Renaissance and Reformation Biographies | Ben Jonson Biography

June 11, 1572
in or near London, England
August 6, 1637
London, England

English playwright

"For a good poet's made as well as born."

Ben Jonson, To the Memory of Shakespeare quoted in Bartlet's Familiar Quotations, [Online] Available http://www.bartleby.com/100/, April 3, 2002.

The English playwright and poet Ben Jonson is best known for his satiric comedies (plays based on criticism through the use of humor). An immensely learned man with an irritable and domineering personality, he was, next to William Shakespeare (1564–1616; see entry), the greatest dramatic genius of the English Renaissance. The Renaissance was a cultural revolution that began in Italy in the mid-1300s. It was initiated by scholars called humanists who promoted the human-centered values of ancient Greece and Rome....