Ben Jonson on his beloved, The Author Mr. William Shakespeare

Abstract

The relationship between Ben Jonson and Shakespeare has already been the subject of a paper at one of the Waterloo conferences on Elizabethan Theatre. In 1969 Samuel Schoenbaum, in “Shakespeare and Jonson: Fact and Myth,” gave us a judicious, as well as entertaining, account of the confused, inadequate or unevidenced stories that were current for several centuries, and are not yet dead.¹ He deplored the practice of “Jonson-baiting” and its consequences. Schoenbaum had had several predecessors.²You may think it unfortunate that one of the opening papers at a conference which is to be especially concerned with Ben Jonson should have reverted to the inevitable and odious comparison.