The Drama Of John Marston

This is an invaluable collection of critical essays on the work of dramatist John Marston.

A work of historical criticism that offers new interpretations of the nine plays attributed solely to John Marston. Explores his use of literary, historical, and intellectual sources and focuses on recurrent major images and themes in the plays.

Bonded Leather binding

This book examines the influence of John Marston, typically seen as a minor figure among early modern dramatists, on his colleague Ben Jonson. While Marston is usually famed more for his very public rivalry with Jonson than for the quality of his plays, this book argues that such a view of Marston seriously underestimates his importance to the theatre of his time. In it, the author contends that Marston's plays represent an experiment in a new kind of satiric drama, with origins in the humanist tradition of serio ludere. His works—deliberately unpredictable, inconsistent and metatheatrical—subvert theatrical conventions and provide confusingly multiple perspectives on the action, forcing their spectators to engage actively with the drama and the moral dilemmas that it presents. The book argues that Marston's work thus anticipates and perhaps influenced the mid-period work of Ben Jonson, in plays such as Sejanus, Volpone and The Alchemist.

This edition brings five of Marston's most interesting plays together in a readable and helpful form. They are collected with modern spelling, full commentaries, textual notes and introductions, in texts newly edited from the original quartos. A survey of criticism of Marston is included. The edition of Sophonisba (a play highly praised by T. S. Eliot) is the first modernised text to appear in one hundred years. Another textual innovation is the relegation to an appendix of Webster's obtrusive additions to The Malcontent. Marston's plays have enjoyed popular revivals in English theatres over the last decade, and the authors' commentary is designed to alert readers to theatrical effects. The playwright's language is elucidated here far more fully than in any other collection.