Your stately Muse, starched with stiff-neck’d pride,
Dain’d it amongst us, most imperiously;
With lavish laughter she did each deride
That came within the prospect of her eye:
Despising all, all her again despise,
Contemn’d of foolish and condemn’d of wise.”
At this easy rate “W. I.” ambles on; and the quiet leisurely stanzas are a relief after the fury of the
Scourge. Modern readers will feel that Marston was not driven by “sæva indignatio” to write satire, and they will not be inclined to accept the young author of Pygmalion as a sedate moralist. “W. I.” puts the matter clearly:
“He scourgeth villainies in young and old
As boys scourge tops for sport on Lenten day.”
The publication of The Whipping of the Satire could hardly have been agreeable to Marston, but it is highly improbable that he is to be held responsible for the poor answer to The Whipping, published anonymously in the same year, under the title of The Whipper of the Satire, his Penance in a White Sheet; or the Beadle’s Confutation.[10] If I have read The Whipper aright, it is the work of one of Marston’s personal friends, or of some admirer who had more zeal than wit. There are some general remarks, of slight account, on the use of satire; and Marston is exhorted to persist in his task of scourging the vices of the age. It will be enough to quote two stanzas:—
“Meantime, good satire, to thy wonted train,
As yet there are no lets to hinder thee:
Thy touching quill with a sweet moving strain
Sings to the soul a blessèd lullaby:
Thy lines beget a timorous fear in all,
And that same fear deep thoughts angelical.
So that the whilom lewd lascivious man
Is now remote from his abhorred life,
And cloathes [loathes?] the dalliance of a courtezan;
And every breathing wicked soul at strife,
Contending which shall first begin to mend
That they may glory in a blessèd end.”
The italicised lines give a delightfully ludicrous description of The Scourge of Villainy.
It is abundantly clear that Marston’s uncouth satires, which to-day are so difficult to read, caused much excitement at the time of their publication. Meres in Palladis Tamia, 1598, reckons Marston among the leading English satirists. John Weever, in his Epigrams, 1599, couples Marston’s name with Jonson’s:—
“Ad Jo. Marston et Ben Johnson.