By my household gods, if I come to the acting of it, I'll
add one tragic part more than is yet expected to it.... What?
shall I have my son a stager now? an enghle for players?... Publius,
I will set thee on the funeral pile first!'
All this harmonises with the few facts we know of Marston's
career, who is said to have been the son of a counsellor of the
Middle Temple, who was at Corpus Christi College at Oxford,
and who was made a _baccalaureus_ there on February 23, 1592. In
comparison with Crispinus and Demetrius, Ovid is but mildly
chaffed; and this, again, is in accord with the relations which soon
after arose, in a very friendly manner, between Jonson and Marston. It
is scarcely to be thought that, if Marston had been derided as
Crispinus, he would already have composed, as early as 1603, his
eulogistic poem on Jonson's _Sejanus_, and dedicated to him in
1604, in such hearty words, his own _Malcontent_.
From some pointed words in the libel composed by Crispinus
against Horace, Gifford concludes that the former must be Marston,
because we meet with these pointed words in some satires and
dramas of Marston. We, on our part, go, in these controversial
plays, by the main and most prominent characteristics; and these
show that Crispinus is Shakspere, and Ovid Marston.
The latter even once says (_Scourge of Villanie_, sat.
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