Marston John

Marston, John, a satirist and playwright of the Shakespearean age, was born in Shropshire about 1575, and educated at Brasenose College, Oxford. In 1598 he wrote a satire called The Scourge of Villanie, and in the same year Pygmalion's Image, which he put forward as a parody of poems like Venus and Adonis. He was himself ridiculed by Ben Jonson in The Poetaster and other works, but afterwards collaborated with him and Chapman in a play called Eastward Ho.' for certain political allusions in which the authors were imprisoned. Marston's own best plays were The Malcontent (1604), The Butch Courtesan (1605), and the horrible tragedy of Snphonisba (1606).

Marston appears to have taken orders some year between 1607 and 1616. He died in London in 1634.