ABSTRACT
Jonson's aims in the Comical Satyres may be seen more sharply in their context by contrast with two dramatists who have been identified as targets of Jonson's satiric mockery in Poetaster:one, Thomas Dekker, being caricatured as Demetrius, the other, John Marston, as Crispinus. Marston had the distinction of being early singled out for notoriety as a satiric poet, and probably in the same year that his poems were burned, in 1599, his first signed play, Antonio and Mellida, appeared at Paul's, performed by boy actors. In the dedicatory epistle Marston protests his innocence of any personal or topical allusions, local or foreign, on the grounds that there is no real Duke of Genoa. Marston, always an accomplished artist in integrating all the resources of theatre, makes deft use of costume, properties, ceremony and social manners to create fully realized images of life without subduing the satiric and critical point.
