first to require or
to deserve, the moral and intellectual impression of the whole will not
improbably be far more favorable than one resulting from a cursory
survey or derived from a casual selection of excerpts. They bring no
manner of support to a monstrous and preposterous imputation which has
been cast upon their author; the charge of having been concerned in a
miserably malignant and stupid attempt at satire under the form of a
formless and worthless drama called "Histriomastix";[1] though his
partnership in another anonymous play--a semi-romantic semi-satirical
comedy called "Jack Drum's Entertainment"--is very much more plausibly
supportable by comparison of special phrases as well as of general
style with sundry mannerisms as well as with the habitual turn of speech
in Marston's acknowledged comedies. There is a certain incomposite and
indigestive vigor in the language of this play which makes the
attribution of a principal share in its authorship neither utterly
discreditable to Marston nor absolutely improbable in itself; and the
satire aimed at Ben Jonson, if not especially relevant to the main
action, is at all events less incongruous and preposterous in its
relation to the rest of the work than the satirical or controversial
part of Dekker's "Satiromastix." But on the whole, if this play be
Marston's, it seems to me the rudest and the poorest he has left us,
except perhaps the comedy of "What you Will," in which several excellent
and suggestive situations are made less of than they should have been,
and a good deal of promising comic invention is wasted for want of a
little more care and a little more conscience in cultivation of material
and composition of parts. The satirical references to Jonson are more
pointed and effective in this comedy than in either of the two plays
last mentioned; but its best claim to remembrance is to be sought in the
admirable soliloquy which relates the seven years' experience of the
student and his spaniel. Marston is too often heaviest when he would
and should be lightest--owing apparently to a certain infusion of
contempt for light comedy as something rather beneath him, not wholly
worthy of his austere and ambitious capacity. The parliament of pages in
this play is a diverting interlude of farce, though a mere irrelevance
and impediment to the action; but the boys are less amusing than their
compeers in the anonymous comedy of "Sir Giles Goosecap," first
published in the y