- RELATIONS OF BLACKFRIARS 169 
The personal quarrel between Jonson on the one side and Mars- 
ton and Dekker on the other, conducted on the battle-field of the 
_. stage, was merely incidental to the general state, arising partly 
out of theatrical, partly out of personal relations. But had it not 
_ been fostered by the theatres it could never have been tolerated, 
could not even have come into existence before an audience. An 
institution does not easily lend itself as an organ of mere per- 
sonal animus. It served the theatres as a temporary vent.* 
_ The personal phases of the quarrel can be briefly stated, so far 
as they appear in literary form. They have been elaborately dis- 
cussed by Fleay, Penniman, and Small, and treated somewhat by 
practically every literary historian or critic that has touched upon 
the period. But as the main events have been given incorrect 
historical perspective by the confusion of chronology, I sum- 
marize certain conclusions here in accordance with the dates es- 
tablished upon final evidence under the list of plays, following.* 
_ The first traces are not vicious, and consist of literary jibes. 
In The Scourge of Villainy (Stationers’ Register, Sept. 8, 1598) 
Marston glanced at Jonson through the character of “judicial 
Torquatus” in the address “To those that seem judicial Perusers,” 
and expected that Torquatus would vouchsafe the new volume 
“some of his new-minted epithets (as real, intrinsecate, Del- 
/ 
Le eT ee eee TT ee ete Sra eee Eee eS 
' , j : oom 
- phic),” without understanding a word of it. Late in the same 
; year, Marston in his revision of Histriomastix (1598) reshaped 
s 
5 represented as so hostile as to re- volume to disproving the positions 
quire such armed protection of both of his predecessors, and on the 
author and actors at Blackfriars. whole is sound in his own identifi- 
j *See further, infra, 180%. cations but wide of the mark in his 
’ *The Rev. F. G. Fleay, A Chron-_ datings. 
cle History of the London Stage By all these scholars the quarrel 
(1890), passim, and A Biographical is given wrong aspects through non- 
Chronicle of the English Drama _ sequential relation of plays and 
1559-1642 (1891), I-II, ad loc., fol- events. The personal side is incor- 
} lows the ministerial method of find- rectly. regarded as having consid- 
ing allegory in the plays concerned, erable independent importance in- 
2 and consequently arrives at roman-_ stead of being subordinate to the 
tic identifications of characters. J. larger conditions that made it pos- 
_ .H.-Penniman, The War of the The- _ sible. 
atres (1897), likewise finds unten- *See the respective titles under 
able identifications. R. A. Small, Plays, complete work, vol. II, for 
3 The Stage-Quarrel between. Ben all evidences and full treatment in 
Jonson and the so-called Poetasters elaborate detail, with extensive ref- 
(1899), devotes a large part of his erences. 
diy’, 
283 
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