Ben Jonson on Shakespeare's Chaucer

This article explores the medieval origin and source material for William Shakespeare’s plays and Edmund Spenser’s archaisms. It specifically examines Ben Jonson’s ire aimed at these writers’ medievalisms. According to Jonson, Shakespeare and Spenser were complicit in resurrecting Chaucerian diction and, in doing so, they incurred Jonson’s vexation. Examination of the external evidence left by Jonson’s criticisms gives us a new lens by which to see Shakespeare’s sources.