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The best writers in this kind were Middleton and Dekker and the best play to read as a sample of it Eastward Ho! in which Marston put off his affectation of sardonical melancholy and joined with Jonson and Dekker to produce what is the masterpiece of the non-Shakespearean comedy of the time.
The best proof of its vitality is the crowd of writers which suddenly broke into this field: Kyd, Marlow, Greene, Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Peele, Ford, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher. The secure possession, by the stage, of the public mind, is of the first importance to the poet who works for it. He loses no time in idle experiments.
Thomas Middleton. Thomas Heywood. Thomas Dekker. Massinger, Ford, Shirley. Prose Writers. Francis Bacon. Richard Hooker. Sidney and Raleigh. John Foxe. Camden and Knox. Hakluyt and Purchas. Thomas North. Summary. Bibliography. Questions. Chronology. The Puritan Movement. Changing Ideals. Literary Characteristics. The Transition Poets. Samuel Daniel. The Song Writers. The Spenserian Poets.
Dramatist, s. of a Norfolk yeoman, was at Camb., 1592-3. It is only since 1881 that his works have been identified. He collaborated with Dekker and others in plays, and was the author of The Isle of Gulls , Law Trickes , and Humour out of Breath , also of an allegorical masque, The Parliament of Bees.
Dramatist, was a Londoner and city chronologer, in which capacity he composed a chronicle of the city, now lost. He wrote over 20 plays, chiefly comedies, besides masques and pageants, and collaborated with Dekker, Webster, and other playwrights.
If "SHAKES his furious SPEARE" in Histriomastix refers to Shakespeare in connection with Cressida, while, in 1599, Dekker and Chettle were doing a Troilus and Cressida for a company not Shakespeare's, then there were TWO Troilus and Cressida in the field.
Thomas Middleton, whose Witch probably was written somewhat later, and who is thought to have drawn on Shakespeare for some of his witch material, gives absolutely no indication in that play that he did not credit those tales of witch performances of which he availed himself. The same may be said of Dekker and of those who collaborated with him in writing The Witch of Edmonton.
Every pains has been taken to prove that the indecent scenes in the play were not written by Massinger, but by Dekker; on what grounds we know not. If Dekker assisted Massinger in the play, as he is said to have done, we are aware of no canons of internal criticism which will enable us to decide, as boldly as Mr. Gifford does, that all the indecency is Dekker's, and all the poetry Massinger's.
Consequently, silence and night obscure the lives and personalities of Kyd, Chapman, Beaumont, Fletcher, Dekker, Webster, and several others, as night and silence hide Shakespeare from our view. He was popular on the stage; some of his plays were circulated separately in cheap and very perishable quartos.
In that work, Meres classifies and criticises the poets of his time and country by comparing each of them with some Greek or Roman poet, kindred to the corresponding English one in the line of production chosen and in quality. Ben Jonson is only mentioned once, at a very modest place; his name stands last, after Chapman and Dekker. Meres confers upon Shakspere most enthusiastic but just praise:
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