The Works Of Ben Jonson

The extraordinary character of Ben Jonson has only recently been brought into the light. Critics traditionally exalted Shakespeare, at Jonson’s expense. In this biography, first published in 1986, the author presents a full and accurate account of Jonson’s life in modern times. Rosalind Miles follows Jonson from his obscure beginnings to his burial in Westminster Abbey, as the first Poet Laureate, in 1637. Her Jonson is vivid and vigorous, equally alive in his life and in his work. This title will be of interest to students of history, English literature and Renaissance drama.

'Compelling... Riggs's approach to the man-as-artist is to see him as a paradox, a man of reckless defiance who boasted openly about his womanizing and criminal record, and who nonetheless represented himself in Renaissance England as the great model of a self-restrained and chastely austere classical style of writing... David Riggs's eminently readable and generously illustrated study not only fully justifies our curiosity, but handles with admirable tact what might be lurid and sensational if our only interest were the gossip.'New York Times Book Review

Ben Jonson, who was with Shakespeare and Marlowe one of three principal playwrights of his age, was also one of its most original and influential poets. Known best for the country house poem ‘To Penshurst’ and his moving elegy ‘On my First Son’, his work inspired the whole generation of seventeenth-century poets who declared themselves the ‘Sons of Ben’. This edition brings his three major verse publications, Epigrams (1616), The Forest (1616), and Underwood (1641) together with his large body of uncollected poems to create the largest collection of Jonson’s verse that has been published. It thus gives readers a comprehensive view of the wide range of his achievement, from satirical epigrams through graceful lyrics to tender epitaphs. Though he is often seen as the preeminent English poet of the plain style, Jonson employed a wealth of topical and classical allusion and a compressed syntax which mean his poetry can require as much annotation for the modern reader as that of his friend John Donne. This edition not only provides comprehensive explanation and contextualization aimed at student and non-specialist readers alike, but presents the poems in a modern spelling and punctuation that brings Jonson’s poetry to life.