Ben Jonson, who was with Shakespeare and Marlowe one of three principal playwrights of his age, was also one of its most original and influential poets. Known best for the country house poem ‘To Penshurst’ and his moving elegy ‘On my First Son’, his work inspired the whole generation of seventeenth-century poets who declared themselves the ‘Sons of Ben’. This edition brings his three major verse publications, Epigrams (1616), The Forest (1616), and Underwood (1641) together with his large body of uncollected poems to create the largest collection of Jonson’s verse that has been published. It thus gives readers a comprehensive view of the wide range of his achievement, from satirical epigrams through graceful lyrics to tender epitaphs. Though he is often seen as the preeminent English poet of the plain style, Jonson employed a wealth of topical and classical allusion and a compressed syntax which mean his poetry can require as much annotation for the modern reader as that of his friend John Donne. This edition not only provides comprehensive explanation and contextualization aimed at student and non-specialist readers alike, but presents the poems in a modern spelling and punctuation that brings Jonson’s poetry to life.

In the first edition of this now-classic text, Richard Peterson offered an important revaluation of the poetry of Ben Jonson and a new appreciation of the way in which the classical doctrine of imitation-the creative use of the thoughts and words of predecessors-permeates and shapes Jonson's critical ideas and his work as a whole. The publication of the original book in 1981 led to a reinterpretation of the poems and a coherent view of Jonson's philosophy; the resulting portrait of Jonson served as a corrective to earlier views based primarily on the satiric poems and plays. This second edition of Imitation and Praise in the Poems of Ben Jonson makes Peterson's important scholarship available to a new generation of scholars and students.

This volume offers an abundant and representative selection of the verse of Ben Jonson and the Cavalier poets.

Bringing together leading Jonson scholars, Ben Jonson and Posterity provides new insights into this remarkable writer's reception and legacy over four centuries. Jonson was recognised as the outstanding English writer of his day and has had a powerful influence on later generations, yet his reputation is one of the most multifaceted and conflicted for any writer of the early modern period. The volume brings together multiple critical perspectives, addressing book history, the practice of reading, theatrical influence and adaptation, the history of performance, cultural representation in portraiture, film, fiction, and anecdotes to interrogate Jonson's 'myth'. The collection will be of great interest to all Jonson scholars, as well as having a wider appeal among early modern literary scholars, theatre historians, and scholars interested in intertextuality and reception from the Renaissance to the present day.

THE greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least in his age. Ben Jonson came of the stock that was centuries after to give to the world Thomas Carlyle; for Jonson's grandfather was of Annandale, over the Solway, whence he migrated to England. Jonson's father lost his estate under Queen Mary, "having been cast into prison and forfeited." He entered the church, but died a month before his illustrious son was born, leaving his widow and child in poverty. Jonson's birthplace was Westminster, and the time of his birth early in 1573. He was thus nearly ten years Shakespeare's junior, and less well off, if a trifle better born. But Jonson did not profit even by this slight advantage. His mother married beneath her, a wright or bricklayer, and Jonson was for a time apprenticed to the trade.

This collection of poems demonstrates Jonson's polished urbanity, direct expression, and classicism, and reveals why these traits have been especially valued in modern times. Carefully structured poem sequences display Jonson's command of poetic form and involve the reader in evaluating a range of shifting perspectives.