Ben Jonson

Abstract

In the opening chapter of this book we looked at a play called Youth. There we saw the central character, Youth himself, pursuing his own selfish desires and rebelling against the established moral and social order. Since then we have seen that the plays of Marlowe and Webster have a similar structure, with both writers presenting characters whose individual desires bring them into conflict with the world around them. The plays of Ben Jonson follow this same broad pattern and deal with the same broad issues. This may seem surprising because most of Jonson’s plays are comedies, whereas the other plays we have looked at are tragedies. Yet if we look at what makes a comedy and what makes a tragedy we should be able to see that, while comedy and tragedy differ in tone and effect, they are essentially concerned with the same issues, the same questions of human behaviour.