Editing Ben Jonson (section)

===Drama===
Apart from two tragedies, ''[[Sejanus (play)|Sejanus]]'' and ''[[Catiline: His Conspiracy|Catiline]]'', that largely failed to impress Renaissance audiences, Jonson's work for the public theatres was in comedy. These plays vary in some respects. The minor early plays, particularly those written for [[boy player]]s, present somewhat looser plots and less-developed characters than those written later, for adult companies. Already in the plays which were his salvos in the Poets' War, he displays the keen eye for absurdity and hypocrisy that marks his best-known plays; in these early efforts, however, the plot mostly takes second place to a variety of incident and comic set-pieces. They are, also, notably ill-tempered. [[Thomas Davies (bookseller)|Thomas Davies]] called ''Poetaster'' "a contemptible mixture of the serio-comic, where the names of [[Augustus Caesar]], [[Maecenas]], [[Virgil]], [[Horace]], [[Ovid]] and [[Tibullus]], are all sacrificed upon the altar of private resentment". Another early comedy in a different vein, ''[[The Case is Altered]]'', is markedly similar to Shakespeare's romantic comedies in its foreign setting, emphasis on genial wit and love-plot. Henslowe's diary indicates that Jonson had a hand in numerous other plays, including many in genres such as English history with which he is not otherwise associated.

The comedies of his middle career, from ''[[Eastward Hoe]]'' to ''[[The Devil Is an Ass]]'' are for the most part [[city comedy]], with a London setting, themes of trickery and money, and a distinct moral ambiguity, despite Jonson's professed aim in the Prologue to ''[[Volpone]]'' to "mix profit with your pleasure". His late plays or "[[wikt:dotage|dotages]]", particularly ''[[The Magnetic Lady]]'' and ''[[The Sad Shepherd]]'', exhibit signs of an accommodation with the romantic tendencies of [[English Renaissance theatre|Elizabethan comedy]].

Within this general progression, however, Jonson's comic style remained constant and easily recognisable. He announces his programme in the prologue to the [[folio (printing)|folio]] version of ''[[Every Man in His Humour]]'': he promises to represent "deeds, and language, such as men do use". He planned to write comedies that revived the classical premises of Elizabethan dramatic theory—or rather, since all but the loosest English comedies could claim some descent from [[Plautus]] and [[Terence]], he intended to apply those premises with rigour.<ref>Doran, 120ff.</ref> This commitment entailed negations: after ''The Case is Altered'', Jonson eschewed distant locations, noble characters, romantic plots and other staples of Elizabethan comedy, focusing instead on the satiric and realistic inheritance of [[new comedy]]. He set his plays in contemporary settings, peopled them with recognisable types, and set them to actions that, if not strictly realistic, involved everyday motives such as greed and [[jealousy]]. In accordance with the temper of his age, he was often so broad in his characterisation that many of his most famous scenes border on the [[farce|farcical]] (as [[William Congreve]], for example, judged ''Epicoene''). He was more diligent in adhering to the [[classical unities]] than many of his peers—although as [[Margaret Cavendish]] noted, the unity of action in the major comedies was rather compromised by Jonson's abundance of incident. To this classical model, Jonson applied the two features of his style which save his classical imitations from mere pedantry: the vividness with which he depicted the lives of his characters and the intricacy of his plots. Coleridge, for instance, claimed that ''[[The Alchemist (play)|The Alchemist]]'' had one of the three most perfect plots in literature.