treacherously labour to undermine my unfenced reputation, I shall (as long as I have being) love the least of their graces and only pity the greatest of their vices.” A candid and creditable avowal, but, alas, “words is wind and wind is mutable.” In the second edition there follows a briefer address, in which the writer promises to “present a tragedy which shall boldly abide the most curious perusal;” and from a marginal note we learn that the tragedy of Sophonisba, published in 1606, was the work which was so boldly to challenge criticism. It is to be feared that this cherished offspring of Marston’s imagination will not be regarded with affection by many readers. For hideous blood-curdling realism the description of the witch

Erictho and her cave is, I venture to think, without a parallel in literature. Tough as whipcord must have been the nerves of an audience which could listen patiently to the recital of Erictho’s atrocities. If there were any women of delicate health among the audience, a repetition of the mishaps connected with the performance of the Eumenides must surely have been unavoidable. Regarded, however, as a whole, the play is not impressive. Sophonisba is a fearless and magnanimous heroine, but her temper is too masculine; she talks too much and too bluntly, and is too fond of striking an attitude. Syphax, the villain of the play, is so prodigiously brutal as to appear perfectly grotesque; and the hero Massinissa bores us by his trite moral reflections. Marston strove to produce a stately tragedy, and was under the impression that his efforts had been crowned with success; but candid readers will judge the performance to be stiff and crude, wanting in energy and dramatic movement, too rhetorical, “climbing to the height of Seneca his style.” In the prefatory address he has a hit at Sejanus (to which in the previous year he had contributed a copy of eulogistic verses), informing us that “to transcribe authors, quote authorities, and translate Latin prose orations into English blank verse, hath, in this subject, been the least aim of my studies.” But Sejanus has certainly not less of dramatic interest than Sophonisba, and in other respects it is far superior.

In 1607 was published the comedy of What You Will (written, I suspect, shortly after the appearance of Cynthia’s Revels), which is largely indebted for its plot

to Plautus’s Amphitruo. In the Induction, Marston again has his fling at Ben Jonson. Philomusus’ heated denunciation of censorious critics,

“Believe it, Doricus, his spirit
Is higher blooded than to quake and pant
At the report of Scoff’s artillery,” &c.,

was evidently written in derisive mimicry of Jonson’s scornful addresses to the audience; and Doricus’ remonstrance,

“Now out upon’t, I wonder what tight brain
Wrung in this custom to maintain contempt
’Gainst common censure,” &c.,

was unquestionably intended as a stiff rebuke to Jonson’s towering arrogance. But these strokes of personal satire are not confined to the Induction. Quadratus’ scathing ridicule of Lampatho Doria, in the first scene of the second act, was certainly aimed at some adversary of Marston’s; and there can be little doubt that this adversary was Ben Jonson. Lampatho is described in the following terms by his admirer Simplicius Faber:—

“Monsieur Laverdure, do you see that gentleman? He goes but in black satin, as you see, but, by Helicon! he hath a cloth of tissue wit. He breaks a jest;[22] ha, he’ll rail against the court till the gallants—O God! he is very nectar: if you but sip of his love, you were immortal.”

At first Lampatho speaks the language of an affected gallant; it is nothing but “protest” with him. Quadratus is disgusted with him:—

“A fusty cask
Devote to mouldy customs of hoary eld.”

After listening to much abuse, Lampatho turns on his assailant:—

“So Phœbus warm my brain, I’ll rhyme thee dead.
Look for the satire: if all the sour juice
Of a tart brain can souse thy estimate,
I’ll pickle thee.”

The threat only irritates Quadratus the more:—

“Why, you Don Kinsayder!
Thou canker-eaten rusty cur, thou snaffle
To freer spirits!
Think’st thou a libertine, an ungyved breast,
Scorns not the shackles of thy envious clogs?
You will traduce us unto public scorn?”

Curious that Marston should apply his own nom de plume “Kinsayder” to the adversary whom he is bullying! In the Scourge of Villainy he sneered at his own poem Pygmalion, and here he is referring contemptuously to his own achievements in satire. A man who openly ridicules himself blunts the edge of an enemy’s sarcasm.

We have seen (p. xxxiii.) that Crites’ bitter abuse of Anaides and Hedon (i.e., Marston and Dekker), in Cynthia’s Revels, was flung back in Jonson’s face by

Dekker. Marston puts into the mouth of Quadratus a speech, modelled closely on those lines of Crites:—

“Lam. O sir, you are so square, you scorn reproof.”
“Qua. No, sir; should discreet Mastigophorus,
Or the dear spirit acute Canaidus
(That Aretine, that most of me beloved,
Who in the rich esteem I prize his soul,
I term myself); should these once menace me,
Or curb my humour with well-govern’d check,
I should with most industrious regard,
Observe, abstain, and curb my skipping lightness;
But when an arrogant, odd, impudent,
A blushless forehead, only out of sense
Of his own wants, bawls in malignant questing
At others’ means of waving gallantry,—
Pight foutra!”

Who “discreet Mastigophorus” and “acute Canaidus” were it would be useless to conjecture. But it is not to be doubted that Quadratus’ abuse of Lampatho was levelled at Ben Jonson; and that Marston was avenging himself in this way for the insults showered upon him by Jonson. In iv. 1, Quadratus sneers at Lampatho’s verse. Lampatho threatens to be revenged. “How, prithee?” says Quadratus; “in a play? Come, come, be sociable.”