As is well known, the latter years of Elizabeth's reign were characterized by un-

certainty, not only over price inflation, shortages of corn, the unresolvable disputes with

Spain and Ireland, but more importantly, the question of succession, the corresponding

fear of civil war, and the rise of Essex and a younger generation of statesmen ambitious

for power and recognition. This problem was exacerbated by the fact that Elizabeth had

expanded enrollments at Cambridge and Oxford "to meet the urgent need for an educated

Protestant ministry," and that by the 1590s these posts had all been filled, leaving a gen-

eration of graduates without employment, discontented and contentious (Riggs 55-56).

The cultural fruit of this discontent could be found throughout the decade in the

vogue of satire derived from the classical satires of Juvenal, Martial, and Horace and

practiced by Joseph Hall, Thomas Nashe, John Marston, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and

others.¹ The Elizabethan satirists generally adapted the Roman practice of presenting a

virtuous narrator who confronts the adverarius with "invective, sarcasm, irony, mockery,

raillery, exaggeration, understatement . . . to make the object of attack abhorrent or ridi-

culous" as a means of moral instruction; typically, satires also included conventional

justifications, in which the author would present himself as "a plain honest man, wishing

harm to no upright person, but appalled at the evil he sees about him and forced by his

conscience" to skewer those who are harming society (Preminger 738).

This was Jonson's standard modus in his comedies, but his satiric bent achieved a

particularly personal and topical flavor in those early plays that make up his contribution

to the war of the theatres, or poetomachia, that he fought against Marston and Dekker

from 1599 to 1602. Jonson's contributions to the war include three epigrams, Every Man

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Out of His Humour, Cynthia's Revels, and perhaps most pointedly, Poetaster. Marston

represented or attacked Jonson in three plays (Histriomastix, Jack Drum's Entertainment,

and What You Will), while Thomas Dekker's Satiromastix served as the final blow, to

which Jonson had already replied in Poetaster. The critical history of these plays pre-

sents two problems.

First is the social and personal aspect of this cultural war and how it interfaces

with the plays: social conditions affecting the companies, how Jonson's commiment to his

social and aesthetic agenda might have been taken by others, and what to make of Dek-

ker's charge, in a play, damning Jonson for the killing of Gabriel Spencer. This problem

is complicated in several ways: as the theatre involves public art and the need for profits,

there is a preliminary concern that the artists manufactured their feud merely as a means

to generate income. Associated with this are questions as to how the war began, the na-

ture of the charges and how seriously we are to take them. One must also discern how

these polemic agendas affect the works themselves, and what this may ultimately teach

us about the use of poetry as a mouthpiece for one's political, artistic, or emotional

agendas.

The second problem is the difficulty of separating these topical references from

artistic achievement. As much ink has been spent in identifying the actual personages

skewered in the plays as in following Jonson's artistic development—his developing dra-

matic theory, configurations of character, and experimentation with plot lines, charac-

teristic motifs such as uses of the chorus, the use of song, and the dinner party or arraign-

ment as resolution. This is perhaps due as much to the critical attention given his later

Cope 3

masterpieces—Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair—as to the human

tendency to put away artistic considerations when audiences may, as with onlookers ob-

serving a brawl, enjoy watching others deflate or beat each other. Finally, though these

two questions—establishing the nature of the actual war in its topical references and

transcending those references to examine Jonson's artistry—may seem contradictory, that

contradiction is central to the nature of satire itself, especially when characters are not

well-disguised. I shall address both questions in this essay.

