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Ben Jonson (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)

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Ben Jonson’s literary career began in the final years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, encompassed that of her Scottish cousin James I, and extended well into the time of Charles I. Certain contradictory aspects of his character have long been recognized. Here was a man who assaulted and killed an actor named Gabriel Spencer but whose poetic theory recommended rationality, moderation, and restraint; who admitted to such excesses as drunkenness, adultery, and raging quarrels, and was jailed on several occasions for presumably seditious passages in his plays, but who also earned a...

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