JONSON, BEN

born June 11?, 1572, London, Eng. died Aug. 6, 1637, London byname of Benjamin Jonson English Jacobean dramatist, lyric poet, and literary critic. He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I. Among his major plays are the comedies Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone (1606), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614). Clifford Leech The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica Additional reading Biographies include Marchette Chute, Ben Jonson of Westminster (1953, reissued 1978); George Parfitt, Ben Jonson (1977), a short work emphasizing the ethical foundations of his art; Rosalind Miles, Ben Jonson: His Life and Work (1986); and David Riggs, Ben Jonson (1989). Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth, Ben Jonson (1979), is an introduction to his life, plays, poems, and masques. Critical writings include the more general works by Alexander Leggatt, Ben Jonson: His Vision and His Art (1981); Rosalind Miles, Ben Jonson: His Craft and Art (1990), a study of all his works; Robert C. Evans, Jonson and the Contexts of His Time (1994); and Richard Dutton, Ben Jonson: Authority, Criticism (1996); two works on the masques, Stephen Orgel, The Jonsonian Masque (1965, reprinted 1981); and John C. Meagher, Method and Meaning in Jonson's Masques (1966); and, on the plays, Edward B. Partridge, The Broken Compass: A Study of the Major Comedies of Ben Jonson (1958, reprinted 1976); Jonas A. Barish, Ben Jonson and the Language of Prose Comedy (1960, reissued 1970); L.A. Beaurline, Jonson and Elizabethan Comedy (1978), a scholarly study of several comedies; and Anne Barton, Ben Jonson, Dramatist (1984), on all the plays.