Ben Jonson

Jonson was born in London, England, in 1572. His father, a clergyman, died just months before Jonson was born, and his mother later remarried a bricklayer when Jonson was still a toddler. Jonson was educated at Westminster School, and while he hoped to attend the University of Cambridge, he left school to become an apprentice bricklayer. Jonson soon abandoned bricklaying and traveled to the Netherlands, where he served as a volunteer English soldier in Flanders. He returned to England in the early 1590s to work as an actor and was awarded the role of Hieronimo in an early production of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy. Jonson married a London woman named Ann Lewis in 1594, and while it is said that they had a rather contentious marriage, the couple had several children, including a daughter who died in infancy and a son who died of the bubonic plague when he was just seven years old. By 1597, Jonson was working exclusively as a playwright, and he staged his first successful play, Every Man in His Humour, in 1598. When James I was crowned the King of England in 1603, Jonson became a respected writer of masques, a form of courtly entertainment that involves singing, dancing, and acting. He wrote The Satyr that same year, followed by The Masque of Blackness in 1605. Jonson’s masques gained him royal favor and a pension of 60 pounds per year, and he began writing comedies, too, including Volpone in 1605, Epicoene in 1607, The Alchemist in 1610, and Bartholomew Fair in 1614. Beginning in the 1620s, Jonson’s health and productivity began to decline. He suffered multiple strokes and died on August 16, 1637, at the age of 65. Since his death, Jonson has been regarded as one of the most talented and prolific writers and theorists of the English Renaissance.