The threat only irritates Quadratus the more:-- "Why, you Don Kinsayder! Thou canker-eaten rusty cur, thou snaffle To freer spirits! Think'st thou a libertine, an ungyved breast, Scorns not the shackles of thy envious clogs? You will traduce us unto public scorn?" Curious that Marston should apply his own _nom de plume_ "Kinsayder" to the adversary whom he is bullying! In the _Scourge of Villainy_ he sneered at his own poem _Pygmalion_, and here he is referring contemptuously to his own achievements in satire. A man who openly ridicules himself blunts the edge of an enemy's sarcasm. We have seen (p. xxxiii.) that Crites' bitter abuse of Anaides and Hedon (_i.e._, Marston and Dekker), in _Cynthia's Revels_, was flung back in Jonson's face by Dekker. Marston puts into the mouth of Quadratus a speech, modelled closely on those lines of Crites:-- "_Lam._ O sir, you are so square, you scorn reproof." "_Qua._ No, sir; should discreet Mastigophorus, Or the dear spirit acute Canaidus (That Aretine, that most of me beloved, Who in the rich esteem I prize his soul, I term myself); should these once menace me, Or curb my humour with well-govern'd check, I should with most industrious regard, Observe, abstain, and curb my skipping lightness; But when an arrogant, odd, impudent, A blushless forehead, only out of sense Of his own wants, bawls in malignant questing At others' means of waving gallantry,-- Pight foutra!" Who "discreet Mastigophorus" and "acute Canaidus" were it would be useless to conjecture. But it is not to be doubted that Quadratus' abuse of Lampatho was levelled at Ben Jonson; and that Marston was avenging himself in this way for the insults showered upon him by Jonson. In iv. 1, Quadratus sneers at Lampatho's verse. Lampatho threatens to be revenged. "How, prithee?" says Quadratus; "in a play? Come, come, be sociable." The tragedy of _The Insatiate Countess_ was published in 1613, with Marston's name on the title-page. In the Duke of Devonshire's library there is a copy,[23] dated 1616, with no name on the title-page. The play was reprinted in 1631, and Marston's name is found on the title-page of most copies of that edition; but the Duke of Devonshire possesses a copy,[24] in which the author's name is given as William Barksteed. In the collected edition of Marston's plays, 1633, _The Insatiate Countess_ is not included. It is therefore clear that Marston's authorship is not established by external evidence. When we come to examine the play itself, which has unfortunately descended in a most corrupt state, the difficulty is not removed. Two picturesque lines at the close of the last scene, "Night, like a masque, is enter'd heaven's great hall, With thousand torches ushering the way,"