The Poetaster

"The Poetaster" is a late Elizabethan stage play, a satire written by Ben Jonson, and first performed in 1601. The play formed one element in the back-and-forth exchange between Jonson and his rivals John Marston and Thomas Dekker in the so-called "Poetomachia" or War of the Theatres of 1599–1601. [James Loxley, "The Complete Critical Guide to Ben Jonson." London, Routledge, 2002.]

"The Poetaster" was entered into the Stationers' Register on Dec. 21, 1601, and was first published in quarto in 1602 by the bookseller Matthew Lownes. The title page of the first edition states that the play was performed by the Children of the Chapel, one of the companies of boy actors popular at the time. The play was next published in the first folio collection of Jonson's works (1616). A prefatory note to the folio text identifies the main actors in the 1601 production as Nathan Field, John Underwood, Salomon Pavy, William Ostler, Thomas Day, and Thomas Marton. The quarto and folio texts both supply subtitles, with slight variants: in the quarto, the title is "Poetaster or The Arraignment," and in the folio, "Poetaster, Or His Arraignment."

It is widely accepted among scholars and critics that the character of Horace in "The Poetaster" represents Jonson himself, while Crispinus, who vomits up a pretentious and bombastic vocabulary, is Marston, and Demetrius Fannius is Dekker. Individual commentators have attempted to identify other characters in the play with historical and literary figures of the era, including George Chapman and Shakespeare — though these arguments have not been accepted by the scholarly consensus. [E. K. Chambers "The Elizabethan Stage," 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923; Vol. 3, p. 365.]

It is generally argued that the play is more than a mere venting of personal spleen against two rivals; rather, Jonson attempted in "The Poetaster" to express his views on "the poet's moral duties in society." [Terence P. Logan and Denzell S. Smith, eds., "The New Intellectuals: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama," Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1977; pp. 67-9.] The play has been considered "an attempt to combine undramatic, philosophical material on good poets with satire on bad poets." [Logan and Smith, p. 8.] Scholars have also traced out a broad range of particular connections between "The Poetaster," other Jonson works, and plays by other authors in the first years of the 17th century. [Logan and Smith, pp. 74, 175-6, 221-2, 313.]

The term poetaster, meaning an inferior poet with pretentions to artistic value, was coined by Jonson in this play.

References

External links

* [http://hollowaypages.com/jonson1692poetaster.htm "The Poetaster" online.]