uch
Shakespearian scholars as Halliwell Phillipps and Sidney Lee. "His
acquaintance with Ben Jonson" writes Rowe, "began with a remarkable
piece of humanity and good nature; Mr. Jonson, who was at that time
altogether unknown to the world, had offered one of his plays to the
players in order to have it acted, and the persons into whose hands it
was put, after having turned it carelessly and superciliously over, were
just upon returning it to him with an ill-natured answer that it would
be of no service to their company, when Shakespeare luckily cast his eye
upon it, and found something so well in it as to engage him first to
read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings
to the public." The play in question was the famous comedy of "Every Man
in His Humour," which was brought out in September, 1598, by the Lord
Chamberlain's company, Shakespeare himself being one of the leading
actors upon the occasion.

Authentic history records a theater war in which Jonson and Shakespeare
figured, on opposite sides, but if allusions in Jonson's play the
"Poetaster" have been properly interpreted, their friendly relations
were not deeply disturbed. The trouble began in the first place by the
London of 1600 suddenly rushing into a fad for the company of boy
players, recruited chiefly from the choristers of the Chapel Royal, and
known as the "Children of the Chapel." They had been acting at the new
theater in Blackfriars since 1597, and their vogue became so great as
actually to threaten Shakespeare's company and other companies of adult
actors. Just at this time Ben Jonson was having a personal quarrel with
his fellow dramatists, Marston and Dekker, and as he received little
sympathy from the actors, he took his revenge by joining his forces with
those of the Children of the Chapel. They brought out for him in 1600
his satire of "Cynthia's Revels," in which he held up to ridicule
Marston, Dekker and their friends the actors. Marston and Dekker, with
the actors of Shakespeare's company, prepared to retaliate, but Jonson
hearing of it forestalled them with his play the "Poetaster" in which he
spared neither dramatists nor actors. Shakespeare's company continued
the fray by bringing out at the Globe Theatre, in the following year,
Dekker and Marston's "Satiro-Mastix, or The Untrussing of the Humorous
Poet," and as Ward remarks, "the quarrel had now become too hot to
last." The excitement, however, continued for s