JONSON, in forty years, made no more than two hundred pounds out of his plays. His livelihood was elsewhere. This was the age of the noble patron, and Jonson was to spend most of his life sitting at the tables of men on whom he depended largely for employment and support. Among them, fortunately, was King James himself—for this was also the age of the Court mask—a form of entertainment in which Jonson, for nearly twenty years, had no rival in the land. Henslowe paid ten pounds for a play, but the Lord High Treasurer might be required to disburse as much as forty pounds for a mask. Jonson, lacking the popular touch, was driven from the common stage and it was a sound instinct which prompted him almost from the outset to seek the approval of a more fastidious public. Even during the poets’ war he had been twitted with having finer friends than his estate allowed. He did not deny it. On the contrary, he admitted that much of the hostility he aroused was provoked by envy of his better company. The young barristers of the Inns of Court, men from the sister universities, and such noble friends as d’Aubigny, Pembroke, Cotton, and Spencer were better able to appreciate his learning ;han the audiences which were crowding into the Globe and the Blackfriars. Noblemen were educated in those days, and Jonson was constantly driven to appeal from the crowd to the judgment of more 66sophisticated spirits. He was drawn socially upwards by a process of attraction and sympathy.