It is acted in an historically-correct fashion by 12-16 year olds, as it was when it was first performed (by Children of the Chapel Royal).'Marston’s angry-young-man play, The Malcontent, was first performed around 1603 by the Children of the Chapel at the Blackfriars playhouse. It is full of energetic, colourful abuse, physiologically precise references to sex, memento mori perorations, and enthusiastic, forensically argued misogyny. So, of course, it’s ideal for kids. Jokes about erections generate a frisson when uttered by 12-year-olds. A young teenager repenting adultery sounds different from an adult making the same statement. A speech detailing with relish how corpses rot in the grave might sound slightly Horrible Histories, but Marston’s erudite misogyny is depressingly up to date.'
-Times Higher Education Supplement
(And people comment about a few Anglo-Saxon invectives in BETM.)
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/f ... 66.article