And now we come to the passage, partly already quoted, which more than anything else shows that the 'purge' which 'our fellow Shakspere gave him'—'Hamlet'—must have greatly damaged, in the eyes of the public, both the reputation of Jonson and of his friends. He confesses it in these remarkable words:—
'I cannot but be serious in a cause of this nature, wherein my fame, and the reputation of divers honest and learned are the question; when a name so full of authority, antiquity, and all great mark, is, through their insolence, become the lowest scorn of the age; and those men subject to the petulancy of every vernaculous orator, that were wont to be the care of kings and happiest monarchs.' [5]
Is there a character, we may ask, not only in Shakspere's dramas, but in any play of that period, to which the description given by Jonson could apply?—of course, Hamlet always excepted, who is but a mask for Montaigne. And who else but Montaigne is designated by the expressions: 'a name so full of authority, antiquity, and all great mark;' 'the care of kings and happiest monarchs?'
That the 'railing rhetoric' in which such a character was derided, could not be contained in a satirical poem, but had reference to a drama, is proved, as already explained, by the fact of Jonson's wrath being directed against the stage-poets. He says expressly, that henceforth, by all his actions, he will 'stand off from them.' To the most learned authorities, the two Universities, he announces that, by his own regular art, he intends giving these wayward disciples of Dramatic Poesy proper instruction and amendment. Had his object not been to strike the most popular of the stage-poets—Shakspere—he would have been bound to make an exception for that name of which everyone must have thought first when stage-poets were subjected to reproof. We repeat: Jonson only intended measuring himself against him who was the greatest of his time. This was fully in accordance with his disputatious inclination. [6]
The person once 'wont to be the care of kings and happiest monarchs' [7] must have been a foreigner, for we do not know of any favourite 'full of authority and antiquity' who enjoyed such high privilege from English kings. However, if a dramatist had been bold enough to put such a favourite on the stage, he would have met with the most severe punishment long before Jonson had pointed out his reprehensible audacity. By the 'happiest monarchs,' Henry III. and Henry IV. of France are meant. The latter, at that time, yet stood in the zenith of his good fortune. Again, the expression: 'of every vernaculous orator,' points to the circumstance of the mockery being directed against a foreigner; and the same may be said of Jonson's question, addressed to supercilious politicians, as to what nation, society, or general order of State he had provoked? Clearly, another nation, a society of different modes of thought than the English one, and foreign institutions, are here indicated.
We now come to some hints contained in 'Volpone,' which partly consist of an endeavour to expose Shakspere on account of plagiarisms committed against other writers, partly of references to irreligious tendencies, against which Jonson warns, and which he strives to ridicule.
Under the existing strict laws which forbade religious questions being discussed on the stage, the latter references had to be made in parable manner, but still not too covertly, so that they might be understood by a certain audience—namely, the members of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. [8]
Already, in the Prologue of his 'Volpone,' Jonson says of himself that—
In all his poems still hath been this measure,
To mix profit with your pleasure.
He also despises certain deceptive tricks of composition:—