SOURCE: "The Comical Satires," in Ben Jonson, Dramatist, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 58-91.

In the following essay, Barton explores the links between real life and dramatic representation in Jonson's comical satires, suggesting that Jonson's satirical works were influenced by his stormy relationship with Marston, and noting the dangers of Jonson's efforts to satirize members of his own audience.

Almost twenty years after the War of the Theatres, or Poetomachia, was over, and Jonson, Marston and Dekker had long since restored amicable relations, Drummond recorded Jonson's statement that the quarrels began when 'Marston represented him in the stage'. Three of Marston's surviving plays contain characters who have certain affinities with Jonson: Histriomastix (1598/9), Jack Drum's Entertainment (1600) and What You Will (1601). The scholar Chrisogonus in Histriomastix was clearly intended by Marston as the hero of the play. Brabant Senior, on the other hand, in Jack Drum's Entertainment, is a figure of...