The origins and motives of the poetomachia are somewhat obscure. Boyce claims

that "it is difficult to tell whether the rivalry was based on real animosity or was a publi-

city stunt" (697). It could also derive from Jonson's stated insistence of giving poetry a

higher classical purpose than his contemporaries had accorded it, or in his ambition to

transcend his bricklayer beginnings for the post of court poet, building himself up by dis-

paraging others. Jonson himself indicates that during this period the theatres needed

some kind of scandal to bring in badly needed money, though he ascribes these motives

to Marston and Dekker, not claiming them as his own. In Poetaster, the actor Histrio

tells Captain Tucca that the players have hired Demetrius, "a dresser [Decker=Dekker] of

plaies about the towne" to "abuse Horace, and bring him in, in a play, with all his gal-

lants" because "it will get us a huge deale of money . . . and we have need on't; for this

winter has made us all poorer, then so many starv'd snakes" (3.4.22-4, 327-29). Dekker,

on the other hand, accuses Jonson of bringing crowds of his supporters to disrupt those

comedies mocking him; Horace in Satiromastix claims that "I can bring (and that they

Cope 4

quake at) a prepar'd troope of gallants, who for my sake shall distaste every unsalted line,

in their fly-blowne Comedies" (1.2.142-44). Cook points out that the concerns over the

actors' poverty were connected to the rivalry between the Children's companies, who

played in private theatres, and the public companies of adult actors. Apparently the

quarrel between the poets brought the audiences back and at least for a time eased that

rivalry, for by 1602 an impressment order issued to round up the riff-raff at "plaie houses,

Bowlinge Alleys, and Dycinge Houses" turned up "Gentlemen, and sarvingmen, . . .

Lawyers, Clarkes, country men that had law cawses, aye the Quens men, knightes, and

as it was credibly reported one Earle" (Gawdy, quoted in Cook 129).

Jonson's descriptions of his motives follow the Roman formula of claiming to be a

plain and honest man who can no longer hold his tongue at the abuses of poetry. After

the second sounding for Every Man Out of His Humour, Asper swears he'll "strip the

ragged follies of the time, naked" (17-18), especially damning "every servile imitating

spirit" who "leaps forth a poet" (67-71). Despite this claim and the savagery of his ridi-

cule for such poetasters, one should also note that from the beginning of his career right

through to Bartholomew Fair, he was also expounding a theory of art derived from the

classics, and as such, his indignation at the abuses of drama should be taken seriously.

His first full play, Every Man in His Humour, opens with a prologue asserting that his

work will present "an image of the times" with "deeds, and language, such as men do

use" (21-23); the chorus of EMO gives this beginning a classical foundation when Cor-

datus explains to Mitis that, in keeping with Cicero's definition, comedy should be an

"imitatio veritae, speculum consuetudinis, imago veritatis"—the imitation and image of

Cope 5

truth, the mirror of custom (206-07), which should be at once pleasant, ridiculous, and

corrective.

This definition finds its fullest measure in the dedication to Volpone, where Jon-

son claims (perhaps somewhat disingenuously) that he has never been "particular" or

"personal" in his works (53), later stating that he follows the doctrine that "the principal

end of poesy" is "to inform men in the best reason of living" (100-01). Perhaps most

revealing is the claim that he will "raise the despised head of Poetry again, and stripping

her out of those rotten and base rags, wherewith the times have adulterated her form, res-

tore her to her primitive habit, feature, and majesty, and render her worthy to be em-

braced and kissed of all the great and master-spirits of our world" (119-23). This last

statement at once discloses the purity of his motives and single-mindedness of purpose

that are both his most endearing and abrasive traits--the humour, if one will, upon which

his adversaries pounced once the attacks began.

This humour or philosophical assertiveness which explicitly attacked Jonson's

contemporaries for abusing poetry, his claim that his work was not for commoners but for

"learned ears" (CR, Prologue 7-11), and his attacks on courtiers as apes and sycophants

gave Marston and Dekker the fodder to mock Jonson for pride, scorn, and arrogance. He

was, as they say, "ripe for the picking," yet the seriousness of the quarrel, though given

some basis in his own irascible humours, appears to be difficult to determine. The ap-

parent animosities fueling the production of plays disappeared after 1602, and the com-

batants later composed together. Critics cite this as proof that the disagreements did not

run deeply or that the others finally had to recognize that Jonson was truly the "English

Cope 6

Horace." He was in any case still defending himself in his dedication to Volpone, five

years after the war's final shots were fired--a fact that implies that there was more to the

poetomachia than a series of publicity stunts to draw in audiences.

