The New Inn, was driven from the stage, for which in its rapid degeneracy he had become too learned and too moral.  A quarrel with Inigo Jones, the architect, who furnished the machinery for the Court masques, lost him Court favour, and he was obliged, with failing powers, to turn again to the stage, for which his last plays, The Magnetic Lady and The Tale of a Tub, were written in 1632 and 1633.  Town and Court favour, however, turned again, and he received a pension of L100; that of the best poets and lovers of literature he had always kept.  The older poets were his friends, the younger were proud to call themselves, and be called by him, his sons.  In 1637, after some years of gradually failing health, he d., and was buried in Westminster Abbey.  An admirer caused a mason to cut on the slab over his grave the well-known inscription, “O Rare Ben Jonson.”  He left a fragment, The Sad Shepherd.  His works include a number of epigrams and translations, collections of poems (Underwoods and The Forest); in prose a book of short essays and notes on various subjects, Discoveries.

J. was the founder of a new style of English comedy, original, powerful, and interesting, but lacking in spontaneity and nature.  His characters tend to become mere impersonations of some one quality or “humour,” as he called it.  Thus he is the herald, though a magnificent one, of decadence.  He painted in general with a powerful, but heavy hand; in his masques, however, he often shows a singular gracefulness, especially in the lyrics which he introduces.  His character, as given by Drummond, is not a particularly attractive one, “a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others, given rather to lose a friend than a jest, jealous of every word and action of those about him, especially after drink ... a dissembler of ill parts which reign in him, a bragger of some good that he wanteth ... passionately kind and angry ... oppressed with fantasy which hath ever mastered his reason.”  There must, however, have been far other qualities in a man who could command, as J. undoubtedly did, the goodwill and admiration of so many of the finest minds of his time.  In person he was tall, swarthy, marked with small-pox, and in later years burly.

SUMMARY.—­B. 1573, ed. Westminster School, serves in Low Countries, returns to England 1592, and takes to stage, kills actor in brawl 1598, a Romanist c. 1598-c. 1610, Every Man in his Humour 1598, Every Man out of his Humour 1599, and other plays till 1633, coll. works pub. 1616, visits Drummond 1618, loses and recovers Court favour, d. 1637.

Among the ed. of J.’s works may be mentioned those of Gifford (9 vols., 1816), re-issued (1875), selected plays Mermaid Series (3 vols., 1893-5), Morley (1884), and Symonds (1886).  Lives and studies by Symonds (English Worthies), and Swinburne (1890).