THE WORKS OF JOHN MARSTON.*

THE Elizabethan playwright and satirist who not unreasonably, and apparently with less than his wonted insincerity, invoked "hungry oblivion" to devour his works and name, has in our day been resuscitated in a manner which seems to mock his invocation, though it undoubtedly does credit to the zeal and enterprise of his latest editor and publisher. His complete works, in three handsome and tolerably thick volumes, are the most recent addition to the series of " Old English Dramatists " now being published by Mr. Nimmo. It would not be easy to speak too highly of the beauty of the type and excellence of the paper of these volumes, or of the careful and conscientious manner in which the works of Marston have been edited by Mr. Millen. Poets far greater than Marston have had no such honour accorded to them. To the present writer, who has, from a sense of duty, plodded painfully through the whole of the plays and poems, it seems singular that they should have been thought worthy of being reprinted in any form at alL Marston was certainly no favourite with his contem- poraries, and none of his plays, as wholes, have been accepted by modern students as masterpieces of our old drama, either in conception or in execution. Even Mr. Millen, who in his introductory notice of the poet has left unpraised nothing of real value in the latter's writings, does not appear to have been much attracted towards them. The best work of Marston might be compressed into a volume of much smaller dimensions than any of the three before us, and even if judged by his best, rather than by the average of his achievements, he could scarcely be said to be entitled to take a very high rank among his fellow- playwrights, In his highest verse we find no subtle melody or true rhythmical movement, hardly any grace, tenderness, or pathos, and no spontaneous outbursts of passion stirring the soul to its very depths. The three lines,— "Lies not my son tombed in the swelling main ? "

" Tags at his oar against the stubborn wave," In the dull, leaden hand of snoring sleep,"—

are as resonant as any that Marston has written, and in the lament of his Antonio,—

" Alas, Feliobe, I have ne'er a friend ; No country, father, brother, kinsman, left To weep my fate, or sigh my funeral I roll but up and down, and fill a seat In the dark cave of dusky misery,"— there is more of pathos than we shall find elsewhere in his writings. Yet no reader will, we think, contend that the above lines have not been greatly surpassed in melody, pathos, and felicity of expression by Marlowe, Beaumont, Webster, Tourneur, and Ford. Marston in one respect, however, if in no other, is dis- tingnished above all his fellows,—in his unparalleled foulness of language. Though none of his fellow-dramatists or immediate pre- decessors and followers were troubled with any fastidious shrinking from the use of strong or coarse language, Marston in this par- ticular far outstrips them all, and their moat indecent scenes seem almost delicate and refined when compared with his. He is the most scurrilous of buffoons, for, in spite of Hazlitt's dictum that he ie pre-eminently a satirist, his love of vulgar raillery, his too manifest delight in conjuring up and brooding over filthy images, and his constant lack of dignity, self-restraint, moral earnest- ness, and passionate indignation against the follies and vices he ridicules, rank him rather with buffoons than with true satirists. A comparison has been sometimes instituted or suggested between him and Toarneur ; but two writers more diverse in their essential qualities it would hardly be possible to imagine. They both, indeed, lacked geniality and true humour, and both inveighed in no measured terms against the excesses of the period ; but here all likeness ends. Tourneur is one of the moat, and Marston one of the least, intense of writers ; the former is always terribly in earnest, the latter ie hardly ever so. Tournear, too, is a great master of poetic style, verbal melody, and pre- cision of utterance, and these are not the distinguishing characteristics of Marston's verse. In no written utterance of Marston do we find the infinite weariness of heart, grief, wrath, and sullen scorn which are conveyed not merely in the words but in the very cadence—so lingering, languid, and mournful—of such lines as the following in The Revenger's Tragedy:-

.

"Banquets, ease, and laughter,

Can make great men as greatness goes by clay ; But wise men little are more great than they."

• The Woks of John Marston. Edited by A. H. Balton, B.A. 3 vols. London J. O. Nimmo. 1887. Marston succeeds only in producing in the minds of his readers disgust and loathing at the language he employs in satirising the licentiousness of his time,—not at the licentiousness itself; but the very opposite is the effect produced by the burning words of Tourneur. In spite of his habitual coarseness, however, there is a certain manliness of tone in all Marston's writings, and this manliness of his makes him ashamed at times of giving way to his own worst impulses, and pandering to the vulgar taste for ribaldry and lubricity of suggestion. Thus, in the prologue to The Fawn, which is, on the whole, the most readable and entertaining of all his plays, be alleges that the " modest pleasure " of his auditors is his " scope," and promises that there shall be no "rank bawdry " in his comedy, adding the vaunt that- " The Venus of this scene doth loathe to wear

So vile, so common, so immodest clothings."

