Ben Jonson

Abstract

Benjamin Jonson was born in London and educated for a short time at Westminster School. On leaving school he followed his stepfather into the bricklaying trade, which he carried on (with a brief interval for military service in the Netherlands) until 1597, when he was employed by Philip Henslowe as an actor-writer. The following year he killed the actor Gabriel Spencer, and was sentenced to hang, but escaped execution by benefit of clergy, although he was dispossessed and branded; while in prison he was converted to Roman Catholicism. He began to write plays for children’s companies, and for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and thus became a colleague of Shakespeare; after the accession of King James, he wrote masques for the court for almost thirty years, often collaborating with Inigo Jones. In about 1610 he reverted to Anglicanism. In 1618 he walked to Scotland, where he stayed for a year and a half; there he met William Drummond, who recorded their conversations. In 1619 he was awarded an honorary MA by the University of Oxford, and began to teach rhetoric at Gresham College in London. In 1628 he was paralysed by a stroke, and was probably bedridden for the last nine years of his life.