Ben Jonson

This critical biography follows the English playwright and poet Ben Jonson from his early years and training through his first adult period as a writer. It then turns to his stage style, showing how he worked as a dramatist, and examines the plays that made his reputation. Separate chapters cover the court masques he wrote for royal audiences and the lyric poems he produced alongside them. The account closes with his second period of maturity and his later years.

John Addington Symonds wrote the book as a volume in the English Men of Letters series, combining a life story with close readings of the work. It suits readers interested in Jacobean drama, the court entertainments of the early seventeenth century, and the development of one of England's best-known writers.