Ben Jonson, John Marston and Early Modern Drama: Satire and the Audience [Hardcover]

This book examines the influence of John Marston, typically seen as a minor figure among early modern dramatists, on his colleague Ben Jonson. While Marston is usually famed more for his very public rivalry with Jonson than for the quality of his plays, this book argues that such a view of Marston seriously underestimates his importance to the theatre of his time. In it, the author contends that Marston's plays represent an experiment in a new kind of satiric drama, with origins in the humanist tradition of serio ludere. His worksdeliberately unpredictable, inconsistent and metatheatricalsubvert theatrical conventions and provide confusingly multiple perspectives on the action, forcing their spectators to engage actively with the drama and the moral dilemmas that it presents. The book argues that Marston's work thus anticipates and perhaps influenced the mid-period work of Ben Jonson, in plays such as Sejanus, Volpone and The Alchemist.

This book examines the influence of John Marston, typically seen as a minor figure among early modern dramatists, on his colleague and rival Ben Jonson. It argues that Marston's plays represent an experiment in a new kind of satiric drama and argues for their wider significance to the theatre of the time.

Acknowledgements
A Note on Editions
Introduction: Why does Marston Matter?
Prologue: The Problem of the Audience
1. The Playwrights and the Audience
2. Dramatic Satire and the Crisis of Authority
3. John Marston: Provoking the Audience
4. Jonson and Marston: 'I write just in thy vein, I'
Conclusion
Appendix: The Boy Actors: The Question of Intent
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Yearlings book is a much-welcome contribution to Marstonian scholarship, and a valuable addition to a comparatively thin corpus of monographic studies of his work. & Yearling has produced a summa Marstoniana thlƒ1