comedy 'Every Man in His Humour,' which was acted by Shakspere's company,
it is said through Shakspere's friendly influence. At about the same time
the burly Jonson killed another actor in a duel and escaped capital
punishment only through 'benefit of clergy' (the exemption still allowed to
educated men).

The plays which Jonson produced during the following years were chiefly
satirical attacks on other dramatists, especially Marston and Dekker, who
retorted in kind. Thus there developed a fierce actors' quarrel, referred
to in Shakspere's 'Hamlet,' in which the 'children's' companies had some
active but now uncertain part. Before it was over most of the dramatists
had taken sides against Jonson, whose arrogant and violent
self-assertiveness put him at odds, sooner or later, with nearly every one
with whom he had much to do. In 1603 he made peace, only to become involved
in other, still more, serious difficulties. Shortly after the accession of
King James, Jonson, Chapman, and Marston brought out a comedy, 'Eastward
Hoe,' in which they offended the king by satirical flings at the needy
Scotsmen to whom James was freely awarding Court positions. They were
imprisoned and for a while, according to the barbarous procedure of the
time, were in danger of losing their ears and noses. At a banquet
celebrating their release, Jonson reports, his 'old mother' produced a
paper of poison which, if necessary, she had intended to administer to him
to save him from this disgrace, and of which, she said, to show that she
was 'no churl,' she would herself first have drunk.

Just before this incident, in 1603, Jonson had turned to tragedy and
written 'Sejanus,' which marks the beginning of his most important decade.
He followed up 'Sejanus' after several years with the less excellent
'Catiline,' but his most significant dramatic works, on the whole, are his
four great satirical comedies. 'Volpone, or the Fox,' assails gross vice;