Jonson thought so well of his rhymes that he included them in the Epigrams of his first Folio (1616). By that date, the year of Shakespeare’s death, if he really loved Shakespeare, as he says, in verse and prose, Ben might have suppressed the verses. But (as Drummond noted) he preferred his jest, such as it was, to his friend; who was not, as usually understood, a man apt to resent a very blunt shaft of very obsolete wit. Like Molière, Shakespeare had outlived the charge of plagiarism, made long ago by the jealous Ben.
Poet-Ape is an actor-playwright “that would be thought our chief”—words which, by 1601, could only apply to Shakespeare; there was no rival, save Ben, near his throne. The playwright-actor, too, has now confessedly
“grown
To a little wealth and credit in the scene,”
of no other actor-playwright could this be said.
He is the author of “works” (Jonson was laughed at for calling his own plays “works”), but these works are “the frippery of wit,” that is, a tissue of plagiarisms, as in the case of Pantalabus. But “told of this he slights it,” as most successful authors, when accused, as they often are, of plagiarism by jealous rivals, wisely do;—so did Molière. This Poet-Ape began his career by “picking and gleaning” and “buying reversions of old plays.” This means that Shakespeare did work over earlier plays which his company had acquired; or, if Shakespeare did not,—then, I presume,—Bacon did!
That, with much bad humour, is the gist of the rhymes on Poet-Ape. Ben thinks Shakespeare’s “works” very larcenous, but still, the “works,” as such, are those of the poet-actor. I hope it is now clear that Poet-Ape, who, like Pantalabus, “takes up all”; who has “grown to a little wealth and credit in the scene,” and who “thinks himself the chief” of contemporary dramatists, can be nobody but Shakespeare. Hence it follows that the “works” of Poet-Ape, are the works of Shakespeare. Ben admits, nay, asserts the existence of the works, says that they may reach “the after-time,” but he calls them a mass of plagiarisms,—because he is in a jealous rage.
But this view does not at all suit Mr. Greenwood, for it shows Ben regarding Shakespeare as the “Ape,” or Actor, and also as the “Poet” and author of the “works.” Yet Ben’s words mean nothing if not that an actor is the author of works which Ben accuses of plagiarism. Mr. Greenwood thinks that the epigram proves merely that “Jonson looked upon Shakspere (if, indeed, he refers to him) as one who put forward the writings of others as his own, or, in plain English, an impostor.” “The work which goes in his name is, in truth, the work of somebody else.” [244a] Mr. Greenwood put the same interpretation on Greene’s words about “Shakescene,” and we showed that the interpretation was impossible. “The utmost we should be entitled to say” (if Shake-scene be meant for Shakspere) “is that Greene accuses Player Shakspere of putting forward, as his own, some work or perhaps some parts of a work, for which he was really indebted to another.” [245a] We proved, by quoting Greene’s words, that he said nothing which could be tortured into this sense. [245b] In the same way Ben’s words cannot be tortured into the sense that “the work which goes in his” (Poet-Ape’s) “name is, in truth, the work of somebody else.” [245c] Mr. Greenwood tries to find the Anti-Willian hypothesis in Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit and in Ben’s epigram. It is in neither.
Jonson is not accusing Shakespeare of pretending to be the author of plays written by somebody else, but of “making each man’s wit his own,” and the men are the other dramatists of the day. Thus the future “may judge” Shakespeare’s work “to be his as well as ours.”
It is “we,” the living and recognised dramatists, whom Shakespeare is said to plagiarise from; so boldly that
“We, the robbed, leave rage, and pity it.”