Shakespeare and Ben Jonson have frequently been paired up for comparison in studies of early modern English drama.Conventional views about Shakespeare’s and Jonson’s comedies evolved and crystallized in the seventeenth,eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.People believed or were led to believe that Shakespeare’s and Jonson’s comedies were in clear opposition:Shakespeare’s comedies were sweet,romantic,amiable,popular and entertaining,whereas Jonson’s were based on an abstract theory of humors,cold,satiric,pedantic,and moralizing.Only in the last century did these oppositions begin to change,but too slowly.This paper calls those binary oppositions into question.It tries to present a more truthful picture of these two playwrights and their comedies through an examination of some of their works.It argues that some of those oppositions are stereotypes and should not be taken seriously by contemporary Shakespearean and Jonsonian scholars.
