Amateur Reader (Tom)
After triumphantly beating up John Marston, Ben Jonson indulged in some Shakespeare envy and wrote a history play, or perhaps a tragedy, Sejanus His Fall (1603), about the soldier who rose to rule the Roman empire, for a few years, under dissolute Emperor Tiberius, before overreaching and being...
Amateur Reader (Tom)
It’s the War of the Theatres! Ben Jonson feuding with John Marston and Thomas Dekker! Who cares! Poetaster, or the Arraignment (1601) features two key scenes where Jonson, under the guise of Horace, is tormented by and then torments Marston, the bad poet of the title. Dekker, a mere hack, gets...
Amateur Reader (Tom)
Ben Jonson was, like Shakespeare, an actor-playwright from a modest background. He had a better education, of which he was enormously vain, and had a Horatian, satirical temperament, compared to the Ovidian Shakespeare and Marlowe. More importantly, he was a born Londoner. His best plays are...