The famous antiquarian John Selden responded to a question from his friend Ben Jonson concerning "the literal and historical meaning of the sacred text usually opposed to the counterfeiting of the sexes by clothing", namely the letter of 5. demonstrates his extraordinary understanding of the sources ancient and , Jonson has since benefited from the attention of numerous biographers, four of whom have been published alone. The latest and best of these, Ian Donaldson's Ben Jonson: A Life, is once again umbilically connected to a major publishing project, Jonson's Cambridge edition, of which Donaldson was an editor generals.