Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

1572 – 1637

Ben Jonson was an English playwright and poet whose works helped define the cultural landscape of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. He is best known for his satirical plays Volpone (1606), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614). A close contemporary of William Shakespeare, he famously contributed the prefatory poem “To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare” to the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays (1623).