Rome -- History -- Tiberius, 14-37 -- Drama; Sejanus, Lucius Aelius, -31 -- Drama; Tragedies (Drama)
His Humour,” is Jonson’s self-complaisant portrait of himself, the
just, wholly admirable, and judicious scholar, holding his head high
above the pack of the yelping curs of envy and detraction, but careless
of their puny attacks on his perfections with only too mindful a
neglect.
The third and last of the “comical satires” is “Poetaster,” acted, once
more, by the Children of the Chapel in 1601, and Jonson’s only avowed
contribution to the fray. According to the author’s own account, this
play was written in fifteen weeks on a report that his enemies had
entrusted to Dekker the preparation of “Satiromastix, the Untrussing of
the Humorous Poet,” a dramatic attack upon himself. In this attempt to
forestall his enemies Jonson succeeded, and “Poetaster” was an
immediate and deserved success. While hardly more closely knit in
structure than its earlier companion pieces, “Poetaster” is planned to
lead up to the ludicrous final scene in which, after a device borrowed
from the “Lexiphanes” of Lucian, the offending poetaster,
Marston-Crispinus, is made to throw up the difficult words with which
he had overburdened his stomach as well as overlarded his vocabulary.
In the end Crispinus with his fellow, Dekker-Demetrius, is bound over
to keep the peace and never thenceforward “malign, traduce, or detract
the person or writings of Quintus Horatius Flaccus [Jonson] or any
other eminent man transcending you in merit.” One of the most diverting
personages in Jonson’s comedy is Captain Tucca. “His peculiarity” has
been well described by Ward as “a buoyant blackguardism which recovers
itself instantaneously from the most complete exposure, and a
picturesqueness of speech like that of a walking dictionary of slang.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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