John Marston Summary

Aside from his reputation as a playwright, John Marston has for the most part been recognized from his own time to the present as a satirist, a malcontent, and a generally cantankerous individual. His... Read more

In the following excerpt from an essay originally written in 1820, Hazlitt discusses Marston primarily as a satirist, praising the power of his dramas despite their "impatient scorn, " &... Read more

Below, Scott discusses Marston's mastery of dramatic technique, focusing on ways in which his plays fuse intellectual and subconscious response in the reader. In The Empty Space Peter Brooks wr... Read more

Here, Swinburne attempts to defend the merits of Marston's style from his detractors, asserting that, while the dramatist can be both inconsistent and coarse in his choice of language and subje... Read more

Below, Eliot argues that Marston has been underrated as a dramatist, partly as a result of comparisons between his work and that of Shakespeare. Eliot suggests that Sophonisba is Marston's best... Read more

Below, Ornstein describes Marston as a playwright who commercially exploited various philosophical notions without demonstrating an understanding of them. Critics who have no taste for Marston'... Read more