Shakespeare's Contemporaries And Successors In The Drama

 "A willing mind makes a hard journey easy"

Click Here For Decline Of Drama

Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I. Among his major plays are the comedies Every Man in His Humour in 1598. Ben Jonson was an English Stuart dramatist, lyric poet, and literary critic. Ben Jonson is best known for his satiric comedies. Jonson was called the first poet laureate. He was father of English classical comedy in England. Jonson is the most commanding literary figure among the Elizabethans. For twenty-five years he was the literary dictator of London, the chief of all the wits that gathered nightly at the old Devil Tavern. With his great learning, his ability, and his commanding position as poet laureate, he set himself squarely against his contemporaries and the romantic tendency of the age. He was known as war of theatres. For two things he fought bravely, to restore the classic form of the drama, and to keep the stage from its downward course. Apparently he failed. He killed a fellow actor Gabriel spenser in duel. He jailed three times in his life. T. S. Elliott called Jonson failed as a tragic dramatist. 

Life And Education 

Ben Jonson full name was byname of Benjamin Jonson was born on June 11, 1572 in London, England and he died on August 6, 1637, London. His father, who worked as minister, Clergyman. Jonson was born two months after his father died. He was adopted child. His stepfather was a bricklayer. He did not continue his schooling, probably because his stepfather forced him to engage in the more practical business of bricklaying. but by good fortune the boy was able to attend Westminster School. He spent a brief period as a soldier in Flanders, Netherlands. He received an honorary master of Arts degree from Oxford University. In 1623, his personal library was destroyed by fire. In 1592 and 1595 between he was married. Regarding his marriage Jonson described his wife to William Drummond as "a shrew, yet honest". The identity of Jonson's wife has always been obscure. 

Works 

His notable works were The Alchemist, Every Man out of His Humour, Volpone, Every Man in His Humour, Sejanus, Bartholomew Fair, Timber: or, Discoveries, Cynthia’s Revels, The Masque of Blackness, Epicoene or The Silent Woman,  a prose comedy. In his first great play, Every Man in His Humour in 1598, the satirical play, Shakespeare acted one of the parts, the globe theatre and that may have been the beginning of their long friendship. Ben Jonson is best known for the satirical plays Volpone, or The Fox in 1606, The Alchemist in 1610, Epicoene Or The Silent Woman in 1609 and Bartholomew Fair in 1614 and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry. many other less known comedies, Jonson wrote two great tragedies, Sejanus in 1603 and Catiline in 1611, upon severe classical lines. In 1597 a play which he co wrote with Thomas Nashe, The Isle of Dogs, sedition content, All copies burned. He jailed for the isle of dogs. Jonson wrote a number of different masques for king James' court. On returning to England, he became an actor and playwright, experiencing the life of a strolling player. He apparently played the leading role of Hieronimo or geronimo in Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy. By 1597 he was writing plays for Philip Henslowe, the leading impresario for the public theatre. The sad shepherd, left unfinished. Ben Jonson never created the character of any noble lady in his work. 

The comedy of Humour, is used in classical sense having four primary fluids, blood, phlegm, choler, melancholy, which are called Humour, whose mixture determines both a man's physical state and his character type. 

Death 

Jonson died on or around 16 August 1637 in Landon, England and his funeral was held the next day. He is buried in the north aisle of the nave in Westminster Abbey, with the inscription words O Rare Ben Johnson set in the slab over his grave.

Every Man in His Humour

The year 1598 marked an abrupt change in Jonson’s status, when Every Man in His Humour was successfully presented by the Lord Chamberlain’s theatrical company and his reputation was established. In this play Jonson tried to bring the spirit and manner of Latin comedy to the English popular stage by presenting the story of a young man with an eye for a girl. Every Man in His Humour was the first of three satires, its special aim was to ridicule the humors of the city. the second, Cynthia's revels, satirizes the humors of the court. The third, the poetaster, the result of a quarrel with his contemporaries. 

