of its kind that I have run across. 'Jonson in The Poetaster, following the fashion of his time, had summed up the political cause of Essex in the person of Julia, the Emperor's "base and revolted daughter."

Plautia. The Gens Plautia (Plotia) was a plebian gens at Rome; several members of the family attained the consulship. Jonson's choice of the name Plautia for the mistress of Tibullus is interesting. In the first book of the elegies Tibullus addresses his mistress by the name of Delia (cf. Poetaster 1. 3. 33); in the second book we find Delia superseded by Nemesis (cf. Poetaster 4. 3. 95); and in the third Neaera reigns. Now Apuleius is authority for the real name of this Delia of Bk. I. I quote from the Apologia (ed. G. Krueger, 1864, p. 15): Accusent

et Tibullum, quod ei sit Plania in animo Delia in uersu. For Plania, Krueger notes that the reading of Casaubon is Flauia; the codex Florentinus has in the margin, Deliam pro Plania. But in his Elegiac Extracts from Tibullus and Ovid (Glasgow, 1840, p. 7), Wm. Ramsay notes that Elmenhorst in his edition of Apuleius' Apologia (p. 279) gives the alternative readings Plautia and Flavia, for Plania. Now Elmenhorst published the Opera of Apuleius at Frankfort in 1621, the year of his death. This cannot, therefore, have been Jonson's source for the name Plautia, and we must suppose it to have occurred in some still earlier edition to which our poet had

access.

Players. Certain players are referred to by nicknames, but do not appear on the stage. The bitterness of the allusions leaves no room for surprise that Jonson was censured for them, as appears from his reply in the Apologetical Dialogue (128-139):

Now, for the Players, it is true, I tax'd 'hem,

And yet, but fome;

Onely amongst them, I am forry for

Some better natures, by the reft fo drawne,

To run in that vile line.

'It has been thought,' comments Whalley, 'that Shakespeare was here alluded to, under the expression of better natures. But I see no reason to confine the phrase to so particular a restriction. It makes good sense to take it in the most obvious meaning: nor does it appear there was any difference now subsisting between Shakespeare and our author.' Gifford goes further. 'Thus far Whalley is right. He might have added, to the confusion of the thinkers, that if their ingenious supposition were true, it would go near to prove-not that Jonson was hostile to Shakspeare, but that Shakspeare was captiously disinclined to Jonson. But, in fact, there is no allusion whatever to Shakspeare, or to the company with which he was connected. The commentators are absolutely mad: they will allow Jonson neither to compliment nor criticize any one but our great poet; and this merely for the pleasure of taxing him with hypocrisy in the one case and envy in the other. I have already observed that the actors ridiculed belonged to the Fortune playhouse; and the critics must have discovered, if their judgment had been as active as their enmity, a very frequent recurrence throughout the Poetaster, and the Apology, to the poverty and low estimation of this unfortunate company.

"If it gave them meat,

Or got them clothes, 'tis well; that was their end." Could this be said of Allen and Shakspeare, of Burbage, Lowin, and Taylor? Without question the Fortune possessed more actors than the "lean Poluphagus" and the "politic Aesop," and to some of those the poet might allude: "the better natures" were not confined, I trust, in Jonson's days any more than in our own, to a single person, or even a single theatre.' That Gifford was here talking not without provocation, appears from the words of Thomas Davies (Dram. Misc. 2. 81): 'Some of the players he [Jonson] characterizes under feigned names: such as "the lean Poluphagus," by whom I conjecture he

means Burbage, who, I have no doubt, acted the lean Macilente.' Davies further supposes that 'Frisker' may be Kemp, and 'Mango, the fat fool,' may be Lowin, the original Falstaff.

Fleay (Chr. 1. 368-9) believes that the players in question are not members of the Admiral's company, then playing at the Fortune, but of Pembroke's "just settled, after years of strolling in the country, 1600 Nov., at the Rose under Henslow, who was also managing the Fortune.' 'The players he [Tucca] invites to supper, I, lean Polyphagus; 2, fiddler Aenobarbus; 3, politician Aesop (compare the politician players in Histriomastix); 4, “my zany,' ," Frisker; "my mango," the fat fool, belong to Pembroke's company. Frisker is probably Kemp; the others Duke, Pallant, Beeston, &c. They are poor and starved this winter, and mean to hire Demetrius (Dekker, who wrote for the Rose and the Fortune) to bring Horace in in a play. But they did not. It was the King's men and Paul's boys who did that.' As to the last few sentences it is worth remarking that the company in question is not represented by Jonson as those who 'mean to hire Demetrius,' but as those who have hired him (Poetaster 3. 4. 339-342). It cannot be regarded as probable that Jonson did not really know what company had secured the services of Dekker, and Satiromastix was acted, as Fleay says, by the Chamberlain's company and the children of Paul's. Of course the opinion of Fleay that the players belonged to Pembroke's company, which seems to have been at this time acting at the Rose (Fleay, Stage 138), and that of Small that they belonged to the Chamberlain's company, acting at the Globe, require some plausible explanation of the words of Tucca to Histrio (3. 4. 135-6), 'You haue fortune

on

your side'; while such an explanation is not needed if we accept Gifford's more obvious interpretation, that Histrio and the rest are by this very passage proved members of the company acting at the Fortune, i. e. the Admiral's. Fleay

argues that a member of Pembroke's company may properly be said to have Fortune on his side, though he acts at the Rose, because both the Rose and the Fortune are now managed by Henslowe and Alleyn. Small thinks it quite as natural to say to a member of the Chamberlain's company that he has Fortune on his side because the men of the Fortune would certainly be in sympathy with any company which purposed to produce a satire upon Jonson. I can but refer again to the arguments brought forward in the discussion of the identity of Histrio, and state my belief that Histrio and the other players belong to the Chamberlain's men. Of course the acceptance of such a conclusion involves the rejection of the identifications of the various actors suggested by Fleay. It seems to me that even if Fleay were right in holding that the Rose company was in Jonson's mind, we are quite incompetent to identify individuals from the characterizing phrases and nicknames supplied by Poetaster. So that when Fleay (Chr. 2. 322) speaks of 'Duke, "the fat fool" of Poetaster, he is treating as a fact what can be only a more or less remote possibility.

The suggestion that by 'Frisker, my zany' Jonson meant Kemp the morris dancer, is too plausible to be neglected without examination. I therefore submit what facts are obtainable, the more general being drawn from Sidney Lee's sketch in DNB. A letter from Sir Philip Sidney to Walsingham, March 24, 1586, speaks of a previous letter sent by 'Will my lord of Lester's jesting player,' which has been regarded as referring to William Kemp and proving him then a member of Leicester's company. This company passed in 1588 to the patronage of Lord Strange, and in 1594 to that of Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon. Although associated with men like Shakespeare, Alleyn, and Burbage, Kemp won his popularity not by legitimate acting, but by dancing jigs and singing comic songs at the close of plays. He acted in Every Man in his Humour.

His famous morris-dance from London to Norwich (mentioned by Jonson, folio 1616, p. 814) took place during Lent, 1599. An account of this he published in 1600: Kemps Nine Daies Wonder Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich. About this time he seems to have travelled and danced abroad; but Henslowe's Diary (p. 215) notes a payment to him on March 10, 1602, when he had become a member of the Earl of Worcester's men, then acting at the Rose under Henslowe's management.

It is quite possible that when Poetaster was being written Kemp was not in England. Fleay himself notes (Stage 138) that the comedian went abroad in 1601. Compare, however, the following information given by Halliwell (Ludus Coventriae, 1841, pp. 409-410), as from MS. Sloan, 392, fol. 401: '1601, Sept. 2. Kemp mimus quidam, qui peregrinationem quondam in Germaniam et Italiam institituerat, post multos errores et infortunia sua reversus: multa refert de Anthonio Sherly equito aurato, quem Romae (legatum Persicum agentem) convenerat.' Kemp must therefore have returned from 'dancing the morrice over the Alps' about the time Poetaster was produced. The Diary shows us only that Kemp was with Henslowe by Aug. 22, 1602. It is clear that Tucca would not have invited any player to his supper who was known to be out of England. Halliwell's quotation shows that Kemp had returned by Sep. 2, 1601. Was he at home when Jonson was writing? Satiromastix was produced about September, and Poetaster must have been on the boards some little time before. We are therefore dealing with mere possibilities again. Kemp may have reached England by June, 1601, when Jonson was at work on Poetaster: Jonson may have thought of Histrio and the other players mentioned in 3. 4 as members of Pembroke's company, and included the newly arrived and ever popular Kemp under the name 'Frisker, my zany.' But it seems highly probable that Kemp was not yet home when Jonson was writing; and we have already seen reasons