Shakspere and Montaigne Part 15

In 'The Poetaster,' which in 1601 was acted by the children of the Queen's Chapel, Jonson made an attack upon three poets. We hope to be able to prove that the one most bitterly abused, and who is bidden to swallow the 'pill,' is no other than Shakspere, whilst the two remaining ones are John Marston and Thomas Dekker. From the 'Apologetical Dialogue'

which Jonson wrote after 'The Poetaster' had already pa.s.sed over the stage, we see that this satire had excited the greatest indignation and sensation in the dramatic world. It was a new manner of falling out with a colleague before the public. The conceited presumption of the author, who in the play itself a.s.sumes the part of Horace, seriously proclaiming himself as the poet of poets, as the worthiest of the worthy, is not less enormous and repulsive than the way in which he proceeds against his rivals.

Quite innocently, Jonson asks in that dialogue (which was spoken on the stage after 'The Poetaster' had given rise to a general squabble), how it came about that such a hubbub was made of that play, seeing that it was free from insults, only containing 'some salt' but 'neither tooth, nor gall,' whilst his antagonists, after all, had been the cause of whatever remarks he himself had made:--

... But sure I am, three years They did provoke me with their petulant styles, On every stage. And I at last, unwilling, But weary, I confess, of so much trouble, Thought I would try if shame could win upon 'em.

In some comedies of Shakspere, which appeared between the years 1598 and 1601, there are characters markedly stamped with Jonsonian peculiarities. We may be convinced that 'gentle Shakspere' had received many a provocation [19] before he took notice of the obscure dramatist who was younger by ten years than himself, and publicly gave him a strong lesson. 'All's Well that Ends Well' contains a figure, Parolles, whose peculiarities are too closely akin to those of Ben Jonson to be regarded as a mere fortuitous accident; especially when we find that Jonson, in 'The Poetaster,' again tries to ridicule this. .h.i.t by a characteristic expression. [20]

Parolles is a follower of Count Rousillon. His position is not further defined than that he follows Bertram; he is a cross between a gentleman and a servant. We hear the old Lord Lafeu reproaching him in act ii.

sc. 3:--

'Why dost thou garter up thy arms o' this fas.h.i.+on? dost make hose of thy sleeves? Do other servants do so?'

Again he calls him--'a vagabond, no true traveller: you are more saucy with lords and honourable personages than the heraldry of your birth and virtue gives you commission.' [21]

Parolles boasts of being born under the sign of Mars, and up to every heroic deed; and it is certainly an allusion to Jonson's bravado of having in the Low Countries, in the face of both camps, killed an enemy and taken _opima spolia_ from him, that Shakspere lets this character make the attempt to retake, single-handed, from the enemy, a drum that had been lost in the battle. Of course, Parolles finally comes out a coward and a traitor. Parolles also mentions that he understands 'Low Dutch.'

In the character of Malvolio ('Twelfth Night; or What You Will,'

1600-1601), the quarrelsome Ben has long ago been suspected, who, puffed up with braggart pride, contemptuously looks down upon his colleagues, and impudently exerts himself to gain access to high social circles; thus a.s.suming, like Parolles, a position that does not properly belong to him. Even as Lord Lafeu takes Parolles a peg lower, so Sir Toby (act. ii. sc. 3) reminds the haughty Malvolio that he is nothing more than a steward. The religion of Malvolio also is several times discussed. Merry Maria relates that he is a 'Puritan or anything constantly but a time-pleaser.' Nor is the priest wanting who is to drive out the hyperbolical fiend from the captive Malvolio: an unmistakeable allusion to Ben Jonson's conversion in prison. The Fool who represents the Priest, puts a question referring to Pythagoras to Malvolio who is groaning 'in darkness' and yearning for freedom. He receives an evasive answer from the prisoner. In 'Volpone,' as we shall see, Jonson answers it very fully. [22]

Altogether, there are allusions in 'The Poetaster,' and in 'Volpone,'

to 'All's Well that Ends Well,' and to 'What You Will,' which we shall have to touch upon in speaking of those plays.

The scene of 'The Poetaster' is laid at the court of Augustus Caesar.

Jonson therein describes himself under the character of Horace. The whole drift of the play is, to take the many enemies of the latter to task for their calumnies and libels against him. Rome is the place of action, and the persons of the drama bear cla.s.sic names. There are, besides Augustus and Horace, Mecaenas (_sic_), Virgil, Propertius, Trebatius, Ovid, Demetrius Fannius, _Rufus Laberius Crispinus_, and so forth. The characters whom they are to represent are mostly authors of the dramatic world around Ben Jonson. They are depicted with traits so easily recognisable that--as Dekker says in his 'Satiromastix'--of five hundred people four hundred could 'all point with their fingers in one instant at one and the same man.'

