On BEN JONSON and his outlook on Shakespeare

Jonson's elegy (a poem written to memorialize the dead), "To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Master William Shakespeare, and What he Hath Left Us," was first published in 1623 as part of the preface to Shakespeare's First Folio, a space traditionally reserved for commemorative verses from the author's greatest friends and admirers, and amounts to the only extended commentary on Shakespeare issued by one of his contemporaries.