Shackerley Marmion

Shackerley Marmion (January 1603 – 1639), also Shakerley, Shakerly, Schackerley, Marmyon, Marmyun, or Mermion, was an early 17th-century dramatist, often classed among the Sons of Ben, the followers of Ben Jonson who continued his style of comedy. He was also a friend and perhaps a protégé of Thomas Heywood.

Background The playwright's father, Shackerley Marmion (son of a London lawyer and member of a junior line of the Marmion Barons of Tamworth), held the manor at Aynho in Northamptonshire but was habitually in debt; in time he would pass his debts on to his son. Shakerley Jnr was baptised on 21 Jan 1603 in Aynho church. Marmion's second play, A Fine Companion, was staged in 1632 or 1633 and published in the latter year, after being performed by the Prince Charles's Men at Salisbury Court Theatre. The Antiquary (c. 1634–36), his third and last play, was acted by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre, and published in 1641.

All comedies, Marmion's plays show the influence of Ben Jonson. Marmion adapted Jonsonian comedy to his own preoccupation with Platonic love. And while he is often classified by critics as a limited talent and a figure of at best secondary importance, his knack with satire has frequently been praised.

Other works Besides his comedies, Marmion wrote a 2000-line verse epic, Cupid and Psyche (1637), a translation and expansion of the Cupid and Psyche story in Apuleius's The Golden Ass in heroic couplets. He also wrote various minor poems, including an elegy on Jonson, published in 1638, titled "A Funeral Sacrifice, to the Sacred Memory of his Thrice-Honored Father, Ben Jonson." Commendatory verses that he wrote for others, or that others wrote for him, associate Marmion with Heywood, Thomas Nabbes, Richard Brome, and the actor Joseph Taylor.

Last years In 1638 Marmion joined Sir John Suckling's privately organized military incursion against the Scottish Covenanters; but he fell out along the route due to illness and returned in London, where he died the following year.