Chapter II: Introduction (1)

When other poets were repeating Horace's boast, "Exegi monumentum," &c., John Marston dedicated the first fruits of his genius "To everlasting Oblivion." In much of Marston's satire there is an air of evident insincerity, but the dedicatory address at the close of _The Scourge of Villainy_ is of startling earnestness:--

"Let others pray
For ever their fair poems flourish may;
But as for me, hungry Oblivion,
Devour me quick, accept my orison,
My earnest prayers, which do importune thee,
With gloomy shade of thy still empery
To veil both me and my rude poesy."

Those lines were printed in 1598. Six and thirty years afterwards the poet was laid in his grave, and on the grave-stone was inscribed "Oblivioni sacrum." But prayers cannot purchase oblivion; and the rugged Timon of the Elizabethan drama, who sought to shroud himself "in the uncomfortable night of nothing," will be forced from time to time to emerge from the shades and pass before the eyes of curious scholars.

It was established by the genealogical researches of that acute and indefatigable antiquary, Joseph Hunter,[1] that John Marston belonged to the old Shropshire family of Marstons. The dramatist's father, John Marston, third son of Ralph Marston of Gayton (or Heyton), co. Salop, was admitted a member of the Middle Temple in 1570; married Maria, daughter of Andrew Guarsi[2] (or Guersie), an Italian surgeon who had settled in London, and had married Elizabeth Gray, daughter of a London merchant; migrated to Coventry; was lecturer of the Middle Temple in 1592.

The year of the poet's birth is unknown, but it may be fixed circ. 1575, and we shall probably not be wrong in assuming that the birthplace was Coventry. For his early education Marston was doubtless indebted to the Coventry free-school. On 4th February 1591-2, "John Marston, aged 16, a gentleman's son, of co. Warwick," was matriculated at Brazennose College, Oxford (Grosart's _Introduction_, p. x.). There is not the slightest doubt that this John Marston, who was admitted Bachelor of Arts on 6th February 1593-4 as the "eldest son of an Esquire" (Wood's _Fasti_, ed. Bliss, i. 602), was the poet; and Wood went wrong in identifying our John Marston with another John Marston, or Marson, who belonged to Corpus. In the will of the elder Marston, proved in 1599, there is a curious passage which shows that the poet, contrary to his father's wishes, abandoned the profession of the law. An abstract of the will (communicated by Col. Chester) has been printed by Dr. Grosart, and is here reprinted:--

"John Marston of City of Coventry Gent dated 24 Oct. 1599 to Mary
my wife, my mansion &c. in Crosse Cheepinge in Coventry and other
premises for life rem^r to John my son and heirs of body rem^r to
heirs of body of Raphe Marston Gent my father dec^d rem^r to
right heirs of my s^d son[;] to s^d wife my interest in certain
lands &c. after death of John Butler[3] my father in law and
Margaret his now wife in par. Cropedy co. Oxon and others in
Wardington co. Oxon rem^r to John my son to s^d wife 1/2 of plate
and household stuff &c. to s^d son John my furniture &c. in my
chambers in the Middle Temple my law books &c. to my s^d son
_whom I hoped would have profited by them in the study of the
law but man proposeth and God disposeth_ &c. to kinsman and
servant Tho^s Marston 20 nobles to my poorest brother Rich^d
Marston 20 nobles for him and his children all residue to Mary my
wife &c. (G. Gascoigne a witness) Proved 29 Nov. 1599." In the
Prerogative Court of Canterbury (82 Kidd.).

Wood vaguely says that the poet (the John Marston of Brazennose College) "after completing that degree [the degree of B.A.] by determination, went his way and improved his learning in other faculties." It is clear from his father's will that he found legal studies distasteful, and we may conjecture that he quickly turned from the professional career on which he had entered and devoted his attention to literature and the stage. Few biographical facts concerning Marston have come down. He married (but at what precise date we cannot determine) Mary, daughter of the Rev. William Wilkes, Chaplain to James I., and Rector of St. Martin's, co. Wilts. Ben Jonson told Drummond of Hawthornden that "Marston wrote his father-in-law's preachings, and his father-in-law his comedies;" a witty remark, contrasting the asperity of Marston's comedies with the blandness of his father-in-law's sermons. Marston's plays--with the exception of _The Insatiate Countess_--were published between 1602 and 1607. He seems to have definitely abandoned play-writing about the year 1607; but the date at which he entered the Church is not clearly ascertained. On 10th October 1616 he was presented to the living of Christ Church in Hampshire;[4] he compounded for the firstfruits of Christ Church on 12th February 1616-7; and he formally resigned the living (probably from ill-health) on 13th September 1631. William Sheares the publisher issued in 1633 a collective edition of Marston's plays, and in the dedicatory address to Lady Elizabeth Carey, Viscountess Falkland, speaks of the author as "in his autumn and declining age" and "far distant from this place." On 25th June 1634 Marston died in Aldermanbury parish, London. His will, dated 17th June 1634, was drawn up when he was so ill as to be compelled to make a mark instead of affixing his signature. The will[5] runs thus:--

