Ben Jonson

English playwright, poet, and actor (1572–1637)

Ben Jonson (11 June 1572 – 6 August 1637) was a major poet and playwright in English Renaissance drama. Many critics consider Jonson to be among the best playwrights of his time, a time when William Shakespeare also lived.

Ben Jonson (circa 1617)

Jonson was classically educated. He was a well-read and cultured man of the English Renaissance with an appetite for controversy of all kinds.

He is best known for satirical plays Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone, or The Fox (c. 1606), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614); also his lyric and epigrammatic poetry'