Ben+Jonson


 * Ben Jonson[[image:http://schools-wikipedia.org/images/677/67765.jpg width="240" height="313" align="right"]] **

Benjamin Jonson was born in June in 1572, and died in August in 1637. He was son of a clergyman. When he was young he went at Westminster school, and worked in his stepfather’s bricklaying. He married Anne Lewis on November 14, 1594.

He was a dramatist, lyric poet, and literary critic. He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I. Among his major plays are the comedies; //Every Man in His Humour// (1598), //Volpone// (1605), and //The Alchemist// (1610).

In the early seventeenth-century, together with John Donne and Robert Burton he inherited a system of knowledge founded on analogy, order, and hierarchy. In this system, a monarch was like God.

The shift towards “new” poetic genres was led by Ben Jonson, with John Donne and George Herbert. These included classical elegy and satire, epigram, verse epistle, meditative religious lyric, and the country-house poem.

Jonson distinguished himself as an acute observer of urban manners. He mentored a group of younger poets, including Herrick and Carew, known as Sons of Ben.

A poem called "To Celia", by Ben Jonson, read aloud. media type="youtube" key="K6PIDNhf2yE" height="390" width="480"

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 * The History of English Literature, page 25