Every Man in His Humour.  It appears that he conceived some grudge against the actors, and apparently against Shakespeare and other playwrights, for, in 1601, his Poetaster is a satire both on playwrights and on actors, whom he calls “apes.”  The apparent attacks on Shakespeare are just such as Ben, if angry and envious, would direct against him; while we know of no other poet-player of the period to whom they could apply.  For example, in The Poetaster, Histrio, the actor, is advised to ingratiate himself with Pantalabus, “gent’man parcel-poet, his father was a man of worship, I tell thee.”  This is perhaps unmistakably a blow at Shakespeare, who had recently acquired for his father and himself arms, and the pleasure of writing himself “gentleman.”  This “parcel-poet gent’man” “pens lofty, in a new stalking style,”—­he is thus an author, he “pens,” and in a high style.  He is called Pantalabus, from the Greek words for “to take up all,” which means that, as poet, he is a plagiarist.  Jonson repeats this charge in his verses called Poet-Ape —

“He takes up all,” makes each man’s wit his own, And told of this, he slights it.”

In a scene added to The Poetaster in 1616, the author (Ben) is advised not

“With a sad and serious verse to wound
Pantalabus, railing in his saucy jests,”

and obviously slighting the charges of plagiarism.  Perhaps Ben is glancing at Shakespeare, who, if accused of plagiary by an angry rival, would merely laugh.

A reply to the Poetaster, namely Satiromastix (by Dekker and Marston?), introduces Jonson himself as babbling darkly about “Mr. Justice Shallow,” and “an Innocent Moor” (Othello?).  Here is question of “administering strong pills” to Jonson; then,

“What lumps of hard and indigested stuff,
Of bitter SATIRISM, of arrogance,
Of self-love, of detraction, of a black
And stinking insolence should we fetch up!”

This “pill” is a reply to Ben’s “purge” for the poets in his
Poetaster.  Oh, the sad old stuff!

Referring to Jonson’s Poetaster, and to Satiromastix, the counter-attack, we find a passage in the Cambridge play, The Return from Parnassus (about 1602).  Burbage, the tragic actor, and Kempe, the low-comedy man of Shakespeare’s company, are introduced, discussing the possible merits of Cambridge wits as playwrights.  Kempe rejects them as they “smell too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphosis . . . " The purpose, of course, is to laugh at the ignorance of the low-comedy man, who thinks “Metamorphosis” a writer, and does not suspect—­how should he?—­that Shakespeare “smells of Ovid.”  Kempe innocently goes on, “Why, here’s our fellow” (comrade) “Shakespeare puts them all down” (all the University playwrights), “aye, and Ben Jonson too.  O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace” (in The Poetaster) “giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge . . . "