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 ...

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

the Folio’s editors approached Ben Jonson, the most respected poet-playwright of the time. Privately, Jonson had a few reservations about Shakespeare. Even so, he coughed up a pretty good blurb ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Literary greats William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson flourished during this period, and the monarch sponsored a new translation of the Bible, resulting in the now widely used King James version.

Ben Jonson “Fate chooses our relatives ... faithful friends are hard to find.” — William Shakespeare “We need old friends to help us grow old and new friends to help us stay young.” ...