Aside from his reputation as a playwright, John Marston has for the most part been recognized from his own time to the present as a satirist, a malcontent, and a generally cantankerous individual. His contemporaries thought of him as a good verse satirist, but coarse and indecent, and one extended portrait of him in the anonymous play The Return from Parnassus (written circa 1600) is particularly unflattering and at the same time revealing:

What Monsier Kinsayder, lifting vp your legge and
pissing against the world, put vp man, put vp for shame.
Methinks he is a Ruffin in his stile,
Withouten bands or garters ornament,
He quaffes a cup of Frenchmans Helicon.
Then royster doyster in his oylie tearmes,
Cuts, thrusts, and foynes at whomesoeuer he meets.
And strowes about Ram ally meditations.
Tut what cares he for modest close coucht termes,
Cleanly to gird our looser libertines.
Giue...