Shakespeare's Work | Shakespeare and His Contemporaries: Other Poets and Playwrights
Shakespeare's relations with contemporary poets and playwrights can be inferred only from his writing or from theirs, for no direct biographical or autobiographical records survive, such as those for John Donne or Ben Jonson. After Shakespeare's death, legends grew.
The wit combats described by Thomas Fuller in his Worthies (1662) cannot be firsthand: "Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great gallion and an English man of war." Fuller, eight years old at Shakespeare's death, beheld the combats in his mind's eye only. However,...
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