Further Reading
- Brock, D. Heyward, A Ben Jonson Companion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983, 307 p. (Alphabetical concordance to Jonson, including major works, characters, themes, contemporaries, and notable Jonson critics.)
- Bryant, J. A., Jr., The Compassionate Satirist: Ben Jonson and His Imperfect World. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1972, 195 p. (Focuses on the major plays, addressing Jonson's attitudes toward his characters.)
- Burt, Richard, Licensed by Authority: Ben Jonson and the Discourses of Censorship. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993, 227 p. (A materialist study of Jonson's writings in relation to the working of seventeenth century censorship practices.)
- Cave, Richard Allen, Ben Jonson. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991, 184 p. (Introductory monograph which focuses on the major plays.)
- Dryden, John, "Essay of Dramatic Poesy." In John Dryden: Selected Criticism, edited by James Kinsley and George Parfitt, pp. 16–76. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. (Discusses Jonson in relation to Shakespeare, and examines Epicœne; or, the Silent Woman with regard to the French classical tradition.)
- Eliot, T. S., "Ben Jonson." In Ben Jonson: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Jonas A. Barish, pp. 14–23. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1963. (Characterizes Jonson's poetry as superficial, yet with form and appealing to the mind.)
- Evans, Robert C., '"Games of Fortune, Plaid at Court': Politics and Poetic Freedom in Jonson's Epigrams."' In "The Muses Common-Weale": Poetry and Politics in the Seventeenth Century*, edited by Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth, pp. 48–61. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1988. (Analyzes three epigrams in light of Jonson's independence and the instability of the patronage system.)
- Gibbons, Brian, Jacobean City Comedy: A Study of Satiric Plays by Jonson, Marston and Middleton. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968, 223 p. (Compares and contrasts Jonson's satires with those of Marston and Middleton, suggesting that Jonson established the city comedy as a new genre.)
- Goldberg, Jonathan, James I and the Politics of Literature: Jonson, Shakespeare, Donne, and Their Contemporaries. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983, 292 p. (Considers the influence of royal authority on Jonson's works, with particular reference to Sejanus, Catiline, Volpone, and the court masques.)
- Greenblatt, Stephen, "The False Ending in Volpone." In Ben Jonson's Volpone, or The Fox, edited by Harold Bloom, pp. 29-43. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988. (Focuses on the self-reflexive character of Volpone.)
- Haynes, Jonathan, The Social Relations of Jonson's Theater. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 143 p. (A dialectical examination of Jonson's position in the theater which stresses his relationship with the audience.)
- Johnson, A. W., Ben Jonson: Poetry and Architecture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, 290 p. (Study of architectonic structure in Jonson's encomiastic poetry and masques.)
- Johnston, George Burke, Ben Jonson: Poet. New York: Columbia University Press, 1945, 175 p. (Evaluates Jonson's use of the mythological and religious in his poetry, along with his treatment of themes on women, chivalry, and courtly love. Includes a discussion of his relationship with Inigo Jones.)
- Jonson, Ben, Ben Jonson: Poems, edited by Ian Donaldson. London: Oxford University Press, 1975, 410 p. (Includes 'Ungathered Verse' and poems from the plays and masques. Stresses Jonson's 'confidence in moral continuities,' which allowed him to draw upon the poetry of classical writers.)
- Judkins, David C, ed., The Nondramatic Works of Ben Jonson: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1982, 260 p. (Contains a chronological listing of Jonson criticism from 1615 to 1978, including biographies, theses, dissertations, and manuscripts, with an introduction summarizing critical debates.)
- Kay, W. David, Ben Jonson: A Literary Life. Houndsmills: Macmillan, 1995, 237 p. (Biographical study of Jonson which stresses his complexity. Includes a brief bibliographical commentary.)
- Knights, L.C., "Ben Jonson: Public Attitudes and Social Poetry." A Celebration of Ben Jonson: Papers Presented at the University of Toronto in October 1972, edited by William Blissett, Julian Patrick, and R. W. Van Fossen, pp. 167–87. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973. (Examines Jonson's individual voice as it informs his social poetry.)
- Lee, Jongsook, Ben Jonson's Poesis: A Literary Dialectic of Ideal and History. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989, 112 p. (Examines the tension between 'fact and fiction' in Jonson's works, notably in the plays Sejanus and Catiline, the poetry, and the court masques.)
- Leggatt, Alexander, Ben Jonson: His Vision and His Art. London: Methuen, 1981, 300 p. (Synthetic study of the plays, masques, and poetry which stresses Jonson's thought.)
