S. R. 1613, April 19. Transfer from Edgar to John Hodgettes (Arber, iii. 521).
The mention of Blackfriars without the name of a company points to a performance after Anne’s patronage had been withdrawn from the Revels boys, late in 1605 or early in 1606, not, as Fleay, ii. 79, suggests, to one by the Chapel in 1602–3. Some features of staging (cf. ch. xxi) raise a suspicion that the play may have been taken over from Paul’s. The resemblance of the title to that of Wonder of a Woman produced by the Admiral’s in 1595 is probably accidental. The epistle glances at Jonson’s translations in Sejanus (1603).
The Insatiate Countess. c. 1610
1613. The Insatiate Countesse. A Tragedie: Acted at White-Fryers. Written by Iohn Marston. T. S. for Thomas Archer.
1616. N. O. for Thomas Archer.
1631.... Written by William Barksteed. For Hugh Perrie.
1631.... Written by Iohn Marston. I. N. for Hugh Perrie. [A reissue.]
Dissertation: R. A. Small, The Authorship and Date of the Insatiate Countess in Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, v (Child Memorial Volume), 277.
It is generally supposed that Marston began the play and that Barksted (q.v.) finished it. Two lines (V. ii. 244–5) appear verbatim in Barksted’s Mirrha (1607). Small traces several other clear parallels with both Mirrha and Hiren, as well as stylistic qualities pointing to Barksted rather than to Marston, and concludes that the play is Barksted’s on a plot drafted by Marston. It may be conjectured that Marston left the fragment when he got into trouble for the second time in 1608, and that the revision was more probably for the Queen’s Revels at Whitefriars in 1609–11 than for the conjoint Queen’s Revels and Lady Elizabeth’s in 1613. Hardly any of the suggestions on the play in Fleay, ii. 80, bear analysis.
Lost Plays