Ben Jonson Plan

Milton, Congreve, Swift, and Huxley. Recent scholarship has sought to place Jonson in the theatrical and political milieu of London, addressing his relationship with his audience and the monarchy. This focus on historical context has also produced an emphasis on the former bricklayer’s “self-fashioning” into dramatist, critic, and finally the first poet laureate. Many critics now regard him as a fore-runner in the 17th-century move­ment toward classicism, and his plays are often ad­mired for their accurate depictions of the men and women of his day, their mastery of form, and their successful blend of the serious and the comic, the top­ical, and the timeless.