John Marston’s 1603 “The Malcontent,” directed by Dominic Cooke, is the last of the highly successful season of plays by Shakespeare’s contemporaries at the Swan on its Elizabethan-like stage. Marston, who specialized in satire, was already represented in the season as a co-writer of “Eastward Ho!” For the satiric treatment of Scotsmen as drunken louts in “Eastward,” his co-authors were jailed , but not Marston, who probably contributed these characters as a satire on the new king, Scottish James I. Because of the cynical, satiric moral outrage expressed in his plays, Marston evidently preferred to write for one of the two children’s companies newly popular in London. They are mentioned in “Hamlet” as “little eyases” who force the adult companies to take to the road.

It is doubtful that the children understood the satiric implications and sexual undertones of the Marston plays in which they acted. In the induction to “Antonio and Mellida,” which Marston wrote for the Boys of St. Paul’s, the child actors express their puzzlement over the text, with which they have difficulties. Records reveal that the Children of the Chapel Royal first performed “The Malcontent,” Marston’s best play, at Blackfriar’s indoor theater early in 1603, before the death of Queen Elizabeth in that year. It also was performed by an adult company, Shakespeare’s King’s Men, at their theater, the Globe, when it reopened in 1604 after the closure of the theaters because of the plague.

Antony Sher provides another no-holds-barred performance in the title role, like the one that so distinguished his portrayal of Shakespeare’s Richard III. This time he has a double role. Malevole, whose name sounds like that of the Puritan steward in “Twelfth Night,” takes on the guise of a malcontent, a bitter jester at the court of Pietro, the Duke of Genoa, who has usurped the throne from Altofronto (the name explains itself), the rightful Duke, also played by Sher. Malevole’s biting criticism, says Pietro, “makes me understand those weaknesses which others’ flattery palliates.”

In a soliloquy Malevole tells us that his disguise gives him “free speech” to criticize everything he sees, here sounding like the malcontent Jaques in “As You Like It,” who wants to be a jester so that he can speak freely to condemn evil and cleanse the world. Malevole declares that he will seek his “just revenge” against the usurping Duke by tormenting his mind, using Iago’s tactic of revealing to Pietro that his wife is unfaithful. Thus, says Malevole, he steals from the Duke “a richer gem” than the crown - his peace of mind.

Transforming Genoa to a Latin American banana republic accustomed to swift changes of rule, director Cooke modern-dresses the mustached, cigar-smoking men of the court in flashy white uniforms and sunglasses, the women in slinky attire. Hunched over and spitting out insults like “you goatish-blooded toderers,” Malevole shuffles about in a black robe and dirty shirt, wearing a greasy rat-tail wig that he whips off to reveal to his friend Celso that he is indeed the banished, bald Altofronto, “last year’s duke.” A duke leaving and then returning to his corrupt dukedom to spy on it may remind you of the Duke in “Measure for Measure,” and indeed Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights were not above lifting from each other whatever might prove useful.

If Altofronto is looking for corruption in the court to criticize, he has plenty of material, especially in the character of the villain, Mendoza (Joe Dixon), who is having an affair with Pietro’s insatiable young wife Aurelia (Amanda Drew). Mendoza thwarts Aurelia’s liaison with a young courtier, Ferneze, by ordering his death. After manipulating Pietro to make himself heir to the rule of Genoa, Mendoza plots with Malevole to poison Pietro and with Pietro to poison Malevole. Mendoza also has designs on Maria, the virtuous wife of Altofronto; marriage to her would cement his claim to the dukedom.

Unlike the mother of all revenge tragedies, “The Spanish Tragedy,” whose masque denouement it borrows, “The Malcontent” is transformed to a tragicomedy in its final masque. To “song and dances,” Maevole, his friend Celso, Pietro, and Ferneze (who has survived) enter wearing death’s-head masks and dance with the ladies, Malevole revealing himself to his wife as the rightful Duke. When they unmask, Mendoza is surrounded by the men of the masque “bending their pistols on him.” His villainy revealed, Mendoza pleads for his life, and Malevole, with a final moral thrust at “th’inconstant people” who judge celebrities by their appearance rather than by their virtue, “kicks out Mendoza.” Performance schedule: www.rsc.org.uk