Thought each man's vice belonged to their whole tribe;

And much good do 't them! What they have done 'gainst me I am not moved with: if it gave them meat,

Or got them clothes, 'tis well; that was their end.

Only amongst them I am sorry for

Some better natures, by the rest so drawn

To run in that vile line.

P. And is this all?

Will you not answer, then, the libels? Author. No.

P. Nor the Untrussers?

Author. Neither.

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
If Tragedy have a more kind aspect;
Her favours in my next I will pursue,
Where, if I prove the pleasure but of one,
So he judicious be, he shall be alone
A theatre unto me. Once I'll 'say1

To strike the ear of time in those fresh strains
As shall, beside the cunning of their ground,
Give cause to some of wonder, some despite,
And more despair to imitate their sound.
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 or the bays,
And in this age can hope no other grace-
Leave me! There's something come into my thought
That must and shall be sung, high and aloof,

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 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

1 Say, essay.

skies, and tumbling to dire ruin suddenly at last. The play had its purpose summed up in the closing words:

Lepidus. How Fortune plies her sports, when she begins To practise them! pursues, continues, adds, Confounds with varying her impassioned moods!

Arrianus. Dost thou hope, Fortune, to redeem thy crimes, To make amend for thy ill-placed favours,

With these strange punishments? Forbear, you things
That stand upon the pinnacles of state,

To boast your slippery height; when you do fall,
You pash yourselves in pieces, ne'er to rise;
And he that lends you pity, is not wise.

Terentius. Let this example move the insolent man
Not to grow proud and careless of the gods.
It is an odious wisdom to blaspheme,
Much more to slighten, or deny their powers:
For, whom the morning saw so great and high,
Thus low and little 'fore the even doth lie.

When this play was printed, in 1605, there was printed with it John Marston's praise of his "most worthy friend" for a work that would, as he said, "even force applause from despairful envy." Those critics who had no eyes of the understanding for the noble treatment of a poet's theme, and for the genius with which, in some scenes, Ben Jonson has applied even his mastery of humour to a tragic purpose, could see with the eyes over their noses that the bottom of each printed page was charged with references to the Roman authors who had enabled him to set his work in a true picture of old Roman life. His reason for doing so Ben Jonson had given in a preface "To the Readers: "--"Lest in some nice nostril the quotations might savour affected, I do let you know that I abhor nothing more; and I have only done it to show my integrity, and save myself in those common torturers that bring all wit to the rack." The torturers are not to be escaped so easily. They see a play with its text justified by many references-Suetonius, Tacitus, and other Latin writers --and deliver judgment against "Sejanus" on the evidence of the foot-notes, saying to one another, with great satisfaction, "It is a pedantic play."

lain's players, to which Shakespeare belonged, became after change of reign the King's players. Shakespeare was at that time thirty-nine years old, Ben Jonson thirty. Shakespeare's "Othello" was produced at court on the 1st of November, 1604, and "Measure for Measure" a few weeks later. "Macbeth" and "King Lear" were acted in 1606. "Julius Cæsar," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Cymbeline," "Coriolanus," are all masterpieces of the reign of James I., produced before the date of the earliest notice of a performance of "The Tempest," which is in 1611. With that play, or with "King Henry VIII.," which was being acted when the Globe Theatre was burnt down in 1613, Shakespeare's work as a dramatist ended. In his latter years he had retired to Stratford, where he died at the age of fifty-two, on the 23rd of April, 1616.

Ben Jonson having produced his "Sejanus," written in the last days of Elizabeth's reign, turned to comedy again, but did not continue the line of the three humorous dramatic homilies which had followed his true comedy of "Every Man in his Humour." He returned to comedy proper, with the humours of men shown through the skilful development of an ingenious and well-considered plot. Three of his best comedies

"Volpone, or the Fox," in 1605; "Epicene, or the Silent Woman," in 1609; and "The Alchemist," in 1610-came between "Sejanus," and his one other tragedy, "Catiline," in 1611. In 1605, he was also fellow-worker with Marston and Chapman upon "Eastward Hoe." He had produced also Court Masques "The Masque of Blackness," in 1605;" "The Masque and Barriers," represented in 1606 at Whitehall, in the Christmas celebration of the marriage of the Earl of Essex;""The Masque of Beauty," in 1608; in 1609, the third of the masques in which the Queen herself took part,

THE MASQUE OF QUEENS;

"celebrated from the House of Fame, by the Queen of Great Britain, with her Ladies, at Whitehall, Feb. 2nd, 1609."

