Ben Jonson
At a glance:
- Series: Dictionary of World Biography: The 17th and 18th Centuries
- Categories: Literature, Publishing
- Subcategories: Authors, Writers, Drama, Theater, Playwrights, Patrons, Mentors
- Curriculum: British History, Renaissance History, 17th Century European History
Article abstract: The comic plays Jonson wrote in the 1600’s remain landmark works of the English Renaissance, and as mentor to younger writers he influenced the course of poetry in the seventeenth century.
Early Life
Between his birth in 1573 and his death in 1637, Ben Jonson was at different times a soldier, an actor, a playwright, a poet, an essayist, and a translator. His fortunes were equally varied: from branded felon to poet laureate, from lionized man of letters to impoverished pensioner. Though he was influential as a mentor to young writers...
[The entire page is 4163 words long]
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