Parasitaster, or The Fawn

Parasitaster, or The Fawn is an early Jacobean play, written by the dramatist and satirist John Marston, probably in 1604, and performed by the Children of the Queen's Revels in the Blackfriars Theatre.

The play is one of several written by Marston in the busy years 1604 and 1605, which also saw the production of The Dutch Courtesan and Sophonisba, as well as Eastward Ho, in which he collaborated with Ben Jonson and George Chapman.

There is general agreement that The Fawn was most likely written and first performed in 1604,[1] although a possible allusion in Act IV, scene i, to the bloody execution of Sir Everard Digby, who was drawn and quartered for his role in the Gunpowder Plot on 30 January 1606, suggests that the printed texts may include revisions, by Marston or others, after that date.

[3] A note on the title page of the second quarto and an addition to the prefatory address to the reader state that many errors in "the first faulty impression" have been corrected by the author in the second.

[5] At the play's conclusion, Hercules holds a symbolic Court of Cupid, in which all the foolish courtiers are arrested for their crimes against love and good sense.