It increasing now to the third time of my being used in these services to Her Majesty's personal presentations, with the ladies whom she pleaseth to honour; it was my first and special regard, to see that the nobility of the invention should be answerable to the dignity of their persons. For which reason I chose the argument to be, A celebration of honourable and true Fame, bred out of Virtue: observing that rule of the best artist, to suffer no object of delight to pass without his mixture of profit and example. And because Her Majesty (best knowing that a principal part of life, in these spectacles, lay in their variety) had commanded me to think on some dance, or shew, that might precede hers, and have the place of a foil, or false masque; I was careful to decline, not only from others, but mine own steps in that kind, since the last year, I had an anti-masque of boys; and therefore now devised, that twelve women, in the habit of hags, or witches, sustaining the persons of Ignorance, Suspicion, Credulity, &c., the opposites to good Fame, should fill that part; not as a masque, but a spectacle of strangeness, producing multiplicity of gesture, and not unaptly sorting with the current, and whole fall of the device.

First

His Majesty, then, being set, and the whole company in full expectation, the part of the scene which first presented itself was an ugly Hell; which flaming beneath, smoked unto the top of the roof. And in respect all evils are morally said to come from hell; as also from that observation of Torrentius upon Horace's Canidia, que tot instructa venenis, ex Orci faucibus profecta videri possit :2 these witches, with a kind of hollow and infernal music, came forth from thence. one, then two, and three, and more, till their number increased to eleven; all differently attired: some with rats on their heads, some on their shoulders; others with ointment-pots at their girdles; all with spindles, timbrels, rattles, or other venefical instruments, making a confused noise, with strange gestures. The device of their attire was Master Jones's, with the invention, and architecture of the whole scene, and machine. Only I prescribed them their properties of vipers, snakes, bones, herbs, roots, and other ensigns of their magic, out of the authority of ancient and late writers, wherein the faults are mine, if there be any found; and for that cause I confess them.

These eleven witches beginning to dance (which is an usual ceremony at their convents or meetings, where sometimes also they are vizarded and masked), on the sudden one of them missed their chief, and interrupted the rest with this speech.

Hag. Sisters, stay, we want our Dame;

Call upon her by her name,

And the charm we use to say;

That she quickly anoint, and come away.

1 Charm. Dame, dame! the watch is set:
Quickly come, we all are met.-
From the lakes, and from the fens,
From the rocks, and from the dens,

From the woods, and from the caves,
From the church-yards, from the graves,

1 A rule followed by every great English poet.

2 Canidia, who, instructed in so many poisons, might seem to have come from the throat of Orcus. (A note on Horace, Epode 5.)

3 Inigo Jones, who became architect to the Queen in 1606, shared honours in the construction of these masques.

Dame. Join now our hearts, we faithful opposites To Fame and Glory. Let not these bright nights Of honour blaze, thus to offend our eyes: Shew ourselves truly envious, and let rise Our wonted rages: do what may beseem Such names, and natures; Virtue else will deem Our powers decreas'd, and think us banish'd earth, No less than heaven. All her antique birth, As Justice, Faith, she will restore; and, bold Upon our sloth, retrieve her age of gold. We must not let our native manners, thus, Corrupt with ease. Ill lives not, but in us. I hate to see these fruits of a soft peace, And curse the piety gives it such increase. Let us disturb it then, and blast the light; Mix hell with heaven, and make nature fight Within herself; loose the whole hinge of things; And cause the ends run back into their springs. Hags. What our Dame bids us do,

We are ready for.

Dame. Then fall to.

But first relate me, what you have sought,

Where you have been, and what you have brought.

1 Hag. I have been all day, looking after

A raven, feeding upon a quarter;

And, soon, as she turn'd her beak to the south,
I snatch'd this morsel out of her mouth.

2 Hag. have been gathering wolves' hairs,
The mad dog's foam, and the adder's ears;
The spurging of a dead man's eyes,
And all since the evening star did rise.

3 Hag. I last night lay all alone
On the ground, to hear the mandrake groan;
And pluck'd him up, though he grew full low;
And, as I had done, the cock did crow.

4 Hag. And I have been choosing out this skull,
From charnel houses, that were full;
From private grots, and public pits:
And frighted a sexton out of his wits.
5 Hag. Under a cradle I did creep,
By day; and when the child was asleep,
At night, I sucked the breath; and rose,
And pluck'd the nodding nurse by the nose.

