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ten- till 1601, when the play was printed[1]. It appears to have been Jonſon's firſt performance[2]; and we may preſume that it was the very play, which, we are told, was brought on the ſtage by the good offices of Shakſpeare, who himſelf acted in it[3]. Malignant and envious as Jonſon appears to have been, he hardly would have ridiculed his benefactor at the very time he was ſo eſſentially obliged to him. In two or three years afterwards, his jealouſy probably broke out, and vented itſelf in this prologue. It is certain that, not long after the year 1600, a coolneſs[4] aroſe between
- ↑ That this attack on King Henry V. was made in 1601, appears the more probable from this circumſtance:—in Ben Jonſon's Poetaſter, which was firſt acted in that year, ſeveral paſſages of this play are ridiculed.
- ↑ Jonſon himſelf tells us in his Induction to the Magnetick Lady, that this was his firſt dramatick performance.—"The author beginning his ſtudies of this kind with Every Man in his Humour."
- ↑ If the names of the actors, prefixed to this play, were arranged in the ſame order as the perſons repreſented, which is very probable, Shakſpeare played the part of Old Knowell. It is ſaid, that he alſo played the part of Adam in As you Like It; and we are informed by Betterton that he performed the Ghoſt in his own Hamlet. We may preſume, therefore, that he uſually repreſented old men.
- ↑ See an old comedy called The Return from Parnaſſus: [This piece was not publiſhed till 1606; but appears to have been written in 1602—certainly was produced before the death of Queen Elizabeth, which happened on the 24th of March 1603.] "Why here's our fellow Shakeſpeare puts them all down; ay and Ben Jonſon too. O that Ben Jonſon is a peſtilent fellow; he brought up Horace giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakeſpeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit." The play of Jonſon's in which he gave the poets a pill, and endeavoured to ridicule ſome words uſed by Shakſpeare, is the Poetaſter, acted in 1601. In what manner Shakſpeare put him down, or made him bewray his credit, does not appear. His retaliation, we may be well aſſured, contained no groſs or illiberal abuſe; and, perhaps, did not go beyond a ballad or an epigram, which may have periſhed with things of greater conſequence. He has, however, marked his diſregard for the calumniator of his fame, by not leaving him any memorial by his Will.—In an apologetical dialogue that Jonſon annexed to the Poetaſter he ſays, he had been provoked for three years (i.e. from 1598 to 1601) on every stage by ſlanderers; as for the players, he ſays,