"In the name of God Amen I John Marston of London Clarke being
sicke in bodie but of perfect and sound mind and memorie doe make
my last Will and Testament in manner and forme following
Imprimise I give and bequeath my soule into the hands of
Allmightie God my Maker and Redeemer and my bodie to be buried in
Christian buriall in some convenient place where my executor
hereafter named shall appointe Item I give and bequeath to James
Coghill and James Boynton both of Christchurch in the County of
South^{tn} the somme of fortie shillinges apeece to be paide
within six mounthes after my decease Item I give and bequeath to
Marie Fabian the wife of W^m Fabian of Christchurch aforesaide
towards the educac'on of hir five sonnes the somme of twentie
eight pound of currant money of England to be paide to hir within
sixe monthes after my decease Item I give to the parrish Church
of Christchurch aforesaide the somme of five poundes to be paide
within sixe monthes next after my decease Item I give and
bequeath to my couzin Hunt of Ashford in the countie of Saloppe
the somme of twentie poundes to be paide within sixe moneths
after my decease Item I give and bequeath to my cozen Griffins
daughter of Kingston in the Countie of Surrey the somme of five
poundes to be paide unto hir within sixe monthes after my decease
Item I give to Marie Collice the daughter of my cozen Anne
Collis of Chancerie Lane the somme of five poundes to be paide
unto hir sixe monthes after my decease Item I give and bequeath
to my cozen Richard Marston of Newe Inne in the Countie of Midd'
my silver bason and ewre but my will is that my wife shall have
the use of it untill it shalbe demaunded of hir by the said
Richard or his attorney in that behalfe lawfullye deputed Item I
give and bequeath unto George Wallie and James Walley sonnes of
M^r Henry Wallie the somme of five poundes apeece to be paide to
the saide Henrie for theier vse within sixe monthes after my
decease Item all the rest of my goodes and cattles moveable and
vnmoveable my debts and legacies and funeral expences being
charged I give and bequeathe to my wel beloved wiefe Marie whome
I ordaine my soule Executrixe of this my last Will and Testament
And I doe hereby renounce and make voide all former Wills by me
heretofore made In Witnes whereof I have herevnto putt my hand
and seale the seaventeenth daie of June in the tenth yeere of the
rainge [_sic_] of oure Soveraigne Lord Charles 1634."

Wood tells us that he was buried beside his father "in the church belonging to the Temple in the suburb of London, under the stone which hath written on it _Oblivioni Sacrum_." Dr. Grosart prints the following entry from the Temple Church burial-register:

"1634, June 26. Mr. John Marston, Minister, sometimes of the Middle Temple, who died in Aldermanbury parish: buried below the Communion Table on the Middle Temple side."

The will was proved on 9th July 1634 in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury by his widow, who was buried by his side on 4th July 1657. She had desired in her will,[6] dated 12th June 1657, that she should be buried "by the body of my dear husband dec^d;" and she bequeathed her "dear husband's picture" to Master Henry Wally of Stationers' Hall. Neither in Marston's will nor in his widow's is there mention of children.

Marston's earliest publication was _The Metamorphosis of Pygmalion's Image_:[7] _And Certain Satires_, which was entered in the Stationers' Registers on 27th May 1598, and issued in the same year. Another series of satires, _The Scourge of Villainy_, was published later in 1598; it had been entered in the Stationers' Registers on 8th September. A second edition of the _Scourge_, containing an additional satire (the tenth), appeared in 1599.

_Pygmalion_ is written in the same metre as _Venus and Adonis_ (from which poem Marston drew his inspiration)--a metre which Lodge had handled with considerable success. A poet who would approach the subject of Pygmalion and his image ought to be gifted with tact and delicacy. In our own day Mr. Morris (in _The Earthly Paradise_) has told the old Greek story in choice and fluent narrative verse; no poet could have treated it more gracefully. Tact and delicacy were precisely the qualities in which Marston was deficient; but the versification is tolerably smooth, and the licentiousness does not call for any special reprehension. In the _Scourge of Villainy_ (sat. vi.) Marston pretends that _Pygmalion_ was written to bring contempt on the class of poems to which it belongs:--

"Hence, thou misjudging censor! know I wrote
Those idle rhymes to note the odious spot
And blemish that deforms the lineaments
Of modern poesy's habiliments."

But it would require keener observation than most readers possess to discover in _Pygmalion_ any trace of that moral motive by which the poet claimed to have been inspired. Archbishop Whitgift did not approve of its moral tone, for in 1599 he ordered it to be committed to the flames with Sir John Davies' _Epigrams_, Cutwode's _Caltha Poetarum_, and other works of a questionable character. In Cranley's _Amanda_, 1635, it is mentioned, in company with _Hero and Leander_ and _Venus and Adonis_, as part of a courtezan's library.

There is not much pleasure or profit to be derived from a perusal of Marston's satires. The author deliberately adopted an uncouth and monstrous style of phraseology; his allusions are frequently quite unintelligible to modern readers, and even the wits of his contemporaries must have been sorely exercised. After a course of Marston's satires Persius is clear as crystal. In the second satire there are some lines which aptly express the reader's bewilderment:

"O darkness palpable; Egypt's black night!
My wit is stricken blind, hath lost his sight:
My shins are broke with searching for some sense
To know to what his words have reference."

Our sense is deafened by the tumult of noisy verbiage "as when a madman beats upon a drum." In Marston's satires there is little of the raciness and buoyancy that we find in the elder satirists--Skelton, Roy, and William Baldwin--who dealt good swashing blows in homely vigorous English. Persius would not have been flattered by Marston's or Hall's attempts at imitation: "nec pluteum cædit nec demorsos sapit ungues" would have been his comment on the spurious pseudo-classical Elizabethan satire. Hall claimed to have been the first to introduce classical satire into England. In the prologue to the first book of _Virgidemiæ_, 1597, he writes:--

"I first adventure with foolhardy might
To tread the steps of perilous despight:
I first adventure: follow me who list,
And be the second English satirist."

It matters little whether Hall's claim was well-founded or not; but it has been often pointed out that there is extant a MS. copy of Donne's satires dated 1593. Hall, who lived to be one of the glories of the English Church, in early manhood certainly did not present an example of Christian meekness and charity. He took a very low view of contemporary writers, but never had the slightest misgivings about his own abilities. It is not easy to ascertain how his quarrel with Marston arose, but it seems clear that he was the aggressor. _Pygmalion_ was published a year later than _Virgidemiæ_, but it had probably been circulated in manuscript, according to the custom of the time, before it issued from the press. There can be little doubt that the ninth satire of book i. of _Virgidemiæ_, is directed against Marston. The opening lines run thus:--

"Envy, ye Muses, at your thrilling mate,
Cupid hath crowned a new laureat;
I saw his statue gaily tired in green,
As if he had some second Phoebus been;
His statue trimm'd with the Venerean tree
And shrined fair within your sanctuary.
What! he that erst to gain the rhyming goal,
The worn recital-post of capitol,
Rhymed in rules of stewish ribaldry
Teaching experimental bawdery,
Whiles th' itching vulgar, tickled with the song,
Hanged on their unready poet's tongue?
Take this, ye patient Muses, and foul shame
Shall wait upon your once profaned name."

