S CONTENTS. Some Words on Dictionaries. By EDMUND MERCER... Obscurity in Literature. By THOMAS NEWBIGGING A Sheaf of Verse. By ROWLAND THIRLMERE Kinsale. By JOHN WALKER. With Illustrations The Art of Poetry. An Address to the University of Ballymooney. The Greek Drama. Part I.-Tragedy. By ARTHUR W. FOX Velasquez in Madrid. By C. E. TYRER The Dramatic Dissensions of Jonson, Marston, and Dekker. Part II. Taormina and Sicilian Mythology. By THOMAS KAY. With Illustrations 219 The Portuguese Drama in the 16th Century. Gil Vicente. Part I. By Sir Philip Sidney and his Arcadia. By WALTER BUTTERWORTH Three Sonnets on Robert Burns. By ABRAaham StansfieLD John Cameron. By THOMAS READ WILKINSON. With Portrait The Greek Drama. Part II.-Comedy. By ARTHUR W. Fox .. The Book Fiend. By C. H. BELLAMY...... Henry Crabb Robinson. By JOHN MORTIMER Ingratitude: A Poem. By RoWLAND THIRLMERE THE DRAMATIC DISSENSIONS OF JONSON, IN MARSTON, AND DEKKER. BY JAMES T. FOARD. ᏢᎪᎡᎢ L. N a former paper I attempted to explain and elucidate some of the lampoons launched against Shakespeare in the earliest part of his public career. They were, in great part, the wail of angry and disappointed men; the bitter and malignant expressions of feeling of jealous and envious rivals. These saluted him almost at the outset of his London life, from his first rise above the horizon of his adverse fortunes and pristine obscurity. These calumnious attacks of his literary competitors ranged between 1586 and 1594, and comprised the libels of Greene and Nash and Chettle. I propose now to deal with a second fusillade of paper bullets to which the poet was subjected. The period was about twelve years later, viz., between 1598 and 1606. With increase of wisdom came increase of sorrow. The poet's enlarged experience entailed a more savage enmity. The probation, in this sense, was, therefore, neither unexciting nor uneventful. But I do not propose to deal with these assaults on the fortress of the author's fair fame, except incidentally. THE MANCHESTER QUARTERLY. NO. LXI., JANUARY, 1897. The libellers concern us little or not at all in their onslaught, because when they reviled he answered not again. But the history of their squabbles among themselves, their abuse of each other, and their occasional agreement in virulent attack on their common superior and common foe, as a collateral episode, are all more or less entertaining. The mere promise of entertainment will, however, not be my will-o-th'-wisp on this occasion. I have chosen the title and theme of my paper as being one which obliquely illustrates the life of the poet, as indirectly throwing light on the transcendent patience and philosophy of his character, and because these petty distractions and dissensions among his pigmy assailants better elucidate the intrinsic nobility and elevation of his nature than laboured panegyric or inflated biography. From the opinion these men held of each other, we can better assess their relative value among themselves and in their relation to their rival, and also, I venture to think, estimate more truly how much the supremacy of the poet was due to his innate superiority as man. Above his foes he towers like a Colossus in ethics, morals, conduct, dignity, honour, and self-restraint. From a chance suggestion in "The Return from Parnassus"-" our fellow Shakespeare, hath given him a purge, that made him bewray his credit "*-it has been, as it appears to me, rashly concluded that Shakespeare * The entire passage stands thus-"KEMP. Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, ay, and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him beray his credit" (p. 58). + Fleay, pp. 36-45, p. 138, says "Jonson and Chapman on the one side at Blackfriars, Shakespeare, Marston, and Dekker on the other, at first at the Globe, Rose, and Paul's, afterwards at the Fortune, kept up one continual warfare for more than three years." This is pure invention and stark nonsense. |