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 satirized James in person, the author was probably John Marston. The other, which provoked the ambassador to protest by its allusions to the domestic arrangements of the French king, was Chapman's Byron. A general inhibition of plays was now ordered, but De La Boderie correctly anticipated that James's anger would soon be mollified, especially as the four other London companies had offered an indemnity which he estimates at what seems the incredibly high figure of 100,000 francs. He thought that similar episodes would be prevented in future by refusing allowance to plays whose subjects were taken from contemporary history. This may, in fact, have been the solution adopted, as a standing order against the representation of any 'modern Christian King' on the stage is quoted in 1624. Clearly, however, it left the even more dangerous resources of allegory and of historical parallel still open to the 'seditious' playwright. The Revels boys seem again to have been in trouble in 1610 owing to an offence taken by Lady Arabella Stuart at a passage of Ben Jonson's Epicoene, which she seems to have misunderstood.

The Paul's boys vaunt their abstention from libels in the prologue to their Woman Hater of 1606. But it must not be supposed that the dramatic indiscretions were limited to a single company. Even the King's men themselves, though probably without any intention to offend, sometimes misjudged the limits of what was permissible. The Earl of Northampton haled Ben Jonson before the Privy Council for his Sejanus of 1603. On 18 December 1604 a Court gossip