Ben Jonson Folios

Ben Jonson Folios

The folio collections of Ben Jonson's works published in the seventeenth century were crucial developments in the publication of English literature and English Renaissance drama. The first folio collection, issued in 1616, treated stage plays as serious works of literature instead of popular ephemera—at the time, a controversial position. The 1616 folio stood as a precedent for other play collections that followed—most notably the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays in 1623, but also the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647, and other collections that were important in preserving the dramatic literature of the age for subsequent generations.

Read more about Ben Jonson Folios:  The First Folio, 1616, The Abortive 1631 Addition, The Second Folio, 1640/1, The Third Folio, 1692

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    Come leave the loathed stage,
    And the more loathsome age,
    Where pride and impudence in faction knit
    Usurp the chair of wit:
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    Something they call a play.
    Let their fastidious, vain
    Commission of the brain,
    Run on and rage, sweat, censure, and condemn:
    They were not made for thee, less thou for them.
    Ben Jonson (1572–1637)

    Ye knowe eek, that in forme of speche is chaunge
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    Us thinketh hem; and yet they spake hem so,
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    Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400)

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    —Ben Jonson (1572–1637)