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Book Review: TF Wharton (Ed). the Drama of John Marston. Cambridge
112 Book Reviews unfair to criticize a researcher too harshly for a following a pre-existing set of selection criteria. At the same time it is reasonable to expect that a declared set of criteria should be rigorously maintained, and that the intellectual basis of those criteria should be clearly stated and take some account of the historical reality of the period under examination. The ambitious task undertaken by the REED project is to be applauded, and it is to be regretted that the present volume falls somewhat short of the standards set by the project as a whole. david hickman T.F. Wharton (ed). The Drama of John Marston: Critical Re-Visions. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp xiii, 233. For a dramatist with at least three canonically important works (The Dutch Courtesan, The Malcontent, and Antonio’s Revenge) contemporary critics have been especially chary of addressing John Marston’s plays. Of those three works, one (Antonio’s Revenge) finds general mention only as a spectacularized and stylized foil to Hamlet.1 Indeed, only a single work – The Dutch Courtesan – today receives attention approaching any degree of regularity: Susan Baker, Donna Hamilton, and Jean Howard have each written outstanding material- ist/feminist appraisals.2 This continuing paucity of critical regard is especially surprising given the astonishing generic range and inventiveness of Marston’s plays as well as their incisive representations of a particularly volatile period in early modern culture. Marston collaborated brilliantly with some of the most distinguished dramatists of the period (Ben Jonson and George Chapman on Eastward Ho!; John Webster on additions to The Malcontent) and also mis- chievously burlesqued the genres they themselves defined. -
Playwright and Minister
PLAYWRIGHT AND MAN OF GOD: RELIGION AND CONVENTION IN THE COMIC PLAYS OF JOHN MARSTON by Blagomir Georgiev Blagoev A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Blagomir Georgiev Blagoev (2010) PLAYWRIGHT AND MAN OF GOD: RELIGION AND CONVENTION IN THE COMIC PLAYS OF JOHN MARSTON Blagomir Georgiev Blagoev Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto 2010 ABSTRACT John Marston’s literary legacy has inevitably existed in the larger-than-life shadows of his great contemporaries William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. In the last two centuries, his works were hardly taken on their own terms but were perceived instead in overt or implicit comparison to Shakespeare’s or Jonson’s. As a result, Marston’s plays acquired the lasting but unfair image of haphazard concoctions whose cheap sensationalism and personal satire often got them in trouble with the authorities. This was the case until recently, especially with Marston’s comic drama. Following revisionist trends, this study sets out to restore some perspective: it offers a fresh reading of Marston’s comic plays and collaborations—Antonio and Mellida, What You Will, Jack Drum’s Entertainment, The Dutch Courtesan, The Malcontent, Parasitaster, Eastward Ho, and Histrio-Mastix—by pursuing a more nuanced contextualization with regard to religious context and archival evidence. The first central contention here is that instead of undermining political and religious authority, Marston’s comic drama can demonstrate consistent conformist and conservative affinities, which imply a seriously considered agenda. This study’s second main point is that the perceived failures of Marston’s comic plays—such as tragic ii elements, basic characterization, and sudden final reversals—can be plausibly read as deliberate effects, designed with this agenda in mind. -
Identity, Disguise and Satire in Three
IDENTITY, DISGUISE AND SATIRE IN THREE COMEDIES OF JOHN MARSTON by BARRY MALCOLM PEGG B.A., University of Keele, 1963 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of English We accept this thesis as conforming to the required, standard THE UNIVERSITY ,OF BB.2T.I SH COLUMBIA July, 1969 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and Study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my r written permission. Department The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada ABSTRACT This thesis investigates the use of the conventions of disguise and deception in three comedies of John Marston (1576-1634)—What You Will. The Malcontent. and The Dutch Courtesan—in order to examine his handling of a convention for thematic purposes. The frequency of disguise in the theatre of the period may be explained by its appeal on more than one level. Its direct visual display of theatrical ingenuity was an immediate source of compelling interest for all spectators, whether in comedy or tragedy. On a more sophisticated level, the metaphysical implications of the discrepancy between ap• pearance and reality were explored thematically by the more thoughtful of the public-theatre playwrights, as well as the satiric playwrights of the private theatres, both of course making full use of the purely theatrical possibilities. -
William Marston, Apprentice; and Eastward Ho!
