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Ben Johnson was a world-class sprinter who broke the 100m and 60m indoor world records in 1987. He won the 100m gold at the 1988 Olympics, but was disqualified for doping and stripped of his medal.
May 4, 2024 · Former Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson won gold in the 100-metre sprint at the 1988 Olympics, but was stripped of his medal and record after testing positive for steroids. He still claims to be the best sprinter and faces racism and backlash in Canada.
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- Mouhamad Rachini
Ben Johnson was an American film and television actor, stuntman, and world-champion rodeo cowboy. He won an Oscar for his role in The Last Picture Show and worked with directors John Ford and Sam Peckinpah.
YearTitleRoleNotes1939Mexican BarflyUncredited1943DeputyUncredited1943Bordertown Gun FightersMessengerUncredited1944Race ContestantUncredited- Overview
- Theatrical career
- His masques at court
- His prime and later life
Ben Jonson (born June 11?, 1572, London, England—died August 6, 1637, London) English Stuart dramatist, lyric poet, and literary critic. He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I. Among his major plays are the comedies Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone (1605...
Jonson was born two months after his father died. His stepfather was a bricklayer, but by good fortune the boy was able to attend Westminster School. His formal education, however, ended early, and he at first followed his stepfather’s trade, then fought with some success with the English forces in the Netherlands. On returning to England, he became an actor and playwright, experiencing the life of a strolling player. He apparently played the leading role of Hieronimo in Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy. By 1597 he was writing plays for Philip Henslowe, the leading impresario for the public theatre. With one exception (The Case Is Altered), these early plays are known, if at all, only by their titles. Jonson apparently wrote tragedies as well as comedies in these years, but his extant writings include only two tragedies, Sejanus (1603) and Catiline (1611).
The year 1598 marked an abrupt change in Jonson’s status, when Every Man in His Humour was successfully presented by the Lord Chamberlain’s theatrical company (a legend has it that Shakespeare himself recommended it to them), and his reputation was established. In this play Jonson tried to bring the spirit and manner of Latin comedy to the English popular stage by presenting the story of a young man with an eye for a girl, who has difficulty with a phlegmatic father, is dependent on a clever servant, and is ultimately successful—in fact, the standard plot of the Latin dramatist Plautus. But at the same time Jonson sought to embody in four of the main characters the four “humours” of medieval and Renaissance medicine—choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood—which were thought to determine human physical and mental makeup.
That same year Jonson killed a fellow actor in a duel, and, though he escaped capital punishment by pleading “benefit of clergy” (the ability to read from the Latin Bible), he could not escape branding. During his brief imprisonment over the affair he became a Roman Catholic.
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Following the success of Every Man in His Humour, the same theatrical company acted Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humour (1599), which was even more ambitious. It was the longest play ever written for the Elizabethan public theatre, and it strove to provide an equivalent of the Greek comedy of Aristophanes; “induction,” or “prelude,” and regular between-act comment explicated the author’s views on what the drama should be.
It appears that Jonson won royal attention by his Entertainment at Althorpe, given before James I’s queen as she journeyed down from Scotland in 1603, and in 1605 The Masque of Blackness was presented at court. The “masque” was a quasi-dramatic entertainment, primarily providing a pretense for a group of strangers to dance and sing before an audience of guests and attendants in a royal court or nobleman’s house. This elementary pattern was much elaborated during the reign of James I, when Jones provided increasingly magnificent costumes and scenic effects for masques at court. The few spoken words that the masque had demanded in Elizabethan days expanded into a “text” of a few hundred lines and a number of set songs. Thus the author became important as well as the designer: he was to provide not only the necessary words but also a special “allegorical” meaning underlying the whole entertainment. It was Jonson, in collaboration with Jones, who gave the Jacobean masque its characteristic shape and style. He did this primarily by introducing the suggestion of a “dramatic” action. It was thus the poet who provided the informing idea and dictated the fashion of the whole night’s assembly. Jonson’s early masques were clearly successful, for during the following years he was repeatedly called upon to function as poet at court. Among his masques were Hymenaei (1606), Hue and Cry After Cupid (1608), The Masque of Beauty (1608), and The Masque of Queens (1609). In his masques Jonson was fertile in inventing new motives for the arrival of the strangers. But this was not enough: he also invented the “antimasque,” which preceded the masque proper and which featured grotesques or comics who were primarily actors rather than dancers or musicians.
Important though Jonson was at the court in Whitehall, it was undoubtedly Jones’s contributions that caused the most stir. That tension should arise between the two men was inevitable, and eventually friction led to a complete break: Jonson wrote the Twelfth Night masque for the court in 1625 but then had to wait five years before the court again asked for his services.
In 1606 Jonson and his wife (whom he had married in 1594) were brought before the consistory court in London to explain their lack of participation in the Anglican church. He denied that his wife was guilty but admitted that his own religious opinions held him aloof from attendance. The matter was patched up through his agreement to confer with learned men, who might persuade him if they could. Apparently it took six years for him to decide to conform. For some time before this he and his wife had lived apart, Jonson taking refuge in turn with his patrons Sir Robert Townshend and Esmé Stuart, Lord Aubigny.
During this period, nevertheless, he made a mark second only to Shakespeare’s in the public theatre. His comedies Volpone; or, the Foxe (1606) and The Alchemist (1610) were among the most popular and esteemed plays of the time. Each exhibited man’s folly in the pursuit of gold. Set respectively in Italy and London, they demonstrate Jonson’s enthusiasm both for the typical Renaissance setting and for his own town on Europe’s fringe. Both plays are eloquent and compact, sharp-tongued and controlled. The comedies Epicoene (1609) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) were also successful.
Jonson embarked on a walking tour in 1618–19, which took him to Scotland. During the visit the city of Edinburgh made him an honorary burgess and guild brother. On his return to England he received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Oxford University, a most signal honour in his time. Jonson’s life was a life of talk as well as of writing. He engaged in “wit-combats” with Shakespeare and reigned supreme. It was a young man’s ultimate honour to be regarded as a “son of Ben.”
In 1623 his personal library was destroyed by fire. By this time his services were seldom called on for the entertainment of Charles I’s court, and his last plays failed to please. In 1628 he suffered what was apparently a stroke and, as a result, was confined to his room and chair, ultimately to his bed. That same year he was made city chronologer (thus theoretically responsible for the city’s pageants), though in 1634 his salary for the post was made into a pension. Jonson died in 1637 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
- Clifford Leech
Ben Johnson is a 24-year-old right-back from England who plays for Ipswich Town since 2024. He has a market value of €8.00m and is a former England U21 international.
- England
- London
Ben Johnson (1918-1996) was an American actor who appeared in over 300 movies, including The Last Picture Show, The Wild Bunch, and The Getaway. He also won a world roping championship in 1953 and worked as a stuntman and horse wrangler for many stars.
Ben Johnson. Actor: The Last Picture Show. Born in Oklahoma, Ben Johnson was a ranch hand and rodeo performer when, in 1940, Howard Hughes hired him to take a load of horses to California.
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