of His Humour (1599), Jonson explained the humors, according to his own theory, as individual “oddities.” However, in the comedies of manners Volpone, or the Fox (1605), Epicoene, or the Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614), he explained the humors as the typical social flaws of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. The tragediesSejanus (1603) andCatiline (1611) embody the principles of classicism. Jonson also wrote approximately 30 masques—allegorical plays on mythological themes for performance at court.

WORKS

Works, vols. 1-11. Oxford, 1925-52.
The Complete Plays, vols. 1-2. London-New York, 1929-34.
Ben Jonson’s Literary Criticism. Lincoln, Neb. [1970].
In Russian translation:
Dramaticheskie proizv., vols. 1-2. Moscow-Leningrad, 1931-33. P’esy. Leningrad-Moscow, 1960.

REFERENCES

Varsher, S. A. Angliiskii teatr vremen Shekspira. Moscow-Petro-grad. 1920
Aksenov, I. Elizavetintsy. Moscow, 1938.
Istoriia angliiskoi literdtury, vol. 1, issue 2. Moscow-Leningrad, 1945.
Istoriia zapadnoevropeiskogo teatra, vol. 1. Moscow, 1956.
Romm, A. S.Ben Dzhonson, 1573-1637. Leningrad-Moscow, 1958.
Bentley, G. E. Shakespeare and Jonson: Their Reputations in the
Seventeenth Century Compared, vols. 1-2. Chicago [1945].
Chute, M. Ben Jonson of Westminster. New York, 1953.
Tannenbaum, S. A. Ben Jonson: A Concise Bibliography. New York, 1938.

E. V. KORNILOVA

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

3 Ben Jonson, Volpone and The Alchemist (New York: Dover Publications, 2004), 1.

BEN JONSON'S VOLPONE

For example, when a new edition of Jonson's works, including The New Inn, was printed in 1692, the octavo's paratextual material was preserved verbatim (Ben Jonson, The Works of Ben Jonson [London: Thomas Hodgkin, for H.

Not clothes but brains: display, status, and reading in Ben Jonson's The New Inn

While he acknowledges the massive scholarship of the Oxford Ben Jonson of C.

Ben Jonson: A Life

Meanwhile, Ian Donaldson, one of the three Cambridge editors, has completed this new biography for Oxford for the more rational price of $39.95-- up-to-date in its facts and references, and so the obvious source for anyone wanting to know about Ben Jonson and his world.

An unruly character

In this engagingly speculative book Richard Dutton, a leading Jonson scholar, aims at putting Volpone, on his account Ben Jonson's best known, most performed, and most studied play, back into history.

Richard Dutton, Ben Jonson, Volpone, and the Gunpowder Plot

Outsider status is not something one would straightforwardly grant Ben Jonson, poet laureate in all but name.

Labor and Writing in Early Modern England, 1567-1667

This new collection replaces two earlier Norton Critical Editions: Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets and George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets.

Seventeenth-Century British Poetry 1603-1660

Part 4, "The Theater of Shakespeare's Contemporaries," includes Miguel Martinez Lopez, "The Philosophy of Death in Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus" (219-33); Josephine Bregazzi, "Changing Roles: Gender Marking through Syntactic Distribution in the Jacobean Theater" (234-49); Jose Manuel Gonzalez, "The Court Drama of Ben Jonson and Calderon" (250-61); Purification Ribes, "Spanish Adaptations of Ben Jonson's Volpone" (262-98); and Luciano Garcia, "The Duchess of Malfi and El mayordomo de la duquesa de Amalfi Revisited: Some Differences in Literary Convention and Cultural Horizon" (299-310).

Jose Manuel Gonzalez, ed. Spanish Studies in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries