Marston, John | Robert Ornstein (essay date 1960)
Robert Ornstein (essay date 1960)
SOURCE: "John Marston, Beaumont and Fletcher," in The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1960, pp. 151-69.
[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's virtues have no charity for his vices, and in truth it is often difficult to distinguish the two. Like most experiments he revels in the "original" stroke; his most reliable weapon is surprise. His lack of propriety is the breach in the wall of convention through which his wit sallies in pursuit of a novel effect. One never feels that Marston's muse was difficult or crabbed as Webster's is reputed to have been. Though his tragic style is labored, it was probably not labored over. Even in his least successful plays he writes with a genuine theatrical instinct, with a knack...
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