936c Jonson, Benjamin. (ca. 1572-1637) The Workes of Benjamin Jonson.

London: by Richard Bishop, and are to be sold by Andrew Crooke in St. Paules, Church-yard, 1640

$7,000

Folio, 7 x 11 in. Second edition. A-Z6, Aa-Zz6, Aaa-Kkk6, Lll4, A-T6. The frontispiece portrait of Jonson copied from Robert Vaughn’s plate, and the engraved title page are present in this copy. The binding is full contemporary calfskin, worn. The front board is slightly loose, and the top margin of the title page has been trimmed closely. The edges of the first few leaves have a small tear in the margin and with some staining near the back. Otherwise, this copy has some typical browning but is in good condition overall.
The second edition of the collected Workes was published three years after Jonson’s death. It contains fifteen works by Jonson, two of which were performed at the Globe theater in London by Shakespeare’s company. Shakespeare himself performed in Jonson’s ‘Every Man in His Humor’ in 1598 and ‘Sejanus’ was performed there five years later in 1603.

“Jonson’s life was tough and turbulent. After his father’s early death, Ben was adopted in infancy by a bricklayer and educated by the great classical scholar and antiquarian William Camden, before necessity drove him to enter the army. In Flanders, where the Dutch, with English help, were warring against the Spaniards, he fought singlehanded with one of the enemy before the massed armies, and killed his man. Returning to England about 1595, he began to work as an actor and playwright but was drawn from one storm center to another. He killed a fellow actor in a duel, and escaped the gallows only by pleading ‘benefit of the clergy’ (i.e., by proving he could read and write, which entitled him to plead before a more lenient court). He was jailed for insulting the Scottish nation at a time when King James was newly arrived from Scotland. He took furious part in an intricate set of literary wars with his fellow playwrights. Having converted to Catholicism, he was the object of deep suspicion after the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes (1605), when the phobia against his religion reached its height. Yet he rode out all these troubles, growing mellower as he grew older, and in his latter years became the unofficial literary dictator of London, the king’s pensioned poet, a favorite around the court, and the good friend of men like Shakespeare, Donne, Francis Beaumont, John Selden, Francis Bacon, dukes, diplomats, and distinguished folk generally. In addition, he engaged the affection of younger men (poets like Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, and Sir John Suckling, speculative thinkers like Lord Falkland and Sir Kenelm Digby), who delighted to christen themselves ‘sons of Ben.’ The Sons of Ben provided the nucleus of the entire Cavalier school of English poets.” (Norton)

STC 14753; See Pforzheimer 560.