It may fairly be said that Ben Jonson was one of the most self-conscious of poets and also a man not noticeably plagued by self-doubt. For publication in 1616, he gathered together a collection of his plays, poems, and other pieces and changed forever the world's (or at least the English-speaking part's) perception of what constituted a man's works. “Works,” the word that Jonson selected as the title for his collection, was itself an act of audaciousness. No one before had thought, perhaps dared to think, that such a grand word, even translated (from the Latin “Opera”) into English, could be used to describe a collection that included mere plays. Seven years later, the collection of Shakespeare's plays bore the more modest title Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, and in 1647 Beaumont's and Fletcher's, similarly, were Comedies and Tragedies.