But shortly after this, Jonson, with two others, wrote a play in which some things were said against the Scots.  With a Scottish king surrounded by Scottish lords, that was dangerous.  All three soon found themselves in prison and came near losing their noses and ears.  This was not the first time that Ben had been in prison, for soon after Every Man in His Humour was acted, he quarreled for some unknown reason with another actor.  In the foolish fashion of the day they fought a duel over it, and Ben killed the other man.  For this he was seized and put in prison, and just escaped being hanged.  He was left off only with the loss of all his goods and a brand on the left thumb.

Now once more Jonson escaped.  When he was set free, his friends gave a great feast to show their joy.  But Ben had not learned his lesson, and at least once again he found himself in prison because of something he had written.

But in spite of these things the King continued to smile upon Ben Jonson.  He gave him a pension and made him poet laureate, and it was now that he began to write the Masques for which he became famous.  These Masques were dainty poetic little plays written for the court and often acted by the Queen and her ladies.  There was much singing and dancing in them, and the dresses of the actors were gorgeous beyond description.  And besides this, while the ordinary stage was still without any scenery, Inigo Jones, the greatest architect in the land, joined Ben Jonson in making his plays splendid by inventing scenery for them.  This scenery was beautiful and elaborate, and was sometimes changed two or three times during the play.  One of these plays called The Masque of Blackness was acted by the Queen and her ladies in 1605, and when we read the description of the scenery it makes us wonder and smile too at the remembrance of Wall and the Man in the Moon of which Shakespeare made such fun a few years earlier, and of which you will read in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Besides his Masques, Jonson wrote two tragedies, and a number of comedies, as well as other poems.  But for a great part of his life, the part that must have been the easiest and brightest, he wrote Masques for the King and court and not for the ordinary stage.  He knew his own power in this kind of writing well, and he was not modest.  “Next himself,” he said, “only Fletcher and Chapman could make a mask."* He found, too, good friends among the nobles.  With one he lived for five years, another gave him money to buy books, and his library became his great joy and pride.

Conversation of Ben Jonson with Drummond of Hawthornden.