BEN JONSON (1572/3-1673)

Dramatist, poet, scholar and writer of court masques, Ben Jonson was the leading literary figure during the reign of King James I (1603-25). He was a close friend of Shakespeare, who acted in Jonson's Every Man in his Humour (1598) and whose company presented Jonson's tragedy Sejanus (1603). In 1616, the year this first edition of his collected works appeared, with an engraved title page by William Hole, Jonson received a pension from James I, making him the first poet laureate in the modern sense. This copy is inscribed on the flyleaf, "This copy was presented to me by my esteemed friend Palmer. D[avid] Garrick," and dated March 9, 1768.