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sonal motive conduces to both dignity and pure comedy. On the other hand, despite his naming Poetaster a 'comical satire' and disavowing any attack in it upon persons, Jonson gives us little comedy and much pitiful personal satire. The themes are the malice, ignorance, and even the poverty, of the poet-apes, and the forbearance (save the mark!), wisdom, and genius of Ben Jonson. Poetaster is learned; it has some action, if also a very crude plot; but it is pervaded by arrogance, narrowness, and pettiness that must forever exclude it from sober comparison with such a drama as the Frogs.

5. 3. 332-349. Several critics have noted that the source of this tirade against Demetrius is Horace, Sat. 1. 4. 78-85. Line 85 of the satire, Hic niger est; hunc tu, Romane, caveto, had already been used in the characterizing of Macilente in Every Man Out 1. 1: ‘O he's a black fellow, take heed of him.'

5. 3. 402 ff. In Satiromastix (p. 11) Tucca says to Horace-Jonson, 'Thou'lt shoote thy quilles at mee, when my terrible backe's turn'd for all this, wilt not Porcupine? and bring me & my Heliconistes into thy Dialogues to make vs talke madlie, wut not Lucian?'

After this observation from Dekker, it is needless to inquire who first among critics discovered that the closing scene in Poetaster was drawn from Lucian's Lexiphanes. And indeed, considering his purpose and his audience, Jonson selected the model wisely. In the Greek dialogue, Lexiphanes, who is infected with a passion for obscure and fantastic diction, reads to Lycinus (Lucian) a florid description of a convivial gathering. So bad is the phraseology that Lycinus is nauseated before the reading has been completed. At this juncture the physician Sopolis, a friend of Lycinus, approaches and is asked by the latter to cure Lexiphanes of his habit of using such uncouth and obsolete terms. Lexiphanes is persuaded to drink of a mixture which immediately raises an intestinal tumult that results

in his vomiting up the objectionable vocabulary. To work a cure, Lycinus then admonishes Lexiphanes utterly to forsake barbarous discourse, and to read instead the best poets, the orators, Thucydides and Plato, and finally the greatest comedies and tragedies. The dialogue concludes with a reiterated warning against bombastic and outlandish diction.

5. 3. 471-8. This speech, together with several allusions and names scattered through the play, is drawn from Horace, Sat. I. 10. 76-91.

A. D. 72. This, as Whalley notes, was suggested by
Martial, 10. 33. 10: Parcere personis, dicere de vitiis.
A. D. 151-4. Gifford here refers to Martial, 6. 64. 24–26:

At si quid nostrae tibi bilis inusserit ardor,
Vivet, et haerebit, totoque legetur in urbe;
Stigmata nec vafra delebit Cinnamus arte.

A. D. 161-6. Gifford, by a slip, gives Juvenal, Sat. 14 as the source of this; it comes from Sat. 13. 193-5:

Diri conscia facti

Mens habet attonitos, et surdo verbere caedit,
Occultum quatiente animo tortore flagellum.

Cf. also lines 191–2:

Continuo sic collige, quod vindicta
Nemo magis gaudet quam faemina.

A. D. 168-170. With this harsh and ambiguous passage compare Discoveries, Acutius cernuntur vitia quam virtutes, where Jonson writes: "The treasure of a fool is always in his tongue, said the witty comic poet,' &c. Concerning this allusion Schelling says (ed. Timber 99): 'I cannot identify this passage in Plautus, Terence, Menander, or other "witty comic poet." There are, however, hundreds of similar proverbs: e. g. "The tongue of a fool carves a piece of his heart to all that sit near him." (Hazlitt, English Proverbs, p. 388).'

A. D. 188-9. Gifford compares Persius, Prol. 10:

Magister artis, ingenique largitor

Venter.

A. D. 197. Cf. Juvenal, Sat. 7. 27: Frange miser calamos, vigalataque proelia dele.

A. D. 213-5. "This passage," says Mr. Malone, Jonson imitated from Shakspeare, the censure of "which one (judicious) must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others."-Hamlet. After all, Jonson's

words are little more than a translation from Cicero, to whom he was much more likely to be indebted than to any contemporary whatever: "Haec ego non multis, sed tibi satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus." Cicero himself alludes to a story told of Plato.'-Gifford.

