Literary Connections
Like many Caroline era plays, Marmion's Fine Companion shows a range of resemblances with, and borrowings from, earlier works. A Match at Midnight, a play in the canon of William Rowley, bears noteworthy common features with Marmion's comedy: the old usurer (Bloodhound, Littlegood) and his rebellious children; the witty virgin (Moll Bloodhound, Aemilia Littlegood) and her decrepit old suitor (Earlack, Dotario); the usurer's silly son (Tim Bloodhound, Lackwit Littlegood); dishonest tavern-crawling discharged soldiers, etc.
In turn, Marmion's play influenced subsequent writers. A Fine Companion served "as a source for plot elements" in Richard Brome's The English Moor. During the Restoration, Thomas d'Urfey borrowed from Marmion's drama to create his Sir Barnaby Whig, or No Wit Like a Woman's (1681). D'Urfey's Captain Porpuss is modeled on Marmion's Captain Whipple. (Four years earlier, in 1677, d'Urfey had similarly plundered Marmion's The Antiquary for another of his works.)
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