Another item that complicates the "publicity theory" is the charge Dekker brought

against Jonson for the murder of Gabriel Spencer: "art not famous enough yet . . . for

killing a Player, that thou must eate men alive?" (Satiromastix 4.2.61-62). Given that

Spencer was an acquaintance of all three poets, this charge could only come from a deep

and unresolved anger at the senseless death of a co-worker; it could not be made lightly

unless its author were both insensitive and morally bankrupt. I suggest, then, that the

truce and later cooperation of these poets cannot prove that the poetomachia was not a

serious dispute; it may simply indicate that all had suffered enough and that they should

get on with their lives.

Having determined that at least some of the charges should be taken as serious

disputation, it will be necessary to follow the course of the feud to observe how the

seriousness of Jonson's purpose and Marston's and Dekker's anger at his arrogance de-

veloped as polemic agendas; after this, conclusions regarding the distortion of artistic

purpose for the sake of political and emotional agendas may be possible. Mary Leland

Hunt, an unabashed advocate for Dekker, finds the beginnings of the feud in Jonson's

satirical portrait of Anthony Munday in The Case Is Altered, claiming that he was "suf-

fering from one of the most malignant attacks of egotism recorded in literature," mislead-

ing "critics down to the present century" (65-66). Riggs, on the other hand, quotes Drum-

Cope 7

mond to suggest that Marston's laudatory caricature of Jonson as Chrisoganous in His-

triomastix led Jonson to mock his characteristic vocabulary by putting it in the mouth of

Clove in Every Man out of His Humour (Riggs 72; EMO 3.4.21-40). According to Riggs,

this was not merely a personal attack, but involved "the proper style of satire; Jonson was

playing Horace to Marston's Lucilius," implying that classic "urbanity and simplicity"

made for better work than "the coarse and bombastic diction associated with the 'harsh'

satirists of antiquity" (Riggs 72-73). Further, Histriomastix was composed in the old al-

legorical mode, involving cycles of time in which

Peace makes plenty, plenty makes pride;

Pride brings quarrel, and quarrel brings war:

War brings spoil, and spoil poverty,

Poverty patience, and patience peace:

So peace brings war, and war brings peace.

(Puttenham, quoting Ihean de Mehune, in Caputi 83)

Set up in six acts, each of which illustrates one cycle of time, the play involves Chriso-

ganous, the Jonson figure, who is a kind of steadfast raissonneur as each of the three

social classes endures its changes through the course of time. Such an approach to dra-

ma—wooden and mechanical at best—would undoubtedly have incensed Jonson, whose

first four plays show not only comic and satiric content, but as noted, a continuous and

restless experimentation with new approaches to dramatic composition.

Jonson's complaint against his adversaries' lack of skill or understanding of the

classical modes of composition could also be levelled against the last salvo of the war,

Dekker's Satiromastix. In this play, Dekker harshly yoked an unfinished tragedy, the at-

tempted rape of Celestine by King William Rufus, with the "untrussing" of Horace, who

is repeatedly exposed to lively invective by Tucca, Crispinus and Demetrius, leading to

Cope 8

his final arraignment and humiliation before this same king. We experience the pathos of

Walter Terill's need to keep his word and thus his "honor," sending his new wife to Rufus

that this King might deflower her, Celestine's attempt to evade this "responsibility" by

drinking what appears to be poison, Terill's accusation of tyranny against Rufus, Rufus's

penitence and the awakening of Celestine, after which Crispinus asks the King to "wed a

comicall event, to presupposed tragicke Argument" (5.2.113-14). The same king who

has disgusted us with his immoral demands is suddenly the merry monarch who oversees

the untrussing of a presumptuous poet, ending the play by sending the newlyweds off to

bed. Unlike Jonson, whose contributions to the poetomachia—though sometimes uneven

or labored, as in the overly long middle acts of Cynthia's Revels—show a steady progres-

sion of deliberate artistic experimentation, Marston's contributions were wooden and

slight, while Dekker's violated the most basic principles of believability for the sake of

his comic revenge. Jonson's claims were thus justified, but his characterizations of his

opponents as inept and mindlessly bombastic in the case of Dekker-Briske or Marston-

Clove of EMO, and proud, ignorant, and impudent in the cases of the Anaides-Dekker

and Hedon-Marston of Cynthia's Revels were bound to inflame his opponents.

