There are few things on record concerning this poet's life. Wood says, that he was a student in Corpus-Christi College, Oxon; but in what country he was born, or of what family descended, is no where fixed. Mr. Langbain says, he can recover no other information of him, than what he learned from the testimony of his bookseller, which is, "That he was free from all obscene speeches, which is the chief cause of making plays odious to virtuous and modest persons; but he abhorred such writers and their works, and professed himself an enemy to all such as stuffed their scenes with ribaldry, and larded their lines with scurrilous taunts, and jests, so that whatsoever even in the spring of his years he presented upon the private and public theatre, in his autumn and declining age he needed not to to be ashamed of." He lived in friendship with the famous Ben Johnson, as appears by his addressing to his name a tragi-comedy, called Male-Content: but we afterwards find him reflecting pretty severely on Ben, on account of his Cataline and Sejanus, as the reader will find on the perusal of Marsten's Epistle, prefixed to Sophonisba.--"Know, says he, that I have not laboured in this poem, to relate any thing as an historian, but to enlarge every thing as a poet. To transcribe authors, quote authorities, and to translate Latin prose orations into English blank verse, hath in this subject been the least aim of my studies."----Langbain observes, that none who are acquainted with the works of Johnson can doubt that he is meant here, if they will compare the orations in Salust with those in Cataline. On what provocation Marsten thus censured his friend is unknown, but the practice has been too frequently pursued, so true is it, as Mr. Gay observes of the wits, that they are oft game cocks to one another, and sometimes verify the couplet. That they are still prepared to praise or to abhor us, Satire they have, and panegyric for us.---- Marsten has contributed eight plays to the stage, which were all acted at the Black Fryars with applause, and one of them called the Dutch Courtezan, was once revived since the Restoration, under the title of the Revenge, or a Match in [1]Newgate. In the year 1633 six of this author's plays were collated and published in one volume, and dedicated to the lady viscountess Faulkland. His dramatic works are these: Antonio and Melida, a history, acted by the children of St. Paul's, printed in 1633. Antonius's Revenge; or the second part of Antonio and Melida. These two plays were printed in Octavo several years before the new edition. Dutch Courtezan, a comedy frequently played at Black Fryars, by the children of the Queen's Revels, printed in London 1633. It is taken from a French book called Les Contes du Mende. See the same story in English, in a book of Novels, called the Palace of Pleasure in the last Novel.