About the Book
The Case is Altered, comedy (ca. 1597–98; printed 1609), with Henry Porter and Anthony Munday?
J. was the founder of a new style of English comedy, original, powerful, and interesting, but lacking in spontaneity and nature. His characters tend to become mere impersonations of some one quality or “humour,” as he called it. Thus he is the herald, though a magnificent one, of decadence. He painted in general with a powerful, but heavy hand; in his masques, however, he often shows a singular gracefulness, especially in the lyrics which he introduces. His character, as given by Drummond, is not a particularly attractive one, “a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others, given rather to lose a friend than a jest, jealous of every word and action of those about him, especially after drink ... a dissembler of ill parts which reign in him, a bragger of some good that he wanteth ... passionately kind and angry ... oppressed with fantasy which hath ever mastered his reason.” There must, however, have been far other qualities in a man who could command, as J. undoubtedly did, the goodwill and admiration of so many of the finest minds of his time. In person he was tall, swarthy, marked with small-pox, and in later years burly.
About the Author
Ben Jonson, 1573–1637
Poet and dramatist, was probably born in Westminster. His father, who died before Ben was four, seems to have come from Carlisle, and the family to have originally belonged to Annandale. He was sent to Westminster School, for which he seems to have been indebted to the kindness of W. Camden, who was one of the masters. His mother, meanwhile, had married a bricklayer, and he was for a time put to that trade, but disliking it, he ran away and joined the army, fighting against the Spaniards in the Low Countries. Returning to England about 1592 he took to the stage, both as an actor and as a playwright. In the former capacity he was unsuccessful. In 1598, having killed a fellow-actor in a duel, he was tried for murder, but escaped by benefit of clergy. About the same time he joined the Roman Catholic Church, in which he remained for 12 years. It was in 1598 also that his first successful play, Every Man in his Humour, was produced, with Shakespeare as one of the players. Every Man out of his Humour [1599], Cynthia’s Revels [1600], and The Poetaster [1601], satirising the citizens, the courtiers, and the poets respectively, followed. The last called forth several replies, the most notable of which was the Satiromastix (Whip for the Satirist) of Dekker, a severe, though not altogether unfriendly, retort, which J. took in good part, announcing his intention of leaving off satire and trying tragedy. His first work in this kind was Sejanus [1603], which was not very favourably received. It was followed by Eastward Ho, in which he collaborated with Marston and Chapman. Certain reflections on Scotland gave offence to James I., and the authors were imprisoned, but soon released. From the beginning of the new reign J. devoted himself largely to the writing of Court masques, in which he excelled all his contemporaries, and about the same time entered upon the production of the three great plays in which his full strength is shown. The first of these, Volpone, or the Fox, appeared in 1605; Epicæne, or the Silent Woman in 1609, and The Alchemist in 1610. His second and last tragedy, Catiline, was produced in 1611.