More 

He never takes liberties with historical facts, as Shakespeare does, but is accurate to the smallest detail. His dramas abound in classical learning, are carefully and logically constructed, and comedy and tragedy are kept apart, instead of crowding each other as they do in Shakespeare and in life. In one respect his comedies are worthy of careful reading,they are intensely realistic, presenting men and women of the time exactly as they were. From a few of Jonson's scenes we can understand better than from all the plays of Shakespeare, how men talked and acted during the Age of Elizabeth.

Beaumont And Fletcher 

Beaumont and Fletcher were the English dramatists. Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, who collaborated in their writing during the reign of James I. Beaumont and Fletcher were comedies and tragedies between about 1606 and 1613. They became known as a team early in their association, so much so that their joined names were applied to the total canon of Fletcher, their plays composed with various other collaborators including Philip Massinger and Nathan Field. they both came from noble and cultured families and were university trained. The two dramatists met at the Mermaid tavern under Ben Jonson's leadership and soon became inseparable friends, living and working together. Tradition has it that Beaumont supplied the judgment and the solid work of the play, while Fletcher furnished the high-colored sentiment and the lyric poetry, without which an Elizabethan play would have been incomplete. The work of these two men is so closely interwoven that, though Fletcher outlived Beaumont by nine years and the latter had no hand in some forty of the plays that bear their joint names, we still class them together. until the marriage of Beaumont in 1613 the two friends lived together near the Globe Theater in Southwark, sharing everything in the closest intimacy.

Francis Beaumont

Francis Beaumont was born in Leicestershire, England and He died on March 6, 1616 in London and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Beaumont entered Pembroke College, Oxford in 1597. His father dying the following year, he abruptly left the university without a degree. In 1613 Beaumont married. 

John Fletcher

John Fletcher was baptized December 20, 1579, Rye, Sussex, England he died on August 29, 1625 in London. His father, Richard Fletcher was minister of the parish. When not quite 12, John was apparently admitted pensioner of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and two years later became a Bible clerk.

Works

Their masterpieces plays were The Maid's Tragedy, tragedy and A King and No King, tragicomedy. The plays generally recognised as Beaumont Fletcher collaborations were The Captain, comedy, The Noble Gentleman, comedy, The Woman Hater, comedy, Cupid's Revenge, tragedy, Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding, tragicomedy. 

The first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647 contained 35 plays, 53 plays were included in the second folio in 1679. The canon of the Beaumont and Fletcher plays is approximately represented by the 52 plays in the folio Fifty Comedies and Tragedies. Scholars now believe that only 10 of these were by the two friends. History of English Literature attributes seven plays to the collaboration of the two friends. 

John Webster

John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist and a late contemporary of William Shakespeare. He have been largely devoted to the blood and thunder play began b Marlowe. Webster is best known for his two brooding English tragedies based on Italian sources.

Life And Education 

he born in 1580 in London, England and he died in 1632 in London, England. the son of a prominent coach maker. His father name John, His mother's name was Elisabeth. Webster's life is obscure, and the dates of his birth and death are not known. His father John and his Uncle Edward were Freemen of the Merchant Taylors' Company and Webster attended Merchant Taylors' School in Suffolk Lane, London.

Works 

His notable works were The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil. He have worked with William Rowley, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher, John Ford, and perhaps Philip Massinger. He began to write for the stage collaboration with Marston. he wrote Westward Ho in 1604 and Northward Ho in 1605, both of which were published in 1607. Other works were Anything for a quiet life in 1621, collaboration with middleton, The Devils Law-Case, published in 1623, a tragicomedy.

The White Devil, tragedy in five acts, performed and published as The White Divel in 1612. Based on historical events that occurred in Italy during the 1580, this dark Jacobean drama is considered one of the finest of the period. The White Devil was performed in the Red Bull Theatre. In The White Devil both evil and good characters are drawn into schemes involving political intrigue, adulterous desire, and bloody revenge. The White Devil, like Macbeth, is a tragedy of action; and The Duchess of Malfi, five-act tragedy, like King Lear, is a tragedy of suffering.

