Widely known as a roistering actor/dramatist (in 1598 he was branded, having narrowly avoided being hanged, for a killing an actor in a duel), Ben Jonson was also a formidable and influential poet. His epigrams and some of his lyrics based on classic modes are particularly outstanding. Although not officially appointed to the post, the pension of 100 marks a year he received from James I in 1616 made Jonson, effectively, the very first Poet Laureate.

A friend of Shakespeare (the bard is thought to have been among the opening cast of Jonson's Every Man in his Humour), Jonson was the leading literary figure of the Jacobean era. At the Mermaid Tavern, in the City of London, he presided over a circle of playwrights and poets that included John Donne, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher and Francis Bacon and, later, he attracted a coterie of young admirers who styled themselves as the 'sons of Ben'. A stroke in 1628 left Jonson bedridden for the latter years of his life - a cruel fate for one of literature's more physically active figures. He died in August 1637 and was buried in 'Poet's Corner', Westminster Abbey.