official verse, and all current poets are her subjects ("While pensive Poets painful vigils keep, / Sleepless themselves to give their readers sleep" I 91–92). She mentions Thomas Heywood, Daniel Defoe (for writing political journalism), Ambrose Philips, Nahum Tate, and Sir Richard Blackmore as her darlings. However, her triumph is not complete, and she aspires to control dramatic poetry as well as political, religious, and hack poetry. She therefore decides that Theobald will be the new King. The action shifts to the library of Lewis Theobald, which is "A Gothic Vatican! of Greece and Rome / Well-purg'd, and worthy Withers, Quarles, and Blome" (I 125-126) (a Vatican Library for Northern European authors, and especially notable for vainglorious and contentious writing and criticism). Theobald is despairing of succeeding in writing dull poetry and plays, and he is debating whether to return to being a lawyer (for that had been Theobald's first trade) or to become a political hack. He decides to give up poetry and become an entirely hired pen for Nathaniel Mist and his Mist's Journal. He therefore collects all the books of bad poetry in his library along with his own works and makes a virgin sacrifice of them (virgin because no one has ever read them) by setting fire to the pile. The goddess Dulness appears to him in a fog and drops a sheet of Thule (a poem by Ambrose Philips that was supposed to be an epic, but which only appeared as a single sheet) on the fire, extinguishing it with the poem's perpetually wet ink. Dulness tells Theobald that he is the new King of Dunces and points him to the stage. She shows him, The book ends with a hail of praise, calling Theobald now the new King Log (from Aesop's fable). A Book II Book II centres on the highly scatological "heroic games". Theobald sits on the throne of Dulness, which is a velveteen tub ("tub" being the common term for the pulpit of Dissenters), and Dulness declares the opening of heroic games to celebrate his coronation. Therefore, all her sons come before her on the Strand in London, leaving half the kingdom depopulated, for she summons both dull writers, their booksellers, and all who are stupid enough to patronise dull writers. The first game is for booksellers. (Booksellers at the time purchased manuscripts from authors, and the proceeds from book sales went