of episodes to interest the audience to the end. This is the dialog after Act IV.:—

Damplay. Why, here his play might have ended, if he would have let it; and have spared us the vexation of a fifth act yet to come, which everyone here knows the issue of already, or may in part conjecture.

Boy. That conjecture is a kind of figure-flinging, or throwing the dice, for a meaning was never in the poet's purpose perhaps. Stay, and see his last act, his catastrophe, how he will perplex that, or spring some fresh cheat, to entertain the spectators with a convenient delight, till some unexpected and new encounter break out to rectify all, and make good the conclusion.

With Jonson, then, it was a case of padding the fifth act, a thing even more undesirable than performing the same operation on the fourth.

A wise perception concerning the method of constructing plays is found in the prolog to The Fox. There he as much as says that the incidents must be constructed to fit the plot, not the plot to fit the incidents. This is hardly in keeping with his usual attitude toward the plot:

Nor made he his play for jests stolen from each table,

But makes jests to fit his fable.

Again, in the Induction to The Magnetic Lady, he has a clever figure illustrating how a play must run clearly and smoothly to the end, the parts being so adjusted as to make any other arrangement impossible (II. 394b):—

For I must tell you (not out of mine own dictamen, but the author's) a good play is like a skein of silk; which if you take by the right end, you may wind off at pleasure on the bottom or card of your discourse in a tale or so, how you will; but if you light on the wrong end you will pull all into a knot or elf-lock; which nothing but the shears or candle will undo or separate.

A little further he asserts the necessity for absolute clearness of presentation:

I have heard the poet affirm that to be the most unlucky scene in a play which needs an interpreter.

The inartistic practise, so common in those days, and not unknown to the modern theatergoer, of interspersing the play with jigs and jugglery to lend variety, was a thing Jonson could not tolerate.

Alch., To the Reader:

for thou wast never so fair in the way to be cozened, than in this age, in poetry, especially in plays: wherein, now the concupiscence of dances and antics so reigneth, as to run away from nature

and be afraid of her is the only point of art that tickles the spectators.

The length of any given scene was an important consideration with Jonson. This dialog occurs in the interlude after Act I., in Every Man out of his Humor:

Mitis.

he might have been made to stay, speak somewhat in reproof of Sordido's wretchedness now at the last.

Cordatus. O, no; that would have been extremely unproper; besides he had continued the scene too long with him, as 'twas, being in no action.

Mitis. You may enforce the length as a necessary reason; but for propriety, the scene would very well have borne it, in my judgment.

Cordatus goes on to prove that a prolongation of the scene would not have been in keeping with the characters of the persons.

A similar dialogue occurs after Act II. 1:

Mitis. Methinks, Cordatus, he dwelt somewhat too long on this scene; it hung in the hand. Cor. I see not where he could have insisted less and to have made his humors perspicuous enough.

Mitis. True, as his subject lies; but he might have altered the shape of his argument, and explicated them better in single scenes.

Cor. That had been single indeed. Why, be

they not the same persons in this, as they would have been in those? and is it not an object of more state, to behold the scene full, and relieved with variety of speakers to the end, than to see a vast empty stage, and the actors come in one by one, as if they were dropped down by a feather into the eye of the spectators?

Observe that character is made the determining factor in construction.

After the second scene of the third act Jonson defends the propriety of violent scenes in comedy, citing the authority of Plautus in support of his opinion:

Cor. What! You supposed he should have hung himself indeed?

'Mit. I did, and had framed my objection to it ready, which may yet be very fitly urged, and with some necessity; for though his purposed violence lost the effect, and extended not to death, yet the intent and horror of the object was more than the nature of a comedy will in any sort admit.

Cor. Ay! What think you of Plautus, in his comedy called Cistellaria? there where he brings in Alcesimarchus with a drawn sword ready to kill himself, and as he is e'en fixing his breast upon it, to be restrained from his resolved outrage by Silenium and the bawd? Is not his authority of power to give our scene approbation?

Even such a detail as the provision for supers was not overlooked by him. In the same play, at the beginning of the second act, we read:

Mitis. What be these two, signior?

Cor. Marry, a couple, sir, that are mere strangers to the whole scope of our play; only come to walk a turn or two in this scene of Paul's, by chance.

What deliberation went to the making of one of Jonson's plays! He had a theoretic principle at the basis of every detail of his practise.

NOVELTY AND ORIGINALITY.

We saw above how Jonson made fun of Munday for writing plays in the old stylefor keeping "that old decorum." Related to his contempt for the old plays is his pride in his own originality.

Cynth. Rev., Prol.:

In this alone, his Muse her sweetness hath,
She shuns the print of any beaten path;

And

proves new ways to come to learned ears.

So proud was he of his own originality, and so sensitive of his right to his own invention,