Besides mocking Marston's vocabulary in the character of Clove, Jonson also

skewered Marston in three epigrams, taking "Playwright" to task for obscene language

and bad manners (Epigramme XLIX), cowardice (LXVIII), and plagiarism (C), a point

noted in Satiromastix, where Horace's epigrams anger Tucca to the point where he swears

"Sirra Poet, we'll have thee untrussed for this" (3.1.265-66). Marston's and Dekker's

complaints against Jonson run the gamut from attacks on his "flat rebellion gainst the

Cope 9

Sacred lawes of divine Poesie" in his pride, scorn, arrogance, self-love, detraction and

insolence (Satiromastix 5.2.214-15), to personal attacks on his background as a brick-

layer and "foul-fisted Morter-treader" (1.2.138-39, 4.2.47); like Shakespeare, who pa-

tiently endured Greene's claim that he was "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers"

who "with his tyger's hart wrapt in a player's hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast

out a blanke verse as the best of you" (Greene, in Shakespeare 1835), Jonson was also re-

minded that he was neither a University Wit nor a man of title—class presumptions that

seem unwittingly to confirm Jonson's estimate of Marston and Dekker as voluptuous

courtier and impudent gallant. Further, Dekker's ridicule of Jonson's dress and appear-

ance confirms yet another distinction between Jonson and his detractors. Their claims

that he is a "Judas . . . that walkes in a Rug," a "thin-bearded Hermaphrodite" and a

"goates pizzel" (1.2.283, 289, 293) are personal attacks, while his complaints against

them generally "spare the persons, and . . . speake the vices" (Poetaster, To The Reader

85), a claim that they cannot make.

Dekker may be guilty as charged, but he is also particularly adept at turning Jon-

son's words and deeds against him, showing that he too has defects. For example, he

mocks Ben as a poet for hurtful epigrams, acrostics that are merely clever (as acrostics

generally are), for the palinode he'll "stitch to my revels" (a violation of style and tone),

and for taking money for hack work, a charge to which Jonson was indeed liable. His

epigram LXXIII, "To Fine Grand," itemizes the verses he has written and demands that

Grand "pay me quickly, or Ile pay you" (22). Dekker also quotes the prologue to Cyn-

thia's Revels to prove that Jonson is arrogant to "the vulger and adulterate braine" even as

Cope 10

he is obsequious to the learned (Satiromastix 2.2.57-59). Taking Jonson to task for his

wrangling against the "honourable and worshipfull Fathers of the law," Dekker accuses

him of destroying the reputations of courtiers "because thy sputtering chappes yelpe, that

Arrogance, and Impudence, and Ignoraunce are the essentiall parts of a courtier" (Satiro-

mastix 4.3.188-90), directly quoting Jonson's own claims in Cynthia's Revels and allow-

ing him to indict himself (CR 2.2.79)

Thus, many of the charges on both sides could be substantiated. Jonson's com-

plaints against Marston and Dekker for lack of artistry are borne out in both Histriomastix

and Satiromastix; their personal attacks on him further illustrate the justice of his claim

that he is "loath to have thy manners knowne in my chast booke; professe them in thine

owne" (Epigram XLIX.5-6). Dekker's Satiromastix, on the other hand, accurately points

out that Jonson is guilty of his own poetic sins—the writing of hurtful epigrams, the pros-

titution of his talent with hack work for hire, and the violation of style and tone in yoking

a palinode to the resolution of Cynthia's Revels. Further, Jonson's aggressive defense of

his classical vision, his obsequiousness to the universities and the Queen while simultan-

eously denouncing courtiers as a class might accurately be described as proud, scornful,

and arrogant. Finally, though the charge of murdering Gabriel Spencer could be seen as

out of place even in satire, its presence in Satiromastix is a truth that Jonson would have

to live down and an indicator of the seriousness of the "game" these writers were playing.

