made the food of the scene.'


It is a pity to curtail this splendid passage, both for its lofty
ideal of poetry, and for its corroboration of the Puritan complaints
against the stage; but a few lines on a still stronger sentence
occurs:-


'The increase of which lust in liberty, together with the present
trade of the stage, in all their masculine interludes, what liberal
soul doth not abhor? Where nothing but filth of the mire is uttered,
and that with such impropriety of phrase, such plenty of solecisms,
such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, such racked metaphors, with
(indecency) able to violate the ear of a Pagan, and blasphemy to turn
the blood of a Christian to water.'


So speaks Ben Jonson in 1605, not finding, it seems, play-writing a
peaceful trade, or play-poets and play-hearers improving company.
After him we should say no further testimony on this unpleasant
matter ought to be necessary. He may have been morose, fanatical,
exaggerative; but his bitter words suggest at least this dilemma.
Either they are true, and the play-house atmosphere (as Prynne says
it was) that of Gehenna: or they are untrue, and the mere fruits of
spite and envy against more successful poets. And what does that
latter prove, but that the greatest poet of his age (after Shakspeare
has gone) was not as much esteemed as some poets whom we know to have
been more filthy and more horrible than he? which, indeed, is the
main complaint of Jonson himself. It will be rejoined, of course,