‘Lampatho Doria’ as Ben Jonson in Marston’s What You Will

Bednarz examines the play What You Will by John Marston. The play which is a late Elizabethan comedy focuses on the relationship between two rival poets: the bitter, misanthropic satirist Lampatho Doria and the generous, lighthearted epicurean Quadratus. The play itself hardly has a plot, being more a series of comic vignettes and debates between characters. It criticizes the satirist as a mean-spirited, envious man, and celebrates good humor, merriment and play while the subplot involves the tricking and humiliation of various fools by a group of boy pages. Also mentioned is the acknowledgement of Philip Finkelpearl that the playwright's satirical comedy is connected to the so-called War of the Theaters, which he defines as a brief outburst of animosity between Jonson and Marston which culminated in Jonson's Poetaster and Dekker's Satiromastix' in 1601.