The Duchess of Malfi, first performed by the King's Men about 1614 and published nine years later. His collaboration with Thomas Dekker Christmas Comes but Once a Year in 1602. With Dekker he also wrote Sir Thomas Wyatt, which was printed in 1607 and probably first performed in 1602. He worked with Thomas Dekker again on two city comedies, Westward Ho in 1604 and Northward Ho in 1605. his earliest tragedy, are less mature in thought and expression, but more readable, because they seem to express Middleton's own idea of the drama rather than that of the corrupt court and playwrights of his later age.

Thomas Middleton

Thomas Middleton was late Elizabethan dramatist. Thomas Middleton was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. He exposed the vices of his time with a tinge of satire. Middleton wrote in many genres, including tragedy, history and city comedy. His best known plays are the tragedies The Changeling with William Rowley and Women Beware Women. He contributed to shakespeare's Macbeth and Timon of Athens. 

Life And Education 

Thomas Middleton born on April 1580 in London, England. Thomas Middleton baptised on 18 April 1580. He was the son of a bricklayer. Middleton was five years old when his father died and Middleton attended The Queen's College, Oxford, matriculating in 1598, but he did not graduate. By 1600 Middleton had spent two years at Oxford and had published three books of verse. he wrote and published three long poems in popular Elizabethan styles.

Works 

His notable works were The Revenger’s Tragedy, A Trick to Catch the Old-One, The Roaring Girl, A Game at Chess, The Changeling, Michaelmas Term, Women Beware Women, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, A Faire Quarrell. He learned to write plays by collaborating with Thomas Dekker, John Webster, and others for the producer Philip Henslowe.

Middleton’s masterpieces are two tragedies, Women Beware Women in 1621 and published in 1657 and The Changeling in 1622, with William Rowley and published in 1653. A Fair Quarrel in 1616 with Rowley, contains one of Middleton’s few heroes, Captain Ager, with his conflicts of conscience. Most of Middleton’s other plays are comedies. He collaborated with Dekker in The Honest Whore in 1604, and with Rowley and Philip Massinger in The Old Law in 1618, published in 1656. The game at chesse, political satire, A perfect piece of literary political art, called by t s eliot. The sponish Gipsy, romantic comedy, collaboration with Ford and Rowley. These work reminds us of as you like it and The changeling, praised by Lamb. 

Death 

Middleton died at his home at Newington Butts in Southwark, England in 1627, and was buried on 4 July in St Mary's churchyard. 

Women Beware Women tells the story of Bianca, a woman who escapes from her rich home to elope with the poor Leantio. Leantio is newly married to Bianca, the daughter of a wealthy family. Leantio is not wealthy; this creates insecurity for him over the relationship. Leantio's mother is also concerned about Bianca's former wealthy situation and thinks that Bianca might not be happy living with her and her son. Leantio tells his mother that they have to keep Bianca hidden because, otherwise, men might fall for her and then he would lose her. 

Thomas Haywood

He was an English playwright, actor and author in late Elizabethan era and early Jacobean theatre. He was best known for his masterpiece a woman killed with kindness, a domestic tragedy, first performed in 1603 at the rose theatre. He himself claimed to have written 220 plays, of which only 23 survived. 

Life And Education

Thomas Heywood born in about 1574, Lincolnshire, England. And he died on August 16, 1641 in London. the son of the clergyman, Robert Heywood. Heywood is said to have been educated at the University of Cambridge but left without a degree when his father died in 1593. he joined Philip Henslowe’s theatrical company, the Admiral’s Men, and was subsequently active in London as a playwright and actor for the rest of his life.

Works

Heywood'S best known plays are his domestic tragedies and comedies. Heywood's first play may have been The Four Prentises of London. His masterpiece, A Woman Killed with Kindness in 1607, domestic play, is one of the earliest middle class tragedies. His plays were so popular that they were sometimes performed at two theatres simultaneously. The most popular of his history play is If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody in 1605–06, is about Elizabeth I. His most important prose work ( long essay ) was An Apology for Actors (1612), an account of actors’ place and dignity and their role in society since antiquity. a moderately toned and reasonable reply to Puritan attacks on the stage, which contains a wealth of detailed information on the actors and acting conditions of Heywood's day. His play Edward 4 part 1, 2, history play, life of Edward 4 of England. His other play The Rape of Lucrece, true story. Heywood produced a number of nondramatic works, including translations, poems, and pamphlets on various topics. The most notable of these nondramatic works is the Apology for Actors. Heywood wrote numerous prose works, mostly pamphlets about contemporary subjects. 

