ABSTRACT
Ben Jonson was a finished scholar at thirteen, a soldier at seventeen, married at nineteen, celebrated for his lost tragedies at twenty-three, convicted of homicide and the author of one of the most famous of English comedies at twenty-five. Incidentally, he had found time to collaborate and quarrel with a number of contemporary authors, to change his religion, to be suspected of a plot against the Government and, most notoriously of all, to be a bricklayer. Jonson's father, imprisoned and forfeited under Mary, turned minister upon his release and so remained till his death in 1572 or 1573. Two years after the death of Jonson's father his mother married again. This time it was a master-bricklayer. But she respected, and persuaded her new lord to respect, the wishes of her first husband, who, being a minister, had doubtless desired his son to be well found in Latin.
