What, according to Dryden, are Ben Jonson’s virtues as a playwright?

What, according to Dryden, are Ben Jonson’s virtues as a playwright?

According to Dryden in An Essay on Dramatic Poesy, Ben Jonson is among the best known writers and theorists of English renaissance literature, second in reputation only to Shakespeare. A prolific   dramatist and a man of letters highly learned in the classics, he profoundly influenced Augustan age through his emphasis on the precepts of Horace, Aristotle and other classical Greek and Latin thinkers.

He was master of mankind love in any of his scenes. His genius was too serious to do it gracefully; he was deeply conversant in the ancient, Greek and Latin. Some time he translated word to word from ancient. Dryden remarks on Ben Jonson who is compared with Shakespeare and in this way the respective merits of the two are brought out.

“As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived if we look upon him while he was himself (For his last plays were but his dotages) I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theater ever had. He was a most severe judge of himself as well as others. In his work you find little to retrench or alter.wit and language and humor also in some measure we had before him I but sometime, something drama was waiting till he came .He managed his strength to more advantage then any who preceded him .You seldom find him making love in any of his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully especially when he knew he came after those who performed both of such a height”.......................................................................................................................................


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