Volpone | Page 8

prefer for Carlo a notorious character named Charles Chester, of
whom gossipy and inaccurate Aubrey relates that he was "a bold
impertinent fellow...a perpetual talker and made a noise like a drum in a
room. So one time at a tavern Sir Walter Raleigh beats him and seals
up his mouth (that is his upper and nether beard) with hard wax. From
him Ben Jonson takes his Carlo Buffone ['i.e.', jester] in "Every Man in
His Humour" ['sic']." Is it conceivable that after all Jonson was
ridiculing Marston, and that the point of the satire consisted in an
intentional confusion of "the grand scourge or second untruss" with
"the scurrilous and profane" Chester?
We have digressed into detail in this particular case to exemplify the
difficulties of criticism in its attempts to identify the allusions in these
forgotten quarrels. We are on sounder ground of fact in recording other
manifestations of Jonson's enmity. In "The Case is Altered" there is
clear ridicule in the character Antonio Balladino of Anthony Munday,
pageant-poet of the city, translator of romances and playwright as well.
In "Every Man in His Humour" there is certainly a caricature of Samuel
Daniel, accepted poet of the court, sonneteer, and companion of men of
fashion. These men held recognised positions to which Jonson felt his
talents better entitled him; they were hence to him his natural enemies.
It seems almost certain that he pursued both in the personages of his
satire through "Every Man Out of His Humour," and "Cynthia's
Revels," Daniel under the characters Fastidious Brisk and Hedon,
Munday as Puntarvolo and Amorphus; but in these last we venture on
quagmire once more. Jonson's literary rivalry of Daniel is traceable
again and again, in the entertainments that welcomed King James on
his way to London, in the masques at court, and in the pastoral drama.
As to Jonson's personal ambitions with respect to these two men, it is
notable that he became, not pageant-poet, but chronologer to the City
of London; and that, on the accession of the new king, he came soon to
triumph over Daniel as the accepted entertainer of royalty.
"Cynthia's Revels," the second "comical satire," was acted in 1600, and,
as a play, is even more lengthy, elaborate, and impossible than "Every
Man Out of His Humour." Here personal satire seems to have absorbed
everything, and while much of the caricature is admirable, especially in
the detail of witty and trenchantly satirical dialogue, the central idea of
a fountain of self-love is not very well carried out, and the persons

revert at times to abstractions, the action to allegory. It adds to our
wonder that this difficult drama should have been acted by the Children
of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, among them Nathaniel Field with whom
Jonson read Horace and Martial, and whom he taught later how to
make plays. Another of these precocious little actors was Salathiel
Pavy, who died before he was thirteen, already famed for taking the
parts of old men. Him Jonson immortalised in one of the sweetest of his
epitaphs. An interesting sidelight is this on the character of this
redoubtable and rugged satirist, that he should thus have befriended and
tenderly remembered these little theatrical waifs, some of whom (as we
know) had been literally kidnapped to be pressed into the service of the
theatre and whipped to the conning of their difficult parts. To the
caricature of Daniel and Munday in "Cynthia's Revels" must be added
Anaides (impudence), here assuredly Marston, and Asotus (the
prodigal), interpreted as Lodge or, more perilously, Raleigh. Crites, like
Asper-Macilente in "Every Man Out of His Humour," is Jonson's
self-complaisant portrait of himself, the just, wholly admirable, and
judicious scholar, holding his head high above the pack of the yelping
curs of envy and detraction, but careless of their puny attacks on his
perfections with only too mindful a neglect.
The third and last of the "comical satires" is "Poetaster," acted, once
more, by the Children of the Chapel in 1601, and Jonson's only avowed
contribution to the fray. According to the author's own account, this
play was written in fifteen weeks on a report that his enemies had
entrusted to Dekker the preparation of "Satiromastix, the Untrussing of
the Humorous Poet," a dramatic attack upon himself. In this attempt to
forestall his enemies Jonson succeeded, and "Poetaster" was an
immediate and deserved success. While hardly more closely knit in
structure than its earlier companion pieces, "Poetaster" is planned to
lead up to the ludicrous final scene in which, after a device borrowed
from the "Lexiphanes" of Lucian, the offending poetaster,
Marston-Crispinus, is made to throw up the difficult words with which
he had overburdened his stomach as well as overlarded his vocabulary.
In the end Crispinus with his fellow, Dekker-Demetrius, is bound