ogy of our 'poetaster.' He concludes the paragraph: "These, again, had a son, who is thus described: "Johannes Marston de Coventry, in co. Warr., et de Templo iurisconsultus in ecclesiae interiore Templi sepultus." He married Maria or Mary, daughter of Andrew Guarsi or GuersieItalian-by Elizabeth Gray, daughter of Gray, Mer chant, London. These last were the father and mother of our John Marston; and these other children are named along with him: (a) Thomas, whose wife was a Lucy of Charlecote; (b) Alice; (c) Elizabeth; (d) Margaret.' It is probable that Marston was notoriously vain of his lineage, else the point of making him refer so often to it would have been lost upon the audience. 'He pens high, loftie, in a new stalking straine,' says Tucca of his poetaster again (3. 4. 173-4). On Marston's thought and style, his editor, Bullen (Works 1. xxvi-xxvii) remarks: 'He could conceive a fine situation, and he had at his command abundance of striking imagery. But we are never sure of him: from tragic solemnity he passes to noisy rhodomontade; at one moment he gives us a passage Aeschylean in its subtle picturesqueness, at another he feebly reproduces the flaccid verbosity of Seneca's tragedies.' This can be better appreciated after a comparison of the speeches of Andrugio, 1 Antonio and Mellida 4. 1, with Antonio's description of his shipwreck, I. I. 'I'le write nothing in it but innocence,' avers Crispinus (4. 7. 32-3), 'because I may fweare I am innocent.' It was evidently known that Dekker was writing the attacking play (Satiromastix) alone, with Marston as no more than counsellor or retoucher. Dekker's rapidity of production was doubtless the qualification influencing Jonson's opponents in their choice, but the writer's bitterness of invective must have resulted from the provocation given him by the Anaides of Cynthia's Revels, produced in the preceding year. 'Satiromastix shows no trace of Marston's style,' writes Small (Stage-Quarrel 122), 'and was published in the name of Dekker alone. That Marston was at Dekker's elbow during the composition, however, is indicated by the Marstonian vigour and dash of the Horace-plot, by the close correspondence of the characters of Horace and Asinius to those of Lampatho and Faber in What You Will, by Tucca's words "I and my Poetasters will untruss him again," and by Jonson's expressions about "the Untrussers" in the Apologetical Dialogue at the end of the Poetaster.' Commenting on the verses assigned to Crispinus in Poetaster 5. 3, Gifford censures Marston's literary licentiousness: 'But, indeed, Marston deserved some reprehension. He boasts, and his boasts have been repeated by the commentators who generally take all upon trust, that he is "free from licentiousness of language." The fact is not so; he is extremely gross and impure. This is what Jonson means, when he makes him "boldly nominate a spade a spade:" and this too is the just object of the attack upon him, in the old play of the Return from Parnassus [itself far from immaculate, be it said]: "Tut! what cares he for modest, close-mouthed terms, Give him plain naked words, stripped of their shirts, It is but fair to remark that this grossness is characteristic of Marston in Pygmalion, the Satires, and the Scourge of Villainie, all early works, but not in his dramas. And, by the way, he gave up even play-writing about 1607, and subsequently entered the Church. Gifford next describes Marston's style, concluding thus: 'It is but fair to add, that whatever Marston might think of the present castigation, he had the good sense to profit by it, since his latter works exhibit but few of the terms here ridiculed.' The credit for working a reformation in Marston's diction is here given too exclusively to Poetaster. 'In 1607,' writes Bullen (Marston's Works 1. xlv-xlvi) 'was published the comedy of What You Will (written, I suspect, shortly after the appearance of Cynthia's Revels), which is largely indebted for its plot to Plautus's Amphitruo.' The expression important for us is that in parenthesis. For of the words which Crispinus vomits in Poetaster, What You Will contains only conscious (cf. I. I. 114), which would indicate that Marston had chastened his style after the attack upon him as Hedon in Cynthia's Revels. Fleay (Chr. 2. 76) dates What You Will in '1601, after Jonson's Poetaster,' but without demonstration; Small (StageQuarrel 101 ff.) concludes from a study of its style and allusions that this play must have been produced in 1601 in reply to Cynthia's Revels and before the appearance of Poetaster. In conclusion, there cannot be the slightest doubt that Rufus Laberius Crispinus represents John Marston. Cytheris. Cytheris was a celebrated Roman courtesan, probably Volumnia Cytheris, a freedwoman and mistress of Volumnius Eutrapelus. Later she became the mistress of Marcus Antonius, and then of Gallus. Gallus writes of her as Lycoris, and by this name Virgil also refers to her in connection with Gallus in the tenth eclogue. Cicero writes of her to Paetus (Fam. 9. 