On The King of Scots, vide supra. Rogers and Ley’s list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, lxxii) ascribes to Marston a Guise, which other publishers’ lists transfer to Webster (q.v.). Collier, Memoirs of Alleyn, 154, assigns to Marston a Columbus, on the basis of a forgery.
Doubtful Plays
Marston doubtless had a hand in revising the anonymous Histriomastix and in Jack Drum’s Entertainment, and attempts have been made to find him in An Alarum for London, Charlemagne, London Prodigal, Puritan (cf. ch. xxiv), and as a collaborator in Dekker’s Satiromastix.
MASKS
Ashby Entertainment. Aug. 1607
[MSS.] (a) Bridgewater House, with title, ‘The honorable Lorde & Lady of Huntingdons Entertainment of their right Noble Mother Alice: Countesse Dowager of Darby the first night of her honors arrivall att the house of Ashby’. [Verses to Lady Derby signed ‘John Marston’; includes a mask of Cynthia and Ariadne.]
(b) B.M. Sloane 848, f. 9. [Speech of Enchantress only, with date Aug. 1607.]
Extracts in H. J. Todd, Works of Milton, v. 149 (1801), and Nichols, James, ii. 145 (1828).
On arrival, in the park, at an ‘antique gate’ with complimentary inscriptions, were speeches by Merimna an enchantress, and Saturn; at the top of the stairs to the great chamber another speech by Merimna and a gift of a waistcoat.
Later in the great chamber was a mask by four knights and four gentlemen, in carnation and white, and vizards like stars, representing sons of Mercury, with pages in blue, and Cynthia and Ariadne as presenters. A traverse ‘slided away’, and disclosed the presenters on clouds. Later a second traverse ‘sank down’, and the maskers appeared throned at the top of a wood. They danced ‘a new measure’, then ‘presented their shields’, and took out the ladies for measures, galliards, corantos and lavoltas. ‘The night being much spent’, came their ‘departing measure’.