#did i neglect to mention that ben jonson was poet laurate of england

[cto10121]

…Yeah, this really needs its own post. You’re in for a wild ride, @pisces-hideout.

So yes, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were total frenemies and their Goku-Vegeta dynamic is as good as historical fact. And it is absolutely glorious.

So Ben Jonson was eight years younger than Shakespeare, a bricklayer-turned-soldier who came into playacting/writing around the late 1590s (seriously, what’s with all the most important people in Shakespeare’s life being 8 years apart from him in age?). Shakespeare and Jonson first met (per Shakespeare’s first biographer Nicholas Rowe) when Jonson submitted his first play, Every Man In His Humour, to Shakespeare’s troupe, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. The LCM disliked the play and were ready to refuse it—except Shakespeare, who gave it a quick look and persuaded his troupe to perform it. After that they became friends and even drinking buddies…but that didn’t stop Jonson from giving Shakespeare hell, though.

Because from the get-go Jonson was the complete opposite of Shakespeare in every way. Arrogant, irascible, macho, scholarly, and opinionated, he 1) was a consummate artiste who wrote super slowly and 2) fought with and made enemies of other play poets, wrote plays, poetry, social and lit criticism, and pretty much doing everything under the sun. He was also very political and spoke truth to power; a controversial play he co-wrote with Tom Nashe literally got him arrested and thrown in the Tower (where he famously converted to Catholicism). While a lot of his plays were commercial failures, he was renowned for his literary work and got an intense following by other pretentious fans called the Tribe of Ben—and of course his satiric social comedies were all the rage in the 1600s.

Oh, and he also killed people. In war, yeah, but also one guy in a duel. Gabriel Spenser, a fellow actor. Got his thumb branded for it. Yeah.

And yes, homeboy ragged on Shakespeare. He straight up told his buddy that Shakespeare “wanted [lacked] art.” He criticized him for his awful geography, particularly giving Ilyria (Czechoslovakia) a coastline. And when Shakespeare’s fellow actors gushed about how Shakespeare was such a genius that he never blotted a single line, Jonson tartly replied, “Would he had blotted a thousand!”

He also had this to say about Shakespeare:

In the end he was a tsundere a softie. After Shakespeare’s death, he wrote an especially great dedicatory poem (“To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr William Shakespeare”) for Shakespeare’s First Folio, famously calling him “Sweet Swan of Avon!” With regards to his family, he was a total yandere; he called his wife “a shrew, but honest” and wrote the most touching tribute to his son Ben when he died.

Shakespeare, meanwhile, wrote fast and effortlessly (per the actors), had a good reputation, did not involve himself in ~theater drama, did not court followers, was consistently successful…and by all accounts trolled Jonson superbly. Check it out:

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