Ben Jonson did not intend to deal ungenerously by his fellow-poets, and they had no thought of him that was at all fatal to healthy friendship. Ben Jonson replied to the attack made upon him, in an Epilogue to the " Poetaster," where he made the author say of it in a dialogue— "I never writ that piece More innocent or empty of offence. Some salt it had, but neither tooth nor gall, With the disdainful self-assertion of his Epilogue, Ben Jonson joined a resolve to turn from Comedy, that had been so persistently mistaken by low natures, "And, since the Comic Muse Hath proved so ominous to me, I will try To strike the ear of time in those fresh strains I, that spend half my nights and all my days Leave me! There's something come into my thought Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof." The fresh strain was his tragedy of "Sejanus," produced in 1603, the year of the death of Queen Elizabeth. This is a fine poem of the fate of power built upon injustice. The favourite of Fortune, who has "Sejanus." sought no other God, and who spurns even that deity when adverse to his worldly gain, is shown with his house built upon sand, rising as if to touch the skies and tumbling to dire ruin suddenly at last. Thomas Thomas Dekker refers to himself in two of his prose works as born in London; and in the dedication of one of his last books, published in 1637, to the Middlesex Justices of the Peace, he says "This is no sermon, but an Epistle Dedicatory, which dedicates these discourses and my three score yeares devotedly yours in my best service." If we take this to be an exact statement of his age, Dekker was born in the year 1575, and began his career as a writer very actively in 1597 at the age of twenty-two. In 1598 Dekker appeared first in print with a poem on the fall of Jerusalem, called "Canaan's Calamitie "Canaan's Calamitie." Jerusalems Misery, or the dolefull destruction of faire Ierusalem by Tytus, the sonne of Vaspasian, Emperour of Rome, in the year of Christ's Incarnation 74. Wherein is shewed the woonderfull miseries which God brought upon that Citty for sinne, being utterly ouer-throwne and destroyed by sword, pestilence and famine." The story, taken from Josephus, is told in the six-lined stanzas, rhyming ababce, which King James called Common Verse, and thought most fit for "materis of love." Dekker describes first the riches of old Jerusalem, then passes to Christ's prophecy of its destruction, the signs and tokens, warnings to repentance, that were disregarded. He tells next of the approach of the enemy; the burning in one night of provisions for twenty years by the malice of one of the Jewish captains; and gives a long description of the famine that followed, with great elaboration of the incident of the woman who ate her only son. The poem ends with overthrow of the The "Seven Deadly Sins of London" and the "Rod for Runa wayes." city, and the fate of the seditious captain who sought favour from Titus. The same theme was treated, as we have seen, in a prose book by Nash five years earlier; but with Nash's "Christ's Tears over Jerusalem" there was interwoven an application of the whole story to London, with a call to London to repent. Dekker's poem, in two hundred and thirteen stanzas, only tells the story, and applies the warning in a couplet at the end : "God grant we may our hatefull sins forsake, This early piece of Dekker's rhymed a famous piece of history, with due regard to the rough appetite for horrors to which the playhouse also often ministered. Of the first edition of "Canaan's Calamitie" there is not a perfect copy left, but it was reprinted in 1617, 1618, 1625, and 1677. Dekker's When Dekker's poem appeared, he had begun to write plays, of which many are known only by entries of their names in Henslowe's Diary. On the eighth of January, 1597, Philip Henslowe sent twenty shillings to Thomas Dowton to buy a play of Dekker's. On the fifteenth of January, 1597-98, Henslowe paid four pounds for Dekker's play of "Phaeton." On the seventh and sixteenth of April, 1599, he made payments to Dekker and Chettle for a tragedy of "Agamemnon." In August of that year Dekker was concerned in a Stepmother's Tragedy," and received forty shillings for a play called "Bear a Brain." In the next month he was working with Ben Jonson, Chettle, and another, at a tragedy of "Robert the Second, King of Scots." Four months later, in January, 1600 (new style), Dekker was paid for a piece called "Truth's Supplication to Candle Light." In February, 1600, he was paid for his part in a play called "The Spanish Moor's Tragedy," written in partnership with William Haughton and John Day. In the next month, March, 1600, there is note in Henslowe's Diary of payment for "The Seven Wise Masters," written by Chettle, Dekker, Haughton, and Day. Here was partnership work upon seven plays within one year. None of them remain. William William Haughton, first mentioned in Henslowe's Diary as "young Horton" in November, 1597, may possibly be the person of that name who, being M.A. of Oxford, was incorporated as M.A. of Cambridge in 1604. The only play of his that has survived, "English-Men for my Money: or, a Woman will have her Will," was a lively comedy, first produced in 1598, but not printed until the year of Shakespeare's death. The date of Haughton's death is not known. There is no record of the plays by him, save entries by Henslowe of names of his lost plays written between 1597 and 1602. One is "The Poor Man's Paradise;" others are "The Tragedy of Merry" and "Cox of Collumpton," both written in partnership with Day. Haughton worked also with Chettle and Dekker upon "Patient Grissel"; with Day and Dekker on "The Spanish Moor's Tragedy"; with Day, Chettle, and Dekker on the "The Seven Wise Masters." Other work of his was on a new version of "Ferrex and Porrex ;" and he wrote pieces of his own called "The English Fugitives," "The Devil and his Dam," "Judas," and "Robin Hood's Pennyworths." Haughton joined Peter Pett in " Strange News out of Poland." Peter Pett was author of a verse pamphlet in 1599, Times Iourney to seeke his Daughter Truth: and Truth's Letter to Fame of England's Excellencie." William Haughton joined with Day in the Second and Third Parts of "The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green," ""The Six Yeomen of the West," "The Proud Woman of Antwerp and Friar Rush," and the Second Part of "Tom Dough." With Day and Wentworth Smith, Haughton wrote also "The Conquest of the West Indies"; with Richard Hathway and Wentworth Smith he wrote, in two parts, "The Six Clothiers"; and he was writing a play called "Cartwright" when last heard of in September, 1602. John Day. John Day is described on the title-page of his "Parliament of Bees" as sometime student of Caius College in Cambridge. He was first mentioned by Henslowe in 1598, when he was at work with Chettle on a play called "The Conquest of Brute, with the first finding of the Bath." Before the end of the reign of Elizabeth, John Day was part-author of twenty-one plays, and whole author of one play called "The Bristol Tragedy." The only one of these plays that remains to us is "The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green," published as Day's in 1659, but written by him in partnership with Chettle. John Day continued to write in the next reign. He is to be distinguished from Angell Day, son of Thomas Day, a parish clerk. Angell Day was apprenticed to a stationer for twelve years from Christmas, 1563, and may have been born, therefore, in 1551. He published, perhaps in 1585, an undated pamphlet describing "Wonderful Strange Sights seen in the Heavens over the Citie of London and other places"; also in 1586 a complete letter-writer called "The English Secretorie," and in 1587 "Daphnis and Chloe. Excellently describing the weight of affection, the simplicitie of loue, the purport of honest meaning, the resolution of reason and disposition of Fate," etc. Angell Day wrote also a small poem, in six-lined stanzas of common verse, upon the life and death of Sir Philip Sidney. Angell Day. Richard Hathway. Richard Hathway, another of the dramatists, working more frequently together than alone, who supplied Philip Henslowe with plays, may have been of the Warwickshire family to which also belonged Shakespeare's wife. He appears in Henslowe's Diary |