ABSTRACT
The most distinctive Jonsonian quality about Poetaster is the playwright’s characteristic awareness of the precise audience for which he was creating his drama. Poetaster was written for performance at the Blackfriars Theatre in 1601 by the company known as the Chapel Children, a troupe of boy actors under the management of Henry Evans. Beginnings or Inductions are often a tease in Jonson’s plays, putting one on one’s mettle; and Poetaster is one such. Before the sounding of the third trumpet which conventionally preceded the start of a play, a hideous figure erupts up onto the stage from the central trap; it is Envy, whose speech quickly exposes how she is as monstrous within as her appearance without. With the notable exception of the two hack writers, the known classical figures all inhabit a precise decorum in their lifestyles and expression: it is generous, genteel and gracious, eloquent, considerate and urbane.
