Ben Jonson: To the First Folio

This book offers a critical assessment of the career of one of the most formidable figures of English literature, the most influential poet and dramatist of the early seventeenth century. Richard Dutton focuses on the greatest landmark of Jonson's career, the 1616 folio collection of his works with which he crowned his growing reputation as a man of letters, collecting together the majority of his most enduring works - including Every Man in his Humour, Volpone, The Alchemist; the tragedies Sejanus and Catiline; and the major masques and poems. The book relates these works (and another masterpiece, Bartholomew Fair, which belongs to the same period) to Jonson's tempestuous life and times, touching on such issues as his involvement with the Gunpowder Plot, his frequent confrontations with the political authorities, his emergence as Poet Laureate at Court and his often touchy relations with fellow authors like Shakespeare and Donne. But the principal aim throughout is to offer detailed critical analyses of Jonson's major works showing how, for all that they are rooted in the concerns of his own age, they are far more accessible and relevant to modern readers than is often assumed.