disowned it. Translated into French, then into Italian (14th century) and into English (16th century), it was known by Wycliffe and Luther, and was not without an influence on the Reform movement.
See J. Sullivan, American Historical Review, vol. ii. (1896–1897), and English Historical Review for April 1905; Histoire littéraire de la France (1906), xxxiii. 528–623; Sigmund Riezler, Die literarischen Widersacher der Päpste zur Zeit Ludwig des Baiers (Leipzig, 1874).
There are numerous manuscripts of the Defensor pacis extant. We will here mention only one edition, that given by Goldast, in 1614, in vol. i. of his Monarchia sacri imperii; an unpublished last chapter was published by Karl Müller, in 1883, in the Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, pp. 923–925.
Count Lützow in The Life and Times of Master John Hus (London and New York, 1909), pp. 5–9, gives a good abstract of the Defensor pacis and the relations of Marsilius to other precursors of the Reformation. (N. V.)
MARSIVAN, or Merzifun (anc. Phazemon?), a town in the Amasia sanjak of the Sivas vilayet of Asia Minor, situated at
the foot of the Tavshan Dagh. Pop. about 20,000, two-thirds
Mussulman. It is a centre of American missionary and educational
enterprise, and the seat of Anatolia College, a theological
seminary, and schools which were partly destroyed in the anti-Armenian
riots of 1893 and 1895. There is also a Jesuit school.
Marsivan is an unusually European place both in its aspect and
the commodities procurable in the bazaar.
MARS-LA-TOUR, a village of Lorraine, between Metz and the
French frontier, which formed part of the battlefield of the 16th
of August 1870. The battle is often called the battle of Mars-la-Tour, though it is more usually named after Vionville. (See Metz; and Franco-German War.) At Mars-la-Tour occurred the destruction of the German 38th brigade.
MARSTON, JOHN (c. 1575–1634), English dramatist and
satirist, eldest son of John Marston of Coventry, at one time
lecturer of the Middle Temple, was born in 1575, or early in 1576.
Swinburne notes his affinities with Italian literature, which may
be partially explained by his parentage, for his mother was the
daughter of an Italian physician, Andrew Guarsi. He entered
Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1592, taking his B.A. degree in
1594. The elder Marston in his will expresses regret that his
son, to whom he left his law-books and the furniture of his rooms
in the Temple, had not been willing to follow his profession.
John Marston married Mary Wilkes, daughter of one of the
royal chaplains, and Ben Jonson said that “Marston wrote his
father-in-law’s preachings, and his father-in-law his sermons.”
His first work was The Metamorphosis of Pigmalions Image,
and certaine Satyres (1598). “Pigmalion” is an erotic poem
in the metre of Venus and Adonis, and Joseph Hall attached a
rather clumsy epigram to every copy that was exposed for sale
in Cambridge. In the same year Marston published, under the
pseudonym of W. Kinsayder, already employed in the earlier
volume, his Scourge of Villanie, eleven satires, in the sixth of
which he asserted that Pigmalion was intended to parody the
amorous poetry of the time. Both this volume and its predecessor
were burnt by order of the archbishop of Canterbury. The
satires, in which Marston avowedly took Persius as his model,
are coarse and vigorous. In addition to a general attack on the
vices of his age he avenges himself on Joseph Hall who had
assailed him in Virgidemiae. He had a great reputation among
his contemporaries. John Weever couples his name with Ben
Jonson’s in an epigram; Francis Meres in Palladis tamia (1598) mentions him among the satirists; a long passage is devoted to “Monsieur Kinsayder” in the Return from Parnassus (1606), and Dr Brinsley Nicholson has suggested that Furor poeticus in that piece may be a satirical portrait of him. But his invective by its general tone, goes far to justify Mr W. J. Courthope’s[1] judgment that “it is likely enough that in seeming to satirize the world without him, he is usually holding up the mirror to his own prurient mind.”
