There is no foundation for the theory which has sometimes been advanced, that the passage in The Poetaster ridiculing Crispinus's coat of arms is an allusion to Shakespeare. It is beyond all doubt that the figure of Crispinus was exclusively intended for Marston; he himself, at any rate, did not for a moment doubt it. For the rest, Jonson's ascertained or conjectured side-glances at Shakespeare are these:—
In the prologue to Every Man in his Humour, which can scarcely have been spoken when the play was performed by the Lord Chamberlain's company, not only is realistic art proclaimed the true art, in opposition to the romanticism which prevailed on the Shakespearian stage, but a quite definite attack is made on those who
"With three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot and half-foot words,
Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars."
And this is followed by a really biting criticism of the works of other playwrights, concluding—
"There's hope left then,
You, that have so graced monsters, may like men."
The possible jibe at Twelfth Night in Every Man out of his Humour (iii. I) has already been mentioned (ante, [p. 272]). That, too, must be of late insertion, and is at worst extremely innocent.
Much has been made of the passage in Volpone (iii. 2) where Lady Politick Would-be, speaking of Guarini's Pastor Fido, says:—
"All our English writers
Will deign to steal out of this author, mainly:
Almost as much as from Montagnié."
This has been interpreted as an accusation of plagiarism, some pointing it at the well-known passage in The Tempest, where Shakespeare has annexed some lines, from Montaigne's Essays; others at Hamlet, which has throughout many points of contact with the French philosopher. But The Tempest was undoubtedly written long after Volpone, and the relation of Hamlet to Montaigne is such as to render it scarcely conceivable that an accusation of plagiarism could be founded upon it. Here again Jonson seems to have been groundlessly suspected of malice.
Jacob Feis (Shakespeare and Montaigne, p. 183) would fain see in Nano's song about the hermaphrodite Androgyno a shameless attack upon Shakespeare, simply because the names Pythagoras and Euphorbus appear in it (Volpone, i. I), as they do in the well-known passage in Meres; but this accusation is entirely fantastic. Equally unreasonable is it of Feis to discover an obscene besmirching of the figure of Ophelia in that passage of Jonson, Marston, and Chapman's Eastward Ho! (iii. 2) where there occur some passing allusions to Hamlet.