"Julia the gem and jewel of my soul, The air respires the pure Elysian sweets In which she breathes, and from her looks descend Praised in her self above all praise; and he Which hears her speak, would swear the tuneful orbs, How like this is to the sonnets taken from Love's Labour's Lost. And again Ovid says: "Hence law, and welcome Muses, though not rich, Yet are you pleasing; let's be reconciled, And new made one. Henceforth I promise faith, And all my serious hours to spend with you: With you whose music striketh on my heart, The law and art of sacred Julia's love: All of this is from the last part of Act 1. These quotations are far from the genuine frenzy of love. Ovid (Shakespeare) is henceforth to devote his serious hours to the Muses, and is to be inspired and comforted by Julia, who is to be his law and his art. Though the manner is not that of Shakespeare, it would seem to be a crude attempt to imitate the spirit of some of the Sonnets. Jonson, the Rival Poet. In all attempts that have been made to identify the rival poet of the Sonnets, the search has been confined to those poets contemporaneous with Shakespeare and who could be shown to have been a rival of his in seeking the favor of the same high personage whom Shakespeare had made his patron, and to whom he has been supposed to have addressed the Sonnets. As Jonson could not be shown to have conformed to these requirements, his name has not been suggested as the rival. But, if the present exposition has shown that the Sonnets in fact were not addressed to any individual, but to Wine, the scope of the inquiry becomes changed and much broadened, and if every devotee and panegyrist of wine becomes a qualified competitor in the list of rivals, to no one will the qualification be more fitting than to Ben Jonson. Unlike Shakespeare he openly avowed his love for wine, and was not unlike him in that he became wine's devoted slave. Dekker responded to Jonson's Poetaster with the Satiromastix. While this play lacked of Jonson's literary art, it surpassed Jonson's play in abuse, and undoubtedly Jonson felt quite outdone by it. Dekker took up the fight like an angry man and was not at all careful as to how or where he struck. About this time there was produced at St. John's College, Cambridge, several plays by an unknown author. One of these was called "The Return from Parnassus." In this play Richard Burbage and William Kempe, real persons and actors associated with Shakespeare, were made characters, and in the course of the dialogue Kempe says to Burbage: "Few of the university pen plaies well, they smell too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much of Proserpina and Juppiter. Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, I 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 beray his credit." This is about the only evidence that has been produced show ing that Shakespeare had any part in the stage controversy. But that it concerned him is evident from what is here said. What purge Shakespeare administered to Jonson, as here alleged, has remained unknown. The reference to a purge undoubtedly refers to the Poetaster, where Horace administers an emetic to Crispinus to vomit him of his offenses. Now it is said that Shakespeare administered a like purge to Jonson. This intimates that Jonson had been guilty of some offense towards Shakespeare, and the inference is that such offense arose out of the Poetaster. Conceding that Shakespeare was represented as Ovid there is very little that is put into his mouth, or that is said to or about him, that in itself could give serious offense. But when the general effect of the play is considered it is otherwise. Virgil and Horace (supposedly Jonson) and others are represented as men of refinement and of artistic tastes, and are readily received by Augustus as men of quality, and are admitted to the court where their judgments are appealed to and relied upon. In short, they are men of high station, and the whole company is above the low and vulgar. On the other hand Ovid is aligned with the players and although a poet of high standing, is portrayed as one of low associations, indulging in an orgy with men and women of a disreputable kind, where virtue is discarded, and all respect for morals and piety are abandoned. Not only is he one of such, but he is shown as Jupiter, the head and leader of the company of immoral characters. As a consequence of his arch offense he is denounced by Augustus above all others, and he and his illicit love, Julia, are convicted and severely sentenced, while the faults of their companions are condoned, and they are forgiven and reinstated in favor. Admitting that it was not intended to be as represented, and that Ovid (Shakespeare) was not really banished, and that his love for Julia was not to be taken literally, and that it was symbolical of his love for Wine only, yet would it be a coarse and very unkind allusion, and one that would be keenly felt and resented by a kindly and sensitive man, such as we are compelled to believe Shakespeare was. It is suggested that under the smart of this affront Shakespeare responded with Sonnets 67, 68, 69 and 70, and this is the "purge that made him (Jonson) beray his credit." The first four lines of Sonnet 67, "Ah! wherefore with infection should he (I) live And with his presence grace impiety, That sin by him advantage should achieve, And lace itself with his society." are all but a confession of the truth of what Jonson sets forth in the Poetaster, and shows how deeply chagrined Shakespeare felt over the exposure. Then in the next two lines, "Why should false painting imitate his cheek And steal dead seeing of his living hue?" is a charge of imitation against Jonson, which will be noticed farther on. Sonnet 68 is as follows: "Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn, And him as for a map doth Nature store, To show false Art what beauty was of yore." This is as severe and telling an arraignment of the plagiarist as could be found in any language. If its charges are true, and they were in fact aimed at Jonson, they may well be said to beray, or soil, his credit as a poet. 69. "The parts of thee that the world's eye doth view By seeing further than the eye hath shown. They look into the beauty of thy mind, And that, in guess, they measure by thy deeds; Then, churls, their thoughts, although their eyes were kind, The soil is this, that thou dost common grow. Here Shakespeare refers to the fact that his foes (probably referring to Jonson, whom he in fact knows is not a foe) commend his verse and praise its quality, but confound that praise by calling attention to his weakness, by adding "the rank smell of weeds." In other words the sonnets depict very lucidly what is shown in the play as to the character of Ovid. 70. "That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect, A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air. If some suspect of ill mask'd not thy show Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe. In this sonnet Shakespeare pretends to believe that Jonson was actuated by envy, and that he had been intentionally slandered. It is not probable that Shakespeare really believed such to be the case, and yet, like any man feeling an injury, it was |