Category: Fleming

Though Jonson seems proudest of his tragedies on classical themes–Sejanjus and Catiline–neither was a hit.  In fact Sejanus, which invited comparisons between the degenerate courtiers of Elizabeth and those of Tiberius–aroused hostility against the poet.  Jonson was also one of a number of Elizabethan writers–Marston and Donne–who excoriated the evils of their time without necessarily correcting any of their own personal vices.  As he grew older, however, Jonson’s satires increasingly took on the gentle ironic tone of Horace instead of the Juvenalian savagery affected by his rivals.  It is significant that the 1590’s were the great years for English satire,...

Part II Jonson wrote some fine poetry and well-crafted plays, but I think he may have missed his calling, which was to be a scholar.  Unfortunately, he did not finish Westminster and never attended university, though both Oxford and Cambridge were later to award him degrees.  Instead, he learned the art of a bricklayer, a trade he practiced before running away to enlist as a soldier and afterwards, again, when his literary career was stalled.  Jonson had a pugnacious disposition and must have enjoyed war.  Fighting in the low countries in 1591, by his own account, he ostentatiously took the...

This is a revised and improved version of a talk I gave at a Summer School on Elizabethan/Jacobean England.     In the north aisle of the nave of Westminster Abbey there is a tomb of a man buried vertically with the inscription, “O Rare Ben Johnson.” [sic]  The inscription was made at the request of a casual visitor who happened to be walking by. The misspelling is believed to be the work of those who replaced the original at some point.  The unusual positioning is explained by an anecdote.  Jonson was being chaffed, so the story goes, by the...