...Ben Jonson, who might have been expected to dislike his brilliant rival. Shakespeare, he declared, 'was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature:...sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped'. There is a peculiar fairness - a kind of open-minded generosity - about Shakespeare's treatment of...

...(whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand . . . He was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature:...expressions: wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped.26 There is some evidence of this restless, torrential...

...ideas and words never betrayed him into excess. One remembers what Ben Jonson said of Shakespeare : ' He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature,...sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped.' Yet one would have been sorry, on the whole, to have had Shakespeare regulated by Ben Jonson ; and...