When _Pygmalion_ was published Hall wrote a poor epigram (see vol. iii. p. 369), which he contrived to paste in those copies of the poem "that came to the stationers at Cambridge."[8] One of the satires, entitled "Reactio,"[9] appended to _Pygmalion_, is a violent attack on Hall. In his "Defiance to Envy," prefixed to _Virgidemiæ_, Hall had boasted that he could, an' that he would, hold his own with any of the poets,--even hinting that he was a match for Spenser. The "Defiance" is a well-written piece of verse, but it gave Marston an excellent opportunity, which he used to the full in "Reactio," of making a very effective attack. In the first satire of book vi. of _Virgidemiæ_ Hall replies to Marston's raillery with less vigour than we should have expected. Again and again in _The Scourge of Villainy_ Marston attacks Hall; he would not let the quarrel drop, but worried his adversary with the pertinacity of a bull-dog. In 1601 a certain "W. I.," who has been doubtfully identified (by Dr. Nicholson) with a Cambridge man, William Ingram, published _The Whipping of the Satire_, which was chiefly directed against Marston (with gibes at Ben Jonson and others). There is a lengthy and spirited preface, in which Marston is taken to task after this fashion:--

"Think you that foul words can beget fair manners? If you do I
will not bate you an ace of an ass, for experience gives you the
lie to your face. But your affection over-rules your reason, and
therefore you are as sudden of passion in all matters as an
interjection and yet as defective in most cases as an
heteroclite: you gathered up men's sins as though they had been
strawberries, and picked away their virtues as they had been but
the stalks. They shall not make me believe but that you were the
devil's intelligencer, for there went not a lie abroad but it was
presently entertained of your ear; and every sin kept
under writing for fear lest the devil waxing almost six thousand
years of age should fail in his memory and so chance to forget
it."

The following stanzas have a sting in them:--

"Can you seem wise to any simple men
That seem'd so simple unto all the wise
And fitter far to hold the plough than pen,
Such incompt stuff you rudely poetise?
Yet I confess there's much conceipt in it,
For you have shown great store of little wit.

Take me your staff and walk some half-score miles,
And I'll be hang'd if in that quantity
You find me out but half so many stiles
As you have made within your poesy:
Nay for your style there's none can you excel,
You may be called John-a-Stile full well.

· · · · · · ·

But he that mounts into the air of Fame
Must have two wings, Nature and Art, to fly;
And that he may soar safely with the same
Must take his rise low from humility;
And not with you a goose's quill to take,
Thinking with that an eagle's flight to make.

Your stately Muse, starched with stiff-neck'd pride,
Dain'd it amongst us, most imperiously;
With lavish laughter she did each deride
That came within the prospect of her eye:
Despising all, all her again despise,
Contemn'd of foolish and condemn'd of wise."

At this easy rate "W. I." ambles on; and the quiet leisurely stanzas are a relief after the fury of the _Scourge_. Modern readers will feel that Marston was not driven by "sæva indignatio" to write satire, and they will not be inclined to accept the young author of _Pygmalion_ as a sedate moralist. "W. I." puts the matter clearly:

"He scourgeth villainies in young and old
As boys scourge tops for sport on Lenten day."

The publication of _The Whipping of the Satire_ could hardly have been agreeable to Marston, but it is highly improbable that he is to be held responsible for the poor answer to _The Whipping_, published anonymously in the same year, under the title of _The Whipper of the Satire, his Penance in a White Sheet; or the Beadle's Confutation_.[10] If I have read _The Whipper_ aright, it is the work of one of Marston's personal friends, or of some admirer who had more zeal than wit. There are some general remarks, of slight account, on the use of satire; and Marston is exhorted to persist in his task of scourging the vices of the age. It will be enough to quote two stanzas:--

"Meantime, good satire, to thy wonted train,
As yet there are no lets to hinder thee:
_Thy touching quill with a sweet moving strain
Sings to the soul a blessèd lullaby_:
Thy lines beget a timorous fear in all,
And that same fear deep thoughts angelical.

So that the whilom lewd lascivious man
Is now remote from his abhorred life,
And cloathes [loathes?] the dalliance of a courtezan;
And every breathing wicked soul at strife,
Contending which shall first begin to mend
That they may glory in a blessèd end."

The italicised lines give a delightfully ludicrous description of _The Scourge of Villainy_.

It is abundantly clear that Marston's uncouth satires, which to-day are so difficult to read, caused much excitement at the time of their publication. Meres in _Palladis Tamia_, 1598, reckons Marston among the leading English satirists. John Weever, in his _Epigrams_, 1599, couples Marston's name with Jonson's:--

"_Ad Jo. Marston et Ben Johnson._

Marston, thy muse enharbours Horace' vein,
Then some Augustus give thee Horace' merit!
And thine, embuskin'd Johnson, doth retain
So rich a style and wondrous gallant spirit,
That if to praise your Muses I desired
My Muse would muse. Such wits must be admired."

The following address is from Charles Fitzgeoffrey's _Affaniæ_, 1601:--

"_Ad Joannem Marstonium._

Gloria, Marstoni, satirarum proxima primæ,
Primaque, fas primas si numerare duas!
Sin primam duplicare nefas, tu gloria saltem,
Marstoni, primæ proxima semper eris.
Nec te poeniteat stationis, Jane: secundus,
Cum duo sint tantum, est neuter at ambo pares."

