closely-knit plays, packed with learning, observation, humour, and character.
But though Jonson's influence did not extend to the production of a satiric comedy of manners which will compare with that of Molière, or even with the work of the later essayists and novelists, it did co-operate with other forces to end the fanciful, euphuistic comedy created by Lyly—a comedy in great measure of language, of pun and poetry—of which Shakespeare's early and middle comedy is the flower. Jonson's plays co-operated with the pamphlets of Greene and Dekker to make the comedy of Middleton, Fletcher, and Shirley a superficial and somewhat conventional comedy of manners,—the manners of the gallant, the citizen, and the rogue,—a comedy of humours, and a comedy of more elaborate and lively intrigue.
Jonson's rivals in the famous quarrel referred to above—John Marston and Thomas Dekker—are good Crispinus and
Demetrius. types of the journeyman dramatists who catered for the popular taste which it was Jonson's endeavour to reform and elevate. "Nor is the moving of laughter," says Jonson, translating from Heinsius, "always the end of comedy; that is rather a fowling for the people's delight or fooling." This "fowling for the people's delight" is all that the average playwright had in view, and his baits were melodramatic tragedy of crime and vengeance, and loosely constructed comedies of incident, romance, and buffoonery. Shakespeare transformed and glorified the popular type, which Jonson strove to "reform altogether."
