Themes in Ben Johnson’s Play

Quazi Mohammad Faisal

Biography:

Benjamin Johnson, more known as Ben Johnson, was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare and was one of the most learned men in Elizabethan times. He was born in London in 1572 and lost his father just a month before his birth. He was no stranger to strategy as soon after his father’s death, her mother was forced to marry a bricklayer. But interestingly, despite his tragic beginning of life, it was for his humor and comedy that he would be known (“Ben Johnson”, n.d.).

Johnson was educated in the Westminster school and contemporary great classical scholar William Camden was his mentor. Camden recognized Jonson's exceptional literary gifts and took the young man under his tutelage. Later, Camden proved to be right about Johnson as he received several honorary degrees from London universities, despite he never received any university education (Baskerville, 1934, pp. 827-830).

Johnson’s reputation was established as a writer of comedy. He was famous for his satirical plays. He was friends with his contemporary great English poet and playwright William Shakespeare. Shakespeare even acted in one of his plays called ‘Every Man in His Humor’. Johnson used to live a bohemian life and he was once almost sentenced to death after he had killed a Spanish actor in a duel. Most of his great plays are written after this incident of his life. His greatest works are ‘Volpone’, ‘The Alchemist’, and ‘Bartholomew Fair’ which were written and acted between 1605 and 1615. After that period, the life of Johnson started to decline but he kept writing comedy after comedy. Even when he died, he was still working with another comedy titled ‘The Sad Shepherd’ (“Benjamin Johnson”, n.d.).

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Themes of Johnson’s Plays

‘Volpone’, ‘The Alchemist’ and ‘Epicoene, or The silent woman’ – these three are the three plays that are taken consideration here to discuss about the theme of Johnson’s play. The first two are major works of Johnson where the later one is relatively a minor one.

The play Volpone states the story of a con artist named Volpone who lives in Venice and has made some good fortune. He then aims to increase his wealth even further by fooling three other Venice merchants and along the way sleep with one of the merchant’s wife. Volpone has ...

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