BEN
JONSON (1572-1637)
1590s
_____. Every Man in his Humour. Comedy. 1596, 1598.
_____. The Isle of Dogs.
Drama. 1597. (With Nashe and others, Lost).
1600s
_____. Cynthia's Revels.
Drama. 1600.
_____. Every Man Out of His Humour. Comedy.
1600.
_____. The
Poetaster. Comedy.
Acted at Blackfriars, 1601.
_____. Sejanus
His Fall. Tragedy. 1603.
_____. The Masque
of Blackness. Acted 1605.
_____.
Eastward Ho! Comedy. 1605.
(With Marston and Chapman)
_____.
Hymenaei. Masque. First
performed
1606.
_____. Volpone. Comedy. 1606.
_____. The Masque of Whiteness.
c. 1607.
_____. Masque of Beauty. 1608.
_____. Britain's Burse.
Drama. 1609.
_____. Epicoene:
Or, The Silent Woman.
Comedy. 1609-10.
_____. The Masque of Queens. 1609.
1610s
_____. The
Alchemist. Comedy. c. 1610.
_____. Oberon the Fairy Prince.
Masque. 1611.
_____. Catiline His Conspiracy.
Tragedy. Pub. 1611.
_____. Love Restored. Masque.
1612.
_____. The Devil is an Ass.
Drama. 1616.
_____. Lovers Made Men.
Masque. 1617.
_____. Bartholomew
Fair. Comedy. 1614.
_____. The Workes
of Beniamin Jonson.
1616. (Folio; Contains: Comedies, Tragedies, Masques,
Epigrams, and The Forest poems; esp. "To Penshurst").
_____. Conversations with Drummond.
1619.
1620s
_____. The Gipsies
Metamorphosed. Masque. 1621.
_____. Time Vindicated. 1623.
_____. "To
the Memory of my Beloved,
The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us."
In Mr. William Shakespeares
Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. (First Folio).
London,1623.
_____. The Fortunate Isles.
1625.
_____. The Staple of Newes.
Comedy. 1626.
1630s
Jonson, Ben. The New Inn.
Comedy. 1630.
_____. Chloridia. Masque.
1631.
_____. The Magnetic Lady.
Comedy. 1632.
_____. Tale of a Tub. Drama.
1633.
1640s
Jonson, Ben. The English Grammar. Ed.
James Howell. 1640.
_____. The Underwood. In
Jonson, (Works, Second folio). 1640.9.*
_____. An Execration against Vulcan.
1640.
_____. Works.
2nd ed. 1640. (Including: Timber: Or, Discoveries).
More on Ben Jonson, here (NIVEL AVANZADO).
Muchos de los argumentos dramáticos de Jonson se basan en la estructura del
intrigante descubierto, o el plan perfecto que fracasa. Aquí un
comentario sobre este tipo de estructura dramática / narrativa: La historia del fracaso del plan.
Some notes on Ben Jonson:
(From Margaret Drabble's Oxford Companion to English Literature):
Ben[jamin] Jonson (1572-1637).
Dramatist, poet, scholar, and writer of court masques. He was of Border
descent, but was born in or near London, the posthumous son of a
clergyman. He was educated at Westminster School under Camden. During
the early 1590s he worked as a bricklayer in his stepfather's employ,
saw military service in Flanders, where he killed an enemy champion in
single combat, and joined a strolling company of players for whom he
acted the part of Hieronimo in The Spanish Tragedy,
a play for which he wrote additional scenes in 1601-2. In 1597 he began
to work for Henslowe's companies as a player and playwright, and was
imprisoned for his share in The Isle of Dogs, a satire now lost 'containing very seditious and slandrous matter' (See Swan Theatre).
In 1598 he killed a fellow actor in a duel, but escaped hanging by
pleading benefit of clergy, being branded instead as a felon. He became
a Roman Catholic during his imprisonment, but returned to Anglicanism
15 years later. His first important play, Every Man in His Humour, with Shakespeare in the cast, was performed by the Lord Chamberlain's Company at the Curtain in 1598, and Every Man Out of His Humour at the Globe in 1599. Cynthia's Revels (1600) and Poetaster (1600-1, attacking Dekker and Marston) were performed by the Children of the Queen's Chapel. His first extant tragedy, Sejanus, was given at the Globe by Shakespeare's company, 1603; his first court masque, The Masque of Blackness,
written to accomodate Queen Anne's desire to appear a a Negress, was
given on Twelfth Night, 1605. In that year he was imprisoned and in
danger of having his nose and ears slit, for his share in Eastward Hoe,
and gave evidence to the Privy Council concerning the Gunpowder Plot.
