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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
About a decade after Kyd's Spanish Tragedy had introduced the revenge-play to the English stage, there appeared almost simultaneously two tragedies which presented a somewhat different treatment of revenge—Shakespeare's Hamlet and Marston's Antonio's Revenge. Although neither play departed entirely from the traditions established by Kyd, both contained a profounder philosophy than the earlier plays of their type. Immediately thereafter followed a succession of tragedies of revenge obviously influenced by the new philosophical treatment. A. H. Thorndike in his “Relations of Hamlet to Contemporary Revenge Plays” attributes the revival of interest wholly to Marston; indeed, he maintains that Shakespeare did not “set the fashion from 1599 on, for Marston almost certainly preceded him.” The other scholars who more recently have interested themselves in this problem, Dr. Friedrich Radebrecht and Sir. E. K. Chambers, share Thorndike's opinion. Yet, as a result of evidence discovered in connection with a study of the influence of Hamlet on the dramatic literature of the period, I question giving Marston credit for the renewed interest in the revenge-play.
1 PMLA, xvii (1902), 200–201.
2 “Shakespeares Abhängigkeit von John Marston,” Neue Anglistische Arbeiten (1918), 3.
3 The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford, 1923), iii, 429–430.
4 Henslowe's Diary, ed. by W. W. Greg, Part i, fol. 64v.
5 Ibid., Part ii, pp. 297–298.
6 Regarding this entry Radebrecht, stating that it could not have referred to Histriomastix, a “zusammenarbeit,” confidently asks, “Sollte es nicht A+M [Antonio and Mettida]
sein?“ (op. cit., p. 8). Then he proceeds upon this assumption. Chambers (op. cit., iii, 428), however, writes: ”The interlineated correction ‘mr mastone’ is a forgery, but probably Marston was the poet. It seems clearer to me than it does to Dr. Greg that the £2 was meant to make up a complete sum of £2 10s for the King of Scots and that Marston was the ‘other Jentellman’ who collaborated with Chettle, Dekker, and Jonson on that lost play.“
7 I have heard that… you Feliche, that are but slightly drawen in this Comedie, should receive more exact accomplishment in a second Part: which, if this obtaine gratious acceptance, meanes to try his fortune.—The Plays of John Marston, ed. by H. Harvey Wood London, 1934), i, 8–9.
8 Piero. One, two. Lord, in two houres what a toplesse mount
Of unpeer'd mischiefe, have these hands cast up.
(Ibid., i, 71)
Luceo. For these eyes beheld
The Dukes united; yon faint glimmering light
Nere peeped through the crannies of the east,
Since I beheld them drinke a sound carouse ….
Maria. What age is morning of?
Luceo. I thinke 'bout five. (Ibid., i, 74–75)
9 A.R., i, 73: cf. Hamlet, ed. by J. Q. Adams (Boston and New York, 1929), v. ii. 287.
10 A.R., i, 115: cf. Hamlet, v. ii. 311–312.
11 Cf. Hamlet, iii. viii. 57.
12 Cf. Hamlet, i. ii. 147–151.
13 Cf. Hamlet, i. v. 25 ff.
14 Cf. Hamlet, i. v. 95–97.
15 See J. Q. Adams, op. cit., pp. 228–229.
16 A.R., i, 102: cf. Hamlet, iii. ii. 400–402; iii. 73 ff.
17 Cf. Hamlet, iii. iv. 111–114.
18 Cf. Hamlet, iv. iii. 162 ff.
19 Hamlet (Cambridge, Eng., 1934), p. xxi.
20 William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, (Oxford, 1930), ii, 197. See also G. C. Moore Smith, Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia (1913), p. x ff.
21 Op. cit., p. 347.
22 Ibid., p. 347.
23 Op. cit., p. 176.
24 Ibid., p. 130.—Dr. Friedrich Radebrecht (op. cit., p. 8), Sir E. K. Chambers (Eliz. Stage, iii, 429–430) and other scholars who agree with Dr. Thorndike use this same incident. Strangely enough, after citing the Painter Scene as evidence for the composition of the play in 1599, Radebrecht later (pp. 37–38) tries to prove that the scene is a parody on Jonson's Painter Scene in his additions to the Spanish Tragedy and therefore must have been added after the entry of Antonio and Mellida in the Stationers' Registers in 1601.
25 Op. cit., i, xv-xvi.
26 Ibid., i, xvi.
27 Yet if, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, we assume that Marston had passed his sixteenth birthday when he matriculated at Oxford, we must then conclude that he wrote Antonio and Mellida before 1599 (according to the calendar then in vogue) became 1600, that is, between January 1 and March 24. But in the Prologue to Antonio's Revenge he implies that he had written the First Part in the summer:
The rawish danke of clumzie winter ramps
The fluent summers vaine . . .
O now, me thinks, a sullen tragick Sceane
Would suite the time, with pleasing congruence.
Thus, no matter how we interpret the inscriptions, we cannot reconcile them either with the facts known about Marston's life or with his writings.
28 See note 2 above.
29 Jonson's Poetaster and Dekker's Satiromastix (Boston, Mass., and London, 1913), p. lxii.
30 The Works of Ben Jonson, ed. by William Gifford (London, 1843), v, ii, p. 94.
31 See also the Cambridge History of English Literature, vi, 47.
32 The italics are mine.
33 See J. Q. Adams, A Life of William Shakespeare, p. 322; also Chambers, Eliz. Stage, iii, 363–364.
34 Chambers, op. cit., iii, 429–430. See also note 27 above.
35 Op. cit., i, xxii.
36 Eliz. Stage, iii, 366. See also Wood, op. cit., i, xxiv; R. A. Small, The Stage Quarrel (1899), pp. 38–42, 107–108, note.
37 Poetaster, Prologue, 11. 14–17.