Ben Jonson

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Fathers

   • W. David Kay

   Pages 1-11

3. The Actor-Playwright

   • W. David Kay

   Pages 12-26

4. The Emerging Classicist

   • W. David Kay

   Pages 27-42

5. Comical Satire and the War of the Theatres

   • W. David Kay

   Pages 43-62

6. Matters of State

   • W. David Kay

   Pages 63-77

7. Learned Inventions

   • W. David Kay

   Pages 78-93

8. Jonson and London Life

   • W. David Kay

   Pages 94-113

9. The Poet and His Patrons

   • W. David Kay

   Pages 114-135

10. The King’s Poet

    • W. David Kay

    Pages 136-159

11. The Beleaguered Muse

    • W. David Kay

    Pages 160-183

12. Epilogue: Sons

    • W. David Kay

    Pages 184-189

13. Back Matter

    Pages 190-237

    PDF

This concise biography surveys Jonson's career and provides an introduction to his works in the context of Jacobean politics, court patronage and his many literary rivalries. Stressing his wit and inventiveness, it explores the strategies by which he attempted to maintain his independence from the conditions of theatrical production and from his patrons and introduces new evidence that, despite his vaunted classicism, he repeatedly appropriated the matter or forms of other English writers in order to demonstrate his own artistic superiority.

• biography
• Classicism
• English
• humour
• independence
• knowledge
• patrons
• play
• politics
• satire
• theatre

• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

  W. David Kay

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