Tag Archives: Ben Jonson

“Language most shows a man. Speak that I may see thee.” — Ben Jonson

Posted on June 11, 2025 by sheila

“O rare Benn Johnson.” — Jonson’s incorrectly-spelled epitaph in Westminster Abbey It’s his birthday today. Ben Jonson did everything. Plays, poems, satires, elegies, epigrams. His talent was wide and flexible. Everything he wrote feels inevitable. However, as Michael Schmidt writes … Continue reading →

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When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, / Hath put a spirit of youth in everything …

Posted on April 23, 2025 by sheila

Today is (supposedly, roughly) the birthday of William Shakespeare. April 23, 1564. (Title of the post from Sonnet 98.) One of the things I think about when I think about Shakespeare, is my late great teacher Doug Moston, who died … Continue reading →

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“For I, the chiefest lamp of all the earth…” — Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine

Posted on February 6, 2025 by sheila

Maybe this is him. I’m armed with more than complete steel, The justice of my quarrel. — Christopher Marlowe, Lust’s Dominion. Act iii. Sc. 4. Playwright, poet, prodigy, agent in Her Majesty’s secret service: the incomparable Christopher Marlowe was born … Continue reading →

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“The fault that I acknowledge in myself is to have descended to print anything in verse.” — John Donne

Posted on January 22, 2025 by sheila

“So difficult and opaque it is, I am not certain what it is I print.” — first publisher of the work of John Donne It’s his birthday today. John Donne (1572-1631) was a poet and an Anglican priest (born a … Continue reading →

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“My thoughts bustle along like a Surinam toad, with little toads sprouting out of back, side, and belly, vegetating while it crawls.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Posted on October 21, 2024 by sheila

He looked at his own Soul with a telescope. What seemed all irregular, he saw and shewed to be beautiful Constellations: and he added to the Consciousness hidden worlds within worlds. –Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Notebooks It’s his birthday today. I’ll … Continue reading →

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The Books: Six Centuries of Great Poetry: A Stunning Collection of Classic British Poems from Chaucer to Yeats: Ben Jonson

Posted on August 16, 2010 by sheila

Daily Book Excerpt: Poetry Six Centuries of Great Poetry: A Stunning Collection of Classic British Poems from Chaucer to Yeats, edited by Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine “O rare Benn Johnson.” — Jonson’s epitaph in Westminster Abbey Rare, indeed. … Continue reading →

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National Poetry Month: Ben Jonson

Posted on April 16, 2007 by sheila

On My First Son Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy. Seven years wert thou leant to me, and I thee pay, Exacted by thy fate, on the … Continue reading →

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Passion Slept

Posted on March 5, 2005 by sheila

From bard to bard the frigid caution crept, Till declamation roar’d, while passion slept. — Ben Jonson

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Admiration

Posted on March 5, 2005 by sheila

“I admire him, but I love Shakespeare.” — John Dryden on Ben Jonson

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