There
is perhaps equal fertility of humor, but there certainly is not equal
harmony of structure in the play which Marston published next
year--"Parasitaster; or, the Fawn"; a name probably suggested by that of
Ben Jonson's "Poetaster," in which the author had himself been the
subject of a greater man's rage and ridicule. The wealth and the waste
of power displayed and paraded in this comedy are equally admirable and
lamentable; for the brilliant effect of its various episodes and
interludes is not more obvious than the eclipse of the central interest,
the collapse of the serious design, which results from the agglomeration
of secondary figures and the alternations of perpetual by-play. Three or
four better plays might have been made out of the materials here hurled
and huddled together into one. The Isabelle of Moliere is not more
amusing or more delightful in her audacity of resource, in her
combination of loyalty with duplicity, innocence with intrigue, than the
daring and single-hearted young heroine of this play; but the "Ecole des
Maris" is not encumbered with such a crowd of minor interests and
characters, of subordinate humors and complications, as the reader of
Marston's comedy finds interposed and intruded between his attention and
the main point of interest.
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