Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – 6 August 1637) was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair.

A man of vast reading and a seemingly insatiable appetite for controversy, Jonson had an unparalleled breadth of influence on Jacobean and Caroline playwrights and poets.

Of Scottish Border country descent. By the summer 1597, Jonson actoring career was beginning to flourish with a fixed engagement in the Admiral's Men. By this time Jonson had begun to write original plays for the Admiral's Men.

In 1598 Jonson produced his first great success, Every Man in His Humour, capitalising on the vogue for humorous plays which George Chapman had begun with An Humorous Day's Mirth. William Shakespeare was among the first actors to be cast.

Jonson's other work for the theatre in the last years of Elizabeth I's reign was marked by fighting and controversy.

At the beginning of the reign of James I of England in 1603 Jonson joined other poets and playwrights in welcoming the new king.

By 1616, Jonson pursued a more prestigious career, writing masques for James' court. The Satyr (1603) and The Masque of Blackness (1605) are two of about two dozen masques which Jonson wrote for James or for Queen Anne;

In 1618 Jonson set out for his ancestral Scotland on foot. He spent over a year there, and the best-remembered hospitality which he enjoyed was that of the Scottish poet, William Drummond of Hawthornden, in April 1619, sited on the River Esk. Drummond undertook to record as much of Jonson's conversation as he could in his diary, and thus recorded aspects of Jonson's personality that would otherwise have been less clearly seen. It is this diary that forms this documentary.

Jonson died on 6 August 1637 and his funeral was held on 9 August. He is buried in the north aisle of the nave in Westminster Abbey, with the inscription "O Rare Ben Johnson" set in the slab over his grave.

Produced by Kieran Sheedy

First broadcast 27th January 1974

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