On the 28th of September 1599 Henslowe notices in his diary that he lent “unto Mr Maxton, the new poete, the sum of forty shillings,” as an advance on a play which is not named. Another hand has amended “Maxton” to “Mastone.” The earliest plays to which Marston’s name is attached are The History of Antonio and Mellida. The First Part; and Antonio’s Revenge. The Second Part (both entered at Stationers’ Hall in 1601 and printed 1602). The second part is preceded by a prologue which, in its gloomy forecast of the play, moved the admiration of Charles Lamb, who also compares the situation of Andrugio and Lucia to Lear and Kent, but the scene which he quotes gives a misleading idea of the play and of the general tenor of Marston’s work.
The melodrama and the exaggerated expression of these two plays offered an opportunity to Ben Jonson, who had already twice ridiculed Marston, and now pilloried him as Crispinus in The Poetaster (1601). The quarrel was patched up, for Marston dedicated his Malcontent (1604) to Jonson, and in the next year he prefixed commendatory verses to Sejanus. Far greater restraint is shown in The Malcontent than in the earlier plays. It was printed twice in 1604, the second time with additions by John Webster. The Dutch Courtezan (1605) and Parasitaster, or the Fawne (1606) followed. In 1605 Eastward Hoe,[2] a gay comedy of London life, which gave offence to the king’s Scottish friends, caused the playwrights concerned in its production—Marston, Chapman and Jonson—to be imprisoned at the instance of Sir James Murray. The Wonder of Women, or the Tragedie of Sophonisba (1606), seems to have been put forward by Marston as a model of what could be accomplished in tragedy. In the preface he mocks at those authors who make a parade of their authorities and their learning, and the next play, What you Will (printed 1607; but probably written much earlier), contains a further attack on Jonson. The tragedy of The Insatiate Countesse was printed in 1613, and again, this time anonymously, in 1616. It was not included in the collected edition of Marston’s plays in 1633, and in the Duke of Devonshire’s library there is a copy bearing the name of William Barksteed, the author of the poems, Myrrha, the Mother of Adonis (1607), and Hiren and the Fair Greek (1611). The piece contains many passages superior to anything to be found in Marston’s well-authenticated plays, and Mr A. H. Bullen suggests that it may be Barksteed’s version of an earlier one drafted by Marston. The character and history of Isabella are taken chiefly from “The Disordered Lyfe of the Countess of Celant” in William Paynter’s Palace of Pleasure, derived eventually from Bandello. There is no certain evidence of Marston’s authorship in Histriomastix (printed 1610, but probably produced before 1599), or in Jacke Drums Entertainement, or the Comedie of Pasquil and Katherine (1616), though he probably had a hand in both. Mr R. Boyle (Englische Studien, vol. xxx., 1901), in a critical study of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, assigns to Marston’s hand the whole of the action dealing with Hector, with the prologue and epilogue, and attributes to him the bombast and coarseness in the last scenes of the play. It will be seen that his undoubted dramatic work was completed in 1607. It is uncertain at what time he exchanged professions, but in 1616 he was presented to the living of Christchurch, Hampshire. He formally resigned his charge in 1631, and when his works were collected in 1633 the publisher, William Sheares, stated that the author “in his autumn and declining age” was living “far distant from this place.” Nevertheless he died in London, in the parish of Aldermanbury, on the 25th of June 1634. He was buried in the Temple Church.
Marston’s works were first published in 1633, once anonymously as Tragedies and Comedies, and then in the same year as Workes of Mr John Marston. The Works of John Marston (3 vols.) were reprinted by Mr J. O. Halliwell (Phillipps) in 1856, and again by Mr. A. H. Bullen (3 vols.) in 1887. His Poems (2 vols.) were edited by Dr A. B. Grosart in 1879. The British Museum Catalogue tentatively assigns to Marston The Whipper of the Satyre his pennance in a white sheete; or, the Beadle’s Confutation (1601), a pamphlet in answer to The Whipping of the Satyre. For an account of the quarrel of Dekker and Marston with Ben Jonson see Dr R. A. Small, The
