John Marston Critical Essay | Lecture by William Hazlitt

Lecture by William Hazlitt

SOURCE: The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 6, edited by P. P. Howe, J. M. Dent and Sons. Ltd., 1931, pp. 224-30.

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, " "bitter indignation, " and indelicate language.

Marston is a writer of great merit, who rose to tragedy from the ground of comedy, and whose forte was not sympathy, either with the stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn and bitter indignation against the vices and follies of men, which vented itself either in comic irony or in lofty invective. He was properly a satirist. He was not a favourite with his contemporaries, nor they with him. He was first on terms of great intimacy, and afterwards at open war, with Ben Jonson; and he is most unfairly...
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