such rude and unattractive work seems at first to require or to deserve, the moral and intellectual impression of the whole will not improbably be far more favorable than one resulting from a cursory survey or derived from a casual selection of excerpts.  They bring no manner of support to a monstrous and preposterous imputation which has been cast upon their author; the charge of having been concerned in a miserably malignant and stupid attempt at satire under the form of a formless and worthless drama called “Histriomastix";[1] though his partnership in another anonymous play—­a semi-romantic semi-satirical comedy called “Jack Drum’s Entertainment”—­is very much more plausibly supportable by comparison of special phrases as well as of general style with sundry mannerisms as well as with the habitual turn of speech in Marston’s acknowledged comedies.  There is a certain incomposite and indigestive vigor in the language of this play which makes the attribution of a principal share in its authorship neither utterly discreditable to Marston nor absolutely improbable in itself; and the satire aimed at Ben Jonson, if not especially relevant to the main action, is at all events less incongruous and preposterous in its relation to the rest of the work than the satirical or controversial part of Dekker’s “Satiromastix.”  But on the whole, if this play be Marston’s, it seems to me the rudest and the poorest he has left us, except perhaps the comedy of “What you Will,” in which several excellent and suggestive situations are made less of than they should have been, and a good deal of promising comic invention is wasted for want of a little more care and a little more conscience in cultivation of material and composition of parts.  The satirical references to Jonson are more pointed and effective in this comedy than in either of the two plays last mentioned; but its best claim to remembrance is to be sought in the admirable soliloquy which relates the seven years’ experience of the student and his spaniel.  Marston is too often heaviest when he would and should be lightest—­owing apparently to a certain infusion of contempt for light comedy as something rather beneath him, not wholly worthy of his austere and ambitious capacity.  The parliament of pages in this play is a diverting interlude of farce, though a mere irrelevance and impediment to the action; but the boys are less amusing than their compeers in the anonymous comedy of “Sir Giles Goosecap,” first published in the year preceding:  a work of genuine humor and invention, excellent in style if somewhat infirm in construction, for a reprint of which we are indebted to the previous care of Marston’s present editor.  Far be it from me to intrude on the barren and boggy province of hypothetical interpretation and controversial commentary; but I may observe in passing that the original of Simplicius Faber in “What you Will” must surely have been the same hanger-on or sycophant of Ben Jonson’s who was caricatured by Dekker in his “Satiromastix” under the name of Asinius Bubo.  The gross assurance of self-complacent duncery, the apish arrogance and imitative dogmatism of reflected self-importance and authority at second hand, are presented in either case with such identity of tone and coloring that we can hardly imagine the satire to have been equally applicable to two contemporary satellites of the same imperious and masterful egoist.