Charles Lamb wrote that he was a prose Shakespeare. His other works were Love’s Mistress, And The Fair Maid of the Exchange, domestic drama doubtfully attributed to Heywood. His charming masque Love’s Mistress (1636) was seen by Charles I and his queen three times in eight days. Other works were A girl worth world, comedy of adventure and The English traveller, romantic drama. 

A Woman Killed with Kindness, Focusing on a married couple, The story deals with a woman who cheats on her husband with his best friend and the events that follow the incident. Throughout the play, she is overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and culpability, and struggles to find a way to redeem herself as a wife. A Woman Killed with Kindness was met with gracious reactions from critics and audiences alike. People have praised Heywood for his ability to write real and raw dialogue. Today, it is considered to be his magnum opus and covers the whole period of the Elizabethan drama. 

Thomas Dekker

Thomas Dekker was an English playwright and pamphleteer. He is noted for his vivid portrayals of London life and his sympathy for the lower classes. Dekker was a contemporary of Shakespeare, and you can feel the tone and energy of the time in this exciting play filled with love, miscommunication, humor, disguise, and war. Thomas dekker wrote mostly comedies, called dickens of elizabethan age. 

Life 

Thomas Dekker born in 1572, London, England, he died in 1632. He may have been born into a family of Dutch immigrants living in London. Nothing is known of dekker's parents and education. He acquired some knowledge of Latin, French and Dutch and he maybe have seen military service in his early years. 

Works

Thirteen more plays survive in which Dekker collaborated with such figures as Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Philip Massinger, John Ford, and William Rowley. The nine surviving plays that are entirely Dekker’s work, probably the best known are The Shoemakers Holiday in 1600 and The Honest Whore, Part 2 in 1630. These plays are typical of his work in their use of the moralistic tone of traditional drama, in the rush of their prose, in their boisterousness, and in their mixture of realistic detail with a romanticized plot.

About 1603 Dekker turned his hand to the writing of popular prose pamphlets. By 1610 he had produced at least 13 of these, The Gull's Hornbook in 1609, a valuable account of behaviour in the London theatres. his dramatic work, usually as a collaborator, The Honest Whore and The Roaring Girl written with Thomas Middleton. He wrote prose pamphlets as The Wonderfull Yeare in 1603, about the plague, The Belman of London in 1608, about roguery and crime. the sad description of London during the plague of that year. 

Westward hoe, a comedy and Northward hoe collaboration with webster. And The mall cut, collaboration with middleton. Dekker play was highly praised by t s eliot. He apparently wrote to support himself, and he had a hand in at least 42 plays written in the next 30 years. In the dispute known as the poets’ war or the war of the theatres, he was satirized in Ben Jonson’s Poetaster as Demetrius Fannius, a very simple honest fellow.. a dresser of plays.

Death 

From 1613 to 1619, he evidently wrote nothing, these years may have been spent in prison for debt. Dekker was likely in debt when he died. He died on 25 August 1632, London, United Kingdom. 

Best Work

The reader will find the best expression of dekker's personality and erratic genius in The Shoemaker’s Holiday, a humorous study of plain working people. 

The Shoemaker’s Holiday is a comedy by Thomas Dekker written during the reign of Elizabeth I in England and takes place during the reign of Henry VI when England is heading into war with France. 

A couple of aristocrats find themselves in a sticky situation, The Lord Mayor of London doesn’t want his daughter Rose to marry Rowland Lacy, who is the nephew to the Earl of Lincoln.The two young lovers are not of the same class, and this means that they are prohibited from marrying one another.However, Rose and Lacy will not acquiesce so easily. Lacy, who is called to war immediately decides not to go and instead disguises himself as a shoemaker. acutely aware of class differences between the two young people, Sir Hugh vows to stop the wedding. To avoid any possible courtship, the elder Lacy has his nephew given a command in the army of King Henry V, who is preparing to invade France.

