Now he has done with it, will not answer the ‘libells’, or the ‘untrussers’ (i. e. Satiromastix), and is turning to tragedy.
Jonson gives the date of production as 1601. The play followed Cynthia’s Revels, criticisms on the epilogue of which inspired its ‘armed Prologue’, who sets a foot on Envy. Envy has been waiting fifteen weeks since the plot was an ‘embrion’, and this is chaffed in Satiromastix, I. ii. 447, ‘What, will he bee fifteene weekes about this cockatrice’s egge too?’ Later (V. ii. 218) Horace is told, ‘You and your itchy poetry breake out like Christmas, but once a yeare’. This stung Jonson, who replied in the Apologetical Dialogue,
Polyposus.They say you are slow,
And scarse bring forth a play a yeere.
Author.’Tis true.
I would they could not say that I did that.
The year’s interval must not be pressed too closely. On the other hand, I do not know why Small, 25, assumes that the fifteen weeks spent on the Poetaster began directly after Cynthia’s Revels was produced, whatever that date may be. It must have come very near that of Satiromastix, for Horace knows that Demetrius has been hired to write a play on him. On the other hand, Satiromastix cannot possibly have been actually written until the contents of Poetaster were known to Dekker. The S. R. entry of Satiromastix is 11 Nov. 1601, and the two dates of production may reasonably be placed in the late spring or early autumn of the same year. The Note to the Reader in Q shows that the Dialogue had been restrained before Poetaster itself appeared in 1602. Probably it was spoken in December between the two S. R. entries. Hart (9 N. Q. xi. 202) assuming that the contemplated tragedy was Sejanus (q.v.) put it in 1603, but this is too late.
Sejanus. 1603
S. R. 1604, Nov. 2 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called the tragedie of Seianus written by Beniamin Johnson.’ Edward Blunt (Arber, iii. 273).
1605, Aug. 6. Transfer from Blount to Thomas Thorpe (Arber, iii. 297).