The Malcontent

Résumé : The Malcontent is an early Jacobean stage play written by the dramatist and satirist John Marston ca. 1603. The play was one of Marston's most successful works. The Malcontent is widely regarded as one of the most significant plays of the English Renaissance; an extensive body of scholarly research and critical commentary has accumulated around it. The Malcontent tells the story of the deposed duke Altofront, who has adopted the alter ego of Malevole, a discontented parasite, in order to try to regain his lost dukedom. Malevole is an angry satirist-figure, who attacks the corruption and decadence of the court in which he lives. The degree to which the play is a comment on the court of James I and the immorality of his courtiers is debatable, as the satire is, by and large, general enough to fit any court. However, The Malcontent seemed to some contemporaries to be, like Marston's later plays, a lashing of the new, bumptious, and corrupt Scottish courtiers, and some specific satire is certain. Although Marston warns in his introductory epistle "some things I have willingly erred, as in supposing a Duke of Genoa, and in taking names different from that city’s families", some scholars believe that Marston intended the Genoa presented in The Malcontent to be an accurate historical depiction of the actual city. Domenico Lovascio argues that the rapid-fire succession of leaders in the play is an accurate reflection of the historically politically unstable city, a city rife with corruption, treachery, and plots.