"Music, tobacco, sack, and sleep, On us the end of time is come, The Sisters ravel out our twine, Let glory blazon others' deed, My blood than breath craves better meed. Let honour others' hope abuse, His next play, The Dutch Courtezan, does not possess much excellence, or excite much interest. It was, however, revived by Mrs. Behn, under the title of the Match in Newgate. The only part we can extract is as follows, and is in the ardent, earnest style of Marston. "Still? my vow is up above me, and like time No beauty shall untwine our arms, no face And would to God only to me you might Your matchless graces, so might I safer seem; Shall cast a slumber on my list'ning sense, Shall make me wish to live, and not fear death, The Parasitaster, or The Fawne, is an amusing and pleasant comedy. The author declaims in his peculiar vein against the flatteries of the little and the follies of the great.-Hercules, the disguised Duke of Ferrara, makes the following soliloquy on flattery. Her. I never knew, till now, how old I was; you; Dear sleep and lust, I thank Is grateful to just states. Most spotless kingdom, (That blow corruption on the sweetest virtues,) I will revenge us all upon you all; With the same stratagem we still are caught, Till in their own lov'd race they fall most lame, The Malecontent appears, from the title, to have been originally written by Webster, and afterwards augmented by Marston. The latter, however, dedicated it to Ben Jonson, and in the preface treats it as his own. The hand of Marston is manifest in some of the scenes, and the character of the Malecontent, or rather his assumed character, is precisely in Marston's manner. It is, upon the whole, a tolerably good comedy. The comedy of Eastward Hoe, in which he joined Chapman and Jonson, will be discussed in our article on Chapman's joint Plays. We have selected a few of the more delicate and retired beauties of Marston's dramas, to serve as a desert to the more substantial matters which have preceded. Of content. **" Ọ, calm-hush'd, rich content! Is there a being blessedness without thee? How soft thou down'st the couch where thou dost rest! Of death. "He's a good fellow, and keeps open house: Of the body after death. * "As having clasp'd a rose Within my palm, the rose being ta'en away, And, again; spoken by a father of his murdered son. Those now lawn pillows, on whose tender softness, From out so fair an inn: look! look! they seem to stir, And breathe defiance to black obloquy." The break of day. *** “See, the dapple grey coursers of the morn Beat up the light with their bright silver hoops, And chase it through the sky." The fool's beatitude. "Even in that, note a fool's beatitude: He is not capable of passion, Wanting the power of distinction, He bears an unturn'd sail with every wind: Blow east, blow west, he steers his course alike. Creating me an honest senseless dolt, A good poor fool, I should want sense to feel I should be dead of sense, to view defame Blur my bright love; I could not thus run mad, Stagger'd, stark fell'd with bruising stroke of chance." The fancy is described to be. "A function, Even of the bright immortal part of man. It is the common pass, the sacred door Unto the privy chamber of the soul, That barr'd, nought passeth past the baser court Of outward sense; by it, th' inamorate Most lively thinks he sees the absent beauties Of his lov'd mistress. By it we shape a new creation, Of things as yet unborn, by it we feed Our ravenous memory, our intention feast." The genius of Marston was more suited to tragedy, with which he commenced his dramatic career, than to comedy, to which he afterwards applied himself. There is a declamatory boldness of tone-a rugged strait forward vehemence of manner-a clearness and precision of thought, which, combined with some (though not a very considerable) degree of imagination, enabled him to depict the more masculine passions with no little success. In the portraiture of love, that passion which manifests itself in such an infinite variety of forms, his mind led him to select the coarsest kind, which he described with a corresponding coarseness of expression. In the delineation of its lighter graces, its more delicate indications, and its more retired sufferings, he is much less successful. The scene, for instance, between Antonio and Mellida, in the prison of the latter, appears to us to be a failure, although, at the same time, it contains two or three touches of true feeling. The character of Sophonisba is somewhat attractive-there is an innocent fearlessness and boldness in the avowal of her feelings towards Massinissa, though a want of delicacy in the expression; and a devoted grandeur of soul in the sacrifice of her life to preserve the honour of her husband; which must find favour with the reader. The execution of the portrait is, however, vastly inferior to the conception of it. The tender and confiding passion of Belinda for Freewill, in the Dutch Courtezan, in spite of appearances being against him, is a beautiful moral picture amidst grossness and deformity. The expedient of Dulcimel, in the Parasitaster, not only to deceive the doting old coxcomb her father, but to make him the unwitting messenger of her wishes, and the contriver of their gratification, is pleasantly managed. The same sort of contrivance is resorted to in Moliere's L'Ecole des Femmes. The greater part of Marston's male characters, in his comedies, are of the description to which we have before alluded. There is a want of invention in his situations, and of variety in his humour. His mind was too stubborn and unbending to accommodate itself to the various follies of his time, and to assume their shape and bearing. With strong notions of moral rectitude, he had not the slightest toleration for deviations from them, and no other resource for correcting or reforming them than to apply his satirical lash, and then he was happy-for in this his power laid, and he felt that it did. |