His manly resolution, however—if, indeed, it was made before the composition of his play, which seems doubtful—soon yields to his natural and apparently uncontrollable propensity to filth; and so early as in the second act, he so far fails to fulfil the promise made in the prologue as to furnish us with scenes which, for indelicacy of idea and grossness of language, are not easily matched in the plays of his contemporaries. His diction— except in his prose passages, which are often masterly in expression—is generally rugged and harsh, and not unfre- quently quaint and pedantic ; nor do we find any delicate play of fancy, or much richness of imagination or subtle sug- gestiveness of phrase or epithet, in his dramas or poems. Such happy lines as the following " Is not you gleam the shuddering morn that flakes

With silver tincture the east verge of heaven ?"—

in their infrequency may fitly be compared to angels' visits. His plays lack dramatic life and movement, the plots are mostly intricate, perplexing, and uninteresting, and there is no growth or development in his characters, who, indeed axe little better than puppets. His females are remarkable for nothing so much as their habitual indelicacy of sentiment and masculine plain- ness of speech ; and though from this censure the Beatrice of The Dutch Courtesan must be excepted for the unusual tender- ness with which, as Mr. Bullen truly observes, she has been delineated by Marston, there is little of marked individuality in her character. The present writer cannot share Mr. Bullen's admiration for the character of the courtesan herself, than whom, he says, "there are few figures more striking in the Elizabethan drama." Her last and thirst for blood and ven- geance are, indeed, unappeasable ; but there seems but little of true art or talent in the construction of the barbarous jargon in which she is made to express her ferocity of feeling or her simulated tenderness. Of women in general, Marston seems to have entertained the opinion expressed in his Insatiate Countess

" Women are made

Of blood, without souls."

And one of his strongest passages of invective—that in which, perhaps, he more nearly touches Juvenal than he does elsewhere —is Mendoza'e diatribe in prose against the whole sex in the second scene of the first act of that certainly powerful but repulsive and tedious play, The Malcontent.

The highest note of tragedy ever struck by Marston is undoubtedly the speech of Andrugio in Scene 1, Act 4, of Antonio and Mellida. As it is given in Lamb's Specimens, it is unnecessary to quote it here ; and it would certainly be presumptuous to add to or detract from the praises so liberally bestowed upon it by other writers. Still, noble and dignified as are the thoughts expressed in this speech, felicitous and richly economical as it is in its choice of imagery, con- densed, massive, stately, and even sonorous as is its blank verse, it must strike most readers as coming rather from the head than from the heart, and as being more marked by rhetorical than poetical brilliancy. Admiration and sympathy are felt on reading it ; but we are certainly not carried away by a torrent of passion and indignation, as we are in the great speeches of the outcast Lear, with which Lamb has not hesitated to compare the utterances of Andrugio in the third and fourth acts of Marston's play. Andrugio 's questionings of Earth and Nature in the third act have nearly as much rhetorical force, with the same lack of passionate overflow of utterance, as his speech in the fourth act to which we have referred. The spirit of doubt, dissatisfaction, and even rebellion against things as they are, which pervades them, reminds one of certain passages in the writings of pessimistic poets of our own day,

" Far better 'Lis

To bless the sun than reason why it shines; Yet He thou talk'st of is above the sun,"—

as ministers of the Gospel than Marston, who, we yet know, entered the Church after he had abandoned the writing of plays.

The comedy of Eastward Ho ! which Marston wrote in con- junction with Jenson and Chapman, each of whom had pro- bably a larger share in its composition than himself, is one of the most delightful and genial masterpieces of the Elizabethan stage; it presents an admirable and almost unique picture of old London citizen-life, and is full of fun and animation. Its prose may be taken as a fair representation of the colloquial language of the day, and has an ease, grace, vivacity, and per- spicuity with which English prose has not generally been credited before the time of Cowley and Dryden; it is entirely free from the pedantry and harsh Latinisma which so often disfiinre the prose of such masters as Bacon and Milton. Such blemishes as the comedy has, it probably owes to Marston chiefly ; it is certainly not difficult to trace his hand in such scenes as the first of the second and fourth acts, in which the speeches of Gertrude and Quicksilver are very characteristic.

We have not left ourselves much room to speak of Marston's satirical poems, but it is perhaps enough to say of them that they rank, in respect of style and substance, with the very worst satires in the language. There is a certain rude vigour, indeed, everywhere displayed ; but the broken lines, doggerel rhymes, and crudities of expression by which the satires are defaced, jar painfully on the sensitive ear, and make it impossible for them to be read with pleasure or satisfaction.

We regret to have to conclude with the expression of our conviction that Marston's works were not worthy of being republished. It is a pity that Mr. Bullen's pains have not been expended on some worthier dramatist or poet. and seems to justify the imputation of infidelity which has sometimes been cast upon Marston. We certainly find much less of religious feeling in his works than we do in those of Marlowe, who has often been regarded as an absolute atheist; and we could far better imagine Webster, who wrote:—

" Heaven-gates are not so widely arch'd As princes' palaces; they that enter there Must go upon their knees,"—

or Ford, who said :—