ABSTRACT
JONSON reached the summit of his achievement in the three great comedies of his early prime : Volpone or the Fox, The Silent Woman, and The Alchemist. In matter, feeling, style and method, they express most faithfully his mind and temper. Jonson was a man of many moods. Readers who come upon his various achievements haphazard might well hesitate between them. Some have found in him a romantic poet who wilfully imprisoned his genius within the limits of a comic method artificially applied in and out of season. Others have preferred a sheaf of lyrics to all his tremendous output of tragedies, comedies and satires. Some linger by preference with his Sad Shepherd and treasure above all things his rare excursions into the pastoral manner. Others find him more appropriately embedded in the infinite variety of fanciful, erudite and ingenious masks. There is validity enough in their hesitations to make it necessary for anyone who gives supremacy to the three great comedies clearly to justify his election.
