The Scourge and the Purge

The final phase of the Poetomachia was initiated when Dekker, urged by Marston, ¹ began writing a play designed to denigrate various aspects of Jonson’s personal and professional life and turn his self-presentation on its head. Jonson, catching wind of this new play, began writing his own, hastening to finish it in 15 weeks in order to preempt Dekker’s labor. ² Continuing to develop his criticism of the satire of Marston and Dekker, Jonson’s play is the culmination of his self-presentation as Horatian purger, a significant feature of his satire with which Dekker took issue in his play. As the two final statements in the fierce literary struggle between these poets, Dekker’s Satiromastix and Jonson’s Poetaster present strong assertions of their respective author’s own style as part of each one’s attempt to reform the other satirist and, in Jonson’s case, to reform, once and for all, the whole of English satire.