Compare also Horace, Sat. 1. 10. 72-74:

Saepe stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint
Scripturus: neque, te ut miretur turba, labores,
Contentus paucis lectoribus.

Jonson placed on the title-page of the 1616 folio an adaptation of the above:

Neque, me ut miretur turba, laboro,

Contentus paucis lectoribus.

A. D. 220-3. This is an imitation of Juvenal, Sat. 7.

27-9:

E.

Frange miser calamos vigilataque proelia dele,
Qui facis in parva sublimia carmina cella,
Ut dignus venias hederis at imagine macra.

HISTORICAL AND PERSONAL SOURCES, WITH
DISCUSSION OF PROPOSED IDENTIFICATIONS

Poetaster is peculiar in that its dramatis personae present a curious and intricate blending of characteristics partly historical, partly fictional. We are confronted now by the

graceful Horace who suffered an amusing martyrdom from the bore in the Via Sacra, and again by the more aggressive English poet who saw nothing incongruous in masquerading under the Roman's name. The bore himself appears incontinently as the Tigellius or the Crispinus, half knave, half fool, whose immortality is to spring from the goodhumored allusions of the Augustan satirist, or as the foppish and bombastic poet-ape under whose fantastic form the testy Elizabethan satirist chooses to introduce his not insignificant nor highly malicious fellow-dramatist Marston. But a confusion of the ancient and the contemporary, of the historical and the fanciful subjects of treatment, is evident in the Horace of Poetaster, and in the case of Crispinus, Demetrius, and Virgil, to mention no others, has made itself felt sufficiently to lead critics to differ widely in estimating the proportion of the Augustan, the Elizabethan, and the purely imaginative elements in these dramatic personalities. It is because of this two-fold or even three-fold treatment that it has seemed necessary to go rather minutely into the various sources, phases, and implications of each character in our drama. The arrangement of names is made alphabetical for the sake of convenience in reference. Finally, in entering upon the discussion of identifications, we cannot do better than to keep in mind Jonson's own warning upon this subject in the Induction of Bartholomew Fair. To this it may be replied that Poetaster is avowedly a satire upon contemporaries. Nevertheless, granting that the characters of Horace, Crispinus, and Demetrius are in the main meant for the poet and his dramatic enemies, the present editor is convinced that in general Jonson does not paint exclusively and scrupulously a living person even when having such in his mind's eye, but rather throws in a characterizing stroke now and again, so that the result is not a portrait, but a caricature, or merely a fanciful or a conventional sketch that suggests to us more or less vividly some person we know. This

explains certain contradictions which some critics have discovered-in Virgil as here presented, for example-and it should also warn us against uncritically reading into any character of Poetaster an identity which Jonson's portraiture may from time to time seem to suggest.

Aesop. Clodius Aesopus, probably a freedman of the Gens Clodia, was the most celebrated tragic actor in Rome in the time of Cicero, whose friend he became. He left a large fortune to a spendthrift son.

Of the Aesop who appears, but says no word, in Poetaster, Gifford notes (GC. 2. 483): 'He was an actor at the Fortune play-house, which is all that I can say of him. Our author treats him with marked dislike: he merely allows him to make his appearance, and then hurries him off the stage to undergo a servile punishment.'

Aesop and the

The facts supplied by the play concerning this doubtful character are as follows: 3. 4. 311-5; 'Doe not bring your AESOPE, your politician; vnleffe you can ram vp his mouth with cloues; the flaue smells ranker then fome fixteene dunghills, and is feuenteene times more rotten.' This is said by Tucca to Histrio, and makes it clear that present Histrio are not identical, as some critics have argued, though they belong to the same company. Of the player who is said by Lupus to have discovered to him the 'libel' written by Horace upon Caesar, Tucca says (5. 3. 112-3): 'I, an honest fycophant-like flaue, and a politician, befides.' Aesop is called in, and, though promised by Tueca a monopoly of playing for his 'covey,' is ordered by Caesar to be whipped for tale-bearing.

The only warranted conclusion from the above is that Aesop is an individual, and not to be confused with Histrio; that he is a member of some company hostile to Jonson, a meddler in politics, and a fellow of low character. For further discussion of Aesop, see under HISTRIO.

Albius. Jonson may have taken this name from Horace, Sat. 1. 4. 28: 'Stupet Albius aere.'

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