Julia, Propertius' sorrow, Augustus' interest in Virgil's Æneid, are connected in the loosest way with scenes satirising the citizen's wife, the swaggering soldier, and the jealousy of bad poets. The last, which is the principal motive of the play, does not connect and unify the other episodes, but comes in by the way, and is developed in a couple of excellent scenes. As a satiric drama with a personal object, The Poetaster has been often overrated—in fact, too much stress can easily be laid upon the personal element in the quarrel.[1] It was a natural phenomenon, the result of the sudden and arrogant intrusion of a new type of play, and that a drama, satirical with a thoroughness unknown since the days of the old Attic comedy. Marston and Dekker assumed to themselves the rôle of protagonists against Jonson, but it is clear that behind them stood a surprised and indignant troop of playwrights and actors, and that there rallied to their support the representatives of the other professions which had been assailed—lawyers, soldiers, and perhaps courtiers. The Apologetic Dialogue which he added to the play had to be withdrawn; and for a time Jonson deemed it prudent to forgo comedy and try
"If Tragedy have a more kind aspect."
- ↑ Mr Fleay has devoted much inquiry to the identification of individuals, and a full discussion is Roscoe Addison Small's The Stage Quarrel between Ben Jonson and the so-called Poetasters, Breslau, 1899. We know so little about the lives and personalities of the authors concerned, that it is difficult either to verify conjectures or to deduce anything of interest or importance from them if correct.
