a rebuke that found expression in almost similar words in the 1609 preface to Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida": "For it is a birth of (that) brain that never undertook anything comical vainly: and were but the vain names of comedies changed for titles of commodities or of plays for pleas, you should see all those grand censors that now style them such vanities flock to them for the main grace of their gravities." Now Jonson, if he, indeed, intended to defend the attacks made on his friend Shakespeare's play, has shown considerable adroitness in the delicate task he undertook, for since the "Poetaster" was written to be acted at the Blackfriars, a theatre under Court patronage, Jonson could not there abuse "the grand censors," and this he avoids doing by making Caesar justly incensed at the impudence of the citizens in daring to counterfeit the divine gods, while Horace, out of reach of Caesar's ear, soundly rates the police spy and the actor for mistaking the shadow for the substance and regarding playacting as if it were political conspiracy. But what, it may be contended, connects the underplot in the "Poetaster" directly with Shakespeare's play is the speech of citizen Mercury and its satirical insistence that immorality may be tolerated by the gods: "The great god Jupiter, of his licentious goodness, willing to make this feast no fast from any manner of pleasure, nor to bind any god or goddess to be anything the more god or goddess for their names, he gives them all free licence to speak no wiser than persons of baser titles; and to be nothing better than common men or women. And, therefore, no god shall need to keep himself more strictly to his goddess than any man does to his wife; nor any goddess shall need to keep herself more strictly to her god than any woman does to her husband. But since it is no part of wisdom in these days to come into bonds, it should be lawful for every lover to break loving oaths, to change their lovers, and make love to others, as the heat of everyone's blood and the spirit of our nectar shall inspire. And Jupiter save Jupiter!"