This concise biography surveys Jonson's career and provides an introduction to his works in the context of Jacobean politics, court patronage and his many literary rivalries. Stressing his wit and inventiveness, it explores the strategies by which he attempted to maintain his independence from the conditions of theatrical production and from his patrons and introduces new evidence that, despite his vaunted classicism, he repeatedly appropriated the matter or forms of other English writers in order to demonstrate his own artistic superiority.

Preface - Acknowledgements - Fathers - The Actor-Playwright - The Emerging Classicist - Comical Satire and the War of the Theatres - Matters of State - Learned Inventions - Jonson and London Life - The Poet and His Patrons - The King's Poet - The Beleaguered Muse - Epilogue: Sons - Suggestions for Further Reading - Notes - Index