Ben Jonson may be the most famous person to use the shortened version of his given name professionally. It is for hackneyed notes and anecdotes like these that the playwright, poet, and actor is now primarily known.

Evidently, it is really difficult to be a dramatist and poet if you lived

John Dryden achieved no small feat in having the politically tumultuous period of the mid- to late-17th century now referred to – not without disputation, and admittedly only in literary circles, and admittedly not a great deal more these days – as the Age of Dryden. This phrase

To speak of William Shakespeare is to speak of the infinite. Perhaps no other writer in history has mapped the human heart as thoroughly, as profoundly, as Shakespeare did. Even 400 years after his death, he lives on as we reinterpret his work, easily translating his words into contemporary contex

Donne wrote some of the most accomplished poetry about love that the English language has to offer. More than mere songs of courtship, Donne's lyrics meditate on love in all its varied manifestations -- from its futility to its possibility, from its disappearance to its ability to grant unearthly