proportion, as is exhibited in his “Satiromastix.”  The controversial part of the play is so utterly alien from the romantic part that it is impossible to regard them as component factors of the same original plot.  It seems to me unquestionable that Dekker must have conceived the design, and probable that he must have begun the composition, of a serious play on the subject of William Rufus and Sir Walter Tyrrel, before the appearance of Ben Jonson’s “Poetaster” impelled or instigated him to some immediate attempt at rejoinder; and that being in a feverish hurry to retort the blow inflicted on him by a heavier hand than his own he devised—­perhaps between jest and earnest—­the preposterously incoherent plan of piecing out his farcical and satirical design by patching and stitching it into his unfinished scheme of tragedy.  It may be assumed, and it is much to be hoped, that there never existed another poet capable of imagining—­much less of perpetrating—­an incongruity so monstrous and so perverse.  The explanation so happily suggested by a modern critic that William Rufus is meant for Shakespeare, and that “Lyly is Sir Vaughan ap Rees,” wants only a little further development, on the principle of analogy, to commend itself to every scholar.  It is equally obvious that the low-bred and foul-mouthed ruffian Captain Tucca must be meant for Sir Philip Sidney; the vulgar idiot Asinius Bubo for Lord Bacon; the half-witted underling Peter Flash for Sir Walter Raleigh; and the immaculate Celestina, who escapes by stratagem and force of virtue from the villanous designs of Shakespeare, for the lady long since indicated by the perspicacity of a Chalmers as the object of that lawless and desperate passion which found utterance in the sonnets of her unprincipled admirer—­Queen Elizabeth.  As a previous suggestion of my own, to the effect that George Peele was probably the real author of “Romeo and Juliet,” has had the singular good-fortune to be not merely adopted but appropriated—­in serious earnest—­by a contemporary student, without—–­ as far as I am aware—­a syllable of acknowledgment, I cannot but anticipate a similar acceptance in similar quarters for the modest effort at interpretation now submitted to the judgment of the ingenuous reader.

Gifford is not too severe on the palpable incongruities of Dekker’s preposterous medley:  but his impeachment of Dekker as a more virulent and intemperate controversialist than Jonson is not less preposterous than the structure of this play.  The nobly gentle and manly verses in which the less fortunate and distinguished poet disclaims and refutes the imputation of envy or malevolence excited by the favor enjoyed by his rival in high quarters should have sufficed, in common justice, to protect him from such a charge.  There is not a word in Jonson’s satire expressive of anything but savage and unqualified scorn for his humbler antagonist:  and the tribute paid by that antagonist to his genius, the appeal to his better