In only one play do we know that the principal characters represent real people. But between _Poetaster_ and _The Devil is an Ass_ there is a vast difference of treatment. In _Poetaster_ (1) the attitude is undisguisedly satirical. The allusions in the prologues and notices to the reader are direct and unmistakable. (2) The character-drawing is partly caricature, partly allegorical. This method is easily distinguishable from the typical, which aims to satirize a class. (3) Jonson does not draw upon historical events, but personal idiosyncrasies. (4) The chief motive is in the spirit of Aristophanes, the great master of personal satire. These methods are what we should naturally expect in a composition of this sort. Of such internal evidence we find little or nothing in _The Devil is an Ass_. Several plausible identifications, however, have been proposed, and these we must consider separately. The chief characters are identified by Fleay as follows: Wittipol is Jonson. He has returned from travel, and had seen Mrs. Fitzdottrel before he went. Mrs. Fitzdottrel is the Lady Elizabeth Hatton. Fitzdottrel is her husband, Sir Edward Coke. =Mrs. Fitzdottrel=. The identification is based upon a series of correspondences between a passage in _The Devil is an Ass_ (2. 6. 57-113) and a number of passages scattered through Jonson’s works. The most important of these are quoted in the note to the above passage. To them has been added an important passage from _A Challenge at Tilt_, 1613. Fleay’s deductions are these: (1) _Underwoods 36_ and _Charis_ must be addressed to the same lady (cf. especially _Ch._, part 5). (2) Charis and Mrs. Fitzdottrel are identical. The song (2. 6. 94 f.) is found complete in the _Celebration of Charis_. In Wittipol’s preceding speech we find the phrases ‘milk and roses’ and ‘bank of kisses’, which occur in _Charis_ and in _U. 36_, and a reference to the husband who is the ‘just excuse’ for the wife’s infidelity, which occurs in _U. 36_. (3) Charis is Lady Hatton. Fleay believes that _Charis_, part 1, in which the poet speaks of himself as writing ‘fifty years’, was written c 1622-3; but that parts 2-10 were written c 1608. In reference to these parts he says: ‘Written in reference to a mask in which Charis represented Venus riding in a chariot drawn by swans and doves (_Charis_, part 4), at a marriage, and leading the Graces in a dance at Whitehall, worthy to be envied of the Queen (6), in which Cupid had a part (2, 3, 5), at which Charis kissed him (6, 7), and afterwards kept up a close intimacy with him (8, 9, 10). The mask of 1608, Feb. 9, exactly fulfils these conditions, and the Venus of that mask was probably L. Elizabeth Hatton, the most beautiful of the then court ladies. She had appeared in the mask of Beauty, 1608, Jan. 10, but in no other year traceable by me. From the Elegy, G. 36, manifestly written to the same lady (compare it with the lines in 5 as to “the