Writers can do crazy things in quest of a blurb. When Norman Mailer finished his third novel, The Deer Park, he sent a copy ...

Irvin Matus The new reading room of the Folger Shakespeare Library is dominated by a huge painting of the sort that Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell migh ...

If my title leads you to hope this column is about amusing things in English, such as funny words like “hornswoggle” and ...

The verbal wit and gender fluidity of his comedies owe much to John Lyly’s courtly style, and traces of some of Ben Jonson’s plays, in which Shakespeare acted, show up in his writing.

Ben Jonson and Francis Beaumont are known to have spent time there. Most significantly, Shakespeare is rumoured to have frequently met with his acting troupe here (a rumour, alas, unproven).

For years, only the Shakespeares and Dickenses of the world have been the mainstays in our English classrooms, with no room for the Rokeyas — voices that resonate with our culture and identity. It’s t ...

The clue to Shakespeare’s ‘preternatural’ ability to endow his characters with personalities lies in his ‘vitalism’ (or what Hazlitt called ‘gusto’). As the likes of Falstaff are (in a phrase borrowed ...

Ben Jonson, in particular, called his friend and rival ‘gentle’ as part of a habit of mocking the Stratford man’s ambition to be considered a gentleman. When in 1596 Shakespeare acquired a coat of ...

Hyde, meanwhile, spent his youth in imitation of Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, among bombastic literary types that included William Davenant and Ben Jonson. In time, the pair found their way into ...

Anouska: And one of the most beloved playwrights was William Shakespeare ... ‘The Isle of Dogs’ written by Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson, was banned. We don’t actually know what was in ...