Finally, there is the question of whether this topical debate has distorted the plays

themselves; of the salvos fired in the "war," only Satiromastix shows the violent yoking

Cope 11

of incompatible plots and thus stands as a clear example of artistic failure brought on by

personal revenge. By its nature, topical satire incorporates specific references that strip

the disguise from the character's humours, risking destroying art for the sake of one's aes-

thetic, emotional or political agendas. Certainly none of the plays of this period measure

up to Jonson's later comedies, to Marston's The Malcontent or to Dekker's The Shoe-

maker's Holiday, yet each has its moments of high poetry and comic invective, and in

Jonson's case one may observe the ceaseless experimentation with form—particularly his

experimentation with a variety of plot lines, choric commentary and song, and the ar-

raignment as a device for resolution. The third play in this series, Cynthia's Revels, is

perhaps his boldest experiment, fusing native allegory with classical mythology while

bringing the humour characters to comic arraignment in the form of a masque. This play,

though muddied by its peculiar excesses, explores the mode of fantasy and spectacle that

would become the central motif of his work as the author of the court masques.

In Ben Jonson: A Literary Life, J. David Kay is quick to assert that Jonson did

not begin his career as an "'experimental' dramatist at odds with the theatre for which he

wrote," but rather was "content to imitate established comic sub-genres, sharpening nor-

mative judgements and satiric detail while downplaying romantic sentiment" (22). This

claim is fair if by "experimental" we mean the twentieth century notion of innovation by

destroying or remaking conventions and if we recognize that from the beginning Jonson's

modus was ironic rather than celebratory. If, on the other hand, we understand that Jon-

son spent his first years establishing a repertoire by a deliberate experimentation with a

Cope 12

limited number of recognizable motifs, we may come to a fuller appreciation for his

particular mode of genius. Every Man in His Humour begins this process, establishing

Jonson's preference for the city comedy format—what came to be known as "Jonson-

ian realism"—over the Shakespearean pattern of constrasting the corrupt polis with the

green wood, where inhibitions are released and transformations may occur.

Further, he is from the start far less interested in love as a power by which "the

senex iratus gives way to a young man's desires" leading to a cognitio which "causes a

new society to crystallize around the hero" (Frye 180, 163). In Jonson, love is usually the

means by which to expose the humours and weaknesses of gulls, though EMI nominally

projects its triumph in young Knowell's marriage to Bridget. Even in this play, however,

transformative love is not the focus of the action, as it is in all of Shakespeare's festive

comedies. In EMI, married love is shown as hollow in the cases of Kitely and Cob, who

must be brought to repentance after the exposure of their humours. Also, though Bridget

is the object of Edward's love, she is present in the plot more to expose the idiocy of Mat-

thew and as the means by which to frustrate old Knowell and finally draw him together

with Clement on the basis of Edward's skill as her poet. Social order is restored, as in all

comedy, but Jonson's brand of comic humor begins as ironic exposure and eventually

progresses to outright satire. He may initially be following "New Comedy elements,

modified in accordance with Elizabethan tastes," as Kay would have it (22), but his path

is from the beginning markedly different from that of his great predecessor.

