"Cynthia's Revels" (1600) was acted by "the children of the Royal Chapel," and printed in 1601. (New scenes were added in the Folio edition of 1616). A lively prologue is acted by the boys, who quarrel for the privilege of speaking it. One of them mimics a coxcomb spectator, with three sorts of tobacco to smoke on the stage. Among the humours of the Court, Crites is taken to represent the author himself, "this Crites is sour". The exquisite song (_ex forti dulcedo_) "Queen and huntress, chaste and fair," outlives the humours, and the satire, which was personal, for the gentlemen of the press and stage, then, as now, liked personal controversy, "it is such easy writing". The "Poetaster"(1601) runs amuck against actors. "They forget that they are in the statute" (against vagabonds) "the rascals; they are blazoned there... they and their pedigrees; they need no other heralds, I wis." This was an anachronism, at the Court of Augustus, the scene of the play, but appropriate to Shakespeare's new scutcheon. The loves of Ovid and Julia, Virgil reading the "Æneid" to Augustus, are mixed with contemporary satire to which Dekker replied in "Satiro-Mastix, or the untrussing of the Humorous Poet" (acted by Shakespeare's company, 1602). Marston (Crispinus) was also assailed, and war raged on the lower slopes of the Muses' hill. Since the beginnings of the theatre, play-writers have parodied and mocked each others' works, as Aristophanes caricatured Euripides, as ancient Pistol parodied Marlowe's "jades of Asia," and Molière made mirth of the tragedies played by the company of the Hôtel de Bourgogne. But Ben, though a huge, noisy, and truculent adversary, was placable, and he and Marston became friends. Much ingenuity has been spent in detecting hits at Shakespeare in Ben's plays and epigrams; very probably some of his cutting allusions are aimed at his successful rival, but it needs two to make a quarrel.