Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 3, 2025
Betterton. Long have we turn'd the point of our just Rage On the half Wits, and Criticks of the Age. Oft has the soft, insipid Sonneteer In Nice and Flutter, seen his Fop-face here. Well was the ignorant lampooning Pack Of shatterhead Rhymers whip'd on Craffey's back; But such a trouble Weed is Poetaster, The lower 'tis cut down, it grows the faster.
When, however, a young Humanist poetaster at Wittenberg, named Lemnius properly Lemchen actually glorified the Archbishop in verse, or, as Luther put it, 'made a saint of the devil, and at the same time vilified some men and women at Wittenberg, Luther read aloud from the pulpit, in 1538, a short indictment, couched in the plainest possible terms, against the shameless libeller, as also against the Archbishop whom he glorified; and this indictment soon appeared in print.
VII. Satyromastix, or the untrussing the humourous poet, a comical satire, presented publickly by the Lord Chamberlain's servants, and privately by the children of Paul's, printed in 4to, 1602, and dedicated to the world. This play was writ on the occasion of Ben Johnson's Poetaster, for some account of which see the Life of Johnson.
What village poetaster or scribbler for the weekly journal enjoying a reputation among his acquaintances for 'smart writing' imagining himself a second Byron or another Sylvanus Cobb, Jr., but what likes to sport a gold pen with 'silver case' before the admiring eyes of friends or the envious glances of rivals, as the instrument with which the flow of melody or pathetic romance in the 'Trumpetown Blower' is produced.
A good young man with a pathetic career; but a poetaster merely.
32: The Satiromastix was performed in 1602, probably in the beginning of the year, as the Epilogue speaks of cold weather, and Dekker scarcely would have waited a year with his answer to The Poetaster. Queen Elizabeth died in 1603. 33: In such type it is printed in the original.
It will be generally admitted that the man capable of self-denial of so truly heroic a nature as this, is no ordinary poetaster. "One would be puzzled to find a similar instance of perfect and absolute disinterestedness in the roll of minstrels, from Homer downwards; and, to tell the truth, there does seem a spice of Quixotism mingled with and tinging the pure fervour of the enthusiast.
The poet, when young, although as I said, he is not likely to fall into the foolishness of conceit which belongs to the poetaster, is yet too apt in his zeal of dedication to talk much of his 'art, or, at least, think much; also to disparage life, and to pronounce much gratuitous absolution in the name of Poetry: Did Burns drink and wench? yet he sang!
Its special aim was to ridicule the humors of the city. The second, Cynthia's Revels, satirizes the humors of the court; while the third, The Poetaster, the result of a quarrel with his contemporaries, was leveled at the false standards of the poets of the age. The three best known of Jonson's comedies are Volpone, or the Fox, The Alchemist, and Epicoene, or the Silent Woman.
What, I wonder, would be said if a literary man preferred, say, some eighteenth-century poetaster to Chaucer because the poetaster in his verse observed rules which Chaucer never dreamed of, because, to drag in Artemus Ward once again, the poetaster's spelling conformed more nearly to ours than Chaucer's! The Mass is indeed noble and stately, but it is miraculously expressive as well.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking