An Engraving of Ben Jonson, 1738.

Playwright, poet, and actor Ben Jonson (1572-1637) by George Vertue (1684-1786). Though highly learned, Jonson like Shakespeare came from a working class background and did not study at a university. His career initially depended very much on Shakespeare's good will for adoption of his plays and their performance. His career was full of vicissitudes, including arrest and near execution for murdering a fellow actor, and he claimed to be equally fatal to Spaniards on the battlefield. Nevertheless he was poet laureate and his work was often presented at the royal court, particularly the masques which he joined Inigo Jones in producing, though they too fell out. This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs Division under the digital ID cph.3c16190. Courtesy of the Yorck Project, under GNU Free Document License.