Ill fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.

His late plays or "dotages" particularly The Magnetic Lady and The Sad Shepherd exhibit signs of an accommodation with the romantic tendencies of Elizabethan comedy. In 1598 Jonson produced his first great success Every Man in His Humour capitalising on the vogue for humorous plays which George Chapman had begun with An Humorous Day's Mirth. "
Thomas Fuller relates stories of Jonson and Shakespeare engaging in debates in the Mermaid Tavern; Fuller imagines conversations in which Shakespeare would run rings around the more learned but more ponderous Jonson.

Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. A man of vast reading and a seemingly insatiable appetite for controversy Jonson had an unparalleled breadth of influence on Jacobean and Caroline playwrights and poets.