when he wrote his "Julius Caesar" about 1600. Therefore when Jonson staged
"Sejanus," three years later and with Shakespeare'scompany once more, he
was only following in the elder dramatist's footsteps. But Jonson's idea
of a play on classical history, on the one hand, and Shakespeare's and the
elder popular dramatists, on the other, were very different. Heywood some
years before had put five straggling plays on the stage in quick
succession, all derived from stories in Ovid and dramatised with little
taste or discrimination. Shakespeare had a finer conception of form, but
even he was contented to take all his ancient history from North's
translation of Plutarch and dramatise his subject without further inquiry.
Jonson was a scholar and a classical antiquarian. He reprobated this
slipshod amateurishness, and wrote his "Sejanus" like a scholar, reading
Tacitus, Suetonius, and other authorities, to be certain of his facts, his
setting, and his atmosphere, and somewhat pedantically noting his
authorities in the margin when he came to print. "Sejanus" is a tragedy of
genuine dramatic power in which is told with discriminating taste the story
of the haughty favourite of Tiberius with his tragical overthrow. Our
drama presents no truer nor more painstaking representation of ancient
Roman life than may be found in Jonson's "Sejanus" and "Catiline his
Conspiracy," which followed in 1611. A passage in the address of the
former play to the reader, in which Jonson refers to a collaboration in an
earlier version, has led to the surmise that Shakespeare may have been that
"worthier pen." There is no evidence to determine the matter.

In 1605, we find Jonson in active collaboration with Chapman and Marston in
the admirable comedy of London life entitled "Eastward Hoe." In the
previous year, Marston had dedicated his "Malcontent," in terms of fervid
admiration, to Jonson; so that the wounds of the war of the theatres must
have been long since healed. Between Jonson and Chapman there was the
kinship of similar scholarly ideals. The two continued friends throughout