The Boston Globe, February 14th, 1989
BEN JONSON. A Life, by David Riggs. Harvard University Press. 399 pp. $35. Illustrated. His name was Johnson and he is so designated on the title pages of his first three printed books. A small detail, perhaps, and commentators who may have noticed probably ascribe it to the rough-and-ready spelling of an age with a half-dozen different ways of rendering the name of Jonson's contemporary rival, Shakespeare. David Riggs, however, persuasively argues that Jonson's switch was deliberate, intended to efface his humble origins, transforming him from artisan to gentleman. He was the stepson of a bri...
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