John Marston had begun his brief career…
June 1599 CE
John Marston had begun his brief career in literature with a foray into the fashionable genres of erotic epyllion and satire.
He had in 1598 published The Metamorphosis of Pigmalian's Image and Certaine Satyres, a book of poetry in imitation of, on the one hand, Ovid, and, on the other, the Satires of Juvenal.
He had also published another book of satires, The Scourge of Villanie, in 1598. (Marston had issued these satires under the pseudonym "W. Kinsayder.")
The satire in these books is even more savage and misanthropic than is normal for the decade's satirists.
As ecclesiastical authorities crack down on the craze for satire of the past year, Marston's Scourge of Villainy and Thomas Middleton's Microcynicon are publicly burned on June 4, 1599.
Although a minor work, the poems included in English playwright the Microcynicon, a work of poetic satire, prefigure the interests of Middleton's mature work in sin, hypocrisy, and lust.
The Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury tighten their enforcement of the existing censorship regime.
Earlier, minor works like pamphlets and plays had been published only with the approval of the Wardens of the Stationers Company, and without ecclesiastical review; this arrangement is terminated.
The War of the Theatres breaks out as a result of the "bishops' ban".
Because of this actual ban on satire in prose and verse publications, the satirical urge has no other remaining outlet than the stage.
The resulting controversy, which is to unfold between 1599 and 1602, involves the playwright Ben Jonson on one side, and his rivals John Marston and Thomas Dekker (with Thomas Middleton as an ancillary combatant) on the other.
The role Shakespeare played in the conflict, if any, has long been a topic of dispute among scholars.
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