Lowell finds some small things to praise in a large collection of their plays. Hazlitt regards them as "a race of giants, a common and noble brood, of whom Shakespeare was simply the tallest." Dyce, who had an extraordinary knowledge of all these dramatists, regards such praise as absurd, saying that "Shakespeare is not only immeasurably superior to the dramatists of his time, but is utterly unlike them in almost every respect." [Illustration: JOHN FLETCHER From the engraving by Philip Oudinet published 1811] We shall not attempt to decide where such doctors disagree. It may not be amiss, however, to record this personal opinion: that these playwrights added little to the drama and still less to literature, and that it is hardly worth while to search out their good passages amid a welter of repulsive details. If they are to be read at all, the student will find enough of their work for comparison with the Shakespearean drama in a book of selections, such as Lamb's _Specimens of English Dramatic Poetry_ or Thayer's _The Best Elizabethan Plays_. BEN JONSON (1573?-1637). The greatest figure among these dramatists was Jonson,--"O rare Ben Jonson" as his epitaph describes him, "O rough Ben Jonson" as he was known to the playwrights with whom he waged literary warfare. His first notable play, _Every Man in His Humour_, satirizing the fads or humors of London, was acted by Shakespeare's company, and Shakespeare played one of the parts. Then Jonson fell out with his fellow actors, and wrote _The Poetaster_ (acted by a rival company) to ridicule them and their work. Shakespeare was silent, but the cudgels were taken up by Marston and Dekker, the latter of whom wrote, among other and better plays, _Satiromastix_, which was played by Shakespeare's company as a counter attack on Jonson. [Illustration: BEN JONSON] The value of Jonson's plays is that they give us vivid pictures of Elizabethan society, its speech, fashions, amusements, such as no other dramatist has drawn. Shakespeare pictures men and women as they might be in any age; but Jonson is content to picture the men and women of London as they appeared superficially in the year 1600. His chief comedies, which satirize the shams of his age, are: _Volpone, or the Fox_, a merciless exposure of greed and avarice; _The Alchemist_, a study of quackery as it was practiced in Elizabethan days; _Bartholomew Fair_, a riot of folly; and _Epicoene, or the Silent Woman_, which would now be called a roaring farce. His chief tragedies are _Sejanus_ and _Catiline_. In later life Jonson was appointed poet laureate, and wrote many masques, such as the _Masque of Beauty_ and the unfinished _Sad Shepherd_. These and a few lyrics, such as the "Triumph of Charis" and the song beginning, "Drink to me only with thine eyes," are the pleasantest of Jonson's works. At the end he abandoned the drama, as Shakespeare had done, and lashed it as severely as any Puritan in the ode beginning, "Come leave the loathëd stage."