More especially against two disciples of the Muse is Jonson's 'gally ink' directed. Let us give a few instances of the lampoons and calumnious squibs by which Horace pretends having been insulted on the part of envious colleagues who, he maintains, look askance at him because 'he keeps more worthy gallants' company' than they can get into. In act iv. sc. I, Demetrius tells Tucca:--

'Alas, Sir, Horace! he is a mere sponge; nothing but humours and observation; he goes up and down, sucking from every society, and when he comes home, squeezes himself dry again.'

Tucca adds:--'He will sooner lose his best friend than his least jest.'

Crispinus is found guilty of having composed a libel against Horace, of which the following may serve as a specimen:--

Ramp up my genius, be not retrograde; But boldly nominate a spade a spade.

What, shall thy lubrical and glibbery muse Live, as she were defunct, like punk in stews?

Alas! that were no modern consequence, To have cothurnal buskins frighted hence.

No, teach thy Incubus to poetize; And throw abroad thy spurious snotteries....

O poets all and some! for now we list Of strenuous vengeance to clutch the fist.

Such was the language the contemporaries of Shakspere used. Are we to wonder, then, if here and there we find in his works an offensive expression?

The two persons who are specially taken to task, and most harshly treated, are Demetrius Fannius, 'play-dresser and plagiarius,' and RUFUS LABERIUS CRISPINUS, '_poetaster and plagiarius_.' In 'Satiromastix,'

Demetrius clearly comes out as Dekker. Crispinus is the chief character of the play:--'the poetaster.' Against him the satire is mainly directed, and for his sake it seems to have been written, for the t.i.tle runs thus: 'The Poetaster, or His Arraignment.' From all the characteristic qualities of Crispinus we draw the conclusion that this figure represented SHAKSPERE.

From the above-mentioned pa.s.sage in 'The Return from Parna.s.sus' it would seem as if a '_pill_' had been administered in the play to several poets.

That is, however, not so. Then, as now, the plural form was a favourite one with writers afraid to attack openly. Horace administers a pill only to one poet--to Crispinus. And as Kemp says that Shakspere, thereupon, gave a '_purge_,' the conclusion is obvious that he who took revenge by administering the purge, must have been the one to whom the pill had been given. 'Volpone,' a play directed against the 'purge'--that is, 'Hamlet'--will convince us that the chief controversy lay between Jonson and Shakspere, and not between Jonson and Dekker.

The following points will, we think, make it still clearer that we are warranted in believing that the figure of Crispinus was intended by Jonson for Shakspere.

When, in presence of Augustus, as well as of the high jurors Maecenas, Tibullus, and Virgil, the two poetasters have been heard; when Horace has forgiven Demetrius, [23] and Crispinus, under the sharp effects of the pill, has thrown up, amidst great pain, [24] the disgraceful words which he had used against Horace, he is dismissed by the latter with the admonition to observe, in future, a strict and wholesome diet; to take each morning something of Cato's principles; then taste a piece of Terence and suck his phrase; to shun Plautus and Ennius as meats too harsh for his weak stomach, and to read the best Greeks, 'but not without a tutor.'

This fits in with Shakspere's 'small Latin and less Greek'--a circ.u.mstance of which Jonson himself, in his poem in memory of Shakspere (1623), thought he should remind the coming generations.

It is, no doubt, a little revenge for the 'dark chamber' in which Malvolio [25] is imprisoned, that, after Horace has concluded his speech in which the study of Latin and Greek is recommended to Crispinus as something very necessary for him, Virgil should add the further advice:--

And for a week or two see him locked up In some dark place, removed from company; He will talk idly else after his physic.

The full name given by Jonson to Crispinus is--RUFUS LABERIUS CRISPINUS.

John Marston already, in 1598, designates Shakspere with the nickname '_Rufus_.' Everyone can convince himself of this by first reading Shakspere's 'Venus and Adonis,' and immediately afterwards John Marston's 'Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image.' [26] We do not know whether it has struck anyone as yet that this poem of Marston is a most evident satire, written even in the same metre as Shakspere's first, and at that time most popular, poem. [27] In his sixth satire of 'The Scourge of Villanie,' Marston explains why he had composed his 'Pigmalion's Image:'--

Yet deem'st that in sad seriousnesse I write such nasty stuff as in Pigmalion?

Such maggot-tainted, lewd corruption! ...

Hence, thou misjudging censor: know I wrot Those idle rimes to note the odious spot and blemish that deformes the lineaments of modern poesies habiliments.

