The Stage-Quarrel between Ben Jonson and the so-called Poetasters, by R. A. Small. (Forschungen zur englischen sprache und litteratur, herausgegeben von Eugen Kölbing, heft 1.)

We, i. e. all interested in English literature, must greet the appearance of this periodical with a warm welcome. The everincreasing interest in English literature has found one vent more, and if we may judge from the work before us it is destined to do worthy service in the common field.

Small's investigation is ushered in by a preface and a biographical sketch from the pen of Professor Kittredge. From this we learn that the author died at the early age of twenty seven. His death is a severe loss to the cause to which he devoted himself, as his Stage - Quarrel testifies. It is to be hoped that his friends will see that the other work left by him: Authorship and Date of The Insatiate Countess, published in "Studies and Notes in Philology and literature" (Boston 1897) may soon appear as an independent work. The sharp but sound critical judgment displayed in the work before us justifies the hope that this latter question also has been treated with the same thoroughness as the Stage-Quarrel. The period treated of in the latter embraces the years 1599, 1600 and 1601. By extracts from John Davies of Hereford, Chapman and the Comedy of Lingua, the author shows the interest taken in this literary quarrel in those days. He then gives the sources from which he draws his conclusions (p. 3) and gives (on p. 4) what seems a happy emendation. By changing a comma into a period, the expression about Jonson in the Drummond Conversations: "In his youth given to venery," which has hitherto been an insurmountable difficulty, has no doubt been made clear. Had Jonson been addicted to venery in his youth, his enemies would have taken care to inform us of the fact. to inform us of the fact. According to Small's punctuation, the sentence applies to Marston. In dealing with his predecessors, Small is almost too painfully conscientious. What possible importance the views of Baudissin, Cartwright, Hermann, Zeis and Henry Wood (whoever that unknown gentleman may be) can have for us, it is difficult to imagine. An other name, Penniman, author of a dissertation on the same subject, bas also more attention bestowed upon him than he seems to deserve. From the quotations Small gives, Penniman seems to be a mere hanger-on of Fleay's. But in dealing with Fleay, Small shows himself equal to his work. The readers of the Engl. stud.

will remember that the present writer declared Fleay's work to be tantalising. You can make use of him only by sharply watching him in all his turnings and windings. Small has done this with neverfailing sagacity, and, has thus shown himself one of the few men capable of making use of the confused mass of materials collected by that unfortunate historian of the stage. But, trying though Fleay has been to his temper, he never goes further than such an utterance of impatience as that on p. 10: "Fleay's book capitally important as it is, is both confusing and untrustworthy." In the numerous cases in which he agrees with Fleay, he shows himself anxious to acknowledge it, where he differs, he expresses his opinion with distinctness and sharpness but without irritation.

After emphasising the satiric tendeney of the time p. 11, he says: "To this satiric tendency, extending through all the strata of its literary life, rather than to any subjective change of character, do we owe, perhaps, the bitter, satiric comedies of Shakespeare's mid-career." I note this point now, as one in which I can by no means agree with Small, and shall go into the matter thoroughly when his views as to the part taken by Shakespeare in the literary quarrel in the person of Ajax in Troilus and Cressida, come to be discussed.

Small enters on p. 13 into an account of the authors concerned in the Stage-Quarrel. He begins with Jonson. A Tale of a Tub and The case is altered are rightly put a the beginning of Jonson's career. They have no bearing on the Stage-Quarrel, nor has Every Man in his Humour. With regard to Every Man out of his Humour, our author has succeeded in fixing the date within very narrow limits viz.: from Feb. 15th to March 24th 1599-1600. In speaking of Cynthio's Revels, Small touches an interasting point. In an article on All's well that ends well in the Engl. stud., I brought forward proofs of alteration in the play, pointing to the conclusion that the ring-episode was introduced while Essex was in the Tower under sentence of death. Small makes it probable that, in the allusion to Diana and Actaeon, Jonson alludes to the murmurs of discontent, among the people at the execution of the popular favourite.

Under The Poetaster (p. 25) we have: "As we know from Hamlet, the men-players were hard pressed by the child actors in 1601." This cannot be taken in the sense that Shakespeare's Hamlet, in any form helongs to the year 1601 as Small affirms

later on. In Hamlet, as in all the later tragedies, the struggle which leads to the catastrophe is an internal one, fought out by the two opposite natures living in the hero's breast, as Goethe has aptly put it. In Julius Caesar the struggle is an external one, and the catastrophe is brought about by the the incompatibility of the natures of Brutus and Cassius, who, uniting their powers to reach a common goal, draw in different directions and involve themselves and their cause in one universal ruin, Such a radical change in the poet's art could not have taken place in the short interval between Julius Caesar (say 1600) and 1601.