More importantly, EMI establishes the foundation for his deliberate experimen-

tation. Jonson worked with five basic plot patterns, variations of which he worked

Cope 13

throughout his career. These are the collision of two or more groups of gulls for the sake

of comic explosion, as in Every Man Out of His Humour or Bartholomew Fair; the pump

motif of Volpone and The Alchemist, in which villains aided by clever servants usher

gulls into their domains one by one, fleecing and expelling them; the villains' plot against

virtuous young men, as in Poetaster and in Epicoene, where Morose's plot against Dau-

phine is ultimately foiled; the romantic plot involving the young man and woman in con-

flict with the senex, usually developed ironically, as in EMI, Poetaster, and Bartholomew

Fair; and a series of variations on the young man's ritual journey, as in the cases of young

Knowell's journey to town, the nominal journey to the fountain in Cynthia's Revels, and

Sir Politic's journey to Italy in Volpone. These plot formulas are sometimes found in

combination, as in the double plot of Volpone or in the ironic romantic resolution of Bar-

tholomew Fair, which grows out of the collision of gulls.

Jonson also developed a family of character types who appear in various combi-

nations within these plots, experimenting as well with choral commentary and the ar-

raignment as resolution. His use of choral commentary in the double chorus of Every

Man Out of His Humour is particularly notable. First, he establishes Cordatus as literary

critic and aesthetic theorist who, with Mitis, foresees the author's intentions. A second

chorus is established in Macilente's and Buffone's asides, which present an early model of

the savage asides employed by Arruntius and the other Germanicans of Sejanus. Jonson

also employs a variety of comic arraignments to bring his plays to resolution: the dinner

party of EMI, the use of deception in the mode of the clever slave to awaken characters

deceived by their humours in EMO, and the scenes of legal or royal courts which figure

Cope 14

in EMI, Poetaster, and Volpone. As noted, the masque is the means of exposure and re-

solution in Cynthia's Revels, a device used principally in revenge tragedies or tragicome-

dies such as The Spanish Tragedy or Hamlet and Marston's The Malcontent for ritual re-

venge or psychological exposure, but here employed for a far different effect.

Perhaps most important for the sake of this essay, however, is to establish the fact

that Jonson's pattern of deliberate experimentation was continuous and undisturbed

throughout the period of the war of the theatres. As noted, EMI establishes his preference

for realism in the city comedy mode. The play develops in the Roman mode of conflict

between the senex and his son, and involves the son's (and later the father's) journey to

town, where friends and gulls assemble, old and young. EMI features the first of Jonson's

miles gloriosus characters, Bobadil, as well as the first of a great chorus of clever slaves,

Brainworm. There are the usual louts (Matthew, Stephen), a pair of jealous husbands

from different social classes, and a Theophrastian angry man, Downright. All are drawn

into a vortex in which their humours are given full reign before being drawn to Clement's

house for arraignment, exposure and repentance, or, in the case of young Knowell, accep-

tance in the structure of authority which, notably, involves the cultural authority of po-

etry, a motif which will surface more forcefully in the commentary of EMO, Cynthia's

Revels, and in Poetaster as the defining paradigm of authority in Augustus's court.

Jonson's next play, Every Man Out of His Humour, begins by announcing that he

will not repeat himself. This play is to be no ordinary city comedy, but is a "comicall

satyre" which does not simply present "an image of the times" (EMI, Prologue 23), but

instead will "strip the ragged follies of the time, naked" (After the second sounding 17-

Cope 15

18). The tone has changed from bemused pleasure to savage irony, which is developed

through the double choric commentary described earlier, and through a series of intensely

hyperbolic characters. Among these are the chronically envious Macilente, the ridiculous

miles gloriosus Puntarvolo, the cloyingly uxorious Deliro, his grasping, faithless wife,

Fallace, and Saviolina, the shallow and haughty woman who presides over this society of

pathetic overreachers whose idea of success is to be able to strut in expensive clothes—a

motif which appears later in Shakespeare's The Tempest. The plot turns on the journey

of the foolish gallants—the asinine Puntarvolo, the vain and insipid Fastidius Briske

(thought by some to represent Marston), and the rest of the ambitious bumpkins in pur-

suit of an unworthy goal—to become courtlings in a heartless social milieu.

