Amateur Reader (Tom)
What do I want to say about John Marston’s The Malcontent (1603, maybe 1604)? It is unusual. Marston is unusual, with a distinct poetic and dramatic sensibility. No one else could have written it. The Duke of Genoa has been tossed out by an usurper, so he infiltrates the court disguised as...
Amateur Reader (Tom)
The plays that have survived from the early London stage are language-crazed. When have so many commercial writers been poets, great poets? When has so much commercial writing been poetry? John Marston is among the purplest of the poet-playwrights, the most baroque. I can imagine readers who...
Amateur Reader (Tom)
John Marston does something with the pair of plays Antonio and Mellida (1599?) and Antonio’s Revenge (1600?) that I do not think I have ever seen before. The first play is a silly, barely coherent romantic comedy, with everything wrapped up in a happy ending. Antonio’s Revenge is a bloody...