Attributing John Marston’s Marginal Plays

John Marston (c. 1576–1634) was a dramatist of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, known for his satirical wit and literary feuds with Ben Jonson. His dramatic corpus consists of nine plays of uncontested authorship. This article investigates four additional plays of uncertain authorship which ha...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Darren Freebury-Jones, Marina Tarlinskaja, Marcus Dahl
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University of Tartu Press 2018-08-01
Series:Studia Metrica et Poetica
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/smp/article/view/14195
Description
Summary:John Marston (c. 1576–1634) was a dramatist of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, known for his satirical wit and literary feuds with Ben Jonson. His dramatic corpus consists of nine plays of uncontested authorship. This article investigates four additional plays of uncertain authorship which have been associated with Marston: Lust’s Dominion; Histriomastix; The Family of Love; and The Insatiate Countess. 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.
ISSN:2346-6901
2346-691X