Then followed the period of his major plays: Volpone, acted at both the
Globe and the two universities, 1605-6, Epicene, or The Silent Woman, 1609-10; The Alchemist, 1610; and Bartholomew Fair
(1614). In 1612-13 he was in France as tutor to Ralegh's son, and in
1618-19 journeyed on foot to Scotland, where he stayed with Drummond of
Hawthornden, who recorded their conversation.
Though not formally appointed the first poet laureate, the essentials
of the position were conferred on Jonson in 1616, when a pension was
granted to him by James I. In the same year he published a folio
edition of his Works, which
raised the drama to a new level of literary respectability, received an
honorary MA from Oxford University, and about this date became
lecturer in rhetoric at Gresham College in London. He was elected
chronologer of London in 1628. After The Devil Is an Ass (1616), he abandoned the public stage for ten years, and his later plays, The Magnetic Lady (1631) and A Tale of a Tub
(1633), show a relatively unsuccessful reliance on allegory and
symbolism. Dryden called them his 'dotages'. From 1605 onwards Jonson
was constantly producing masques for the court, with scenery by Inigo
Jones. This form of entertainment reached its highest elaboration in
Jonson's hands. He introduced into it the 'antimasque', an
antithetical, usually disorderly, prelude to the main action which
served to highlight by contrast the central theme of political and
social harmony. There are examples of this in The Masque of Queens
(1609), Love Restored (1612), Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at
Court (1616), Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618, which gave Milton
his idea for Comus), and Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion (1624). After Chloridia
(1631), his collaboration with Jones ended in a famous quarrel, which
Jonson treated in several vituperative poems, concerning the relative
priority of verbal and thematic content and spectacle. His last masques
were produced in 1633-4. His non-dramatic verse includes Epigrammes and The Forest,
printed in the Folio of 1616: notable among his epigrams are two tender
and moving epitaphs, Nos. xxii and xlv, 'On My First Daughter' (c.
1595) and 'On His First Sonne' (1603) ('Farewell, thou child of my
right hand, and joy'). The Underwood and a translation of Horace's Ars Poetica were printed in 1640. His chief prose works are The English Grammar and Timber, or Discoveries, printed in 1640.
During the reign of James I Jonson's literary prestige and influence
were unrivalled. He presided over a literary circle which met at the
Mermaid Tavern, and later in the Apollo Room of the Devil and St
Dunstan Tavern, where his leges conviviales
or 'social rules' were inscribed over the mantlepiece. His friends
included Shakespeare, whom he loved 'on this side idolatry', Donne, F.
Bacon, George Chapman, Beaumont, Fletcher, Cotton, and Selden, and
among the younger writers (who styled themselves the 'sons' or 'tribe
of Ben' R. Brome, Carew, Cartwright, Sir K. Digby, Lord Falkland,
Herrick, Nabbes, Randolph, and Suckling. His chief patrons were the
Sidney family, the earl of Pembroke, the countess of Bedford, and the
duke and duchess of Newcastle. Jonson suffered a stroke in 1628, after
which he was perhaps permanently bedridden until his death in August
1637. He was buried in Westminster Abbey under a tombstone bearing the
inscription 'O rare Ben Jonson', and celebrated in a collection of
elegies entitled Jonsonus Virbius (1638).
As a man Jonson was arrogant and quarrelsome, but fearless,
warm-hearted, and intellectually honest. His reputation declined
sharply from about 1700, as Shakespeare's, with whom he was inevitably
compared, increased, but in this century it has revived, thanks partly
to the comprehensive edition of C. H. Herford and P. and E. Simpson (11
vols, 1925-52), vols. i and ii of which contain the standard biography.
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- Un audio sobre la vida de BEN JONSON.
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Ben Jonson: NIVEL AVANZADO
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