26), as being present with V. Eutrapelus at a dinner party, in B. C. 46, probably in August. In his correspondence with Atticus (Att. 10. 10) May 3, B. C. 49, he had remarked that Antony was carrying Cytheris about with him in an open sedan, as if she were a second wife. Pliny (Hist. Nat. 8. ch. 21) speaks of Antony's having caused himself to be drawn in a chariot by lions, cum mima Cytheride. It seems probable that these references are all to the Cytheris who figures in our play as the mistress of Gallus. Demetrius Fannius. Demetrius and Fannius are objects of Horace's satire; Jonson has combined the two names in order to make one sufficiently opprobrious for his former collaborator and present enemy, Thomas Dekker. In Sat. I. 10. 87-88, Horace mentions ineptus Fannius conviva Tigelli. Cf. Sat. 1. 10. 78-80, 90-1; 1. 4. 21. Cicero writes (Fam. II. 1): 'That strange fellow Demetrius was always, I know, the very reverse of his namesake [a celebrated orator, fl. 300 B. C.], of Phaleris; but I find he is now grown more insufferable than ever, and is degenerated into an arrant Bilienus.' [Bilienus is unknown.] Whether Horace and Cicero had in mind the same original is immaterial, the point for us being that Demetrius as he figured in classical literature was plainly enough an ass to satisfy Jonson's requirements in Poetaster. The Demetrius of Poetaster is a malicious rascal, with no claim to poetic gifts, scholarship, or social rank. He is sadly in need of a new suit (3. 4. 337, 361-3; 4. 3. 130-1); he is not an original dramatist so much as a mere 'playdresser,' one who makes over the works of others (3. 4. 339); he is impudent and spiteful by nature (3. 4. 353-8); he has been hired by Histrio's company (not, be it observed, by Crispinus) to abuse Horace in a play (3. 4. 339–342); he is indicted as 'play-dresser and plagiary' (5. 3. 226-7); he does not himself understand the classical authors from whom he accuses Horace of stealing (5. 3. 321-3); he maligns Horace (5. 3. 231-240), and is condemned therefore to wear a jester's coat and cap (5. 3. 598-9); he shares with Crispinus the name of 'untrusser' or 'whipper of the age' (5. 3. 627-8). Recent critics all agree with Gifford in his identification of Demetrius with Dekker; as has been shown above (pp. xliii-xliv), Dekker himself in Satiromastix (pp. 195-9) is at once our earliest and our final authority upon this point. But the further identification of Demetrius-Dekker with Anaides of Cynthia's Revels and Carlo Buffone of Every Man Out has been attempted. Fleay says (Chr. 1. 363–9): 'The description of Demetrius as a rank slanderer, &c., is conclusive as to his identity with Buffone and Anaides.' And again (Chr. 1. 369): 'Finally, note that Demetrius as much as Crispinus affected the title of Untrusser, neglect of which fact has lead to the common mistake [made by Fleay, Chr. 1. 97] in making Marston Carlo Buffone.' His last remark is in allusion to Every Man Out 2. 1, where Puntarvolo calls Carlo Buffone 'thou Grand Scourge, or Second Untruss of the time.' This was formerly thought to identify Carlo with Marston, whose Scourge of Villainy had appeared in September 1598. Dissent from the identification of Dekker with Anaides and Buffone is expressed by J. H. Penniman, who asserts (War of the Theatres 46 note; cf. also 113-4) that Jonson's first attack on Dekker was that made in Poetaster after it had become known that Dekker was writing Satiromastix. Of the characterization of Hedon and Anaides in Cynthia's Revels 3. 2, he says confidently (ibid. 80): 'Dekker quotes these lines in Satiromastix as if they referred to Crispinus (Marston) and Demetrius (Dekker). As no attack on Dekker had been made in Cynthia's Revels, he appropriated to himself lines which referred to another of Jonson's enemies.' Penniman identifies Anaides with Marston (46 note), and Hedon with the poet Daniel (81). But the plain meaning of the passage in Satiromastix (Dekker's Dram. Works 1. 195) is that Hedon = Crispinus Marston, and that Anaides Demetrius = Dekker, and it would take a good deal of 'proof' such as Penniman adduces to convince us that Dekker was not acute enough to discover and state the facts in this instance. The whole matter has been completely threshed out by Small in his Stage-Quarrel, and there can no longer be any doubt in a candid mind that Dekker was right in this identification. Only a brief discussion, therefore, is necessary here. It is quite true, as Penniman says, that in August and September of 1599 Jonson was writing plays with Dekker: note the payments by Henslowe (Diary 155-6) to Jonson, Dekker, and others for the Page of Plymouth, and Robert the Second, King of Scots' Tragedy. But Penniman's further assertion that Jonson first attacked Dekker in Poetaster (written in the summer of 1601), and then only |