But the most elaborate notice that any contemporary has given of Marston's satires is to be found in _The Return from Parnassus_.[11] The passage has been often quoted, but it must find a place here:--

"What, Monsieur Kinsayder, lifting up your leg and pissing
against the world? put up, man! put up, for shame!
Methinks he is a ruffian in his style,
Withouten bands or garters' ornament:
He quaffs a cup of Frenchman's Helicon,
Then roister-doister in his oily terms;
Cuts, thrusts, and foins at whomsoever he meets
And strews about Ram-Alley meditations.
Tut, what cares he for modest close-couch'd terms
Cleanly to gird our looser libertines?
Give him plain naked words stripp'd from their shirts,
That might become plain-dealing Aretine.
Ay, there is one that backs a paper-steed,
And manageth a pen-knife gallantly:
Strikes his poynado at a button's breadth,
Brings the great battering-ram of terms to towns,[12]
And at first volly of his cannon-shot
Batters the walls of the old fusty world."

Under date 28th September 1599 Henslowe records in his _Diary_ (p. 156, ed. Collier) that he lent "unto Mr. Maxton, the new poete (Mr. Mastone), the sum of forty shillings" in earnest of an unnamed play. The name "Mastone" is interlined in a different hand as a correction for "Maxton;" but there can be no doubt that the "new poete," whose name the illiterate manager misspelled, was John Marston. There is no other mention of him in the _Diary_. In 1602 were published Marston's _First Part of Antonio and Mellida_ and _Antonio's Revenge_, which had been entered in the Stationers' Registers on 24th October 1601, and had been ridiculed in that year by Ben Jonson in _The Poetaster_. Considered as a work of art the two parts of _Antonio and Mellida_ cannot be rated highly. The plot is clumsy and grotesque, and the characters, from the prodigious nature of their sins and sorrows, fail to excite in us any real interest. Marston was possessed of high tragic power, but he has not done himself justice. The magnificent prologue to _Antonio's Revenge_ prepares us to expect an impressive tale of tragic woe, but the promise is not worthily redeemed. He could conceive a fine situation, and he had at his command abundance of striking imagery. But we are never sure of him: from tragic solemnity he passes to noisy rhodomontade; at one moment he gives us a passage Æschylean in its subtle picturesqueness, at another he feebly reproduces the flaccid verbosity of Seneca's tragedies. Lamb quoted in his _Specimens_ the finest scene of _Antonio and Mellida_,--the scene where the old Andrugio on the Venice marsh, overthrown by the chance of war and banished from his kingdom, gives tongue to the conflicting passions that shake his breast. That scene deserves the eloquent praise that it received from the hands of Lamb; and if Marston had been able to keep the rest of the play at that level the _First Part of Antonio and Mellida_ would rank with the masterpieces of Webster. But what is to be said of a writer who, in describing a shipwreck, gives us such lines as the following?--

"Lo! the sea grew mad,
His bowels rumbling with wind-passion;
Straight swarthy darkness popp'd out Phoebus' eye,
And blurr'd the jocund face of bright-cheek'd day;
Whilst crudled fogs mask'd even darkness' brow:
Heaven bad 's good night, and the rocks groan'd
At the intestine uproar of the main.
Now gusty flaws strook up the very heels
Of our mainmast, whilst the keen lightning shot
Through the black bowels of the quaking air;
Straight chops a wave, and in his sliftred paunch
Down falls our ship, and there he breaks his neck;
Which in an instant up was belkt again."

This is hardly a fair specimen of Marston's powers, but it exhibits to perfection his besetting fault of straining his style a peg too high; of seeking to be impressive by the use of exaggerated and unnatural imagery. When he disencumbers himself of this fatal habit his verse is clear and massive. Neither Webster nor Chapman ever gave utterance to more dignified reflections than Marston puts into the mouth of the discrowned Andrugio in the noble speech beginning, "Why, man, I never was a prince till now" (vol. i., p. 64). There is nothing of bluster in that speech; there is not a word that one would wish to alter. Nor is Marston without something of that power, which Webster wielded so effectively, of touching the reader's imagination with a vague sense of dread. He felt keenly the mysteries of the natural world; the weird stillness that precedes the breaking of the dawn, and

"the deep affright
That pulseth in the heart of night."

_Antonio and Mellida_ amply testifies that Marston possessed a strangely subtle and vivid imagination; but few are the traces of that "sanity" which Lamb declared to be an essential condition to true genius.

In 1604 was published _The Malcontent_;[13] another edition, augmented by Webster, appeared in the same year. From the Induction we learn that it had been originally acted by the Children's Company at the Blackfriars; and that when the Children appropriated _The Spanish Tragedy_, in which the King's Company at the Globe had an interest, the King's Company retaliated by acting Marston's play, with Webster's additions. _The Malcontent_ has more dramatic interest than _Antonio and Mellida_; it is also more orderly and artistic. Jonson's criticism evidently had a salutary effect, for we find no such flowers of speech as "glibbery urchin," "sliftred paunch," "the fist of strenuous vengeance is clutch'd," &c. Marston has been at pains to give a more civil aspect to his "aspera Thalia." Moreover, the moralising is less tedious, and the satire more pungent than in the earlier plays. There is less of declamation and more of action. The atmosphere is not so stifling, and one can breathe with something of freedom. There are no ghosts to shout "Vindicta!" and no boys to be butchered at midnight in damp cloisters; nobody has his tongue cut out prior to being hacked to pieces. Marston has on this occasion contrived to write an impressive play without deeming it necessary to make the stage steam like a shambles. As before, the scene is laid in Italy; and again we have a vicious usurper, and a virtuous deposed duke; but the characters are more human than in the earlier plays. Mendoza, the upstart tyrant, is indeed a deeply debased villain, but he is not deformed, like Piero, beyond all recognition. Altofronto, the banished duke, who disguises himself in the character of a malcontent and settles at the usurper's court, is a more possible personage than Andrugio. The description that the malcontent gives of himself in iii. 1, and the other description of the hermit's cell in iv. 2, exemplify Marston's potent gift of presenting bold conceptions in strenuously compact language.

