satires" which Jonson contributed to what Dekker called the 'poetomachia'
or war of the theatres as recent critics have named it. This play as a
fabric of plot is a very slight affair; but as a satirical picture of the
manners of the time, proceeding by means of vivid caricature, couched in
witty and brilliant dialogue and sustained by that righteous indignation
which must lie at the heart of all true satire -- as a realisation, in
short, of the classical ideal of comedy -- there had been nothing like
Jonson's comedy since the days of Aristophanes. "Every Man in His Humour,"
like the two plays that follow it, contains two kinds of attack, the
critical or generally satiric, levelled at abuses and corruptions in the
abstract; and the personal, in which specific application is made of all
this in the lampooning of poets and others, Jonson's contemporaries. The
method of personal attack by actual caricature of a person on the stage is
almost as old as the drama. Aristophanes so lampooned Euripides in "The
Acharnians" and Socrates in "The Clouds," to mention no other examples; and
in English drama this kind of thing is alluded to again and again. What
Jonson really did, was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make
out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary
pretensions and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and
his uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no
wonder that Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal
quarrels with his fellow-authors. The circumstances of the origin of this
'poetomachia' are far from clear, and those who have written on the topic,
except of late, have not helped to make them clearer. The origin of the
"war" has been referred to satirical references, apparently to Jonson,
contained in "The Scourge of Villainy," a satire in regular form after the
manner of the ancients by John Marston, a fellow playwright, subsequent
friend and collaborator of Jonson's. On the other hand, epigrams of Jonson
have been discovered (49, 68, and 100) variously charging "playwright"
(reasonably identified with Marston) with scurrility, cowardice, and