Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas,
Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please."
Ben says this himself—in the prologue to his "Every Man in his Humour."
Again, in the "Induction" to his "Bartholomew Fair," he has this fling at "The Tempest:"
"If there be never a servant-monster in the fair, who can help it," he says, "nor a nest of antiques? He is loth to make Nature afraid in his plays, like those that beget tales, tempests, and such like drolleries." *
* "The Tempest" of that day in William Shakespeare's hands,
then, was a "drollery." See some curious evidence going to
prove that, while the titles of the plays always remain the
same, the plays themselves may have been different at
different times. 'post VI, "The New Theory." Dr. Carl Elze
(Essays on Shakespeare. London. Macmillans. 1874), thinks
that Jonson meant a hit at Shakespeare when he says, in
Volpone, "all our English authors will steal."
But that Jonson never himself believed, or expressed himself as believing, that William Shakespeare was a poet (except in this rhymed panegyric which Heminges and Condell prefixed to the first folio), there is still further and perhaps stronger proof. Three years after William Shakespeare's death, Ben Jonson paid a visit to William Drummond of Hawthornden, and spent with him the greater part of the month of April, 1019 (or, as some fix it, the month of January, in that year). Drummond was a poet himself, and, it is said, his poetical reputation was what had attracted Jonson to make the visit. At any rate, he did visit him, and Drummond kept notes of Jonson's conversation. These notes are in the form of entries or items, grouped under Drummond's own headings or titles, such as: "his acquaintance and behavior with poets living with him."
Daniel was at jealousies with him.
Drayton feared him, and he esteemed not of him.
That Francis Beaumont loved too much himself and his own verses. That Sir John Roe loved him; and when they, too, were ushered by my Lord Sullblk from a mask, Roe wrott a moral Epistle to him which began: That next to Playes, the Court and the State were the best. God threateneth Kings, Kings Lords, (as) Lords do us.