_The Malcontent_ was dedicated by Marston in very handsome terms to Ben Jonson, and there is a complimentary allusion to Jonson in the epilogue. At this distance of time it is impossible to fully understand the relations that existed between Jonson and Marston. There seem to have been many quarrels and more than one reconciliation. During his visit to Hawthornden, Jonson told Drummond that "He had many quarrels with Marston, beat him and took his pistol from him, wrote his _Poetaster_ on him; the beginning of them were that Marston represented him in the stage in his youth given to venery."[14] The original quarrel seems to have begun about the year 1598. In the apology at the end of _The Poetaster_, Jonson writes:

"Three years
They did provoke me with their petulant styles
On every stage: and I at last unwilling,
But weary, I confess, of so much trouble,
Thought I would try if shame could win upon 'em."

_The Poetaster_ was produced in 1601; so these attacks on Jonson, in which Marston must have taken a leading part, began about 1598. In the address "To those that seem judicial Perusers" prefixed to _The Scourge of Villainy_, Marston undoubtedly ridicules Ben Jonson for his use of "new-minted epithets[15] (as _real_, _intrinsecate_, _Delphic_)." "Real" occurs in _Every Man out of his Humour_ (ii. 1); "intrinsecate" in _Cynthia's Revels_ (v. 2); and "Delphic" in an early poem of Jonson's. But, as _Every Man out of his Humour_ was first produced at Christmas 1599, and _Cynthia's Revels_ in 1600, these "new-minted epithets" must have been used by Jonson in some early plays that have perished. Jonson retaliated by attacking Marston in _Every Man out of his Humour_, and _Cynthia's Revels_. In the former play (iii. 1) he introduces two characters, Clove and Orange, who are expressly described as "mere strangers to the whole scope of our play." They are on the stage only for a few minutes. Clove is represented as a pretender to learning: "he will sit you a whole afternoon sometimes in a bookseller's shop, reading the Greek, Italian, and Spanish, when he understands not a word of either." Orange is a mere simpleton who can say nothing but "O Lord, sir," and "It pleases you to say so, sir." In the "characters of the persons" (prefixed to the play) we are told that this "inseparable case of coxcombs ... being well flattered" will "lend money and repent when they have done. Their glory is to invite players and make suppers." Dr. Brinsley Nicholson suggests that Orange was intended as a caricature of Dekker, and that Clove stands for Marston. This view is, doubtless, partly correct, but we must not insist on it too strongly. Dekker--whatever may be said of Marston--had no money to lend, and would rather have expected to sup at the players' expense than to be made the shot-clog of the feast: again and again in _The Poetaster_ he is ridiculed on the score of poverty. It is undeniable that Jonson, to raise a laugh against Marston, puts into Clove's mouth grotesque words culled from _The Scourge of Villainy_. "Monsieur Orange," whispers Clove to his companion, as they are walking in the middle aisle of Paul's, "yon gallants observe us; prithee let's talk fustian a little and gull them; make them believe we are great scholars." Presently we have the passage containing the Marstonian words (which I have printed in italics):--

"Now, sirs, whereas the ingenuity of the time and the soul's
_synderisis_ are but _embryons_ in nature, added to the
_paunch of Esquiline_,[16] and the intervallum of the
_zodiac_, besides the _ecliptic line_ being optic and
not mental, but by the contemplative and theoric part thereof
doth _demonstrate_ to us the vegetable circumference and the
ventosity of the _tropics_, and whereas our
_intellectual_, or _mincing capreal_ (according to the
metaphysics) as you may read in Plato's _Histriomastix_.[17]
You conceive me, sir?"

In the first scene of the second act, Puntarvolo addresses Carlo Buffone as "thou _Grand Scourge_, or Second Untruss of the time," in allusion to Marston's _Scourge of Villainy_.

_Cynthia's Revels_ was produced in 1600 and printed in 1601. In this play, Anaides and Hedon are represented as being jealous of Crites, and as seeking by underhand means to bring him into discredit. It is certain that Jonson was glancing particularly at Marston and Dekker. In the second scene of the third act, Crites, defending himself against his two traducers, observes:--

"If good Chrestus,
Euthus, or Phronimus, had spoke the words,
They would have moved me, and I should have call'd
My thoughts and actions to a strict account
Upon the hearing; but when I remember
'Tis Hedon and Anaides, alas, then
I think but what they are, and am not stirr'd.
The one a light voluptuous reveller,
The other a strange arrogating puff,
Both impudent and arrogant enough;
That talk as they are wont, not as I merit;
Traduce by custom, as most dogs do bark;
Do nothing out of judgment, but disease;
Speak ill because they never could speak well:
And who'd be angry with this race of creatures?"

Dekker in _Satiromastix_[18] puts four of these lines ("I think but what they are ... arrogant enough") into the mouth of Horace (Jonson), plainly assuming that the abuse was intended for Marston and himself. Marston, too, in _What You Will_ (p. xlviii.), fastens on this speech of Crites and uses it as a weapon against Jonson. _Cynthia's Revels_ was quickly followed by _The Poetaster_, which was produced in 1601 by the Children of the Queen's Chapel. Hitherto, Jonson had merely skirmished with his adversaries; in _The Poetaster_ he assails them might and main with all the artillery of invective. Marston is ridiculed as Crispinus, and Dekker as Demetrius Fannius. Crispinus is represented as a coarse-minded, ill-conditioned fellow, albeit of gentle parentage, who, like the bore encountered by Horace in the Via Sacra, is prepared to adopt the meanest stratagems in order to gain admittance to the society of courtiers and wits. He plots with the shifty out-at-elbows Demetrius (a witless "dresser of plays about the town here," to wit, Thomas Dekker), and a huffing Captain Tucca, to disgrace Horace (Ben Jonson). But the attempt results in a ludicrous failure; Crispinus and Demetrius are arraigned at a session of the poets, and, after receiving a severe rebuke for their calumnies, are contemptuously dismissed on taking oath for their future good behaviours. In court a dose of hellebore is administered to Crispinus, who thereupon proceeds to vomit up gobbets of Marston's fustian vocabulary. When the physic has worked its effect Virgil gives Crispinus such advice as Lycinus gave to Lexiphanes in Lucian's dialogue; bidding him form his style on classical models and not

"hunt for wild outlandish terms
To stuff out a peculiar dialect."

