Counting Insatiate Countesses: The Seventeenth-Century Annotations to Marston's "The Insatiate Countess"

Tricomi is especially concerned here with the need to validate the frequently stated assertion that dramatic texts possess "cultural power." From this perspective, the hitherto unpublished marginal notations on a copy of the 1631 quarto of John Marston's and William Barksted's The Insatiate Countess assume unusual significance, for they present a rare opportunity to assess this play's power of representation in relation to two seventeenth-century readers. Tricomi also proposes, first, to establish the dating limits of the marginalia, to distinguish the two hands involved, and to describe fully the four kinds of annotation. Then attempts to establish the analogical habits of reading that govern the topical applications offered by the readers and to treat the cultural significance of their practice.