but by no means 'your eating plaier' Polyphagus, nor 'the villanous-out-of-tune fiddler' Aenobarbus, nor Aesop, 'your politician'. Later in the play Histrio and Aesop inform against Ovid and Horace, who is Jonson, to the government, and although Tucca promises Aesop 'a monopoly of playing, confirm'd to thee and thy couey, vnder the Empirours broad Seale, for this seruice', his actual reward is to be whipped.[1] In the Apologetical Dialogue printed with the play Jonson admits his hostility to the players:
Now for the Players, it is true, I tax'd 'hem,
And yet, but some; and those so sparingly,
As all the rest might haue sate still, vnquestion'd,
Had they but had the wit, or conscience,
To thinke well of themselues. But, impotent they
Thought each man's vice belong'd to their whole tribe:
And much good doo't 'hem. What th' haue done 'gainst me,
I am not mou'd with. If it gaue 'hem meat,
Or got 'hem clothes, 'tis well. That was their end.
Onely amongst them, I am sorry for
Some better natures, by the rest so drawne,
To run in that vile line.
The Return from Parnassus is of less significance, as being a Cambridge, not a London, play, and merely an echo of the main controversy. It was acted during the Christmas of 1601-2, and is a satire of things in general from the university point of view. Amongst other topics the relations of scholarship to the stage are touched upon. Burbadge and Kempe come in, boasting of their victory over Ben Jonson, and trying to recruit poets into their service.[2] The scholars resent such thraldom:
And must the basest trade yeeld vs reliefe?
Must we be practis'd to those leaden spouts,
That nought doe vent but what they do receiue.
And in the end they decide rather to take the road as fiddlers:
Better it is mongst fidlers to be chiefe,
Then at a plaiers trencher beg reliefe.
But ist not strange these mimick apes should prize
Vnhappy schollers at a hireling rate.
Vile world, that lifts them vp to hye degree,
And treades vs downe in groueling misery.
England affordes those glorious vagabonds,
That carried earst their fardels on their backes,