_The Poetaster_ was entered in the Stationers' Register on 21st December 1601, and _Satiromastix_ had already been entered on the 11th of the preceding month. The title-page of _Satiromastix_ bears only Dekker's name, and to Dekker the play is attributed in the Stationers' Register. It was doubtless with Marston's approval that Dekker took up the cudgels against the truculent Ben, but there is no evidence to show that Marston had any share in the authorship of _Satiromastix_. It is not necessary to deal here with Dekker's spirited rejoinder, but there is one difficult passage, put into the mouth of Horace, to which passing attention must be called:--

"As for Crispinus, that Crispin-ass and Fannius his play-dresser,
who (to make the Muses believe their subjests' [_sic_] ears
were starved and that there was a dearth of poesy) cut an
innocent Moor i'th middle, to serve him in twice, and when he had
done made Poules' work of it; as for these twins, these poet-apes,

Their mimic tricks shall serve
With mirth to feast our muse whilst their own starve."
(_Works_, 1873, i. 212.)

The meaning of this obscure passage seems to be that Marston and Dekker wrote in conjunction a play which had a Moor for its leading character; that the writers' barren invention prompted them to treat the story again in a Second Part; and that the two parts, when they had served their time upon the stage, were published in Paul's Churchyard. At least that is the only intelligible explanation that I can give to the words; but I am altogether unable to fix on any extant play, in which a Moor figures, that could be attributed to Marston and Dekker. From Henslowe's _Diary_ we know that Dekker was concerned in the authorship of a play called _The Spanish Moor's Tragedy_ (which has been doubtfully identified with _Lust's Dominion_, printed in 1657 as a work of Marlowe's); but Dekker's coadjutors in that play were William Haughton and John Day.

It is curious to note that in the very year (1601) when the quarrel between Marston and Jonson reached a climax, the two enemies are contributing poems to the _Divers Poetical Essays_ appended to Robert Chester's tedious and obscure _Love's Martyr_. The other contributors were Shakespeare and Chapman; Marston's verses follow Shakespeare's _Phoenix and Turtle_. In 1604, as we have noticed, Marston dedicated his _Malcontent_ to Jonson in very cordial terms; and in 1605 he prefixed some complimentary verses to _Sejanus_.

In 1605 was published the comedy of _The Dutch Courtezan_, which had been acted by the Children's Company at the Blackfriars. There is more of life and movement in this play than in any other of Marston's productions. The character of the passionate and implacable courtesan, Franceschina, is conceived with masterly ability. Few figures in the Elizabethan drama are more striking than this fair vengeful fiend, who is as playful and pitiless as a tigress; whose caresses are sweet as honey and poisonous as aconite. All the characters are drawn with skill and spirit. Young Freevill is a typical Elizabethan gallant, very frank in his utterances, and not burthened with an excess of modesty. Malheureux, his moody friend, is noted for his strictness of life, but a glance from Franceschina scatters his virtuous resolutions, and he is ready at the temptress' bidding to kill his friend in order to satisfy his passion. The innocent shamefaced Beatrice, affianced to young Freevill, is drawn with more tenderness than Marston usually shows; and her gay prattling sister Crispinella recalls (_longo intervallo_) another more famous Beatrice. Cockledemoy, the droll and nimble trickster, who at every turn dexterously cozens Master Mulligrub, the vintner, affords abundance of amusement; but his plain speaking shocks the sensitively chaste ears of Mary Faugh, the old bawd. Antony Nixon, in _The Black Year_, 1606, speaks of the play as "corrupting English conditions";[19] but Nixon's protest went for little. In December 1613 _The Dutch Courtezan_ was acted at Court (Cunningham's _Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels_, p. xliv.). Having received some alterations at the hands of Betterton, it was revived in 1680 under the title of _The Revenge, or A Match in Newgate_.

A singularly fresh and delightful study of city-life is the comedy of _Eastward Ho_, published in 1605. Three dramatists combined to produce this genial masterpiece--Chapman, Jonson, and Marston. It seems to have been written shortly after James' accession, when the hungry Scots were swarming southwards in quest of preferment. Englishmen were justly indignant at the favours bestowed by James on these Scotch adventurers, and a passage in _Eastward Ho_ stated the grievance very plainly. "You shall live freely there" [_i.e._, in Virginia], says Seagull, "without sergeants, or courtiers, or lawyers, or intelligencers, only a _few_ industrious Scots, perhaps, who, indeed, are dispersed over the face of the whole earth. But as for them, there are no greater friends to Englishmen and England, when they are out on't, in the world, than they are. And for my part, I would a hundred thousand of 'hem were there, for we are all one countrymen now, ye know; and we should find ten times more comfort of them there than we do here." At the instance of Sir James Graham, one of James' newly-created knights, the playwrights were committed to prison[20] for their abuse of the Scots, and the report went that their ears were to be cut and their noses slit. Ben Jonson told Drummond that he had not contributed the objectionable matter, and that he voluntarily imprisoned himself with Chapman and Marston, who "had written it amongst them." After his release from prison Jonson gave a banquet to "all his friends," Camden and Selden being among the guests. In the middle of the banquet his old mother drank to him and produced a paper containing "lusty strong poison," which she had intended, if the sentence had been confirmed, to take to the prison and mix in his drink; and she declared--to show "that she was no churl"--that "she minded first to have drunk of it herself." The passage about the Scots is found only in some copies of the 4tos; in others it was expunged. Scotch pride seems to have been easily wounded. On 15th April, 1598, George Nicolson, the English agent at the Scotch Court, writing from Edinburgh to Lord Burghley, stated that "it is regretted that the Comedians of London should scorn the king and the people of this land in their play; and it is wished that the matter be speedily amended, lest the king and the country be stirred to anger" (_Cal. of State Papers, Scotland_, ii. 749). Certainly the reflections in _Eastward Ho_ have somewhat more of bitterness than banter; but one would have thought that the favoured Scots about the Court would be content to let the matter pass. Sir James Murray was the person who acted as _delator_, and it is not improbable that he found in the play some uncomplimentary allusions to himself, in addition to the sweeping satire on his countrymen. In the first scene of the fourth act there is a curious passage which has no point unless we suppose that it is directed against some particular courtier:

"_1st Gent._ I ken the man weel; he's one of my thirty pound knights.