Early Theatre 19.2 (2016), 81–100 http://dx.doi.org/10.12745/et.19.2.2678 Charles Cathcart Edward Greene, Goldsmith; William Marston, Apprentice; and Eastward Ho! This essay presents new information about the family of John Marston the dramatist. I review this material in relation to the work of Suzanne Gossett and W. David Kay, the two editors of Eastward Ho! for The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson. My article explores how our knowledge of a writer’s personal relation- ships may affect our understanding of that writer’s contribution to a collaborative enterprise. In the summer of 1605 three members of the Marston family each experienced a significant event. All were in their twenties. Thomas Marston, eldest son and heir of William Marston of Middleton in Shropshire, was admitted to the Middle Temple. His brother William became free of the Goldsmiths Company. And their cousin John ran into serious trouble as a consequence of his involvement in writing Eastward Ho! In this essay I bring forward new information about the family of John Mar- ston the dramatist and connect this evidence with biographical findings that have attracted little attention since the time of R.E. Brettle’s thesis in 1927 or that of the publication of the Middle Temple records some twenty years previ- ously.1 I will seek to relate this material to a significant publishing exercise of much more recent times: the work of the two editors of Eastward Ho! for The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, Suzanne Gossett and W. -
What Did John Marston Know About Shakespeare?
i¬D about ^Ij^feegpeare? Patrick ^uckrtbge John Marston has been a shadowy but persistent presence in heterodox discussions ofthe Shakespeare autiiorship since the nineteenth century. It is hardly surprising that he should have something to offer to an investi gation of concealed Uterary and theafrical identities in London in the 1590s: he was living and working in the Inns of Court and around the theattes from about 1594, when he matticulated from Brasenose College, Oxford University, until 1606, when he left the Middle Temple. A cursory glance at Marston's poems and plays reveals an oddly persistent preoccupation with that popular but enigmatic body of work coming to be known as 'Shakespeare' through the 1590s, the most striking being The Metamorphosis ofPigmalion 's Image, his parody/pastiche ofVenus and Ado nis, and the links and parallels in character, situation and dialogue between Hamlet and Antonio's Revenge. Other tum-of-the-century plays of Marston' s —Antonio and Mellida, What You Will, The Dutch Courtesan, and The Malcontent—appear to exhibit a more generally ironic relationship to certain Shakespearean plays, such as Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, and Measure for Measure. As the author of two volumes of verse satires, Marston took a 'profes sional' interest in duplicity, hypocrisy, and imposture, ttaditional satiric targets that he would have seen as notably instantiated in the use of 'front-men' or 'stooges' for aristocratic writers. There are a few passages in the satires where he could be referring to such a practice: the allusion to those who .. -
John Marston at the `Mart of Woe': the Antonio Plays 14 Rick Bowers 2 John Marston: a Theatrical Perspective 27 W
THE DRAMA OF JOHN MARSTON CRITICAL RE-VISIONS edited by T. F. W H A RTO N published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom cambridge university press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK www.cup.cam.ac.uk 40 West 20th Street, New York, ny 10011±4211, USA www.cup.org 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia Ruiz de AlarcoÂn 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain # Cambridge University Press 2000 The book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2000 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeset in Baskerville 11/12.5pt System 3b2 [ce] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data The Drama of John Marston: Critical Re-Visions / edited by T. F. Wharton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0 521 65136 0 (hardback) 1. Marston, John, 1575±1634 ± Criticism and interpretation. i.Wharton,T.F. pr2697.d73 2000 822'.3 ± dc21 isbn 0 521 65136 0 hardback Contents Notes on contributors page ix Acknowledgements xi Note on the text xii Introduction 1 T. F. Wharton 1 John Marston at the `mart of woe': the Antonio plays 14 Rick Bowers 2 John Marston: a theatrical perspective 27 W. Reavley Gair 3 Varieties of fantasy in What You Will 45 Matthew Steggle 4 Safety in ®ction: Marston's recreational poetics 60 Patrick Buckridge 5 Insatiate punning in Marston's courtesan plays 82 Richard Scarr 6 Touching the self: masturbatory Marston 100 William W. -
Unfair to Criticize a Researcher Too Harshly for a Following a Pre-Existing Set of Selection Criteria
