The names of Ronsard, Malherbe and Scarron are especially associated with the genre in French literature, and Marino and Metastasio in Italian. Perhaps no poem of this class has been more universally admired than the pastoral "Epithalamion" of Edmund Spenser (1595), though he also has important rivals—Ben Jonson, Donne and Francis Quarles. Ben Jonson's friend, Sir John Suckling, is known for his epithalamium "A Ballad Upon a Wedding." In his ballad, Suckling playfully demystifies the usual celebration of marriage by detailing comic rustic parallels and identifying sex as the great leveler.