Benjamin Jonson was an English playwright and poet. Jonson’s artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He was born at Westminister and educated at Westminister school. His father died before Jonson’s birth, and the boy adopted the trade of his stepfather, who was a master bricklayer. From this, he turned to acting and writing plays, engaging himself, both as actor and playwright, with the Lord Admiral’s company (1597). In 1617, he has created a poet for the king, and the close of James’s reign saw Jonson the undisputed ruler of English literature. His favourite haunt was the Mermaid Tavern, where he reigned as dictator over a younger literary generation. He was buried in Westminister Abbey, and over him was placed the epitaph “o rare Ben Jonson!”

Jonson’s numerous works, comedies, tragedies, masques, and lyrics, are of widely varying merit, but all of them, as well as his Timber, a kind of commonplace-book, which is of considerable interest for its critical comment on literature. To him, the chief function of literature was to instruct. His play was divided conventionally into comedies and tragedies, for Jonson, true to his classical models, did not combine the two. In his comedies, he aimed to return to the controlled, satirical, realistic comedy of the classical dramatist, and the inductions of his plays make it clear that he hoped to reform the drama on these lines. His main concern was with the drawing of character, and his creations are important because they introduce the “comedy of humours“. Many of his characters arc, in consequence, types, but the best, like Bobadill in Every Man in his Humour, rise above the type and live as truly great comic characters.

His early comedies, Every Man in his Humour (1598), Every Man out of Humour (1599), Cynthia’s Revels (1600), and The Poetaster (1601), show his ingenuity of plot, his hearty humour, his wit, and they are full of vivacity and fun. Every Man in his Humouris, perhaps, his greatest work. The middle group of comedies, Volpone, or the Fox (1605), Epicoene, or The Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fayre (1614), represents, as a group, his best work. They are all satirical in tone, realistic and natural in dialogue, and ingenious in the plot. The characters are less angular and more convincing. His later comedies, The Devil is an Ass (1616) and The Staple of News (1625), show a distinct falling-off in dramatic power.

The two historical tragedies, Sejanus his Fall (1603) and Catiline his Conspiracy (1611), are composed of classical models. They are too laboured and mechanical to be reckoned as great tragedies. Jonson was also friends with many of the writers of his day, and many of his most well-known poems include tributes to friends such as Shakespeare, John Donne, and Francis Bacon. Ben Jonson died in Westminster on August 8, 1637. A tremendous crowd of mourners attended his burial at Westminster Abbey. He is regarded as one of the major dramatists and poets of the seventeenth century.

John Bunyan was an English writer and Puritan preacher. He was born in Elstow, near Bedford, in 1628, the son of Thomas Bunyan and Margaret Bentley. He followed his father into the tinker’s trade but rebelled against God and ‘had but few equals, both for cursing, swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name of God’. As a teenager, he joined Cromwell’s New Model Army but continued his rebellious ways. His life was saved on one occasion when a fellow soldier took his place at the siege of Leicester, and ‘as he stood sentinel he was shot in the head with a musket bullet and died’.

Bunyan married at age 21. Those books his wife brought to the marriage began a process of conversion. Gradually, he gave up recreations like dancing, bell ringing, and sports; he began attending church and fought off temptations. Later, he realised that he was lost and without Christ when he came into contact with a group of women whose ‘joyous conversation about the new birth and Christ deeply impressed him’. In 1651 the women introduced him to their pastor in Bedford, John Gifford, who was instrumental in leading Bunyan to repentance and faith.

That same year he moved to Bedford with his wife and four children, including Mary, his firstborn, who had been blind from birth. He was baptised by immersion in the River Ouse in 1653. Appointed a deacon of Gifford’s church, Bunyan’s testimony was used to lead several people to conversion. By 1655 Bunyan was himself preaching to various congregations in Bedford, and hundreds came to hear him. In the following years, Bunyan began publishing books and became established as a reputable Puritan writer, but around this time, his first wife died. He remarried in 1659, a young woman named Elizabeth, who was to be a staunch advocate for her husband during his imprisonments for in 1660 Bunyan was arrested for preaching without official permission from King Charles II; he was to spend the next 12½ years in Bedford County Gaol.

In January 1672, Charles II issued the Declaration of Religious Indulgence with to make Roman Catholicism legal. As a result, many religious prisoners were pardoned and released, including John Bunyan. That same month, he became pastor of the Bedford church. In March 1675, he was imprisoned for preaching again because Charles II withdrew the Declaration of Religious Indulgence. This time he was imprisoned in the Bedford town jail on the stone bridge over the Ouse.

Bunyan became a prolific author as well as a popular preacher, though most of his works consisted of expanded sermons. He wrote, The Pilgrim’s Progress, in two parts, the first of which was published in London in 1678, and the second in 1684. He had begun the work in his first period of imprisonment and probably finished it during the second. The earliest edition with the two parts combined in one volume was published in 1728. A third part, falsely attributed to Bunyan, appeared in 1693 and was reprinted as late as 1852. The Pilgrim’s Progress is arguably one of the most widely known allegories ever written. It has been extensively translated into other languages.

Two other successful works of Bunyan’s are less well-known: The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), an imaginary biography, and The Holy War (1682), an allegory. A third book that reveals Bunyan’s inner life and his preparation for his appointed work are, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666). It is all about Bunyan’s spiritual path. Bunyan died in 1688 after catching a cold while riding through a rainstorm on a journey to reconcile a quarreling family. He was buried at the Nonconformist cemetery of Bunhill Fields in London.

Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet, and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. He was Shakespeare’s most important predecessor in English drama, who is noted especially for his establishment of dramatic blank verse. He was born at Canterbury and educated there and at Cambridge. He adopted literature as a profession and became attached to the Lord Admiral’s players.

Marlowe’s plays, all tragedies, were written within five years (1587-92). He had no bent for comedy, and the comic parts found in some of his plays are always inferior and maybe by other writers. Only in Edward II does he show any sense of plot construction, while his characterization is of the simplest, and lacks the warm humanity of Shakespeare’s. All the plays, except Edward II, revolve around one figure drawn in bold outlines. This character shows no complexity or subtlety of development and is the embodiment of a single idea.

In Tamburlaine the Great, the shepherd seeks the “sweet fruition of an earthly crown,” in The Jew of Malta Barabbas seeks “infinite riches in a little room,” while the quest of Doctor Faustus is for more than human knowledge. Each of the plays has behind it the driving force of this vision, which gives it an artistic and poetic unity. It is, indeed, as a poet that Marlowe excels. Though not the first to use blank verse in English drama, he was the first to exploit its possibilities and make it supreme. His verse is notable for its burning energy, its splendour of diction, its sensuous richness, its variety of pace, and its responsiveness to the demands of varying emotions.

The Massacre at Paris is a short and luridly written work, the only surviving text of which was probably a reconstruction from memory of the original performance text, portraying the events of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, which English Protestants invoked as the blackest example of Catholic treachery. It features the silent “English Agent”, whom subsequent tradition has identified with Marlowe himself and his connections to the secret service. The Massacre at Paris is considered his most dangerous play, as agitators in London seized on its theme to advocate the murders of refugees from the low countries and, indeed, it warns Elizabeth I of this possibility in its last scene.

Doctor Faustus (or The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus), based on the German Faustbuch, was the first dramatised version of the Faust legend of a scholar’s dealing with the devil. While versions of “The Devil’s Pact” can be traced back to the 4th century, Marlowe deviates significantly by having his hero unable to “burn his books” or repent to a merciful God to have his contract annulled at the end of the play. Marlowe’s protagonist is instead carried off by demons, and in the 1616 quarto his mangled corpse is found by several scholars. Doctor Faustus is a textual problem for scholars as two versions of the play exist: the 1604 quarto, also known as the A text, and the 1616 quarto, or B text. Both were published after Marlowe’s death. On 30 May Marlowe was stabbed to death during a fight at a house in Deptford, apparently after an argument about a bill. He was about 29. The incident’s relation, if any, to Marlowe’s investigation by the Privy Council is unknown.

John Donne was an English poet, scholar, and secretary. John Donne is considered now to be the pre-eminent metaphysical poet of his time. He was born in Bread Street, London in 1572 to a prosperous Roman Catholic family. He was the son of a wealthy merchant. His parents were Roman Catholics, and he was educated in their faith before going to Oxford and Cambridge. He entered the Inns of Court in 1592, where he mingled wide reading with the life of a dissolute man-about-town. He wrote his Satires, the Songs and Sonets, and the Elegies, but, though widely circulated in manuscript, they were not published until 1663, after his death. He entered the Anglican Chruch, after a severe personal struggle, and in 1621, became Dean of St. Paul’s, which position he held until his death in 1631. He was the first great Anglican preacher.

His Poetry

Donne was the most independent of the Elizabethan poets and revolted against the easy, fluent style, stock imagery, and pastoral conventions of the followers of Spenser. His poetry is forceful, Vigorous, and despite faults of rhythm, often strangely harmonious. His cynical nature and keenly critical mind led him to write satires, such as Of the Progres of the Soule (1601). His love poems, the Songs and Sonets, were written in the same period, and are intense and subtle analyses of all the moods of a lover, expressed in vivid and startling language, which is colloquial rather than conventional. His poems are all intensely personal and reveal a powerful and complex being. Among the best known and most typical of the poems of this group are Aire and Angels, A Nocturnall upon S.Lucies day, A Valediction: forbidding mourning, and The Extaise.

His religious poetry was written after 1610, and the greatest, the nineteen Holy Sonets, and the lyric such as A Hymn to GOD THE FATHER, after his wife’s died in 1617. They too are intense and personal and have a force unique in this class of literature. “He affects the metaphysics”, said Dryden of Donne, and the term ‘metaphysical’ has come to be applied to Donne and a group of poets who followed him. The most distinctive feature of the metaphysical is their imagery, which, in Donne, is almost invariably unusual and striking, often breath-taking, but sometimes far-fetched and fantastic.

His Prose

Donne’s prose work is considerable both in bulk and achievement. The Pseudo-Martyr (1610) was a defense of the oath of allegiance, while Ignatius His Conclave (1611) was a satire upon Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits. The best introduction to Donne’s prose is his Devotions (1614), which give an account of his spiritual struggles during a serious illness. His finest prose works are his Sermons, which number about 160. In seventeenth-century England, the sermon was a most important influence, and the powerful preacher in London was a public figure capable of Wielding great influence. Donne’s sermons, of which the finest is probably Death’s Duell (1630), contain many of the features of his poetry. Donne seems to have used a dramatic technique that had a great hold on his audiences.

Conclusion

Donne left a deep and pervasive influence on English poetry. The metaphysical lyricists owed a great debt to him. Sometimes, his followers excelled him in happy conceit, passion, and paradoxical reasoning. And yet he gave a sincere and passionate quality to the Elizabethan lyric. He is one of those great poets who have left a mark on the history of English poetry. At times, his poetry is strange, fantastic, bizarre, maybe repellent. Donne may not be capable at times of graceful love or sweetness of song, but he enriched Elizabethan poetry with sincerity, originality, and fullness of thought.