Quote #59

Shakespeare, in a play, brought in a number of men saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where there is no sea by some 100 miles.

More from Ben Jonson

  1. That Donne himself, for not being understood, would perish.
  2. He saw in a vision his eldest son (then a child and at London) appear unto him with the mark of a bloody cross on his forehead, as if it ha…
  3. He cursed Petrarch for redacting verses to sonnets, which he said were like that tyrant's bed, where some who were too short were racked, o…
  4. He hath consumed a whole night in lying looking to his great toe, about which he hath seen Tartars and Turks, Romans and Carthaginians, fig…
  5. That Shakespeare wanted Art.
  6. His opinion of verses. That he wrote all his first in prose, for so his master Camden had learned him. That verses stood by sense without e…
  7. One, though he be excellent and the chief, is not to be imitated alone; for never no imitator ever grew up to his author; likeness is alway…
  8. A gentleman reading a poem that began with Where is that man that never yet did hear Of fair Penelope, Ulysses' queen? [Jonson] calling his…

All Ben Jonson quotes