cause some passages in the comedy of _Eastward Ho!_
gave offense to King James, and he was in danger of a horrible death, after
having his ears and nose cut off. He tells us how, after his pardon, he was
banqueting with his friends, when his "old mother" came in and showed a
paper full of "lusty strong poison," which she intended to mix with his
drink just before the execution. And to show that she "was no churl," she
intended first to drink of the poison herself. The incident is all the more
suggestive from the fact that Chapman and Marston, one his friend and the
other his enemy, were first cast into prison as the authors of _Eastward
Ho!_ and rough Ben Jonson at once declared that he too had had a small hand
in the writing and went to join them in prison.

Jonson's father came out of prison, having given up his estate, and became
a minister. He died just before the son's birth, and two years later the
mother married a bricklayer of London. The boy was sent to a private
school, and later made his own way to Westminster School, where the
submaster, Camden, struck by the boy's ability, taught and largely
supported him. For a short time he may have studied at the university in
Cambridge; but his stepfather soon set him to learning the bricklayer's
trade. He ran away from this, and went with the English army to fight
Spaniards in the Low Countries. His best known exploit there was to fight a
duel between the lines with one of the enemy's soldiers, while both armies
looked on. Jonson killed his man, and took his arms, and made his way back
to his own lines in a way to delight the old Norman troubadours. He soon
returned to England, and married precipitately when only nineteen or twenty
years old. Five years later we find him employed, like Shakespeare, as
actor and reviser of old plays in the theater. Thereafter his life is a
varied and stormy one. He killed an actor in a duel, and only escaped
hanging by pleading "benefit of clergy";[154] but he lost all his poor
goods and was branded for life on his left thumb. In his first great play,
_Every Man in His Humour_ (1598), Shakespeare acted one of the parts; and
that may have been the beginning of their long friendship. Other plays
followed rapidly. Upon the accession of James, Jonson's masques won him
royal favor, and he was made poet laureate. He now became undoubted leader
of the literary men of his time, though his rough honesty and his hatred of
the literary tendencies of