Building in Language

Ben Jonson was born on June 11, 1572, in London, a month after his father died. His mother remarried a bricklayer, and Jonson learned the trade. He laid bricks, mixed mortar, built walls. He hated it. What he wanted was to write, and eventually he did, but the experience of construction stayed. His plays were engineered with the precision of someone who knew that a weak foundation collapses the whole structure.

He attended Westminster School, studying Latin, Greek, and classical rhetoric. He never went to university. His first major success came in 1598 with "Every Man in His Humour." Shakespeare acted in it. The two knew each other well. Jonson admired Shakespeare but found him frustrating -- sprawling, loose, full of improbabilities. Jonson's plays were tight, controlled, classical.

title page of ben jonson's 1616 folio works -- the first time an english author had collected their own plays and poems into a single volume. source: wikimedia commons

His best-known works -- "Volpone," "The Alchemist," "Bartholomew Fair" -- mock greed, hypocrisy, gullibility. Plots are intricate, deceptions collapsing at the end. He also wrote masques for King James I, collaborating with architect Inigo Jones on productions combining poetry, music, and stagecraft. They argued constantly. Jonson believed words mattered most. Jones believed visual design did. The partnership produced innovation and ended in mutual resentment.

Jonson was the first English author to publish a collected edition of his own works, in 1616. Critics mocked the idea that plays were serious literature. He did not care. The folio established the precedent Shakespeare's colleagues followed with the First Folio seven years later. Jonson died in 1637, buried in Westminster Abbey. His gravestone reads "O Rare Ben Jonson." He built plays the way a mason builds a wall, and some are still standing.