Love as a corrupting influence resurfaces in this play, but here the exposure does

not involve the groundless jealousy of husbands, instead presenting the deluded husband

who must be awakened to his wife's inconstancy. The play also features an unusual

comic arraignment: Macilente, who had been blinded by envy of almost everyone's sta-

tion in life, awakens to discover the falseness of courtiers who show "grace, as they

pretend comes from the heart" (4.4.82) while in truth exuding only shallowness and

foppish ambition. Through a series of deceptions in the manner of the clever slave, Ma-

cilente is able to deliver more innocent characters from their humours while at the same

time arraigning Deliro's wife, Fallace, and the careless fop, Briske. This is the first play

that clearly figures in the poetomachia, and it should be noted that the plainly visible

references to Marston are found only in one scene (3.4), where Clove, a minor gull,

speaks a fustian English that mimics the pompous speeches in one of Marston's plays.

Cope 16

The resemblance of Briske to Marston, often noted by critics, is too general to be taken

as a clear thrust at Jonson's nemesis. The play's faults—its length and corresponding lack

of movement—show the young playwright struggling with the large canvas of the comic

plot, but do not grow from artistic distortions wrought for the sake of his dispute with

Marston.

The same faults mar Cynthia's Revels, which nevertheless remains Jonson's

boldest experiment, his only play—other than his later court masques, of which this

is a preliminary model—which departs from city realism. The play mixes classical

myth, court intrigue, and the native allegorical tradition of the moralities, but most impor-

tantly, features the masque as the point to which the plot leads, its device for comic

arraignment and the exposure of the unworthy characters. The plot develops around the

motif of the fountain of Narcissus as the source for the inflation of humours in the charac-

ters who must be corrected; as in EMO, these are fops, courtlings, and the heartless hinds

of the court, but in this play there is also a layer of virtuous court personages headed up

by Arete and Cynthia herself. As noted by Riggs, "the play flaunts Jonson's ambitions at

every turn" (70), but Riggs fails to see that there is no "contradiction between Criticus's

reformist stance and his desire to be employed as a court entertainer" (71). While fops

and courtlings could be characterized as "sybaritic and conceited" (Riggs 71), the point of

the play is that Criticus must find his way through these false courtiers to the Queen and

her inner circle, whom he characterizes as virtuous: there is good reason for Criticus to

find his place in court, where the true wielders of power remain undeluded by foppery.

Cope 17

Despite this caveat, however, Cynthia's Revels appears to be the play most sin-

gularly marred, both in the "motley web" of its story types (HS 398) and by Jonson's

political ambitions and agenda of revenge against Marston and Dekker. Its political

ambitions are apparent in the symbolic representation of Elizabeth as Cynthia, a point

which unnecessarily constrained Jonson in representing her as a character. James Savage

notes that "Elizabeth the Queen has been of far more importance to Jonson the aspirant

than . . . Cynthia the comic chracter to Jonson the poet" (25): she cannot live and breathe

as a character with a personality, but is merely present as a deity whose whole purpose is

to deliver the resolution through her decree. Further, the array of court characters, in-

cluding those thought to represent Marston and Dekker (Hedon and Anaides), is little

more than a "collection of personified faults corresponding to the evil powers of the

Morality play" (HS 404-05): the agenda transforms the players through schematic

representation in which Virtue is contrasted to Vice without ever penetrating to the

emotions that move the heart or the kinds of situational ironies and corrections that

convince us emotionally.

Jonson's fourth major play, Poetaster, constitutes his most direct assault in the

war of the theatres. The play follows a similar pattern to Cynthia's Revels, though here

the plot against the virtuous young poets involves false poets rather than false courtiers.

As a Roman comedy prefiguring the Roman tragedy Sejanus, the play is unique among

the Roman plays of the period in that its context is not one of political power, but cultural

authority. As with Sejanus, Jonson follows his sources fairly closely; "the portrayal of

the Augustan literary milieu" is derived from Horace's epistle to Augustus (Epistles 2.1;

Cope 18

Riggs 76). The play features a return to the conflict between senex and son in the ro-

mantic plot of Ovid and Julia, which is connected to the plot of Crispinus and Demetrius

(Marston and Dekker) against Horace. As in Cynthia's Revels, the plots of the villains

are employed to establish the superiority of the hero, but unlike that play, the groups

of true and false courtiers and poets are brought together long before the arraignment.

