In these lines, besides indicating Shakespeare's recent Ovidian excursion in Venus and Adonis by his reference to "Castalian bowls," Chapman shows knowledge of Shakespeare's intention, in the composition of Love's Labour's Lost, of exhibiting Queen Elizabeth as a huntress. Chapman's Cynthia of The Shadow of Night is plainly a rhapsodised idealisation of the Queen. Later on I shall elaborate the fact that Love's Labour's Lost was written late in 1591, or early in 1592, as a reflection of the Queen's progress to Cowdray House, the home of the Earl of Southampton's maternal grandfather, Viscount Montague, and that the shooting of deer by the Princess and her ladies fancifully records phases of the entertainments arranged for the Queen during her visit.
Assuming, then, from the foregoing evidence and inferences that Chapman composed the early Histriomastix in 1593, let us examine the play further in order to trace its fuller application to Shakespeare and his affairs in that year.
Though Histriomastix was revised as an attack upon Shakespeare in 1599 by Chapman and Marston, who had commenced to collaborate in dramatic work in the previous year, its original plot and action remain practically unaltered. In its revision its early anti-Shakespearean intention was merely amplified and brought up to date by a few topical allusions, fitting circumstances in the lives of the persons caricatured, pertaining to the later period. The substitution of Troilus and Cressida for The Prodigal Child, as the play within the play presented by Sir Oliver Owlet's company, is also due to the period of revision. All of the passages of the play which are suggestive of the period of revision are palpably in the style of John Marston.
Among the persons of the early play is Chrisoganus, a scholar and mathematician, who has set up an academy to expound the seven liberal Sciences: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy, all of which are introduced as persons in the first act. Chrisoganus was undoubtedly intended for Chapman's friend Thomas Harriot, the mathematician and astronomer, who was so prominent in the academical movement of 1592-93. The name Chrisoganus is evidently a reflection of Harriot's Ephemeris Chrisometra, a MS. copy of which is preserved in Zion College. Chapman's poem to Harriot, prefixed to his Achilles Shield (1599), expresses many of the same ideas voiced in Histriomastix and in much the same language, and indicates Chapman's collaboration with Marston in the revision of the play in that year.
In the early Histriomastix Chapman represents himself in the character of Peace. When the utterances of Peace are compared with certain of Chapman's poems, such as his Euthymia Raptus, or The Tears of Peace (1609), his poem to Harriot (1598), The Shadow of Night (1594), and Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595), in all of which he breaks away from his subject-matter at intervals to extol his own virtues and bewail his poverty and his neglect by patrons, it becomes evident that he transfigures himself in Histriomastix as Peace; which character acts as a chorus to, or running commentary on, the action of the play.
The whole spirit and purpose of this play is reproduced in The Tears of Peace, which is a dialogue between Peace and an interlocutor, who discuss at great length exactly the same ideas and subjects, dramatically treated, in Histriomastix, i.e. the neglect of learning and the learned, and "the pursuit of wealth, glory, greatness, pleasure, and fashion" by "plebian and lord alike," as well as the unaccountable success of an ignorant playwright who writes plays on any subject that comes into his head:
"And how they trot out in their lines the ring
With idly iterating oft one thing,
A new fought combat, an affair at sea,
A marriage or progress or a plea.
No news but fits them as if made for them,
Though it be forged but of a woman's dream."
The plays of no other dramatist of that period match the description of the subjects of the plays given here. The "progress," mentioned by Chapman, is undoubtedly a reference to Love's Labour's Lost; "A marriage," Midsummer Night's Dream; "a plea," The Merchant of Venice; "A new fought combat," Henry V.—as a reflection of the military services of Southampton and Essex in Ireland in 1599; "an affair at sea," Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, etc.
In the second scene of Histriomastix, to Peace, the Arts, and Chrisoganus, come Mavortius and a group of his friends representing the nobility whom the academicians endeavour to win to their attendance and support. Mavortius and his followers refuse to cultivate Chrisoganus and the Arts, preferring a life of dalliance and pleasure, and to patronise plays and players instead. Other characters are introduced representing the Law, the Army, and Merchandise, who also neglect the Arts and live for pastime and sport.
The company of players patronised by Mavortius performs under the licence of Sir Oliver Owlet, and under the leadership of Posthaste, an erstwhile ballad maker, who writes plays for the company and who threatens to return to ballad making when playing proves unprofitable.