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THE

Ancient

BRITISH DRAMA.

VOLUME SECOND.

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2273

42

44-141

THE

ANCIENT BRITISH DRAMA.

THE

O MALCONTENT.

BY

JOHN MARSTON.

JOHN MARSTON is supposed to have been of a family settled at Aftcot, in the county of Salop. Wood imagines him to have been the same John Marston who was a student of Corpus Christi Col lege in Oxford, and was admitted B. A. February 20, 1592. He was a poet who acquired, and very deservedly, a considerable reputation, and is3 said to have died in the former part of King Charles the First's time, aged about sixty years. He was the author of, 1. "The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image, and Certain Satires, 1598."

2. The Scourge of Villanie. Three Bookes of Satires, 1599.

Both these works were reprinted in 1764. And Mr Warton, in his Observations on Spenser's Fairy Queen, Vol. I. p. 59., says of these Satires, that they "contain many well drawn characters, and several good strokes of satirical genius; but are not, upon the whole, so finished and classical as Bishop Hall's, the first part of which were published about a year before these."

Marston sometimes assumed the name of Kinsayder; but why he did so, and from whence he adopted it, do no where appear. Under this fictitious surname, he is satirized in The Return of Parnassus, A. 1. S. 2.

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Kinsayder, lifting up your leg, and pissing against the World? put up, man,

"Methinks he is a ruffian in his style,
Withouten bands, or garters' ornament:
He quaffs a cup of Frenchman's helicon;
Then roister doister, in his oily terms,

Cuts, thrusts, and foins, at whomsoe'er he meets,
And strows about Ram-Alley meditations.

VOL. II.

'Oldys' MSS. Notes on Langbaine.

2 Athenæ Oxonienses, Vol. I. p. 332.
3 Oldys.

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