A Possible Allusion by Middleton to Shakespeare's Death?

THE year 2016 will mark the quadricentennial of Shakespeare’s death. While the occasion will no doubt elicit a flurry of tributes and biographies, it might also provide an opportune moment to re-examine the evidence concerning how Shakespeare met his end. The case file is, regrettably, a thin one. Apart from the terse comment of Reverend Richard Davies, that Shakespeare ‘died a papist’, the only testimony comes from the journals of John Ward, a Stratford vicar: ‘Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted