Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 3).pdf/446

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pseudonym of W. Kinsayder. Small, 64, has refuted the attempts to find in them attacks on Jonson, and H. C. Hart (9 N. Q. xi. 282, 342) has made it plausible that by 'Torquatus' was meant, not Jonson, but Gabriel Harvey. This view is now accepted by Penniman (Poetaster, xxiii). On 28 Sept. 1599 Henslowe paid £2, on behalf of the Admiral's, for 'M^r Maxton the new poete'. The interlineated correction 'M^r Mastone' is a forgery (Greg, Henslowe, i. xlii; ii. 206), but probably Marston was the poet. The title of the play was left blank, and there was no further payment. It seems clearer to me than it does to Dr. Greg that the £2 was meant to make up a complete sum of £6 10s. for The King of Scots, and that Marston was the 'other Jentellman' who collaborated with Chettle, Dekker, and Jonson on that lost play. The setting up of the Paul's boys in 1599 saved Marston from Henslowe. For them he successively revised the anonymous Histriomastix (q.v.), wrote the two parts of Antonio and Mellida and Jack Drum's Entertainment, helped Dekker with Satiromastix, and finally wrote What You Will. This probably accounts for all his dramatic work during Elizabeth's reign. In the course of it he came into conflict with Jonson, who told Drummond in 1619 (according to the revision of the text of Laing, 20, suggested by Penniman, War, 40, and Small, 3) that 'He had many quarrells with Marston, beat him, and took his pistol from him, wrote his Poetaster on him; the beginning of them were, that Marston represented him in the stage'. Marston's representation of Jonson as Chrysoganus in Histriomastix was complimentary, that as Brabant senior in Jack Drum's Entertainment offensive; and it was doubtless the latter that stirred Jonson to retaliate on Marston, perhaps as Hedon in Cynthia's Revels, certainly as Crispinus in The Poetaster. Marston's final blow was with Lampatho Doria in What You Will. When the theatres reopened in 1604 Marston seems to have left the Paul's boys and taken a share in the syndicate formed to exploit the Queen's Revels, for whom the rest of his plays were written. He was now on friendly terms with Jonson, to whom he dedicated his Malcontent and for whose Sejanus he wrote congratulatory verses. Possibly further friction arose over the unfortunate collaboration of Jonson, Marston, and Chapman in Eastward Ho!, for the chief indiscretion in which Marston seems to have been responsible, and may have stimulated a sarcasm on Jonson in the Epistle to Sophonisba. In 1608 Marston's career as a dramatist abruptly terminated. An abstract of the Privy Council Register has the brief note on 8 June, 'John Marston committed to Newgate' (F. P. Wilson from Addl. MS. 11402, f. 141, in M. L. R. ix. 99). I conjecture that he was the author of the Blackfriars play (cf. ch. xii, s.v. Chapel) which hit at James's explorations after Scottish silver. He disappeared, selling his interest in the Blackfriars company, then or in 1605, to Robert Keysar, and leaving The Insatiate Countess unfinished. He had taken orders by 10 Oct. 1616 when he obtained the living of Christchurch, Hampshire. This he resigned on 13 Sept. 1631. In 1633 he was distant from London, but died on 25 June 1634 in Aldermanbury parish. He had married Mary, probably the daughter of William Wilkes, one of James's