Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Marston, John

MARSTON, John, was one of the most vigorous satirists and dramatists of the Shakespearean age. He was probably some ten years younger than Shakespeare. He has been identified with a gentleman commoner of Brasenose College, Oxford, who entered in 1591, and was admitted B.A. in 1593 as the eldest son of an esquire. If this is the same John Marston that was buried in the Temple Church in 1634, under a tombstone Oblivioni sacrum, the identification of him with the poet is most probably right, for one of Marston's most singular poems is a prayer to Oblivion—

"Let others pray
For ever their fair poems flourish may;
But as for me, hungry Oblivion,
Devour me quick."

In the superfluity of learned allusions and Latin quotations in his plays Marston proclaims the fact that he was a university man. He entered the field of letters in 1598, as a satirist, with a Scourge of Villany. He was professedly an imitator of Juvenal, but he wrote rather in the spirit of Skelton, and speedily earned something like Skelton's reputation as a coarse ribald buffoon of astonishing energy, girding at the grossest vices of the time in "plain naked words stript from their shirts." There was more of the good-natured chuckling buffoon than of the cynic in Marston's satire, though he did profess unmeasured scorn for the vices and fopperies of his age. The coarse energy of his invective pours out as if he loved strong language more than he hated the subjects of his ridicule. Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis was one of Marston's first butts; in his Pygmalion's Image (1598) the wooing of Adonis by the queen of love is very roughly but very cleverly parodied. The freshness and vigour of Marston's vein brought him at once into notice. He is mentioned (misspelt as Maxton or Mastone) in Henslowe's Diary, in 1599, as "the new poet" receiving payment as part author of a play; and in the same year he was probably ridiculed by Ben Jonson as "Carlo Buffone" in Every Man out of his Humour. He and Dekker had a famous quarrel with Jonson arising out of the latter's attack upon them in the Poetaster (see Dekker). The literary enemies were reconciled; Marston forswore literary quarrels, dedicated a play to Jonson in terms of high eulogy, and was conjoined with Jonson and Chapman in the play of Eastward Ho! some political allusions in which nearly cost the authors their ears. Marston wrote comparatively few plays, published in quick succession at the following dates: Antonio and Mellida (1602); Antonio's Revenge (1602); The Malcontent (1604, his first and most powerful play); The Dutch Courtesan (1605); Parasitaster (1606); Sophonisba (1606); What You Will (1607). Marston then apparently left off play writing; if he lived till 1634, there is no explanation of his sudden stoppage. There is very little constructive skill in his plays; the plots are uninteresting. He does little more than send a procession of puppets across the stage, one or more of which "gird at" the others—very "loose libertines" and very contemptible some of them—in the author's own rough vein of satire. One scene in Antonio and Mellida was much admired by Charles Lamb, and either suggested or was suggested by one of the most powerful situations in King Lear. But the passage taken out of the body of the play gives a very misleading idea of its general tenor, or of the general cast of Marston's dramatic work.