Marvell and Jonson

This chapter explores the meaning and varieties of praise and dispraise in Marvell’s relationship with Ben Jonson. The chapter offers readings of Marvell’s engagements with Jonson in his lyric verse, in ‘Tom May’s Death’, and in some of his later prose and poetry, including ‘On Mr Milton’s Paradise Lost’. Exploring the different ways in which Marvell may have encountered Jonson’s poems and plays in manuscript, in print, and in the theatre, this chapter investigates, and considers at its close, what T. S. Eliot in 1921 called ‘the vast and penetrating influence of Ben Jonson’ on Marvell.