John Marston (1575-1634)

This site is devoted to John Marston, Renaissance satirist and playwright. He isn't read much, but he ought to be. Here are three good reasons why:

I up do plough
The hidden entrails of rank villainy,
Tearing the veil from damned Impiety.
Quake, guzzle dogs that live on putrid slime,
Scud from the lashes of my jerking rhyme.

- From the Proem to The Scourge of Villainy.

Love? Hang love:
It is the abject outcast of the world.
Hate all things, hate the world, thyself, all men.
Hate knowledge, strive not to be over-wise:
It drew destruction into Paradise.
Hate honour, virtue, they are baits
That 'tice men's hopes to sadder fates.
Hate beauty: every ballad-monger
Can cry his idle foppish humour.
Hate riches...

- Quadratus on love in What You Will.

His appetite is as unsatiable as the grave: as far from any content as from heaven. His highest delight is to procure others' vexation, and therein he thinks he truly serves heaven; for 'tis his position, whosoever in this earth can be contented is a slave and damned; therefore does he afflict all in that to which they are most affected. The elements struggle within him; his own soul is at variance within herself; his speech is halter-worthy at all hours. I like him...

- Pietro describing Malevole in The Malcontent.

• More Marston on-line: UToronto Representative Poetry
• More Marston on-line: Poets' Corner
  

John Marston - a selective bibliography

Marston's best-known works are The Malcontent and Antonio and Mellida, best described as satirical tragicomedies, but his work runs from city comedy such as The Dutch Courtesan to classical tragedy such as Sophonisba, a play almost operatic in its innovative use of music. Marston's Satires are, perhaps, something of an acquired taste.

1. Texts of Marston:

• Works ed. A.H.Bullen (1887).
• The Poems of John Marston ed. A. Davenport (Liverpool Liverpool UP, 1961).
• The Plays of John Marston ed. H Harvey Wood, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1938).

Wood's is still the most recent complete edition of the plays. Selections include:

• The Selected Plays of John Marston ed. MP Jackson & M Neill (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986).
• The Malcontent and other plays ed. K. Sturgess (Oxford, 1997) - a paperback with up-to-date bibliography and useful brief introduction.

Both of these contain Sophonisba, Antonio and Mellida, Antonio's Revenge, The Dutch Courtesan, and The Malcontent. Individual editions include:

• Sophonisba ed. W. Kemp (1979).
• Antonio and Mellida ed. R. Gair (1991).
• Antonio's Revenge ed. R. Gair (1978).
• The Dutch Courtesan ed. M.L. Wine (1965).
• The Malcontent ed. G.K. Hunter (1975).
• What You Will ed. M.R. Woodhead (1980).
• The Fawn ed. G.A. Smith (1965).
• Eastward Ho, Marston's 1605 collaboration with Chapman and Jonson, ed. R. Van Fossen (1979).

• The Insatiate Countess appears in Four Jacobean Sex Tragedies ed. M. Wiggins (1998). His edition differs markedly from its predecessors in the way it resolves the contradictory character-names presented in the original printing, and in its approach to the difficult question of the authorship of the play.
• Elizabethan and Jacobean Comedies gen. ed. Brian Gibbons (1984) reprints the New Mermaid editions of Eastward Ho ed. C.G.Petter and of The Malcontent ed B.Harris, both also available individually.

3. Secondary material:

• A. Caputi, John Marston, Satirist (1961).
• Charles Cathcart, "Plural Authorship, Attribution, and the Children of the King's Revels", Renaissance Forum 4.2 (2000): http://www.hull.ac.uk/renforum/v4no2/cathcart.htm. (Marston and The Insatiate Countess).
• P. J. Finkelpearl, John Marston of the Middle Temple (1969).
• R. Gair, The Children of Paul's (Cambridge, 1982).
• G. Geckle, John Marston's Drama: Themes, Images, Sources (1980).
• R.W. Ingram, John Marston (1978).
• M. Scott, John Marston's Plays: Theme, Structure, and Performance (1978).
• M. Shapiro, Children of the Revels (New York, 1977).
• T.F. Wharton, The Critical Fall and Rise of John Marston (1998).
• T.F. Wharton ed., The Drama of John Marston: Critical Re-visions (Cambridge, 2000).

Interesting on-line things:

• Anniina Jokinen's wonderful Luminarium page on Marston <http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marston/>
  
  

• David Stymeist's biography of Marston at The Literary Encyclopedia, <http:www.litencyc.com>.

• Peter Winterburn, "Music in Marston's The Malcontent" (1998), a student project hosted at Vanderbilt University.

• Marston's Masque at Ashby (1607) - text, and photos.
  

• Arwin van Arum's notes on Eliot's poem "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar", explicating a reference to a Marston entertainment, & printing a text.