Timber: or, Discoveries
work by Jonson
Also known as: “Explorata”, “Sylva”
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attack on stage practices
- In dramatic literature: Western theory
… (1595) and Ben Jonson in Timber (1640) merely attacked contemporary stage practice. Jonson, in certain prefaces, however, also developed a tested theory of comic characterization (the “humours”) that was to affect English comedy for a hundred years. The best of Neoclassical criticism in English is John Dryden’s Of Dramatick Poesie,…
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discussed in biography
- In Ben Jonson: His prime and later life
…second Jonson folio (1640), appeared Timber: or, Discoveries, a series of observations on life and letters. Here Jonson held forth on the nature of poetry and drama and paid his final tribute to Shakespeare: in spite of acknowledging a belief that his great contemporary was, on occasion, “full of wind”—sufflaminandus…
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