At the end of his satire ('Pigmalion's Image'), Marston self-complacently tacks on a concluding piece: 'The Author in Praise of his Precedent Poem.' Whom else does he address there than him whose poetical manner he wished to mock--namely, Shakspere's--when he begins with these words:--

Now, Rufus! by old Glebron's fearfull mace, Hath not my Muse deserv'd a worthy place? ...

Is not my pen compleate? Are not my lines Right in the swaggering humour of these times?

The name of 'Rufus' has two peculiarities which may have induced Marston to confer it upon Shakspere. First of all, like the English king of that name, Shakspere's pre-name was William. Secondly, the best-preserved portrait of Shakspere shows him with hair verging upon a reddish hue.

But not only the colour of the hair, but also its thinness (according to all pictures and busts we have of Shakspere, he was bald-headed), seems to have been satirised by Jonson in his 'Poetaster.' In act ii.

sc. 1, Chloe asks Crispinus, who, excited by her love and her beauty, pretends becoming a poet, whether, as a poet, he would also change his hair? To which Crispinus replies, 'Why, a man may be a poet, and yet not change his hair.'

Now Dekker, in his 'Satiromastix, in which all personal insults are to be avenged [28](for which reason the chief personages of 'The Poetaster' are introduced under the same name), makes Horace give forth a long song in praise of 'heades thicke of hair,' whilst Crispinus gives another in honour of 'balde heads;' from which we conclude that Chloe's remark on Crispinus' hair has reference to a bald pate, but the name of 'Rufus'

to the colour of whatever hair there is.

'Rufus Laberius Crispinus' might truly be thus rendered: 'The red-haired SHAK-erius, with the crisp-head, who cribs like St. Crispin.' The word Rufus, as already explained, reminds us both of Shakspere's red hair and his pre-name 'William.' Laberius (from _labare_, to shake; hence Shak-erius, a similar nickname as Greene's SHAKE-_scene_) is clearly an indication of the poet's family name. The Roman custom of placing the name of the _gens_, or family, in the middle of a person's name, leaves no doubt as to Jonson's intention. Laberius was a dramatic poet, even as Shakspere. Laberius was an actor (Suet. c.i.

39). So was Shakspere. Laberius played in his own dramas. Shakspere did the same. Laberius' name corresponds etymologically, as regards meaning, to the root-syllable in Shakspere's name. Could Jonson, who was so well versed in cla.s.sics, have made his satirical allusion plainer or more poignant? In Crispinus, both Shakspere's curly hair and the offence of application, plagiarism, or literary theft, with which he is charged by his antagonist, are manifestly marked; St. Crispin being noted among the saints for his filching habits. He made shoes for the poor from materials stolen from the rich.

Crispinus approaches Horace quite as a 'Johannes Factotum,' as Greene had designated Shakspere in 1592. Jonson makes him a.s.sert that he, too, is a scholar, a writer conversant with every kind of poetry, and a Stoic. He also declares that he is studying architecture, and that, if he builds a house, [29] it must be similar to one before which they are standing.

In Dekker's 'Satiromastix,' Crispinus is described as being of a most gentle nature. This is in harmony with the well-known quality generally attributed to Shakspere. In the beginning of 'Satiromastix,' Crispinus approaches Horace for the object of peace and reconciliation. The latter excuses himself, in words similar to those of the 'Apologetical Dialogue,' that even if he should 'dip his pen in distilde Roses,'

or strove to drain out of his ink all gall, [30] yet his enemies would look at his writings 'with sharpe and searching eyes.' Nay--

When my lines are measur'd out as straight As even parallels, 'tis strange that still, Still some imagine they are drawne awry.

The error is not mine, but in their eye; That cannot take proportions.

_Crispinus_. Horrace, Horrace!

To stand within the shot of galling tongues, Proves not your gilt, for could we write on paper, Made of these turning leaves of heaven, the cloudes, Or speak with Angels tongues: yet wise men know, That some would shake the head, tho' saints should sing, Some snakes must hisse, because they're borne with stings.

_Horace_. 'T is true.

_Crispinus_. Doe we not see fooles laugh at heaven? and mocke The Makers workmans.h.i.+p?

Crispinus goes on telling Horace that none are safe from such calumnies; but that, if his 'dastard wit' will 'strike at men in corners,' if he will 'in riddles folde the vices' of his best friends, then he must expect also that they will 'take off all gilding from their pilles,'

and offer him 'the bitter coare' (core). [31] With great emphasis, Crispinus admonishes Horace not to swear that he did not intend whipping the private vices of his friends while his '_las.h.i.+ng jestes make all men bleed_.' Crispinus concludes his mild, conciliatory speech with the words:--