Middleton here refers to Nash’s _Pierce Pennilesse_ and King James I.’s _Counterblast to Tobacco_. The former in his supplication to the devil says: ‘It is suspected you have been a great _tobacco_-taker in your youth.’ King James describes it as ‘a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrid stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.’ The dramatists seem never to grow tired of this joking allusion to the devil and his pipe of tobacco. Cf. Dekker, _If this be not a good Play_, _Wks._ 3. 293: ‘I think the Diuell is sucking Tabaccho, heeres such a Mist.’ _Ibid._ 327: ‘Are there gentleman diuels too? this is one of those, who studies the black Art, thats to say, drinkes Tobacco.’ Massinger, _Guardian_, _Wks._, p. 344: --You shall fry first For a rotten piece of touchwood, and give fire To the great fiend’s nostrils, when he smokes tobacco! Dekker (_Non-dram. Wks._ 2. 89) speaks of ‘that great _Tobacconist_ the Prince of Smoake & darknes, _Don Pluto_.’ The art of _taking_ or _drinking_ tobacco was much cultivated and had its regular professors. The _whiff_, the _ring_, etc., are often spoken of. For the general subject see Dekker, _Guls Horne-booke_; Barnaby Riche, _Honestie of this Age_, 1613; Harrison, _Chronology_, 1573; _Every Man in_, etc. An excellent description of a tobacconist’s shop is given in _Alchemist_, _Wks._ 4. 37. For a historical account of its introduction see Wheatley. _Ev. Man in_, p. xlvii. Jonson’s form _tabacco_ is the same as the Italian and Portuguese. See Alden, _Bart. Fair_, p. 169. =5. 8. 74, 5 yellow=, etc. =That’s Starch! the Diuell’s Idoll of that colour.= For the general subject of yellow starch see note 1. 1. 112, 3. Compare also Stubbes, _Anat. of Abuses_, p. 52: ‘The deuil, as he in the fulness of his malice, first inuented these great ruffes, so hath hee now found out also two great stayes to beare vp and maintaine this his kingdome of great ruffes.... The one arch or piller whereby his kingdome of great ruffes is vnderpropped, is a certaine kinde of liquide matter which they call _starch_, wherein the devil hath willed them to wash and diue his ruffes wel.’ ‘Starch hound’ and ‘Tobacco spawling (spitting)’ are the names of two devils in Dekker’s _If this be not a good Play_, _Wks._ 3. 270. Jonson speaks of ‘that idol starch’ again in the _Alchemist_, _Wks._ 4. 92. =5. 8. 78 He is the Master of Players.= An evident allusion to the Puritan attacks on the stage. This was the period of the renewed literary contest. George Wither had lately published his _Abuses stript and whipt_, 1613. For the whole subject see Thompson, E. N. S., _The Controversy between the Puritans and the Stage_, New York, 1903.