First at a party and later at a court banquet, these groups mingle to establish conflicts that

give the plot far more movement than either EMO or Cynthia's Revels.

Further, though this is the most blatantly topical of the four plays, its characters

are given more emotional depth than in its immediate predecessor. Crispinus, for exam-

ple, is treated roughly by Horace in their initial meeting; he is a "strong tedious talker"

full of "lewd solecisms, and worded trash" (3.1.201, 106), but Horace's treatment of him

also gives him a true motive for joining those interested in his downfall. The use of

invective by both Horace and Tucca also adds humor and color to the language of the

play, as does the extensive use of songs, inept lyrics utilized for comic relief and to high-

light the vanity and ambitions of the false poets. Finally, Savage notes that in the comic

resolution, Augustus is a far more satisfactory deity than Cynthia in the earlier play, "for

Jonson did not find it necessary in him to placate an irascible old queen" (25). After de-

termining the guilt of the false poets, Augustus relaxes, leaving the comic revenge to

Horace—who gives them purgatives which make them vomit up their false words. This

resolution is probably too vulgar for some tastes, but it makes for a grotesquely dramatic

passage on stage. Virgil, as the supreme cultural authority in the play, delivers the final

Cope 19

sentence, assigning the poetasters to read the classics "and hence-forth, learne to beare

your selfe more humbly" (5.3.562-63)

The war of the theatres fought by Jonson against Marston and Dekker presents a

major obstacle in assessing Jonson's early career, but it also affords critics an opportunity

to explore the extent to which such topical agendas may contribute to or destroy the artis-

try of the plays. One may approach the poetomachia—and Jonson's contribution to it—

by two major avenues, each of which presents a distinctive reading. The first involves

determining the social function of this war, both through appeals to social conditions, li-

terary fashion, the seriousness of Jonson's commitment to his aesthetic and social agenda

and of Dekker's reference to the killing of Gabriel Spencer, which cannot be taken as a

jest for publicity's sake. Connected to this is the problem of penetrating the allegory of

character developed in all the plays associated with the poetomachia. I have only ad-

dressed this concern incidentally in this paper, as it seems that most of the identities of

major characters have been adequately established, and as long as one is wary of the

kinds of overdetermination practiced by Small and other nineteenth century critics, there

is currently no need to expend energy on the question of "who's who." The major initial

concern, then, is determining whether the poetomachia was a publicity stunt or a serious

quarrel, and unlike most modern critics, I cannot dismiss either the reference to Spencer

or the seriousness of Jonson's agenda. The fact that these poets later worked together

does not prove that the quarrel was sincere, the emotions real; it simply indicates that per-

haps all had suffered enough and were willing to "bury the hatchet."

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The second way of reading the plays associated with the war is through noting

how and when artistic purpose is distorted by the polemic agenda. Dekker's Satiromastix

is the most obvious case of such distortion, and I have suggested that Jonson's Cynthia's

Revels suffers from a formal dichotomy of good versus evil characters derived from the

moralities but determined by his ambition to raise himself while exposing Marston, Dek-

ker, and courtlings generally. Beyond this case, the aesthetic sins of Jonson's early plays

are not derived from his agenda in the poetomachia, but display in both EMO and Cyn-

thia's Revels an incomplete mastery over plot movement. Jonson's development in the

first four major plays is more clearly seen as a testament to his deliberate practice of

experimentation with plot and its various motifs. Finally, topical content expressed as

fierce satire need not destroy the artistry of the play; attentiveness to the development and

motivations of character, plot movement, and onstage dramatic variation are necessary

for artistic success regardless of whether the play tickles or stabs.

Cope 21