"_2d Gent._ No, no, this is he that stole his knighthood o' the grand day for four pound given to a page; all the money in's purse, I wot well."

Satirical references to King James' knights, the men who purchased knighthood from the king, are as common as blackberries; but in the present passage there must be a covert allusion to some person who procured the honour by an unworthy artifice, and I suspect that the allusion is to Sir James Murray. It is surprising that, when the reflections on the Scots were expunged, the passage in iv. 1 was allowed to stand; for, whether Sir James Murray was or was not personally ridiculed, the mimicry of James' Scotch accent is unmistakeable. Perhaps the king joined in the laugh against himself, when the play was acted before him by the Lady Elizabeth's Servants at Whitehall on 25th January 1613-4 (Cunningham's _Extracts from the Account of the Revels_, p. xliv.).

Of the merits of _Eastward Ho_ it would be difficult to speak too highly. To any who are in need of a pill to purge melancholy this racy old comedy may be safely commended. Few readers, after once making his acquaintance, will forget Master Touchstone, the honest shrewd old goldsmith, rough of speech at times but ever gentle at heart, thrifty to outward show but bountiful as the sun in May: he lives in our affections with Orlando Friscobaldo and Simon Eyre. Quicksilver, the rowdy prentice, dazed from last night's debauch, reciting in a thick voice stale scraps of Jeronymo as he reels about Master Touchstone's shop, heedless of the maxims of temperance which frown in print from the walls; Golding, the well-conducted prentice, the apple of his master's eye, armed at all points with virtue and sobriety; Gertrude, the goldsmith's extravagant daughter, with her magnificent visions of coaches, and castles, and cherries at an angel a pound; Mildred, her sister, simple and dutiful; Mistress Touchstone, who has been infected with Gertrude's vanity, but quickly learns penitence in the school of necessity; Sir Petronel Flash, the shifty knight, eager to escape from creditors and serjeants to the new-found land of Virginia; Security, the blood-sucker and egregious gull:--all these characters, and the list is not exhausted, stand limned in all the warmth of life. Mr. Swinburne, in his masterly essay on Chapman, says with truth that "in no play of the time do we get such a true taste of the old city life so often turned to mere ridicule by playwrights of less good humour, or feel about us such a familiar air of ancient London as blows through every scene."

It is very certain that Marston could never have written single-handed so rich and genial a play. In all Marston's comedies there is a strong alloy of bitterness; we are never allowed to rise from the comic feast with a pleasant taste in the mouth. What precise share Marston had in _Eastward Ho_ it would be difficult to determine with any approach to certainty. In the very first scene (vol. iii. p. 8) we come across a passage which is distinctly in Marston's manner:--

"I am entertained among gallants, true; they call me cousin Frank, right; I lend them monies, good; they spend it well."

Compare a passage of _The Fawn_ (vol. ii. p. 181):--

"His brother your husband, right; he cuckold his eldest brother, true; he get her with child, just."

But in the same opening scene there are equally unmistakable signs of Jonson's presence. Touchstone says of Golding:--"He is a gentleman, though my prentice ...; well friended, _well parted_." The curious expression "_well parted_" will be at once recognised as Jonsonian by the vigilant reader, who will remember how Macilente, in "The Characters of the Persons" prefixed to _Every Man out of his Humour_,[21] is described as "A man _well parted_, a sufficient scholar," &c. Jonson and Marston worked on the first scene together; and it seems to me that throughout the first two acts we have the mixed work of these two writers. In the second scene of the third act, as Mr. Swinburne notices, Chapman's hand is clearly seen in the quaint allusion to "the ship of famous Draco." Quicksilver's moralising, in iv. 1, after he has scrambled ashore at Wapping on the night of the drunken shipwreck, is again in Chapman's manner; but his elaborate devices for blanching copper and sweating angels (later in the same scene) must, without the shadow of a doubt, be ascribed to the invention of the author of _The Alchemist_. It would be of doubtful advantage to pursue the inquiry at length.

_Eastward Ho_ was revived at Drury Lane on Lord Mayor's day 1751, under the title of _The Prentices_ (n. d. 12mo), and again in 1775 under the title of _Old City Manners_. Hogarth is said to have drawn from _Eastward Ho_ the plan of his prints _The Industrious and Idle Prentices_. Nahum Tate's farce _Cuckold's Haven_, published in 1685, is drawn partly from _Eastward Ho_ and partly from _The Devil is an Ass_.

