* 1605 – The controversial play Eastward Hoe by Ben Jonson, George Chapman, and John Marston is performed, landing two of the authors in prison.

But he was in great demand and also appeared in the plays of many of the great contemporary writers, such as Ben Jonson ( the title role in Volpone, and Subtle in The Alchemist ), John Marston ( The Malcontent ), John Webster ( The Duchess of Malfi ) and Beaumont and Fletcher ( The Maid's Tragedy ).

* George Chapman, Ben Jonson & John Marston – Eastward Hoe ( performed & published )

In Histriomastix, Marston satirizes Jonson ’ s pride through the character Chrisoganus ; Jonson responds by satirizing Marstons's wordy style in Every Man Out of His Humour, acted by the Lord Chamberlain's Men.

To these years belong the collaborations with Ben Jonson and John Marston which presumably contributed to the War of the Theatres in 1600 and 1601.

In that year, also, he collaborated with Chettle, Jonson, and Marston on a play about Robert II.

He variously commissioned, bought and produced plays by, or made loans to Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Middleton, Robert Greene, Henry Chettle, George Chapman, Thomas Dekker, John Webster, Anthony Munday, Henry Porter, John Day, John Marston and Michael Drayton.

Individual scholars have attributed the play to Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, John Marston, and Michael Drayton ; others have suggested Thomas Heywood and George Wilkins.

Eastward Ho ( 1605 ), written with Jonson and John Marston, contained satirical references to the Scots which landed Chapman and Jonson in jail.

* Chapman, George, Benjamin Jonson et John Marston.

On the excuse of discussing a recently-published collection of extracts from contemporary poetry, John Bodenham's Belvedere, he briefly criticizes, or rather characterizes, a number of writers of the day, among them being Spenser, Constable, Michael Drayton, John Davies, John Marston, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, and Thomas Nashe ; the last of whom is referred to as dead.

The character Lampatho Doria is generally thought to represent Ben Jonson, Marston's opponent in the controversy, while Quadratus may stand in for Marston himself.

Traditionally, though without strong external attribution, Histriomastix has been regarded as his first play ; performed by either the Children of Paul's or the students of the Middle Temple in around 1599, it appears to have sparked the War of the Theatres, the literary feud between Marston, Jonson and Dekker that took place between around 1599 and 1602.

Jonson, who reported to Drummond that Marston had accused him of sexual profligacy, satirized Marston in Clove in Every Man Out of His Humour, as Crispinus in Poetaster, and as Hedon in Cynthia's Revels.

For his part, Marston may have satirized Jonson as the complacent, arrogant critic Brabant Senior in Jack Drum's Entertainment and as the envious, misanthropic playwright and satirist Lampatho Doria in What You Will.

If Jonson can be trusted, the animosity between himself and Marston went beyond the literary.

However, the two playwrights were reconciled soon after the so-called War ; Marston wrote a prefatory poem for Jonson's Sejanus in 1605 and dedicated The Malcontent to Jonson.

Chapman and Jonson were arrested for, according to Jonson, a few clauses that offended the Scots, but Marston escaped any imprisonment.

William Gifford, perhaps the eighteenth century's most devoted reader of Jonson, called Marston " the most scurrilous, filthy and obscene writer of his time.

* Eastward Ho, by Marston, George Chapman, and Ben Jonson, London, Blackfriars theater, 1604-1605.

However, other scholars have found Grillo's arguments unpersuasive, arguing that Shakespeare could have derived much of this material from John Florio, an Italian scholar living in England who was later thanked by Ben Jonson for helping him get Italian details right for his play Volpone.

Such a bed trick has been a dramatic convention since antiquity and was used more than 40 times by every major playwright in the Early Modern theatre era except for Ben Jonson.

* 1598 – English playwright Ben Jonson kills an actor in a duel and is indicted for manslaughter.

The term playwright appears to have been coined by Ben Jonson in his Epigram 49, To Playwright, as an insult, to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre.

Philip Henslowe's diary records payment to Ben Jonson for additions that year, but it is disputed whether the published additions reflect Jonson's work or if they were actually composed for a 1597 revival of The Spanish Tragedy mentioned by Henslowe.

King James I essentially created the position as it is known today for Ben Jonson in 1617, although Jonson's appointment does not seem to have been made formally.

An early 17th century broadside ballad, " The Mad Merry Pranks of Robin Goodfellow "— which is so deft and literate it has been taken for the work of Ben Jonson — describes Puck / Robin Goodfellow as the emissary of Oberon, the Faery King, inspiring night-terrors in old women but also carding their wool while they sleep, leading travellers astray, taking the shape of animals, blowing out the candles to kiss the girls in the darkness, twitching off their bedclothes, or making them fall out of bed on the cold floor, tattling secrets, and changing babes in cradles with elflings.

Its architect was Axel Jonson, and the construction lasted for one year at a cost of approximately 500, 000 SEK.

* Ben Jonson – playwright and poet, imprisoned for the 22 September 1598 killing of his fellow actor Gabriel Spenser in a duel.

While its origins are disputed, it is " clearly of foreign derivation .... Gifford, in a note in his edition of Ben Jonson, tells us that ' Pimlico is sometimes spoken of as a person, and may not improbably have been the master of a house once famous for ale of a particular description.

He also made major contributions to stage design by his work as theatrical designer for several dozen masques, most by royal command and many in collaboration with Ben Jonson.

Between 1605 and 1640, Jones was responsible for staging over 500 performances, collaborating with Ben Jonson for many years, despite a relationship fraught with competition and jealousy: the two had famous arguments about whether stage design or literature was more important in theatre.

Ben Jonson, for example, was often engaged to write courtly masques, ornate plays where the actors wore masks.

Conversely, he suggested that influence was not as much of a problem for such poets as Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

" It has been noted that the original inscription on Ben Jonson's tablet, which was already removed by the time Davenant died, was " Rare Ben ," which was the name Shakespeare supposedly had for Jonson.

In 1386 Chaucer used the Parson's Tale to poke fun at geomancy in Canterbury Tales: " What say we of them that believe in divynailes as … geomancie …" Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were also known to use geomancy for comic relief.

Like other poets of his era, Drayton was active in writing for the theatre ; but unlike Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, or Samuel Daniel, he invested little of his art in the genre.

There is a tradition that he was a friend of Shakespeare, supported by a statement of John Ward, once vicar of Stratford-on-Avon, that " Shakespear, Drayton and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespear died of a feavour there contracted.

He was also the author of Effigies poetica ( 1824 ), Life of Edmund Kean ( 1835 ), Essays and Tales in Prose ( 1851 ), Charles Lamb ; a Memoir ( 1866 ), and of memoirs of Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare for editions of their works.

Satiromastix marks the end of the " poetomachia "; in 1603, Jonson and Dekker collaborated again, on a pageant for the Royal Entry, delayed from the coronation of James I, for which Dekker also wrote the festival book The Magnificent Entertainment.

" His metrical style was influenced by Jonson and his imagery by Donne, for whom he had an almost servile admiration.