6 Hag. I had a dagger: what did I with that? Kill'd an infant to have his fat.

A piper it got, at a church-ale,

I bade him again blow wind in the tail.

7 Hag. A murderer, yonder, was hung in chains,

The sun and the wind had shrunk his veins;

I bit off a sinew; I clipp'd his hair;

I brought off his rags that danced in the air.

8 Hag. The screech-owl's eggs, and the feathers black, The blood of the frog, and the bone in his back,

2 Infants' fat boiled was said to be the chief ingredient in the ointment which enabled witches to ride in the air. It was mixed with poppy and narcotic drugs. The witches anointed themselves with it, and also sometimes their broomsticks. Killing of infants was also one of a witch's occasional recreations.

I have been getting; and made of his skin

A purset, to keep sir Cranion in.

9 Hag. And I have been plucking, plants among, Hemlock, henbane, adder's-tongue, Night-shade, moon-wort, libbard's-bane;

And twice, by the dogs, was like to be ta'en.

10 Hag. I, from the jaws of a gardener's bitch,

Did snatch these bones, and then leap'd the ditch: Yet went I back to the house again,

Killed the black cat, and here's the brain.

11 Hag. I went to the toad breeds under the wall, I charmed him out, and he came at my call; I scratch'd out the eyes of the owl before,

I tore the bat's wing; what would you have more? Dame. Yes, I have brought, to help our vows, Hornéd poppy, cypress boughs,

The fig-tree wild that grows on tombs,

And juice that from the larch-tree comes,

The basilisk's blood, and the viper's skin:

And now our orgies let us begin.

Here the Dame put herself in the midst of them, and began her

following Invocation:

You fiends and furies (if yet any be

Worse than ourselves), you that have quaked to see
These knots untied, and shrunk, when we have charmed;
You, that to arm us, have yourselves disarmed,
And to our powers resign'd your whips and brands
When we went forth, the scourge of men and lands;
You that have seen me ride, when Hecaté
Durst not take chariot; when the boisterous sea,
Without a breath of wind, hath knock'd the sky,
And that hath thundered, Jove not knowing why:
When we have set the elements at wars,
Made midnight see the sun, and day the stars;
When the wing'd lightning, in the course hath staid,
And swiftest rivers have run back, afraid,
To see the corn remove, the groves to range,
Whole places alter, and the seasons change;
When the pale moon, at the first voice down fell
Poisoned, and durst not stay the second spell:
You, that have oft been conscious of these sights;
And thou, three-forméd star, that on these nights
Art only powerful, to whose triple name

Thus we incline, once, twice, and thrice the same;
If now with rites profane, and foul enough,
We do invoke thee; darken all this roof,
With present fogs: exhale earth's rot'nest vapours,
And strike a blindness through these blazing tapers!
Come, let a murmuring charm resound,
The whilst we bury all i' the ground.
But first, see every foot be bare;
And every knee.

Hag. Yes, Dame, they are.

4 Charm. Deep, O deep we lay thee to sleep;

We leave thee drink by, if thou chance to be dry;
Both milk and blood, the dew and the flood.
We breathe in thy bed, at the foot and the head;
We cover thee warm, that thou take no harm:
And when thou dost wake,

Dame earth shall quake,

And the houses shake,
And her belly shall ake,
As her back were brake,
Such a birth to make,
As is the blue drake:
Whose form thou shalt take.

Dame. Never a star yet shot!

Where be the ashes?

Hag. Here in the pot.

Dame. Cast them up; and the flint-stone Over the left shoulder-bone;

Into the west.

Hag. It will be best.

5 Charm. The sticks are across, there can be no loss,
The sage is rotten, the sulphur is gotten
Up to the sky, that was in the ground,
Follow it then with our rattles, round;
Under the bramble, over the brier,
A little more heat will set it on fire:
Put it in mind to do it kind,
Flow water and blow wind.
Rouncy is over, Robble is under,

A flash of light, and a clap of thunder,
A storm of rain, another of hail.
We all must home in the egg-shell sail;
The mast is made of a great pin,
The tackle of cobweb, the sail as thin,

And if we go through and not fall in
Dame. Stay, all our charms do nothing win
Upon the night; our labour dies,

Our magic feature will not rise-
Nor yet the storm! we must repeat
More direful voices far, and beat
The ground with vipers, till it sweat.
6 Charm. Bark dogs, wolves howl,
Seas roar, woods roll,

Clouds crack, all be black,

But the light our charms do make.