- Lemly, John, "Make odde discoveries!': Disguises, Masques, and Jonsonian Romance." In Comedy from Shakespeare to Sheridan: Change and Continuity in the English and European Dramatic Tradition, edited by A. R. Braunmuller and J. C. Bulman. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986, 290 p. (Focuses on the theme of disguise and exposure in Jonson's masques and late plays.)
- Maus, Katharine Eisman, Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, 212 p. (Examines Jonson's classicism, tracing the influence of Roman 'moralist' writers on Jonson's works.)
- McCanles, Michael, Jonsonian Discriminations: The Humanist Poet and the Praise of True Nobility. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992, 306 p. (Focuses on Jonson's poetry in terms of vera a nobilitas, true nobility, and in relation to aristocratic status, signs of nobility, praise, patronage, and courtship.)
- McDonald, Russ, "Sceptical Visions: Shakespeare's Tragedies and Jonson's Comedies." In Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespearean Study and Production, edited by Stanley Wells, pp. 131-47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. (Comparative study which suggests that Jonson and Shakespeare share 'a new and darker vision' of a corrupt world.)
- Miles, Rosalind, Ben Jonson: His Craft and Art. Savage: Barnes & Noble Books, 1990, 303 p. (Comprehensive study of Jonson's creative life, addressing his failures, struggles and successes.)
- Miles, Rosalind, Ben Jonson: His Life and Work. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986, 306 p. (Chronological study of Jonson's major works.)
- Nichols, J. G., The Poetry of Ben Jonson. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969, 177 p. (Discusses Jonson's poetry as idealistic and satirical, but not intentionally artful.)
- Parfitt, G. A. E., Ben Jonson: Public Poet and Private Man. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1976, 181 p. (Contends that Jonson projects into his work both a classicist and a realist persona.)
- Partridge, Edward B., The Broken Compass: A Study of the Major Comedies of Ben Jonson. London: Chatto & Windus, 1958, 254 p. (Important study of imagery and metaphor in Jonson's comedies.)
- Paster, Gail Kern, The Idea of the City in the Age of Shakespeare. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1985, 249 p. (General study of the role of the city in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, which takes particular note of the representation of urban life in Jonson.)
- Patterson, Annabel, "Lyric and Society in Jonson's Underwood." Lyric Poetry: Beyond New Criticism, edited by Chaviva Hošek and Patricia Parker, pp. 148–63. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985. (Remarks on the relation of the self to the state in Jonson's later lyrics.)
- Riggs, David, Ben Jonson: A Life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989, 399 p. (Biography which finds in Jonson a contrasting but ultimately complementary mix of 'reckless selfassertion' and 'rationalistic self-limitation.')
- Rowe, George E., Distinguishing Jonson: Imitation, Rivalry, and the Direction of a Dramatic Career. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988, 220 p. (Traces the development of Jonson's artistic identity, focusing chiefly on the plays.)
- Salingar, Leo, "Comic Form in Ben Jonson: Volpone and the Philosopher's Stone." In English Drama: Forms and Development, edited by Marie Axton and Raymond Williams, pp. 48-68. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. (Considers the role of the theme of alchemy in Volpone.)
- Summers, Claude J. and Ted-Larry Pebworth, eds., Classic and Cavalier: Essays on Jonson and the Sons of Ben. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982, 290 p. (Compilation which includes essays on Jonson's poetry, on his contribution to the history of English literature, on his poetics, and on the poetic structures he shares with his 'tribe.')
- Swinburne, Algernon Charles, A Study of Ben Jonson. London: Chatto & Windus, 1889, 181 p. (Categorizes Jonson's poetry as 'incurably' stiff and irregular in terms of expressive texture and style.)
- Trimpi, Wesley, Ben Jonson's Poems: A Study of the Plain Style. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1962, 292 p. (Comments on Jonson's adaptation of the anti-Ciceronian classical 'plain style' which emphasizes content rather than expression, and denotation rather than connotation.)
- Watson, Robert N., Ben Jonson's Parodic Strategy: Literary Imperialism in the Comedies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987, 269 p. (Examines Jonson's use of parody to assert his influence on the London theater world.)
- ——, "The 'Strangeness' of Ben Jonson's The Forest." Leeds Studies in English 18 (1987): 45–54. (Emphasizes the poems of The Forest as examples of paradox, simultaneously conservative and 'strange.')
- ——, Ben Jonson and the Poetics of Patronage. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1989, 334 p. (An extended study of the patronage system, covering such issues as freedom, flattery, the psychology of patronage, rivalry, and friendship.)
- ——, Shakespeare & Jonson, Jonson & Shakespeare. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988, 239 p. (Book-length comparison of Shakespeare and Jonson, examining the relationship between the two dramatists and noting similarities of theme in their works.)
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