172 CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL AT BLACKFRIARS 
made to the recent unpleasantness. Absence of reference ins§ 
these two plays is negative proof that the personal war-cloud had ~ 
passed, by 1602. Positive proof is in the year 1604, when Mars- — 
ton dedicated The Malcontent to Jonson, and also wrote com- ~ 
mendatory verses for Sejanus, Dekker, however, cherished ill- — 
feeling as late as 1609, in The Guls Horne-Book.* 
The quarrel in its personal aspects was of much less impor- — 
tance than usually supposed. So far as we can now identify 
them, it includes only these three men. But from Jonson’s Apol- 
ogetical Dialogue and from Dekker’s address To the World in 
Satiromastix, we are led to believe that other poets and their 
theatres were involved. Doubtless they were. But as the plays 
have not come to light and are probably irretrievably lost, we 
can now say no more about them. 
The attempt to identify Shakespeare on this personal side in 
Troilus and Cressida hardly needs refutation. Beyond the minor ~ 
reference in the Prologue,? I find nothing in the play touching — 
either the personal or the impersonal side.* 
I have given this incident of the personal quarrel more space ~ 
than its relative importance demands, but not more than seems _ 
required to put it into its proper perspective as a minor matter in — 
the history of stage-relations.* 
*See supra, 133*, 140°. of William Shakespeare (5th ed., 
* Supra, 168°. 1905) 237°; -—R.- Boyle, Troilus and 
®Scholars differ widely on the Cressida, in Englische Studien 
play. See for example, R. A. Small, (1902), XXX, 21-59. 
op. cit., 139-71; Sidney Lee, A Life *See further, infra,-180*. 
286 
