style. 'With the additions played by the Kings Maiesties Servants,
written by John Webster,' means that the additions, in which
the servants of His Majesty, in the 'Induction,' are brought on the
stage, were written by John Webster.
Read the 'Extempore Prologue' which Sly speaks at the conclusion of
the Induction--a shameless travesty of the Epilogue in _As You
Like It_. Read the beginning of act iii. sc. 2 of _The Malcontent_,
where Malevole ('in some freeze gown') burlesques the splendid
monologue in King Henry the Fourth (Part 11. act iv. sc. I). Read
act iii. sc. 3 of _The Malcontent_, where Marston sneers at the scene
in act iv. of _King Richard the Second_ when Richard says:--
Now is this golden crown like a deep well,
That owes two buckets filling one another.
50: Is it imaginable that Shakspere could have allowed his own
most beautiful productions to be thus leered at, and mocked,
in his own theatre? Our feeling rebels against the thought.
Beniamini Jonsonio
Poetae Elegantissimo Gravissimo
Amico Suo Candido et Cordato
Johannes Marston, Musarum Alumnus,
Asperam Hanc Suam Thaliam DD.
51: Who else can be meant by the 'Frenchman's Helicon' than
Montaigne? He is satirically called 'Helicon,' as he is taken down
from his height in 'Hamlet.'
52: In meaning alike to Jonson's: 'Counting all old doctrine heresie.'
53: Act i. sc.2.
54: Act iv. sc. 5.
55: Act i. sc. 4.
56: Act i. sc. 7.
57: Act i. sc. 6.
58: Act iii. sc. 2.
59: Act ii. sc. 5.
60: Act i. Sc. 5 in _Hamlet_; _Malcontent_, act iii. sc. 3.
61: Perhaps an allusion to the conclusion of _Hamlet_, when the
State falls into the hands of a soldier (Fortinbras).
--Soldaten-Religion, keine Religion ('a soldier's religion, no
religion'), as the old German saying is.
62: Rochelle-Churchman--that is, Huguenot.
63: See Bacon's Essay, _Of Atheism_: 'All that impugn a received
religion or superstition are by the adverse part branded with the
name of Atheists.'
64: Sonnet lxvi. lxxxv.
65: xc. xci. xcii.
66: In _Eastward Hoe_, his most delicate poetical production,
Ophelia, is most abominably parodied--'rudely strumpeted.'