_Parasitaster, or the Fawn_, published in 1606, takes us again to Italy, and once more we have to listen to a satirical exposure of the courtiers' vices and follies. In spite of occasional tediousness the play is interesting. Dulcimel, Gonzago's witty daughter, who gulls her self-conceited old father by a pretended discovery of Tiberio's love for her, and succeeds by her blandishments in converting the young misogynist into a perfervid wooer, is a delightfully attractive heroine. The stratagem employed by Dulcimel is of ancient date: it is found in Terence's _Adelphi_, Boccaccio's _Decameron_ (third tale of the third day), and Molière's _L'École des Maris_. I am half inclined to suspect that Marston was slily glancing at the "wise fool" King James in the person of the silly and pedantic Gonzago; and it is probable that some social scandals of the time afforded material for the description of the intrigues of Gonzago's courtiers. Granuffo, who gains a reputation for wisdom by never opening his mouth, might possibly be made an amusing character by an actor skilled in facial contortions; but the humour of the thing is not very apparent in print. Signior No in the _Noble Spanish Soldier_ (attributed to Samuel Rowley, though the play may properly belong to Dekker), and Littleword in Nabbes' _Covent Garden_, are somewhat similar characters. The address _To the Equal Reader_, prefixed to _Parasitaster_, is excellently written, and exhibits Marston in a very pleasant light. "For mine own interest for once," he writes, with a frankness which is not without a touch of pathos, "let this be printed,--that of men of my own addiction I love most, pity some, hate none; for let me truly say it, I once only loved myself, for loving them, and surely I shall ever rest so constant to my first affection, that let their ungentle combinings, discourteous whisperings, never so treacherously labour to undermine my unfenced reputation, I shall (as long as I have being) love the least of their graces and only pity the greatest of their vices." A candid and creditable avowal, but, alas, "words is wind and wind is mutable." In the second edition there follows a briefer address, in which the writer promises to "present a tragedy which shall boldly abide the most curious perusal;" and from a marginal note we learn that the tragedy of _Sophonisba_, published in 1606, was the work which was so boldly to challenge criticism. It is to be feared that this cherished offspring of Marston's imagination will not be regarded with affection by many readers. For hideous blood-curdling realism the description of the witch Erictho and her cave is, I venture to think, without a parallel in literature. Tough as whipcord must have been the nerves of an audience which could listen patiently to the recital of Erictho's atrocities. If there were any women of delicate health among the audience, a repetition of the mishaps connected with the performance of the _Eumenides_ must surely have been unavoidable. Regarded, however, as a whole, the play is not impressive. Sophonisba is a fearless and magnanimous heroine, but her temper is too masculine; she talks too much and too bluntly, and is too fond of striking an attitude. Syphax, the villain of the play, is so prodigiously brutal as to appear perfectly grotesque; and the hero Massinissa bores us by his trite moral reflections. Marston strove to produce a stately tragedy, and was under the impression that his efforts had been crowned with success; but candid readers will judge the performance to be stiff and crude, wanting in energy and dramatic movement, too rhetorical, "climbing to the height of Seneca his style." In the prefatory address he has a hit at _Sejanus_ (to which in the previous year he had contributed a copy of eulogistic verses), informing us that "to transcribe authors, quote authorities, and translate Latin prose orations into English blank verse, hath, in this subject, been the least aim of my studies." But _Sejanus_ has certainly not less of dramatic interest than _Sophonisba_, and in other respects it is far superior.

In 1607 was published the comedy of _What You Will_ (written, I suspect, shortly after the appearance of _Cynthia's Revels_), which is largely indebted for its plot to Plautus's _Amphitruo_. In the Induction, Marston again has his fling at Ben Jonson. Philomusus' heated denunciation of censorious critics,

"Believe it, Doricus, his spirit
Is higher blooded than to quake and pant
At the report of Scoff's artillery," &c.,

was evidently written in derisive mimicry of Jonson's scornful addresses to the audience; and Doricus' remonstrance,

"Now out upon't, I wonder what tight brain
Wrung in this custom to maintain contempt
'Gainst common censure," &c.,

was unquestionably intended as a stiff rebuke to Jonson's towering arrogance. But these strokes of personal satire are not confined to the Induction. Quadratus' scathing ridicule of Lampatho Doria, in the first scene of the second act, was certainly aimed at some adversary of Marston's; and there can be little doubt that this adversary was Ben Jonson. Lampatho is described in the following terms by his admirer Simplicius Faber:--

"Monsieur Laverdure, do you see that gentleman? He goes but in black satin, as you see, but, by Helicon! he hath a cloth of tissue wit. He breaks a jest;[22] ha, he'll rail against the court till the gallants--O God! he is very nectar: if you but sip of his love, you were immortal." At first Lampatho speaks the language of an affected gallant; it is nothing but "protest" with him. Quadratus is disgusted with him:--

"A fusty cask
Devote to mouldy customs of hoary eld."

After listening to much abuse, Lampatho turns on his assailant:--

"So Phoebus warm my brain, I'll rhyme thee dead.
Look for the satire: if all the sour juice
Of a tart brain can souse thy estimate,
I'll pickle thee."

The threat only irritates Quadratus the more:--

"Why, you Don Kinsayder!
Thou canker-eaten rusty cur, thou snaffle
To freer spirits!
Think'st thou a libertine, an ungyved breast,
Scorns not the shackles of thy envious clogs?
You will traduce us unto public scorn?"

Curious that Marston should apply his own _nom de plume_ "Kinsayder" to the adversary whom he is bullying! In the _Scourge of Villainy_ he sneered at his own poem _Pygmalion_, and here he is referring contemptuously to his own achievements in satire. A man who openly ridicules himself blunts the edge of an enemy's sarcasm.

We have seen (p. xxxiii.) that Crites' bitter abuse of Anaides and Hedon (_i.e._, Marston and Dekker), in _Cynthia's Revels_, was flung back in Jonson's face by Dekker. Marston puts into the mouth of Quadratus a speech, modelled closely on those lines of Crites:--

"_Lam._ O sir, you are so square, you scorn reproof."
"_Qua._ No, sir; should discreet Mastigophorus,
Or the dear spirit acute Canaidus
(That Aretine, that most of me beloved,
Who in the rich esteem I prize his soul,
I term myself); should these once menace me,
Or curb my humour with well-govern'd check,
I should with most industrious regard,
Observe, abstain, and curb my skipping lightness;
But when an arrogant, odd, impudent,
A blushless forehead, only out of sense
Of his own wants, bawls in malignant questing
At others' means of waving gallantry,--
Pight foutra!"

Who "discreet Mastigophorus" and "acute Canaidus" were it would be useless to conjecture. But it is not to be doubted that Quadratus' abuse of Lampatho was levelled at Ben Jonson; and that Marston was avenging himself in this way for the insults showered upon him by Jonson. In iv. 1, Quadratus sneers at Lampatho's verse. Lampatho threatens to be revenged. "How, prithee?" says Quadratus; "in a play? Come, come, be sociable."