Ben Jonson
English playwright, poet, and actor (1572–1637)
Ben Jonson was an English playwright, poet and actor. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence on English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone, or The Fox, The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614), and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry. He is regarded as "the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I."
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ben Jonson” is english playwright, poet, and actor (1572–1637). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Jonson, English and playwright, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “english playwright, poet, and actor (1572–1637)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1598, 1610 and 1614.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Ben Jonson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.