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.”

The Poetaster was produced in 1601; so these attacks on Jonson, in which Marston must have taken a leading part, began about 1598. In the address “To those that seem judicial Perusers” prefixed to The Scourge of Villainy, Marston undoubtedly ridicules Ben Jonson for his use of “new-minted epithets[15] (as real, intrinsecate, Delphic).” “Real” occurs in Every Man out of his Humour (ii. 1); “intrinsecate"” in Cynthia’s Revels (v. 2); and “Delphic” in an early poem of Jonson’s.

But, as Every Man out of his Humour was first produced at Christmas 1599, and Cynthia’s Revels in 1600, these “new-minted epithets” must have been used by Jonson in some early plays that have perished. Jonson retaliated by attacking Marston in Every Man out of his Humour, and Cynthia’s Revels. In the former play (iii. 1) he introduces two characters, Clove and Orange, who are expressly described as “mere strangers to the whole scope of our play.” They are on the stage only for a few minutes. Clove is represented as a pretender to learning: “he will sit you a whole afternoon sometimes in a bookseller’s shop, reading the Greek, Italian, and Spanish, when he understands not a word of either.” Orange is a mere simpleton who can say nothing but “O Lord, sir,” and “It pleases you to say so, sir.” In the “characters of the persons" (prefixed to the play) we are told that this “inseparable case of coxcombs ... being well flattered” will “lend money and repent when they have done. Their glory is to invite players and make suppers.” Dr. Brinsley Nicholson suggests that Orange was intended as a caricature of Dekker, and that Clove stands for Marston. This view is, doubtless, partly correct, but we must not insist on it too strongly. Dekker—whatever may be said of Marston—had no money to lend, and would rather have expected to sup at the players’ expense than to be made the shot-clog of the feast: again and again in The Poetaster he is ridiculed on the score of poverty. It is undeniable that Jonson, to raise a laugh against Marston, puts into Clove’s mouth grotesque words culled from The Scourge

of Villainy. “Monsieur Orange,” whispers Clove to his companion, as they are walking in the middle aisle of Paul’s, “yon gallants observe us; prithee let’s talk fustian a little and gull them; make them believe we are great scholars.” Presently we have the passage containing the Marstonian words (which I have printed in italics):—

“Now, sirs, whereas the ingenuity of the time and the soul’s synderisis are but embryons in nature, added to the paunch of Esquiline,[16] and the intervallum of the zodiac, besides the ecliptic line being optic and not mental, but by the contemplative and theoric part thereof doth demonstrate to us the vegetable circumference and the ventosity of the tropics, and whereas our intellectual, or mincing capreal (according to the metaphysics) as you may read in Plato’s Histriomastix.[17] You conceive me, sir?"

In the first scene of the second act, Puntarvolo addresses Carlo Buffone as “thou Grand Scourge, or Second Untruss of the time,” in allusion to Marston’s Scourge of Villainy.

Cynthia’s Revels was produced in 1600 and printed in 1601. In this play, Anaides and Hedon are represented as being jealous of Crites, and as seeking by underhand

means to bring him into discredit. It is certain that Jonson was glancing particularly at Marston and Dekker. In the second scene of the third act, Crites, defending himself against his two traducers, observes:—

“If good Chrestus,
Euthus, or Phronimus, had spoke the words,
They would have moved me, and I should have call’d
My thoughts and actions to a strict account
Upon the hearing; but when I remember
’Tis Hedon and Anaides, alas, then
I think but what they are, and am not stirr’d.
The one a light voluptuous reveller,
The other a strange arrogating puff,
Both impudent and arrogant enough;
That talk as they are wont, not as I merit;
Traduce by custom, as most dogs do bark;
Do nothing out of judgment, but disease;
Speak ill because they never could speak well:
And who’d be angry with this race of creatures?”

Dekker in Satiromastix[18] puts four of these lines (“I think but what they are ... arrogant enough”) into the mouth of Horace (Jonson), plainly assuming that the abuse was intended for Marston and himself. Marston, too, in What You Will (p. xlviii.), fastens on this speech of Crites and uses it as a weapon against Jonson. Cynthia’s Revels was quickly followed by The Poetaster, which was produced in 1601 by the Children of the Queen’s Chapel. Hitherto, Jonson had merely skirmished with his adversaries; in The Poetaster he assails them might and main with all the artillery of invective. Marston

is ridiculed as Crispinus, and Dekker as Demetrius Fannius. Crispinus is represented as a coarse-minded, ill-conditioned fellow, albeit of gentle parentage, who, like the bore encountered by Horace in the Via Sacra, is prepared to adopt the meanest stratagems in order to gain admittance to the society of courtiers and wits. He plots with the shifty out-at-elbows Demetrius (a witless “dresser of plays about the town here,” to wit, Thomas Dekker), and a huffing Captain Tucca, to disgrace Horace (Ben Jonson). But the attempt results in a ludicrous failure; Crispinus and Demetrius are arraigned at a session of the poets, and, after receiving a severe rebuke for their calumnies, are contemptuously dismissed on taking oath for their future good behaviours. In court a dose of hellebore is administered to Crispinus, who thereupon proceeds to vomit up gobbets of Marston’s fustian vocabulary. When the physic has worked its effect Virgil gives Crispinus such advice as Lycinus gave to Lexiphanes in Lucian’s dialogue; bidding him form his style on classical models and not

“hunt for wild outlandish terms
To stuff out a peculiar