Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown, page 147 by Andrew Lang
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stix (by Dekker and Marston?), introduces Jonson himself as babbling darkly about "Mr. Justice Shallow," and "an Innocent Moor" (Othello?). Here is question of "administering strong pills" to Jonson; THEN,
"What lumps of hard and indigested stuff, Of bitter SATIRISM, of ARROGANCE, Of SELF-LOVE, of DETRACTION, of a black And stinking INSOLENCE should we fetch up!"
This "pill" is a reply to Ben's "purge" for the poets in his Poetaster. Oh, the sad old stuff!
Referring to Jonson's Poetaster, and to Satiromastix, the counter- attack, we find a passage in the Cambridge play, The Return from Parnassus (about 1602). Burbage, the tragic actor, and Kempe, the low-comedy man of Shakespeare's company, are introduced, discussing the possible merits of Cambridge wits as playwrights. Kempe rejects them as they "smell too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphosis . . . " The purpose, of course, is to laugh at the ignorance of the low-comedy man, who thinks "Metamorphosis" a writer, and does not suspect--how should he?--that Shakespeare "smells of Ovid." Kempe innocently goes on, "Why, here's our fellow" (comrade) "Shakespeare puts them all down" (all the University playwrights), "aye, and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace" (in The Poetaster) "giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge . . . "
The Cambridge author, perhaps, is thinking of the pill (not purge) which, in Satiromastix, might be administered to Jonson. The Cambridge author may have thought that Shakespeare wrote the passage on the pill which was to "fetch up" masses of Ben's insolence, self- love, arrogance, and detraction. If this be not the sequence of ideas, it is not easy to understand how or why Kempe is made to say that Shakespeare has given Jonson a purge. Stupid old nonsense! There are other more or less obscure indications of Jonson's spite, during the stage-quarrel, against Shakespeare, but the most unmistakable proof lies in his verses