THE HAMLET PASSAGE 181 
players he wrote for and jibed at their opposition poets and play- 
ers,’ as notably in Jonson’s Poetaster (ca. April, 1601) at Black- 
friars and Dekker’s Satiromastix (summer, 1601) at the Globe 
and Paul’s. 
Although there is a law (Elizabeth 1559)? which absolutely 
forbids any allusion or criticism by the stage with reference to 
affairs of state and religion, “the nation holds it no sin” even 
thus to countenance and set on such a controversy as the present 
one.* 
It is a condition of affairs much to be deplored, and “in a well- 
governed state’’* seems hardly “‘possible.”® 
Where the blame rests for this “throwing about of brains” and 
for the whole unsatisfactory theatrical status is thus shadowed 
forth with such consummate skill that the audience, familiar with 
the circumstances, could not miss the chief cause of grievance, 
though no breach of open declaration is made. 
The conclusion as to whether the boys win or not is a pregnant 
summary of conditions in a single line. Rosencranz puns on 
“carry it away,” and says that they not only have won but they 
have carried off the chief audience and income of the Globe,— 
*“Unless the poet and the player Also in New Shakespeare Society 
went to cuffs [F;, “Cuffs’] in the Transactions (1880-85), Appendix . 
question.” “Cuffs” was a common to Part II, 19f. 
nickname for a schoolmaster be- For punishments inflicted on the 
cause of his bad habit. “To go to Rose in 1597 and the Curtain early 
cuffs’ about anything therefore 1601, doubtless under the interpre- 
came to have a quadruple signifi- tation of this law, see supra, 155,158. 
cation,—primarily “to cuff or fight,’ It seems remarkable that Shake- 
then “to go to a master who cuffs,” speare was permitted so much as 
“to go to school,” and “to study, the present deft passage in Hamlet 
study up, study how, find ways and against the same law. See supra,’ 
means.” 164. 
Shakespeare plays with the pun- ®Tschischwitz (quoted in Fur- 
ning nature of the expression, with ness, Variorum Shakespeare, Ham- 
the final sense of course resting Jet, I, 167) could not see the “logic” 
upon the last of the quartet. of 332-37, as they stand,—for a very 
Compare the following from good reason! But really was ever 
Satiromastix (summer, 1601, ed. a cause that required the most del- 
Hawkins, op. cit., III, 135):—“He icate handling presented to the 
[Horace-Jonson] has as desperate minds of the audience with more 
a wit as any scholar ever went to consummate “logic”? 
cuffs for’ [=went to school for, “Order of the Privy Council, 22 
acquired by study]. June, 1600, uw. s., 151°. 
*Printed in J. P. Collier, op. cit., 5 Hamlet, u. s., 174, F:, 1. 342. 
C1831"); .168-69:;- .(1879°), 166%. 
295 
