practice of "comical satire." Though Jonson was cited to appear before the
Lord Chief Justice to answer certain charges to the effect that he had
attacked lawyers and soldiers in "Poetaster," nothing came of this
complaint. It may be suspected that much of this furious clatter and
give-and-take was pure playing to the gallery. The town was agog with the
strife, and on no less an authority than Shakespeare ("Hamlet," ii. 2), we
learn that the children's company (acting the plays of Jonson) did "so
berattle the common stages...that many, wearing rapiers, are afraid of
goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither."

Several other plays have been thought to bear a greater or less part in the
war of the theatres. Among them the most important is a college play,
entitled "The Return from Parnassus," dating 1601-02. In it a much-quoted
passage makes Burbage, as a character, declare: "Why here's our fellow
Shakespeare puts them all down; aye and Ben Jonson, too. O that Ben Jonson
is a pestilent fellow; he brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill, but
our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his
credit." Was Shakespeare then concerned in this war of the stages? And
what could have been the nature of this "purge"? Among several
suggestions, "Troilus and Cressida" has been thought by some to be the play
in which Shakespeare thus "put down" his friend, Jonson. A wiser
interpretation finds the "purge" in "Satiromastix," which, though not
written by Shakespeare, was staged by his company, and therefore with his
approval and under his direction as one of the leaders of that company.

The last years of the reign of Elizabeth thus saw Jonson recognised as a
dramatist second only to Shakespeare, and not second even to him as a
dramatic satirist. But Jonson now turned his talents to new fields. Plays
on subjects derived from classical story and myth had held the stage from
the beginning of the drama, so that Shakespeare was making no new departure