The phrase Sons of Ben is a mildly problematic term applied to followers of Ben Jonson in English poetry and drama in the first half of the seventeenth century.
Sons of Ben has been applied to the dramatists who were overtly and admittedly influenced by Jonson's drama, his most distinctive artistic achievement. Joe Lee Davis listed eleven playwrights in this group: Richard Brome, Thomas Nabbes, Henry Glapthorne, Thomas Killigrew, Sir William Davenant, William Cartwright, Shackerley Marmion, Jasper Mayne, Peter Hausted, Thomas Randolph, and William Cavendish.
The term, or the alternative "Tribe of Ben," was also employed as self-description by some of the Cavalier poets who admired and were influenced by Jonson's poetry, including Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Sir John Suckling, and Thomas Carew. Jonson and his followers congregated at London taverns, especially the Apollo Room in the Devil Tavern, near Temple-Bar. Above the mantelpiece in this room Jonson inserted a marble slab engraved with his Leges Conviviales, or 'Rules of Conviviality'. These were Jonson's rules for the group. Written in Latin, they were modelled on Horace and Martial. Translations were reprinted throughout the following century.
Famous quotes containing the words sons and/or ben:
“So cruel prison how could betide, alas,
As proud Windsor, Where I in lust and joy
With a king’s son my childish years did pass
In greater feast than Priam’s sons of Troy?
Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour;”
—Henry Howard, Earl Of Surrey (1517?–1547)
“Ye knowe eek, that in forme of speche is chaunge
Withinne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
That hadden prys, now wonder nyce and straunge
Us thinketh hem; and yet they spake hem so,
And spedde as wel in love as men now do;
Eek for to winne love in sondry ages,
In sondry londes, sondry ben usages.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400)