He
confesses it in these remarkable words:--
'_I cannot but be serious in a cause of this nature, wherein my fame,
and the reputation of divers honest and learned are the question; when
a name so full of authority, antiquity, and all great mark, is, through
their insolence, become the lowest scorn of the age; and those men
subject to the petulancy of every vernaculous orator, that were wont
to be the care of kings and happiest monarchs_.' [5]
Is there a character, we may ask, not only in Shakspere's dramas, but
in any play of that period, to which the description given by Jonson
could apply?--of course, Hamlet always excepted, who is but a mask
for Montaigne. And who else but Montaigne is designated by the
expressions: 'a name so full of authority, antiquity, and all great
mark;' 'the care of kings and happiest monarchs?'
That the 'railing rhetoric' in which such a character was derided, could
not be contained in a satirical poem, but had reference to a drama, is
proved, as already explained, by the fact of Jonson's wrath being
directed against the stage-poets. He says expressly, that henceforth,
by all his actions, he will 'stand off from them.' To the most learned
authorities, the two Universities, he announces that, by his own regular
art, he intends giving these wayward disciples of Dramatic Poesy proper
instruction and amendment. Had his object not been to strike the most
popular of the stage-poets--Shakspere--he would have been bound to make
an exception for that name of which everyone must have thought first
when stage-poets were subjected to reproof.
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