not to attach some value to the argument of Stoll, Webster, 17, for a date later than the execution of Sir Everard Digby on 30 Jan. 1606 (Stowe, Annales, 881), which appears to be alluded to in IV. i. 310, 'Nay, heed me, a woman that will thrust in crowds,—a lady, that, being with child, ventures the hope of her womb,—nay, gives two crowns for a room to behold a goodly man three parts alive, quartered, his privities hackled off, his belly lanched up'. It is true that there were also quarterings for treason on 29 Nov. 1603 (Stowe, Annales, ed. Howes, 831), but these were in Winchester; also that contemporary notices, such as that in Stowe and the narratives in J. Morris, Catholics under James I, 216, and in Somers Tracts (1809), ii. 111, which describes the victims as 'proper men, in shape', afford no confirmation of indecent crowds in 1606, but the cumulative effect of the quadruple allusions here, in Day's Isle of Gulls (q.v.), in Sharpham's Fleir (q.v.), and in Middleton's Michaelmas Term (q.v.) is pretty strong. The passage quoted by Crawford, ii. 40, from Montaigne is hardly particular enough to explain that in the Fawn. I do not like explaining discrepancies by the hypothesis of a revision, but if Kirkham revived the Fawn at Paul's in 1606, he is not unlikely to have had it written up a bit. The epistle refers to 'the factious malice and studied detractions' of fellow-dramatists, perhaps an echo of Marston's relations with Jonson and Chapman over Eastward Ho!
The Wonder of Women, or Sophonisba. 1606 S. R. 1606, March 17 (Wilson). 'A booke called the wonder of woemen, or the Tragedie of Sophonisba, &c.' Eleazar Edgar (Arber, iii. 316). 1606. The Wonder of Women Or the Tragedie of Sophonisba, as it hath beene sundry times Acted at the Blacke Friers. Written by Iohn Marston. John Windet. [Epistle to the General Reader by the author, but unsigned, Argumentum, Prologue, and Epilogue.] S. R. 1613, April 19. Transfer from Edgar to John Hodgettes (Arber, iii. 521). The mention of Blackfriars without the name of a company points to a performance after Anne's patronage had been withdrawn from the Revels boys, late in 1605 or early in 1606, not, as Fleay, ii. 79, suggests, to one by the Chapel in 1602-3. Some features of staging (cf. ch. xxi) raise a suspicion that the play may have been taken over from Paul's. The resemblance of the title to that of Wonder of a Woman produced by the Admiral's in 1595 is probably accidental. The epistle glances at Jonson's translations in Sejanus (1603).
The Insatiate Countess. c. 1610
1613. The Insatiate Countesse. A Tragedie: Acted at White-Fryers. Written by Iohn Marston. T. S. for Thomas Archer.
1616. N. O. for Thomas Archer.
1631. . . . Written by William Barksteed. For Hugh Perrie.
1631. . . . Written by Iohn Marston. I. N. for Hugh Perrie. [A reissue.]
