JONSON, BEN. — A playwright and poet contemporary with Shakespeare, born in Westminster in 1573 (probably on 11 June), died in London on 6 August 1637. He was the only one among the Elizabethans who adhered to the classical precepts regarding the unities. Unlike his great contemporary, he set much of his plots in contemporary London, though he drew more directly than any other from the 16th-century Italian theatre of classical derivation.
He also assimilated that theory of the “humours,” according to which the disposition of an eccentric individual—and thus of the comic type—would be determined by the excess of one of the four humours said to constitute the essence of the human organism: hot, cold, moist, dry. In keeping with this theory he constructed many of the leading characters in his comedies, the best known of which are: Every Man in His Humour (performed in 1598 by a company that included Shakespeare), Every Man Out of His Humour (performed in 1599), and, among his more mature comedies, Volpone (1606), a bitter satire on avarice set in Venice; The Alchemist (1611), Sejanus (1603), and Catiline (1611) are two tragedies of rigorously classical form and structure. J. was also an exquisite lyricist, especially in his masks (choreographic spectacles performed at court and in the houses of nobles).