_Jack Drum's Entertainment_, an indifferent comedy, which appears to have been written about the year 1600,[27] bears the clearest traces of Marston's early style. All the monstrous phraseology of _The Scourge of Villainy_ and _Antonio and Mellida_ is seen here in perfection. When Jonson in _The Poetaster_ (v. 1) ridiculed Marston's absurd vocabulary, he selected, _inter alia_, for castigation, some expressions which occur only in _Jack Drum_, and are not found (in so closely parallel a form) in the works published under Marston's name: clear proof that the authorship of this play is to be ascribed, at least in part if not entirely, to Marston. In act iii. of _Jack Drum_ we have-- "Crack not the sinews of my patience," which is ridiculed in _The Poetaster_-- "As if his organons of sense would crack The sinews of my patience." In act ii. are these ridiculous lines-- "Let clumsy chilblain'd gouty wits Bung up their chief contents within the hoops Of a stuff'd dry-fat;" so in _The Poetaster_-- "Upon that puft-up lump of barmy froth, Or clumsy chilblain'd judgment." In act iv. Planet's reflections on the arrogant Old Brabant are clearly directed against Jonson. Collier in his _Memoirs of Edward Alleyn_ (p. 154) printed a letter of Marston to Henslowe; but, as "the whole letter is manifestly a forgery, having been first traced in pencil, the marks of which are in places still visible" (Warner's _Catalogue of Dulwich Manuscripts and Muniments_, p. 49), this relic is of no interest. Another letter, addressed to Lord Kimbolton by a "John Marston,"[28] is printed in Collier's _Shakespeare_[29] (i. 179, ed. 1858); but as it was written in 1641, the writer could not have been the dramatist, who died in 1634. Among the additional MSS. (14,824-6) in the British Museum is a poem entitled _The New Metamorphosis, or a Feast of Fancy or Poetical Legends ... Written by J. M., Gent._, 1600, which has been, not very wisely, ascribed to Marston. I must confess that I have only a superficial acquaintance with this poem; but, as the work fills nearly nine hundred closely-packed pages, I trust that my confession will not be severely criticised. After the title-page is a leaf containing the arguments of books i.-vi.; then comes a new title-page _An Iliad of Metamorphosis or the Arraignment of Vice_, followed by a dialogue between Cupid and Momus. Six lines headed "The Author to his Book" follow the dialogue, and then comes "The Epistle Dedicatory," consisting of a couple of lines-- "To Momus, that same ever-carping mate, And unto Cupid I this dedicate." After the commendably brief epistle come two lines which inform us that-- "My name is French, to tell you in a word; Yet came not in with conquering William's sword." (Marston's name was certainly not French; it was a good old Shropshire name.) The prologue begins thus:--