Came to them, are turned to private playes,
And to the humour of children.
[1063] The main interest of the 'war of the theatres', or 'Poetomachia' as Dekker, Satiromastix, Epist. 10, calls it, is for literature and biography, rather than for stage-history. I refer to it under the plays concerned in chh. xxiii, xxiv, and can only add a brief summary here. The treatment of R. A. Small, The Stage Quarrel (1899), is excellent, and may be supplemented by H. C. Hart's papers, Gabriel Harvey, Marston and Ben Jonson (9 N. Q. xi. 201, 281, 343, 501; xii. 161, 263, 342, 403, 482) and On Carlo Buffone (10 N. Q. i. 381), while the less critical view, partly derived from Fleay, of J. H. Penniman, The War of the Theatres (1897), is revised in his edition of Poetaster and Satiromastix. The protagonists are Jonson and Marston, with whom became allied Dekker. Daniel and many others, whose names have been brought under discussion, do not seem to have been really concerned. Jonson himself tells us, in the Apologetical Dialogue, probably written late in 1601, to Poetaster that 'three yeeres, They did provoke me with their petulant stiles On every stage'. This takes us to 1599, up to which year there is no just ground for suggesting any conflict between Jonson and Marston. Jonson may then have taken offence at Marston's portrait of him, intended to be complimentary, as Chrisoganus in Histriomastix. In the same year he criticized Marston's style in E. M. O. In 1600 Marston satirized Jonson as Brabant Senior in Jack Drum's Entertainment, and in 1601 as Lampatho Doria in What You Will. Jonson in turn brought Marston into Poetaster (1601) as Crispinus, and added Dekker as Demetrius. Dekker retorted a month or two later with his caricature of Jonson as Horace in Satiromastix. Some unascertained part in the 'purge' given to Jonson is ascribed in 3 Parnassus (1601) to Shakespeare. Jonson and Marston seem to have been reconciled by 1603; but the dispute had not been merely a paper one, for Jonson, Conversations, 11, 20, claims that he 'beat Marston, and took his pistol from him'.
[1064] Small, 67, has an excellent analysis of Histriomastix. He dates it in 1596, but not convincingly. It might just as well be 1588-90. The text is in R. Simpson, The School of Shakespeare, ii. 1, and needs re-editing. Moreover, Simpson thought that Posthaste was Shakespeare. The actor-scenes are i. 112-62; ii. 70-147, 188-344; iii. 179-243, 265-78; iv. 159-201; v. 61-102, 238-43; vi. 187-240. Of these I think that ii. 247-80; iii. 179-217, 265-78 may belong to the Marstonian revision.
[1065] Cf. Hamlet, II. ii. 415, 'The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited'.
[1066] Poetaster, III. iv; IV. iv; V. iii. 108-38.
[1067] Can the Aesop episode be a reminiscence of the part played by Augustine Phillips in the Essex innovation? Cf. vol. ii, p. 205.
[1068] 2 Return from Parnassus, iv. 3; v. 1.
[1069] In certain other plays which have actors amongst their dramatis personae (e.g. Midsummer-Night's Dream and Middleton's Mayor of Queenborough) the point is reversed, and it is the regular companies who satirize provincial companies or amateurs.
[1070] Thus in 1618 the Mayor of Exeter complained of a company travelling under Daniel's patent for the Children of Bristol (q.v.) that, though the patent was for children, the company consisted of men, with only five youths amongst them.