112 Book Reviews unfair to criticize a researcher too harshly for a following a pre-existing set of selection criteria. At the same time it is reasonable to expect that a declared set of criteria should be rigorously maintained, and that the intellectual basis of those criteria should be clearly stated and take some account of the historical reality of the period under examination. The ambitious task undertaken by the REED project is to be applauded, and it is to be regretted that the present volume falls somewhat short of the standards set by the project as a whole. david hickman T.F. Wharton (ed). The Drama of John Marston: Critical Re-Visions. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp xiii, 233. For a dramatist with at least three canonically important works (The Dutch Courtesan, The Malcontent, and Antonio’s Revenge) contemporary critics have been especially chary of addressing John Marston’s plays. Of those three works, one (Antonio’s Revenge) finds general mention only as a spectacularized and stylized foil to Hamlet.1 Indeed, only a single work – The Dutch Courtesan – today receives attention approaching any degree of regularity: Susan Baker, Donna Hamilton, and Jean Howard have each written outstanding material- ist/feminist appraisals.2 This continuing paucity of critical regard is especially surprising given the astonishing generic range and inventiveness of Marston’s plays as well as their incisive representations of a particularly volatile period in early modern culture. Marston collaborated brilliantly with some of the most distinguished dramatists of the period (Ben Jonson and George Chapman on Eastward Ho!; John Webster on additions to The Malcontent) and also mis- chievously burlesqued the genres they themselves defined. -
Metatheatrical Rivalry in John Marston's Antonio's Revenge
3532 Early Theatre 22.1 (2019), 93–118 https://doi.org/10.12745/et.22.1.3691 Mitchell Macrae ‘[A]dore my topless villainy’: Metatheatrical Rivalry in John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge is a self-reflexive tragedy with characters who speak and act like characters familiar with the conventions of Elizabethan revenge plays. This article argues that Marston’s use of metatheatricality allegorizes the competitive nature of commercial theatres. As Marston’s characters seek to emulate and surpass their theatrical models, revenge becomes a medium for aesthetic achievement, a show- case for acting and rhetorical skill. The play expands the theatrum mundi trope, imagining the world not as a single stage but as a marketplace of rival stages wherein playwrights vie for applause and seek recognition for their theatrical brilliance. Despite Antonio’s Revenge declaring itself a serious tragedy, a ‘black-visaged [show]’ that seeks to ‘weigh massy in judicious scale’, the play’s metatheatricality has made the play difficult for scholars and critics to categorize (Prologue 20, 30).1 Characters in Antonio’s Revenge do not speak so much as they extemporize, riffing knowingly on the conventions of early modern revenge plays. The dialogue in the play often exaggerates the stock rhetoric of revenge tragedy to the point that John Marston’s play may seem indecorously tongue-in-cheek. Samuel Schoen- baum calls Marston’s work ‘bizarre — more eccentric than the art of any of his contemporaries’ and claims that ‘the essential incongruity of Marston’s work’ is its most ‘striking feature’.2 R.A. -
Studia Metrica Et Poetica Sisu 5 1.Indd
Studia Metrica et Poetica 5.1, 2018, 28–51 Attributing John Marston’s Marginal Plays Darren Freebury-Jones, Marina Tarlinskaja, Marcus Dahl* Abstract: John Marston (c. 1576–1634) was a dramatist of the Elizabethan and Jaco- bean periods, known for his satirical wit and literary feuds with Ben Jonson. His dramatic corpus consists of nine plays of uncontested authorship. This article inves- tigates four additional plays of uncertain authorship which have been associated with Marston: Lust’s Dominion; Histriomastix; The Family of Love; and The Insatiate Coun- tess. The internal evidence for Marston’s hand in these four texts is examined and an analysis made of the potential divisions of authorship. The essay provides a survey of Marston’s individual style by testing vocabulary; prosody; collocations of thought and language; and versification habits within both his acknowledged plays and the contested texts, in comparison to plays written by other authorship candidates. Keywords: Marston; Dekker; Lording Barry; authorship attribution studies; vocabu- lary; collocations; versification analysis Introduction Interest in the authorship of Elizabethan dramas has grown exponentially dur- ing the past several decades. Computerized studies have become a powerful means of uncovering minute details of poetic texts, and online concordances, such as Literature Online (LION)1 and Early English Books Online (EEBO),2 have become available. Nonetheless, some analyses can still be made only by hand. The most productive evidence for the authorship of Renaissance plays is a linguistic approach. Scholars have been able to enhance our knowledge of early modern canons through analyses of authorial preferences for morpho- logical, syntactic, and orthographic forms; authors’ vocabularies, including * Authors’ addresses: Darren Freebury-Jones, School of English, Communication and Phi- losophy, Cardiff University, John Percival Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU, UK. -
