Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonsonwas an English playwright, poet, actor and literary critic of the 17th century, whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours. He is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour, Volpone, or The Foxe, The Alchemistand Bartholomew Fayre: A Comedyand for his lyric poetry; he is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth11 June 1572
If you be sick, your own thoughts will make you sick
Still to be neat, still to be drest, / As you were going to a feast.
That for which all virtue now is sold, and almost every vice- almighty gold
For a good poet's made as well as born.
There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.
This is the danger, when vice becomes a precedent
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair, / Now the sun is laid to sleep, / Seated in thy silver chair, / State in wonted manner keep: / Hesperus entreats thy light, / Goddess, excellently bright.
Ramp up my genius, be not retrograde; But boldly nominate a spade a spade.
Follow a shadow, it still flies you,Seem to fly it, it will pursue.So court a mistress, she denies you;Let her alone, she will court you.Say, are not women truly, thenStyled but the shadows of us men?
Follow a shadow, it still flies you, Seem to fly it, it will pursue. So court a mistress, she denies you; Let her alone, she will court you. Say, are not women truly, then Styled but the shadows of us men?
Soul of the Age! / The applause! delight! the wonder of our stage! / My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by / Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie / A little further, to make thee a room; / Thou art a monument without a tomb.
I do hold it, and will affirm it before any prince in Europe, to be the most sovereign and precious weed that ever the earth rendered to the use of man.
If he were / To be made honest by an act of parliament, / I should not alter in my faith of him.