John Marston's career first started in 1598 with the publishing of The Metamorphosis of
Pigmalions Image and Certaine SatyresandThe Scourge of Villanie. Then, between
1599 and 1606, Marston wrote all of his self-written plays, including Histriomastix, Jack
Drum's Entertainment, Antonio and Mellida and Antonio's Revenge, What You Will,
The Fawn, The Dutch Courtesan, Sophonisba, and The Malcontent. It is the last of these
plays that is of importance to this particular study of Marston's work.
In The Malcontent,Marston outlines an essentially moral, Christian pattern. As
Geckle points out, avarice, envy,wrath, lechery, and pride are all sins of the world that several
characters in the play allow themselves to be overtaken by. Pietro, Mendoza, Ferneze, Aurelia,
and Maquerelle let fortune control their lives and are doomed for unhappiness. Pietro, however,
taking the protagonist Altofronto's advice, is saved after developing a moral sense and accepting
God's will. Mendoza, learns too late that there is no contentment in earthly things after placing
all his hope in fortune and fate. As Geckle suggests, the element of Providence in the play "does
not lead the sinners to death but either to spiritual regeneration or to rejection from the new
society." In this play, Marston creates a plot in which the themes and ideas are morally explicit
and comment on the life of the people of the sixteenth century.
Plot was not the only prowess that John Marston exhibited for theatre production. As Scott
writes, "In reading his plays one feels that the writer had a practical experience of the theatre and
knew how to make use of it." Music was employed by Marston at key times to show different
elements of mood and emotion. Visual as well as aural elements were used to make the spoken
word more expressive and effective. The contribution of the musical element in The
Malcontent is of utmost importance at first to shock the audience to attention by playing "the
vilest out of tune Musicke." This first scene shows the audience, perhaps subconsciously, that
their view of the action will be affected greatly by the musical settings.
Right from the opening of the play, music has several effects on the audience. As Colley
points out,
The two instances of music enhance the creation of a mood appropriate to the
satire upon a debased society. The courtiers' ironic references to a tavern' and
a brothel house,'. . .suggest something of the Genoan setting. The courtiers'
stilted poses and lofty commands within the context of Malevole's music are
powerful theatrical representations of the style and mood of the play.
Production was plainly on Marston's mind in this instance. Music was just the element that he
needed, in this scene and others, to make the production a success. Musical effects color both the
seriousness and the lightness of The Malcontent.With this musical variation, there is an
established and noticed difference among the many scenes and moods of this tragi-comedy.
In another example, Mendoza's plan is to have Ferenze and the Duke murdered, Aurelia
deported, and the power of the government to be shifted into his own hands. While Mendoza is
spying on Ferenze outside Aurelia's chamber, a musical interlude is playing. The audience
probably percieves this music to highlight this brief scene and intensify the mood.
Later in the play, soft music is playing in the Dutchess' chamber. Mendoza enters with his
sword drawn to surprise Aurelia's lover. Thus the attempted murder of Ferneze is set within yet
another musical context. The love song, as Colley suggests, "contrasts vividly with Mendoza's
malice as he thrusts his rapier into the youth's body. Yet the music also colors the seriousness of
the event by placing the murder' in an aura of unreality." This attempted murder accompanied
by a love song perhaps helped clue the audience into the fact that it was not a successful attempt.
If it were a successful attempt, there might have been the normal"murder scene accompaniment
music" of shouts, loud noises, and sharp, high notes during this action.
The importance of song and dance in The Malcontent operates to progress the action
of the play, as well as to maintain the interest of the audience. In the later acts, especially, song
and dance can be seen as crucial. The eventual "defeat" of Pietro, forseen since the opening of
the play, is finally achieved within a music context at the end of act three. The Duke's sadness
over his loss of power is revealed to the audience by a song performed to him by his pages.
Pietro says,
Sing of the nature of women, and then the song shall surely be full of variety, old
crotchets, and most sweet closes; it shall be humerous, grave, fantastic, amorous,
melancholy, sprightly, one in all, and all in one. (III. v. 29-32)
Duke Pietro lies down as the music is sung to him. In a short time, another song and dance are
performed for Pietro. This time however, it is performed by the malcontent, who entreats the
Duke to join him in a plot of his own. This gives the Duke hope. Marston, having chosen Pietro
for redemption, shows this redemption to the audience through a melancholy song that makes the
Duke out to be a sympathetic figure. As Colley suggests, "the audience perceives in his sufferng
the development of a new sensitivity, a sensitivity that earns' him the forgiveness at the end of
the play. Without this choreography of song and plot, the audience's emotions are not as
strongly swayed towards the forgiveness of the Duke. With it, however, there is created in them
an expectation and longing for it.
Another important sequence of song and dance in The Malcontent occurs in act four
with the murder of Pietro:
Aurelia.
Music, music!
Prepasso.
Who saw the duke? The duke?
Enter Equato
Aurelia.
Music!
Equato.
The duke! Is the duke returned?
Aurelia.
Music!
Music, sound high, as in our heart. Sound high!
Enter Malevole, and Pietro disguised as hermit.
Malevole.
The duke--peace!--the duke is dead.
Aurelia.
Music!
Malevole.
Is't music?
(IV. ii. 13-27; IV. iii. 1-3)
When the dancing ends, Mendoza finds himself named successor to the "slain" Duke. Now that
he has control of the Dukedom, the successful emergence of the villian, Mendoza, is placed, by
Marston, in a context of more music and dancing. There was no actual sighting of the dead Duke
Pietro. It was assumed by the characters and perhaps the lively and rambunctious action of the
dancers on stage during this scene helped "gloss over" this point for the important ones.
In the fifth act, Marston uses music and dance, as Colley states, "to make Mendoza's
mistaken notion of magnificance appear as ludicrous and deceptive." Marston uses this dance
transition to transfer Mendoza from the courtly dance scene of the Duke's love for pomp and
ceremony, to the true feelings of malice that lay deep within him.
John Marston's The Malcontent is viewed by many critics to be his best and most
popular play. Because Marston weaves plot and music together so well in this play, there have
been several adaptations of The Malcontent in recent years. As R.W. Ingram writes,
Marston uses The Malcontent to explore still further the artifice of the theater and
its implications; and his plot, character, and meaning are shaped by
this exploration. The obviousness of the contrivances only makes the pungent
reality' exuded by the play stronger.
This "pungent reality" also is seen through the musical settings throughout the play. From the
beginning, the sequential action is underscored by muscal accompaniment. As the play opens,
for instance, "The vilest out of tuneMusicke being heard" is coming from Malevole's chamber.
While he remains unseen, his abuse of the courtiers is revealed to the audience by the discordant
music.
Music for modern productions of The Malcontent include such arrangements as
works for brass band by Carl Davis and pieces by Gabrieli and Marenzio. New interpretations of
Marston's musical intent are perhaps not in accordance with Maston's original musical thought.
Scott points out that one critic, Nicholas de Jongh called the new interpretation a rape. . .of John
Marston's tragi-comedy.' De Jongh and John Peter of The Sunday Times agreed that "it
sacrificed the tragic content of the work." Scott, however, recognizes that,
Certainly over the past twenty years Marston has been recognized by the English
theatre as a dramatist of a certain significance. It seems that, as he is gradally
finding his place back in the repertory, directors and adaptors are beginning to
realise the potential theatrically in his works; a theatricality depending on a style
which thrusts forth a dislocated world not altogether unlike our own.