JONSON, BEN. - Playwright and poet, contemporary of Shakespeare, born at Westminster in 1573 (probably on 11 June), died in London on 6 Aug. 1637. He was the only one among the Elizabethans to observe the classical precepts concerning the unities. Unlike his great contemporary, he set a large part of his plots in the London of his own time, although he imitated more directly than any other the models of sixteenth-century Italian theatre of classical derivation.
He also assimilated the theory of “humours,” according to which the character of the eccentric individual and, consequently, 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 conformity with this theory he constructed many of the protagonists of his comedies, the best known of which are: Every man in his humour (performed in 1598 by a company of actors among whom Shakespeare appeared), Every man out of his humour (performed in 1599), and, among the more mature comedies, Volpone (1606), a bitter satire on avarice, set in Venice; The Alchemist (1611); Sejanus (1603) and Cataline (1611) are two tragedies of rigorously classical form and structure. J. was also an exquisite lyric poet, especially in his masks (choreographic entertainments performed at court and in the houses of nobles).