Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1859 edition. Excerpt: ...of wit, In a mere halting fury strives to fling His ulcerous body in the Thespian spring, And straight leaps up a poet, --but as lame As Vulcan or the founder of Cripplegate." Again, in the lines appended to "The Poetaster," when that merciless attack on Decker, Marston, and others, was published in 1602: " That these base and beggarly conceits Should carry it by the multitude of voices, Against the most abstracted work, opposed To the stuff'd nostrils of the drunken rout--Oh I this would make a learn'd and liberal soul To rive his stained quill up to the back, And damn his long-watched labours to the fire. # I, that spend half my nights and all my days Here in a cell to get a dark pale face, To come forth worth the ivy and the bays, And in this age can hope no other grace! Leave me! There 'a something come into my thought That mnst and shall be sung high and aloof, Safe from the wolf's black jaw and the dull ass's hoof I " Not liking to be so bullied, the public had persisted in their instinctive preference of other plays, and, above all, of those of Shakspeare and of Beaumont and Fletcher. On the other hand, the scholarly and academic critics, pleased at being appealed to, had made the cause of Ben their own, and had championed him as the poet of the most learned art. Thus situated between the public and the learned, Ben had acted accordingly. In the very year of Shakspeare's death, he had, as if with the intention of quitting the stage altogether, collected and published in a folio volume the greater part of his plays, masques, and other compositions up to that date. During the nine remaining years of James's reign he had not written a single new play, but had contented himself with the composition of some ten additional masques, ...
