THE WORKS OF 9512 JOHN MARSTON. REPRINTED FROM THE ORIGINAL EDITIONS. WITH NOTES, AND SOME ACCOUNT OF HIS PREFACE. S O few particulars have been recovered respecting the life and personal character of JOHN MARSTON, whose dramatic and satirical writings are now for the first time collected together, it would be futile to attempt to promote them to the dignity of Biography. The circumstances known, or rather conjectured, respecting this author, for nearly all of which we are indebted to Antony à Wood, may be stated in a very few words. According to the Oxford biographer, John Marston, the dramatist, was a student in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and was admitted Bachelor of Arts on the twenty-third of February, 1592; but, adds Wood, "in what county he was born I cannot yet find, because, 1st, that he was not matriculated; 2nd, that he was not scholar of that house, or Fellow, in the admissions of both which, their counties of natívity are constantly registered." Even this statement, however, appears to be formed upon a mere conjecture originating in the identity of name, not upon the authority of trustworthy information; for he previously mentions a John Marston, "son of a father of both his names, of the |