Massinger, Ford, Shirley

Massinger, Ford, Shirley, These three men mark the end of the Elizabethan drama. Their work, done largely while the struggle was on between the actors and the corrupt court, on one side, and the Puritans on the other, shows a deliberate turning away not only from Puritan standards but from the high ideals of their own art to pander to the corrupt taste of the upper classes.

Philip Massinger

Philip Massinger was an English dramatist. he born in1583 and he died on 17 March 1640. he was baptised at St. Thomas's Salisbury on 24 November 1583. He apparently belonged to an old Salisbury family. He is described in his matriculation entry at St. Alban Hall, Oxford in 1602, as the son of a gentleman. he was in prison for debt. His plays plots and situations are usually so strained and artificial that the modern reader finds no interest in them. 

Works

His notable works were A New Way to Pay Old Debts, The Virgin Martyr, The Maid of Honour, The Fatal Dowry, The City Madam, The False One. Massinger collaborated on with Fletcher is The False One in 1620 and The Virgin Martyr in 1620 with Thomas Dekker, a historical play about the persecution of Christians under the Roman emperor. The Renegado, a tragicomedy. 

his two great comedies were A New Way to Pay Old Debts, his most popular and influential play, in which he expresses genuine indignation at economic oppression and social disorder, and The City Madam in 1632, dealing with similar evils but within a more starkly contrived plot that curiously combines naturalistic and symbolic modes.

Death 

Massinger died suddenly at his house near the Globe Theatre, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Saviour's, Southwark, on 18 March 1640 in London, England. In the entry in the parish register he is described as a stranger.

John Ford

John Ford was an English playwright and poet of the Jacobean and Caroline eras. His work is noted for its stylistically simple and pure expression of powerful, shocking themes.

Life 

John Ford born in England in 1586 and died in 1639. In 1602 Ford was admitted to the Middle Temple, where he studied law and wrote poems.

Works

His Notable works were Tis Pity She’s a Whore, The Broken Heart, The Lover’s Melancholy, Perkin Warbeck. He collaborated with Dekker in The Sun’s Darling in 1624, perhaps also in The Welsh Ambassador in 1623, and in three other plays, now lost. In about 1627 to 1638 Ford wrote plays by himself, mostly for private theatres. The Broken Heart is characteristic of Ford’s work in its depiction of a noble and virtuous heroine who is torn between her true love and an unhappy forced marriage, again with tragic consequences for all concerned. The Lover’s Melancholy is the best of Ford’s other plays, all of which are tragicomedies. 

Death 

Nothing is known of Ford's activities after 1639, when his last known play was printed. No record of his death or burial has been found, died in about 1639.

James Shirley 

Shirley was the most prolific and highly regarded dramatist during the reign of King Charles I, writing 31 plays, 3 masques, and 3 moral allegories. he was a prolific writer for the stage, producing more than thirty regular plays, tragedies, comedies, and tragicomedies. Shirley was given to imitation of his predecessors, and his very imitation is characteristic of an age which had lost its inspiration. He was an English poet and dramatist, one of the leading playwrights in the decade before the closing of the theatres by Parliament in 1642. 

Life And Education 

James Shirley born on September 1596, London, England and he buried on October 29, 1666, London, England. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, London, St John's College, Oxford, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. Degree and after M.A. Degree. 

Works 

In About 1624 he moved to London and became a playwright. His first play, The Schoole of Complement, was performed in 1625 at the Phoenix, Drury Lane. He wrote His first poem, Echo, or the Unfortunate Lovers was published in 1618. 

He is best remembered for his comedies of fashionable London life, including The Wittie Faire One (1628), Hyde Park (1632), and The Lady of Pleasure (1635). His best tragedies, both on dark, Italianate themes, are The Traytor in 1631 and The Cardinal in 1641. His elaborate masque The Triumph of Peace (1634) was performed at the Inns of Court and His Notable work. When the theatres closed in 1636, spread of the plague, Shirley became dramatist for St. Werburgh’s Theatre in Dublin.

1642 the theatres and glorious tradition of elizabethan dramas were closed. 

"Honest labor bears a lovely face"