Editing Ben Jonson (section)

==Relationship with Shakespeare==
[[File:Shakespeare and Jonson at the Mermaid Tavern.jpg|thumb|A 19th-century engraving illustrating [[Thomas Fuller]]'s story of [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]] and Jonson debating at the [[Mermaid Tavern]]]]

There are many legends about Jonson's rivalry with [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]]. William Drummond reports that during their conversation, Jonson scoffed at two apparent absurdities in Shakespeare's plays: a nonsensical line in ''[[Julius Caesar (play)|Julius Caesar]]'' and the setting of ''[[The Winter's Tale]]'' on the non-existent seacoast of Bohemia. Drummond also reported Jonson as saying that Shakespeare "wanted art" (i.e., lacked skill).<ref name="arte">{{cite book |editor-last=Patterson |editor-first=Richard Ferrar |title=Ben Jonson's conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden |date=1923 |publisher=Blackie |location=London |page=5 |url=https://archive.org/details/benjonsonsconver00jonsuoft/page/5/mode/2up |oclc=1070005576}}</ref>

In [[s:On Shakespeare|"De Shakespeare Nostrat"]] in ''Timber'', which was published posthumously and reflects his lifetime of practical experience, Jonson offers a fuller and more conciliatory comment. He recalls being told by certain actors that Shakespeare never blotted (i.e., crossed out) a line when he wrote. His own claimed response was "Would he had blotted a thousand!"{{efn|Studies based on W. W. Greg's ''The Shakespeare First Folio'' have noted there appear to be passages that Shakespeare wrote and then changed. When printed, the printers did not properly sort the original from the final version of such passages, so traces remain of both.<ref name="Shakespeare's Deletions and False Starts">{{cite journal |last1=Honigmann |first1=E. A. J. |title=Shakespeare's Deletions and False Starts |journal=The Review of English Studies |date=1 February 2005 |volume=56 |issue=223 |pages=37–48 |doi=10.1093/res/hgi003}}</ref>}} However, Jonson explains, "Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature: had an excellent ''Phantsie''; brave notions and gentle expressions: wherein hee flow'd with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stopp'd".<ref>{{cite book |last=Jonson |first=Ben |editor-last=Harrison |editor-first=G. B. |title=Discoveries, 1641; Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden, 1619 |date=1923 |publisher=John Lane, The Bodley Head |location=London |page=28 |series=The Bodley Head Quartos |url=https://archive.org/details/discoveries1641c0000jons}}</ref> Jonson concludes that "there was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned." When Shakespeare died, he said, "He was not of an age, but for all time."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Pogue |first1=Kate Emery |url=https://archive.org/details/shakespearesfrie00pogu_0 |title=Shakespeare's Friends |publisher=Praeger |year=2006 |isbn=0-275-98956-9 |location=London |page=[https://archive.org/details/shakespearesfrie00pogu_0/page/99 99] |quote=praised than to be pardoned age but for all time. |access-date=25 September 2016 |url-access=registration}}</ref>

[[Thomas Fuller]] relates stories of Jonson and Shakespeare engaging in debates at the [[Mermaid Tavern]]; Fuller imagines conversations in which Shakespeare would run rings around the more learned but more ponderous Jonson. That the two men knew each other personally is beyond doubt, not only because of the tone of Jonson's references to him but because Shakespeare's company produced a number of Jonson's plays, at least two of which (''[[Every Man in His Humour]]'' and ''[[Sejanus His Fall]]'') Shakespeare certainly acted in. However, it is now impossible to tell how much personal communication they had, and tales of their friendship cannot be substantiated.{{Citation needed|date=September 2016}}

Jonson's most influential and revealing commentary on Shakespeare is the second of the two poems that he contributed to the prefatory verse that opens Shakespeare's [[First Folio]]. This poem, [[s:To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare and What He Hath Left Us|"To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare and What He Hath Left Us"]], did a good deal to create the traditional view of Shakespeare as a poet who, despite "small Latine, and lesse Greeke",<ref>Baldwin, W. T. [https://web.archive.org/web/20060904145150/http://durer.press.uiuc.edu/baldwin/vol.1/html/2.html ''William Shakespere's <!-- [(sic)] --> Smalle Latine and Lesse Greeke'', 1944].</ref> had a natural genius. The poem has traditionally been thought to exemplify the contrast which Jonson perceived between himself, the disciplined and erudite classicist, scornful of ignorance and sceptical of the masses, and Shakespeare, represented in the poem as a kind of natural wonder whose genius was not subject to any rules except those of the audiences for which he wrote. But the poem itself qualifies this view:

{{poemquote|Yet must I not give Nature all: Thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.}}

Some view this elegy as a conventional exercise, but others see it as a heartfelt tribute to the "Sweet Swan of Avon", the "Soul of the Age!" It has been argued that Jonson helped to edit the First Folio, and he may have been inspired to write this poem by reading his fellow playwright's works, a number of which had been previously either unpublished or available in less satisfactory versions, in a relatively complete form.{{Citation needed|date=September 2016}}