Jonson repeats
this charge in his verses called Poet-Ape -
"HE TAKES UP ALL," makes each man's wit his own,
And told of this, he slights it."
In a scene added to The Poetaster in 1616, the author (Ben) is
advised not
"With a sad and serious verse to wound
Pantalabus, railing in his saucy jests,"
and obviously slighting the charges of plagiarism. Perhaps Ben is
glancing at Shakespeare, who, if accused of plagiary by an angry
rival, would merely laugh.
A reply to the Poetaster, namely Satiromastix (by Dekker and
Marston?), introduces Jonson himself as babbling darkly about "Mr.
Justice Shallow," and "an Innocent Moor" (Othello?). Here is
question of "administering strong pills" to Jonson; THEN,
"What lumps of hard and indigested stuff,
Of bitter SATIRISM, of ARROGANCE,
Of SELF-LOVE, of DETRACTION, of a black
And stinking INSOLENCE should we fetch up!"
This "pill" is a reply to Ben's "purge" for the poets in his
Poetaster. Oh, the sad old stuff!
Referring to Jonson's Poetaster, and to Satiromastix, the counter-
attack, we find a passage in the Cambridge play, The Return from
Parnassus (about 1602). Burbage, the tragic actor, and Kempe, the
low-comedy man of Shakespeare's company, are introduced, discussing
the possible merits of Cambridge wits as playwrights. Kempe rejects
them as they "smell too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer
Metamorphosis .
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