Marston's poetics - foamy bubbling of a fleamy brain

The plays that have survived from the early London stage are language-crazed. When have so many commercial writers been poets, great poets? When has so much commercial writing been poetry? John Marston is among the purplest of the poet-playwrights, the most baroque. I can imagine readers who find he goes too far. I love it when he gets rolling. Here, for example, Antonio reads aloud, in Latin,…