On the same page (25) and the two following, Small gathers together all that Jonson has taken from the Latin poets in this play. Small's own share in this work is very considerable, and he repeatedly confesses his obligations to Köppel. The most interesting, thorough and instructive part of Small's work at Jonson follows on pp. 27 &c. in the table of the characters of the three plays, Every Man out of his Humour, Cynthia's Revels, The Poetaster, with his remarks on them. His most important results are (1.) that Anaides and Demetrius are meant for Dekker, while Carlo Buffone is not a literary man at all, he is Charles Chester, a man about town. The most convincing evidence of the correctness of this supposition we find on p. 38, where we are told that Sir Walter Raleigh once sealed up Chester's mouth, as Puntarvolo seals up Carlo Buffone's. Although I am not inclined to go so far as Small does with regard to Aubrey ("the early and trustworthy authority of Aubrey", p. 37), yet it is pretty clear that, in this case, he (Aubrey) has hit the mark. On pp. 34, 35 Small gives interesting parallel passages to support his views. (2) Of the trio Brisk, Hedon and Crispinus, the two latter are meant for Marston, while Brisk is a dandy of the time, identical with Emulo in Patient Grissel, whose original has not yet been ascertained. On p. 44 we have an amusing example of Fleay putting down Flealy. In the North British Review for July 1870 p. 402, somebody had declared that Emulo in Patient Grissel was meant for Jonson. In Shakespeariana III 31, Fleay said, "Emulo is certainly Jonson". In his Chronicle I 97, having evidently forgotten all about this, he speaks of "a foolish assertion, put forth by a DemiDoctor, some years since, that Emulo is meant for Jonson." Just like Flealy. He adopts what suits his purpose without acknowedgment and then abuses those he has stolen from!

Small (p. 44) disposes of an unfounded guess, which appeared in the Quarterly Review for January 1896, and was adopted by Sidney Lee in the Life of Lyly in the Dict. of Nat. Biog. that Sir Fastidious Brisk was Lyly.

Small then takes up Puntarvolo in Every Man out of his Humour and Amorphus in Cynthia's Revels. Puntarvolo is partly (but only partly) identified with Sir John Hatington. In other aspects he and Amorphus are only types of the travelled gull, for whom numerous originals might be found in Elisabethan England. Amorphus (the Deformed) is glanced at by Shakespeare in Much Ado III 3 (Watchman) several times, which has not been noticed by Small. The manner in which the allusion is made, lightly and jokingly, rather weakens what Small has afterwarts to say about Shakespeare's share in the Stage-Quarrel under Troilus and Cressida.

Small rejects, very properly I think, Fleay's identification of Asotus with Lodge and of Sordido with some kinsman of Burbadge, in which case of course Sordido's son and brother, Fungoso and Sogliardo would, as Small argues, also be Burbadges. Fleay's reason for his guess, given by Small on p. 54, is so ridiculous, that, in mere pity, I shall not take the pains to show its absurdity.

Small is somewhat severe in many passages on Jonson. I attribute this to the unlucky idea that he took up as to Shakespeare's share in this literary controversy. I have no doubt that allusions to it may be found in the plays, the dates of which fall within or shortly after the period of time embraced by the Quarrel. But that Shakespeare, at that time or afterwards, made any sustained effort to ridicule Jonson on the stage, I regard as unimaginable. Jonson presented many inviting points of attack to his contemporaries, not only from the peculiarities in his own character, but also from his persistent attempts to reform the stage and introduce a new form of art. But there is no reason to suppose that his declaration that he had loved Shakespeare in life almost to idolatry, was not the utterance of his inmost soul. Small's views as to Shakespeare's part in the Quarrel must stand or fall with the date of Troilus and Cressida in its present form. If that play was later than 1602, his theory falls to pieces at once. p. 62 our author goes on to treat of Marston's share in the Quarrel. I have no hesitation in saying that I regard Small's views with respect to the point whether Fleay was right in his identifications of Jonson with Carlo Buffone, Tubrio and

On

Jack of Paris Garden as firmly established, though Symonds accepts. F.'s identification of Jonson with Tubrio and with Jack of Paris Garden (probably a wellknown ape). Symonds also takes Torquatus in the introduction to the Scourge of Villany for Jonson. Herford (Dict. of Nat. Biog. article Jonson) identifies Tubrio with Jonson, a view also shared in by Gifford, Halliwell, Grosart and Bullen, a very formidable list of authorities. On pp. 64, 65, 66 he gives his views on these identifications with convincing clearness.

On p. 67 Small goes on to treat of Histriomastix, and gives it as his opinion that Marston re-cast in it part at least of an old play. This play he thinks belongs to 1596, before the StageQuarrel began, and that it may possibly be an early play of Chapman's, although he confesses that he cannot assign it to that dramatist decisively The date of Marston's recast he assigns to the August of 1599 on the authority of Stow and that it was presented by a Children's Company the Paul's Boys. Small does not believe that Posthaste in this play was Shakespeare. If, he says, that character refers to any particular person, that person is Munday. The character of Chrysogonus in the play, Small thinks, is a flattering picture of Jonson, which however the latter's sensitiveness and irascibility caused him to regard as an insult. The carefully conducted investigation seems to me to establish Small's views.

Passing over Antonio and Mellida and Antonio's Revenge we come to Jack Drum's Entertainment, which Small assigns to Marston and dates 1599, or 1600, when the Irish rebellion and the difficulties with Spain were at their height. The character of Brabant Senior in this play, he thinks, is a hit at Jonson. Marston's What you Will our authour dates 1601 and regards it as a reply to Jonson's Cynthia's Revels acted in February or March that year. Aronstein in the Engl. Stud. XX 381. 382 advances the same view without much discussion. That M.'s play in its present form was a re-cast, Small shows pp. 109 &c. very convincingly. The other plays of Marston have no reference to the Quarrel. Small's summary of the part taken by Marston in the Quarrel, I give in his own words: Marston made no allusion to Jonson in his Satires and Scourge of Villany. In Histriomastix, August 1599, he, consciously made Chrysogonus a favourable portrait of Jonson. In Antonio and Mellida and Antonio's Revenge