© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press 2006; all rights reserved
John Marston, The Malcontent, and the King's Men
Blackburn
John Marston's augmentations of The Malcontent, together with additional material composed by Webster, appear only in the last of the play's three quartos of 1604. This article argues that Marston's writing peculiar to the third quarto constitutes new and revising work and not the restoration of passages omitted in the earlier publications. It further argues that this work was probably composed with a view to performance by the King's Men, the company that acquired The Malcontent subsequent to its first staging at Blackfriars. Moreover, the likely echoes of Hamlet to appear within the text unique to the third quarto prospectively betray a special sensitivity to their theatrical provenance.