Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford
Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford,blank-verse dramatic monologue by E.A. Robinson, published in The Man Against the Sky (1916).
This witty, jovial, and incisive characterization of Shakespeare is presented in the words of his fellow poet, supposed to be drinking in a London tavern with a Stratford visitor. Describing him as “this mad, careful, proud, indifferent Shakespeare,” Jonson says that he is an incomparable genius, but solitary and passion-consumed, “empowered out of nature” by lacking “faith, innocence, illusion, Whatever 'tis that keeps us out o' Bedlam,” and saved perhaps only by his thrift and ambition and “that House in Stratford.”
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