But

The

no allusion to the class that so vigorously assailed them are indeed few. These allusions, sometimes in the form of harmless jokes, again of downright scurrility, for the most part are too insignificant to warrant our attention. there are certain plays more ambitious in their satire. Puritan, 1607, whose authorship, variously attributed to Shakespeare, Middleton and others, is unknown, makes several of the holy society ridiculous through their hypocrisy and stupidity. This play is a very poor farce, and the imbecility, the puerile dishonesty represented as characterizing the Puritans, is so overdrawn that it is ineffective as satire.

In The Family of Love, 1608, Middleton devoted an entire comedy to equal nonsense. A band of religious enthusiasts, known by this name, seems to have been organized by Heinrich Niclaes about 1555. They were guided, they professed, by Divine Love, but their enemies said, by carnal affection. So that classifying them under the general name of Puritans, as often was done, cast a slur upon the latter. Middleton, in his satire, depicts wanton sensuality masquerading in the guise of religious enthusiasm, together with some of the common foibles of the city Puritan. The whole is done in such a way, Ward observes, 'as to lead to the conclusion that the dramatist knew little or nothing of the principles or practices which he was attempting to satirize.' In A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, 1630, by the same author, some Puritan women appear at a congratulatory party; they converse most inanely, and are so unimportant as not even to be distinguished by names.

In The Muse's Looking Glass; 1634, Randolph makes Bird, a feather-maker, and Mrs. Flowerdew, a seller of pins and looking-glasses, both Puritans of Blackfriars, the leading characters. Their cant and extravagant language, the inconsistency of their dealing in feathers, and their ignorant hostility to the stage, are well satirized. It is important to note that Randolph was one of the Sons of 'Hist. Eng. Dram. Lit. 2. 517.

Ben, and that in this comedy, both in his manner and in what he satirized, he was plainly influenced by the older poet.

Viewed as a whole, the satire of contemporary dramatists against the Puritans was scattered and fragmentary. The few who give the Puritans more attention, render their shafts ineffective by their carelessness of aim and indifference in manner. Randolph is an exception, but he follows Jonson so closely that it is hardly necessary to give him special consideration.

It is a fact of no little significance that, while Jonson scrutinized the typical and individual failings of the Puritans with a thoroughness that makes his satire surpass that of all the other dramatists put together, nowhere in his comedies does he charge them with social impurity. I cannot regard it as accidental; the suggestion of making such an accusation certainly is found in Marston's Malcontent, The Puritan, and Middleton's Family of Love, all of which were produced a few years previous to The Alchemist; neither Jonson's delicacy nor the standards of the times would have stigmatized such a subject as improper for the stage.

The evidence is fairly conclusive that Jonson deliberately chose not to make such a charge, and that in his hostility he practised moderation, laying hold only of that which in his judgment rightly deserved the lash. Nor is this inconsistent with his satire on the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the Puritans, although, as I have said, these failings are not to be regarded as characterizing the class as a whole. Jonson was a man of strong prejudices, and even a few cases of religious imposition and deceit brought to his attention might easily have colored a feeling already somewhat averse to the Puritans. What seems to be his real judgment regarding them, expressed in plain and concise form, is found in a passage in Timber, which I translate: "The Puritan hypocrite is a fanatic mentally unbalanced by a belief in his own peculiar vision, by which

he thinks he has discovered certain errors in a few of the dogmas of the church. Thence seized by a holy frenzy, he madly resists the magistrates, believing that he is thus showing obedience to God.'

That Jonson, of all the Jacobean dramatists, should have been the one especially to attack the Puritans, is extremely paradoxical. At heart he was a very Puritan himself. He could never resist an opportunity for preaching; as he says in the Prologue of The Alchemist,

This pen

Did never aim to grieve, but better men.

More than once he himself attacked the stage, and far surpassed the similar efforts of the Puritans, because he knew better of what he spoke. But Jonson resembled the Puritans also in their failings: he lacked tolerance and sympathy. As it was not easy for him to appreciate a rival playwright, it was also difficult for him to do justice to a rival moralist. And for himself to attack his own profession was quite different from standing silently by, and seeing outsiders ignorantly and abusively attempt the same. The latter, to a man of his combative nature, was a challenge which professional honor would not allow him to ignore. His attitude toward the Puritans, further, may have been influenced not a little by religious prejudice. From the Conversations with Drummond we know that for twelve years after his imprisonment in 1598, he was a professed Catholic. Could the Puritans' absurd fears and bitter denunciations of popery have failed to awaken antagonism in this rough fighter?

Finally, Jonson was hostile to the Puritans because he failed to appreciate their real spirit. As has already been observed, his genius was powerful and massive rather than delicate and graceful. There was a lack of the finest feeling. He gloried in the great monuments of philosophical and scientific knowledge, but the noble idealism that transcends all that is mere intellect, he only dimly

apprehended. His attitude toward Shakespeare was distinguished by a large and generous admiration, and yet it was an admiration chiefly of the remarkable powers of a master-mind. The same limitation marks his portrayal of the Puritans. He did not exhibit the poet's power of seeing deep into their spirit. Thus his satire fails to be the truest and most convincing, and at times borders upon caricature. This was how Bartholomew Fair impressed Samuel Pepys as he saw it in 1668: 'It is an excellent play; the more I see it, the more I love the wit of it; only the business of abusing the Puritans begins to grow stale, and of no use, they being the people that, at last, will be found the wisest.'