Ben Jonson

Topic: Ben Jonson

1. Verified Sourced Facts

• The Neville Research wiki page for Ben Jonson lists as available resources:

“Epigram to Henry Neville”

• The same wiki page also lists:

“Notes of Ben Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond”

• The Wikisource text of Jonson’s poem To Sir Henry Nevil opens:

“Who now calls on thee, NEVIL, is a muse,”

• The same poem includes the line:

“Go on, and doubt not what posterity,”

• The poem closes:

“Whilst others toil for titles to their tombs.”

• The 1616 Archive.org witness of Jonson’s folio gives the epigram to Neville on p. 803.

• The 1616 Archive.org witness of Jonson’s folio also includes an epigram headed:

“To Sir Henry Savill”

• David McPherson’s catalog of Jonson’s library states that Jonson owned:

“Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores, ed. Sir Henry Savile (No. 161)”

• Source-hardening check of McPherson confirms that this is a real library/provenance point, but not a simple blanket annotation point: McPherson records two Jonson-associated copies of Savile's Rerum, with the Oxford copy the stronger candidate for Jonson annotation and the Stratford text annotations judged not Jonson's.

• A 2026-04-21 web audit identified the Folgerpedia page Books from Ben Jonson's library at the Folger as the best public institutional control for McPherson's authority. Folgerpedia states that David McPherson's annotated catalog is the main reference on Ben Jonson's books and that the Cambridge Works online database is a revised and enlarged version of McPherson's catalog, though subscription-based and still a work in progress.

• The same web audit found a public 1692-folio transcription/commentary witness for To Sir Henry Nevil. That witness is useful for reception-history and for identifying later commentary errors, but the primary text should still be controlled by the 1616 folio and/or Cambridge Works.

2. Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information

• Local image witnesses preserved with that tweet show three cropped openings from the 1616 folio:

“DONNE, the delight of Phoebus, and each Muse,”

“How I doe loue thee Beaumont, and thy Muse,”

“Who now calls on thee, Nevil, is a Muse,”

• Ken Feinstein’s 3 Mar. 2019 tweet thread reads the Neville epigram as mourning language for a man who died in 1615, focusing on phrases such as “lent life”, “go on”, and “tombs.”
• Ken Feinstein’s 28 Mar. 2019 tweet highlights Jonson’s “posterity” language in the Neville epigram.
• Ken Feinstein’s 22 May 2019 tweet highlights a Muse opening-line pattern across Jonson’s epigrams to Donne, Beaumont, and Neville.

3. Citations

• “Ben Jonson.” Henry Neville Research Wiki, 22 Mar. 2021, http://nevilleresearch.com/index.php?title=Ben_Jonson.
• Jonson, Ben. “To Sir Henry Nevil.” Wikisource, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/To_Sir_Henry_Nevil.
• Jonson, Ben. The workes of Beniamin Ionson. London, printed by Will. Stansby, 1616. Archive.org witness, p. 803, https://archive.org/details/workesofbeniamin00jons/page/803/mode/1up.
• Jonson, Ben. The workes of Beniamin Ionson. London, printed by Will. Stansby, 1616. Archive.org witness, p. 796, https://archive.org/details/workesofbeniamin00jons/page/796/mode/2up.
• McPherson, David. “Ben Jonson’s Library and Marginalia: An Annotated Catalogue.” Studies in Philology, vol. 71, no. 5, Texts and Studies, 1974, pp. 1, 3-106. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4173858. Local PDF: McPherson-BenJonsonsLibrary-1974.pdf.
• “Books from Ben Jonson's library at the Folger.” Folgerpedia, Folger Shakespeare Library, https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Books_from_Ben_Jonson%27s_library_at_the_Folger.
• Jonson, Ben. The Workes of Benjamin Jonson, 1692 folio, Epigrams, public transcription with commentary, https://hollowaypages.com/jonson1692epigrams.htm.
• Feinstein, Ken. “Does it feel more authentic since I took these photos myself from a Ben Jonson 1616 First Folio? Lent life / go on / tombs ... words used to mourn dead people. This is a loving tribute to his friend who died in 1615. #ShakespeareSunday”. X, 3 Mar. 2019, https://twitter.com/user/status/1102248047348572161. Local archive: twitter_First_Folio.md.
• Feinstein, Ken. “Remember in the Epigram Jonson wrote to Henry Neville he specifically mentions posterity. "Go on, and doubt not, what posterity... Shall judge of thee."” X, 28 Mar. 2019, https://twitter.com/user/status/1111385931662016512. Local archive: twitter_First_Folio.md.
• Feinstein, Ken. “There is a very curious pattern in Ben Jonson's Epigrams to Donne, Beaumont, and Henry Neville. The first line of each ends with the word "Muse".” X, 22 May 2019, https://twitter.com/user/status/1131335699695714304. Local archive: twitter_Ben_Jonson.md.
• wiki_1616_folio.md, local wiki page noting the Archive.org and commentary leads for the 1616 folio.
• ben_jonsons_library_and_henry_savile.md, related narrow packet.

4. Local Image Witnesses

5. Notes on Access

• This packet preserves three source layers separately:
• the wiki source map for Jonson
• the public poem transcription
• Ken Feinstein tweet/image evidence
• The interpretive statements about mourning language and the Donne/Beaumont/Neville Muse pattern are preserved as Ken Feinstein interpretation, not recast here as anonymous factual narration.
• The Donne/Beaumont/Neville Muse pattern is presently supported in this packet by the Ken Feinstein tweet-image witness. The current local A04632 extraction workflow securely recovered the Donne and Neville openings but did not recover the Beaumont epigram, so that extraction gap should be treated as a local workflow problem rather than as grounds to discard the tweet-image evidence.
• The narrow library/provenance point about Jonson owning Savile’s Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores is treated separately in ben_jonsons_library_and_henry_savile.md.
• Source-hardening result, 2026-04-27: use McPherson for Jonson ownership of Savile's Rerum; avoid saying "Jonson annotated Savile's Rerum" without specifying the Oxford-copy uncertainty and the Stratford-copy caution.
• Web audit result: this packet is now mixed, because the existence of Jonson's Neville epigram is verified by direct folio witnesses, while the mourning/posterity/Muse-pattern reading remains Ken Feinstein interpretation unless checked directly against a controlled Jonson text and commentary set.