" While, in the Induction to his "Staple of News,"
Jonson has clearly portrayed himself. "Yonder he is," says Mirth, in
reply to some remark touching the poet of the performance, "within--I
was in the tiring-house awhile, to see the actors dressed--rolling
himself up and down like a tun in the midst of them ... never did
vessel, or wort, or wine, work so ... a stewed poet!... he doth sit
like an unbraced drum, with one of his heads beaten out," &c. The
dramatic poets, it may be noted, were admitted gratis to the theatres,
and duly took their places among the spectators. Not a few of them
were also actors. Dekker, in his "Satiromastix," accuses Jonson of
sitting in the gallery during the performance of his own plays,
distorting his countenance at every line, "to make gentlemen have an
eye on him, and to make players afraid" to act their parts. A further
charge is thus worded: "Besides, you must forswear to venture on the
stage, when your play is ended, and exchange courtesies and
compliments with the gallants in the lords' rooms (or boxes), to make
all the house rise up in arms, and cry: 'That's Horace! that's he!
that's he! that's he that purges humours and diseases!'"
Jonson makes frequent complaint of the growing fastidiousness of his
audience, and nearly fifty years later, the same charge against the
public is repeated by Davenant, in the Prologue to his "Unfortunate
Lovers.
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