This edition brings five of Marston's most interesting plays together in a readable and helpful form. They are collected with modern spelling, full commentaries, textual notes and introductions, in texts newly edited from the original quartos. A survey of criticism of Marston is included. The edition of Sophonisba (a play highly praised by T. S. Eliot) is the first modernised text to appear in one hundred years. Another textual innovation is the relegation to an appendix of Webster's obtrusive additions to The Malcontent. Marston's plays have enjoyed popular revivals in English theatres over the last decade, and the authors' commentary is designed to alert readers to theatrical effects. The playwright's language is elucidated here far more fully than in any other collection.

"This Malevole is one of the most prodigious affections that ever conversed with nature: a man, or rather a monster, more discontent than Lucifer." The Malcontent is a striking example of the new satiric tone and moral seriousness in English comedy of the early 1600s. The play's vision of a fallen humanity driven by lust and ambition is created partly by its depiction of Machiavellian intrigue in the court of Genoa, and partly by the disaffected Malevole, the malcontent of the title, who is actually the deposed Duke Altofronto in disguise. Marston's tragi-comedy is full of reversals, surprises and moral transformations and offers a thin disguise for the Jacobean court and its vices. This new student edition contains a lengthy new Introduction with background on the author, date and sources, theme, critical interpretation and stage history.