Ben Jonson's Feud with the Poetasters, 1599-1601
'i/an THE RICE INSTITUTE BEN JONSON’S FEUD WITH THE POETASTERS, 1599-1601 by Larry McMurtry A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS Houston, Texas February, 1960 Table of Contents I. Introduction 1 - 16 II. John Marston 17 - 41 III. Ben Jonson 42 - 85 IV. Thomas Dekker 86 - 100 V. William Shakespeare 101 - 125 VI. Conclusion 126 - 134 Notes 135 - 145 - Bibliography 146 - 148 I Introduction Ben Jonson's famous dispute with Marston and Dekker fell Just at the end of Elizabeth's reign and aroused animosities which found expression in a number of closely related, satirical plays. It was no uncommon thing for a dramatist in those rich years to make his contemporaries objects of ridicule; but until the formidable Jonson took umbrage stage warfare had not been waged on so large a scale. Pleay perhaps exaggerates when he says that any criticism of any play produced 1599 to 1601 is of no util¬ ity unless it takes the quarrel into account, but he has?:a point.' As a significant incident in the development of two important dramatists (for the third, Dekker, seems to have escaped effect) the Stage Quarrel justifies whatever scholarly effort has been spent on it; but aside from this, it has a strong independent Interest to the student of Elizabethan attitudes. The plays involved reflect the general satiric spirit at work in the times; and what we can judge of their reception deepens our insight into the theatre-goer of the day. -
Two Manuscript Comments by Early Readers in the Works of Mr John Marston (1633)
Early Theatre 12.1 (2009) Blago Blagoev Two Manuscript Comments by Early Readers in The Works of Mr John Marston (1633) The copy of The Works of Mr John Marston (1633) in the collection of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre at the University of Texas at Austin features two previously unknown manuscript comments.1 The first comment dismisses Marston summarily as a tedious playwright, based on the first three plays in the volume — the comedy Antonio and Mellida, its tragic sequel Antonio’s Revenge, and the tragedy Sophonisba. It states, ‘Mr Iohn Mar- ston. A very dull sencelesse Poett. I have read his 3 first Playes’ (see figure 1). The second comment is much kinder to the playwright; it praises his comedy Parasitaster, or The Fawn for being ‘A good play’ (figure 3). Both manuscript comments constitute rare records of early readers’ response to Marston’s plays and are valuable for several reasons. First, they are evidence for the conflict- ing reactions Marston’s drama provoked in a family generally known for its theatrical enthusiasm. Second, the two comments are not broad or derived like other early readers’ remarks on Marston’s plays, especially those from the first century and a half since the publication of his Works. Instead they are the result of critical readings of concrete plays and are thus important for the rather limited history of Marston’s early reception. Finally, the specific reference to Antonio’s Revenge in the first comment is the only early one so far made upon an actual reading of the play. -
Two Manuscript Comments by Early Readers in <Em
Early Theatre 12.1 (2009) Blago Blagoev Two Manuscript Comments by Early Readers in The Works of Mr John Marston (1633) The copy of The Works of Mr John Marston (1633) in the collection of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre at the University of Texas at Austin features two previously unknown manuscript comments.1 The first comment dismisses Marston summarily as a tedious playwright, based on the first three plays in the volume — the comedy Antonio and Mellida, its tragic sequel Antonio’s Revenge, and the tragedy Sophonisba. It states, ‘Mr Iohn Mar- ston. A very dull sencelesse Poett. I have read his 3 first Playes’ (see figure 1). The second comment is much kinder to the playwright; it praises his comedy Parasitaster, or The Fawn for being ‘A good play’ (figure 3). Both manuscript comments constitute rare records of early readers’ response to Marston’s plays and are valuable for several reasons. First, they are evidence for the conflict- ing reactions Marston’s drama provoked in a family generally known for its theatrical enthusiasm. Second, the two comments are not broad or derived like other early readers’ remarks on Marston’s plays, especially those from the first century and a half since the publication of his Works. Instead they are the result of critical readings of concrete plays and are thus important for the rather limited history of Marston’s early reception. Finally, the specific reference to Antonio’s Revenge in the first comment is the only early one so far made upon an actual reading of the play.