drollest character in all Marston's plays is also the most offensive in his language—'the foulest-mouthed profane railing brother'; but the drollest passages in the whole part are those that least want washing. How far the example of Ben Jonson may have influenced or encouraged Marston in the indulgence of this unlovely propensity can only be conjectured; it is certain that no third writer of the time, however given to levity of speech or audacity in the selection of a subject, was so prone—in Shakespeare's phrase—to 'talk greasily' as the authors of 'Bartholomew Fair' and 'The Dutch Courtesan.'
In the two parts of his earlier tragedy the interest is perhaps, on the whole, rather better sustained than in 'The Wonder of Women.' The prologue to 'Antonio's Revenge' (the second part of the 'Historie of Antonio and Mellida') has enjoyed the double correlative honour of ardent appreciation by Lamb and responsive depreciation by Gifford. Its eccentricities and perversities of phrase[1] may be no less noticeable, but should assuredly be accounted less memorable, than its profound and impassioned fervour of grave and eloquent harmony. Strange, wayward and savage as is the all but impossible story, rude and
- ↑ One strange phrase in the very first line is surely a palpable misprint—ramps for cramps.
