ough _Histriomastix_ was revised as an attack upon Shakespeare in 1599
by Chapman and Marston, who had commenced to collaborate in dramatic
work in the previous year, its original plot and action remain
practically unaltered. In its revision its early anti-Shakespearean
intention was merely amplified and brought up to date by a few topical
allusions, fitting circumstances in the lives of the persons
caricatured, pertaining to the later period. The substitution of
_Troilus and Cressida_ for _The Prodigal Child_, as the play within the
play presented by Sir Oliver Owlet's company, is also due to the period
of revision. All of the passages of the play which are suggestive of the
period of revision are palpably in the style of John Marston.

Among the persons of the early play is Chrisoganus, a scholar and
mathematician, who has set up an academy to expound the seven liberal
Sciences: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and
Astronomy, all of which are introduced as persons in the first act.
Chrisoganus was undoubtedly intended for Chapman's friend Thomas
Harriot, the mathematician and astronomer, who was so prominent in the
academical movement of 1592-93. The name Chrisoganus is evidently a
reflection of Harriot's _Ephemeris Chrisometra_, a MS. copy of which is
preserved in Zion College. Chapman's poem to Harriot, prefixed to his
_Achilles Shield_ (1599), expresses many of the same ideas voiced in
_Histriomastix_ and in much the same language, and indicates Chapman's
collaboration with Marston in the revision of the play in that year.

In the early _Histriomastix_ Chapman represents himself in the character
of Peace. When the utterances of Peace are compared with certain of
Chapman's poems, such as his _Euthymia Raptus_, or _The Tears of Peace_
(1609), his poem to Harriot (1598), _The Shadow of Night_ (1594), and
_Ovid's Banquet of Sense_ (1595), in all of which he breaks away from
his subject-matter at intervals to extol his own virtues and bewail his
poverty and his neglect by patrons, it becomes evident that he
transfigures himself in _Histriomastix_ as Peace; which character acts
as a chorus to, or running commentary on, the action of the play.

The whole spirit and purpose of this play is reproduced in _The Tears of
Peace_, which is a dialogue between Peace and an interlocutor, who
discuss at great length exactly the same ideas and subjects,
dramatically treated, in _Histriomastix_, _i.e._ the negle