With this compare Eastward Ho (by Jonson, Chapman, and Marston, 1605) 2. 1. 118-9: Quicksilver [the drunken apprentice]. Who cries on murther? Lady, was it you? how does our master? pray thee cry Eastward-ho! Even in Othello (ed. Furness, 5. 1. 61-2) we find: Iago. Who's there? Who's noyse is this that cries on murther? Upon the Othello passage we have Malone's reference to Bel-imperia. Murder, murder: helpe, Hieronimo, helpe. It will be observed that the words of Quicksilver in Eastward Ho are not at all a close parallel to the speeches quoted from the Spanish Tragedy, while they do imitate word for word Chapman's Blind Beggar as here quoted. Yet Chapman was one of the three authors of Eastward Ho, and we cannot suppose him to have been ridiculing his own former work. On the other hand, at this time Jonson and Marston must have been on good terms with him, and we should scarcely expect either of them to slip in a sly stroke at Chapman. If it be suggested that in the Blind Beggar Chapman himself parodied Kyd, the answer is that even if Kyd were to be regarded as a fair mark, yet in the passage where the debatable words appear, and indeed throughout the play, Chapman was perfectly serious, just as Shakespeare was in Othello 5. 1. 61-2. Clearly enough, in Poetaster 3. 4 Jonson parodies the old bombastic tragedy, and imitations of it in his own day. He has already cited the Spanish Tragedy: is he still ridiculing that, or is he ridiculing Chapman's Blind Beggar, when he makes Pyrgus cry, 'Who calls out murder? lady, was it you?' It seems to me that the words are too exactly like Chapman's and too little like Kyd's, to leave any doubt in our minds that Chapman is here burlesqued. The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, be it said, was just the high-flown, unnatural, crude sort of tragedy that Jonson scorned; it was much weaker and scarcely less blatant than the Spanish Tragedy itself. My own opinion is that in Poetaster Jonson does have his fling at Chapman, and that Quicksilver's travesties in Eastward Ho were also Jonson's work. It may seem that we have been making a long digression. But the conclusion reached with reference to this bit of ridicule in Poetaster has a bearing on the Chapman-Virgil problem. For if Jonson had been thinking of Chapman's Blind Beggar of Alexandria as a latter-day example of the earlier bombastic tragedy-and he can hardly have thought of it as anything else—and had unmistakably made sport of an easily recognized passage in it, he can hardly have turned in his fifth act to present his audience with Chapman as the 'incomparable Virgil' of the Elizabethan era. It is true that throughout our discussion of the relations of Jonson and Virgil, we have had to deal in probabilities and inferences; but it seems to the present editor that even these make a strong case against the identification of Virgil with Chapman. The net results of our three-fold inquiry may now be presented. 1) The preliminary argument proved that the eulogies in Poetaster 5. I were for the most part aptly descriptive of the historical Virgil, while none were inapplicable, and all might have been addressed to him in Jonson's day. This gave strong presumptive evidence against the identification of Virgil with any Elizabethan. 2) Notwithstanding his tribute in later years, Jonson can never have respected the learning or sympathized with the art of Shakespeare; moreover, it appears that immediately after the production of Poetaster relations between the two dramatists became strained. It is therefore all but certain that Virgil does not represent Shakespeare. 3) In respect to scholarship and literary ideals, Chapman and Jonson stood shoulder to shoulder; there is no evidence of unfriendliness between the two poets in 1601, and later they were collaborators. But the characterization of Virgil seems wholly undeserved by Chapman, and Poetaster itself contains an uncomplimentary allusion to one of Chapman's pieces of bombast. Identification of Chapman with Virgil, then, is quite unwarranted. Our final conclusion must be that the Virgil of Poetaster is Virgil and no other. Summary. Of the many identifications proposed for characters in Poetaster, our investigations have established but three. Horace is Ben Jonson; Crispinus is John Marston; Demetrius is Thomas Dekker. Perhaps Dekker was right in surmising that Tucca represented Captain Hannam, but the latter is quite unknown to us. Critics who have discovered others of Jonson's contemporaries in our play have followed threads of fancied relation that lead into, but never out of, a labyrinth. Unless new sources of information be found, we must rest for the most part upon negations. F. THE OVID ELEGY IN POETASTER The version of Ovid, Eleg. I. 15, given in act 1, scene I, is of disputable authorship. Gifford writes (GC. 2. 376): 'This little poem does not now appear for the first time. In 1599 was published a translation of Ovid's Elegies by Christopher Marlow, and this1 among them: not, indeed, pre'The version which appeared as Marlowe's I reproduce from his Works (ed. Bullen, 3. 136-8): ELEGIA XV. Ad invidos, quod fama poetarum sit perennis. Envy, why carp'st thou my time's spent so ill? Nor that I study not the brawling laws, cisely as it stands here, but with such variations as may be supposed to exist in the rough sketch of a finished original. Marlow was now dead; but is seems strange that the editor of his poems, who might be Chapman, should print this under his name, especially as it is followed by that before us; which Jonson probably reclaimed when he wrote the Poetaster. I give this poem to Jonson, because he is That all the world may ever chant my name. Homer shall live while Tenedos stands and Ide, Ascræus lives while grapes with new wine swell, While bondmen cheat, fathers [be] hard, bawds whorish, Rude Ennius, and Plautus full of wit, Are both in Fame's eternal legend writ. What age of Varro's name shall not be told, And Jason's Argo, and the fleece of gold? Lofty Lucretius shall live that hour, To verse let kings give place and kingly shows, After this follows: The same, by B. I. The second version differs from that in Poetaster only in line 37, which runs: The frost-drad myrtle shall impale my head. well known to be incapable of taking credit for the talents of another; and it certainly affords a curious instance of the laxity of literary morality in those days, when a scholar could assert his title to a poem of forty-two lines, of which thirty at least are literally borrowed, and the remainder only varied for the worse.' There have been dissenters from the theory advanced by Gifford. Collier (Bibliog. and Crit. Account, 1866, 2. 312) in describing one of the Middleburgh editions of Marlowe's translations from Ovid, says: 'After Lib. 1, Elegia, 15, comes "The same by B. J." [B. I.] which may mean Ben Jonson; but it is rather a correction and improvement of Marlowe than a new translation.' Fleay (Chr. 1. 367) implies that Jonson was borrowing without credit given: 'In [Poetaster] I i, the translation of Ovid's Elegy is taken bodily, with slight alterations, from Marlowe, and was inserted as "by B. I." by the side of Marlow's in the 3rd (2nd Middleburgh) edition of his translation.' Even Nicholson (Ben Jonson 1. 269) asserts: 'This is Jonson's improved variant of Marlowe's vision [sic] of Ovid's First Book of Loves, Elegy 15, and a variant not improbably first made for this play.' The recent editors of Marlowe, however, disclaim our poem. Dyce (Marlowe's Works, 1870, p. 324) has this note: 'The same by B. I.] Not in ed. A.—“B. I.” i. e. Ben Jonson, who afterwards introduced this version into The Poetaster; see his Works, ii. 397, ed. Gifford, who is probably right in stating that both the translations are by Jonson, the former one being the rough sketch of the latter.' Cf. also Dyce, ibid. xxxix. From Bullen (Marlowe's Works I. XXV-xxvi.) it is necessary to quote at length: 'The version of the Amores must belong to a somewhat earlier date [than 1587]. Dyce conjectures that it was written as a college exercise (surely not at the direction of the college authorities). It is a spirited translation, though the inaccuracies are manifold; in licentiousness, |