Dame. Not yet! my rage begins to swell;
Darkness, Devils, Night and Hell,

Do not thus delay my spell.

I call you once, and I call you twice;
I beat you again, if you stay my thrice:
Thorough these crannies where I peep,
I'll let in the light to see your sleep.
And all the secrets of your sway
Shall lie as open to the day,
As unto me. Still are you deaf !
Reach me a bough, that ne'er bare leaf,
To strike the air: and Aconite,
To hurl upon this glaring light;
A rusty knife to wound mine arm;
And as it drops I'll speak a charm,
Shall cleave the ground, as low as lies
Old shrunk-up Chaos, and let rise,
Once more, his dark and reeking head,
To strike the world, and nature dead,
Until my magic birth be bred.

7 Charm. Black go in, and blacker come out;
At thy going down, we give thee a shout.
Hoo!

At thy rising again, thou shalt have two,
And if thou dost what we would have thee do,
Thou shalt have three, thou shalt have four,
Thou shalt have ten, thou shalt have a score.
Hoo! Har! Har! Hoo!

8 Charm. A cloud of pitch, a spur and a switch,
To haste him away, and a whirlwind play,
Before and after, with thunder for laughter,
And storms for joy of the roaring boy;
His head of a drake, his tail of a snake.

9 Charm. About, about, and about,

Till the mists arise, and the lights fly out,

Nor on my arm advanced with Pallas' shield,
(By which, my face aversed, in open field
I slew the Gorgon) for an empty name:
When Virtue cut off Terror, he gat Fame.
And if, when Fame was gotten, Terror died,
What black Erynnis, or more hellish Pride,
Durst arm these hags, now she is grown and great,
To think they could her glories once defeat?
I was her parent, and I am her strength,
Heroic Virtue sinks not under length
Of years, or ages; but is still the same

While he preserves as when he got good fame.
My daughter, then, whose glorious house you see
Built all of sounding brass, whose columns be
Men-making poets, and those well-made men,
Whose strife it was to have the happiest pen
Renown them to an after-life, and not
With pride to scorn the muse, and die forgot;
She, that enquireth into all the world,
And hath about her vaulted palace hurled
All rumours and reports, or true or vain,
What utmost lands or deepest seas contain,
But only hangs great actions on her file;
She, to this lesser world, and greatest isle,

To-night sounds honour, which she would have seen
In yond' bright bevy, each of them a queen.
Eleven of them are of times long gone.

Penthesilea, the brave Amazon,

Swift-foot Camilla, queen of Volscia,
Victorious Thomyris of Scythia,

Chaste Artemisia, the Carian dame,

And fair-hair'd Berenice, Egypt's fame,
Hypsicratea, glory of Asia,

Candace, pride of Ethiopia,

The Britain honour, Boadicea,

The virtuous Palmyrene, Zenobia,

The wise and warlike Goth, Amalasunta,

The bold Valasca of Bohemia;

These, in their lives, as fortunes, crown'd the choice

Of womankind, and 'gainst all opposite voice

Made good to time, had, after death, the claim

To live eterniz'd in the House of Fame.
Where hourly hearing (as what there is old?)
The glories of Bell-anna so well told,
Queen of the Ocean; how that she alone
Possest all virtues, for which one by one
They were so fam'd: and wanting then a head
To form that sweet and gracious pyramid

columns, he chose the statues of the most excellent poets, as Homer, Virgil, Lucan, &c., as being the substantial supporters of Fame. For the upper, Achilles, Æneas, Cæsar, and those great heroes, which these poets had celebrated. All which stood as in massy gold. Between the pillars, underneath, were figured land-battles, sea-fights, triumphs, loves, sacrifices, and all magnificent subjects of honour, in brass, and heightened with silver. In which he profest to follow that noble description made by Chaucer of the place. Above were sited the masquers, over whose heads he devised two eminent figures of Honour and Virtue for the arch. The friezes, both below and above, were filled with several-coloured lights, like emeralds, rubies, sapphires, carbuncles, &c., the reflex of which, with our lights placed in the concave, upon the masquers' habits, was full of glory. These habits had in them the excellency of all device and riches; and were worthily varied by his invention, to the nations whereof they were queens. Nor are these alone his due; but divers other accessions to the strangeness and beauty of the spectacle: as the hell, the going about of the chariots, and binding the witches, the turning machine, with the presentation of Fame. All which I willingly acknowledge for him since it is a virtue planted in good natures, that what respects they wish to obtain fruitfully from others, they will give ingenuously themselves."