appeared almost immediately after his death, as to the circumstances of which his relentless adversary had taken care to inform himself personally. Nashe took up the defence of his dead friend and ridiculed Harvey in Strange News (1593); and the dispute continued for some years. But, before this, the dramatist Henry Chettle published a pamphlet from the hand of the unhappy man, entitled Greene’s Groat’s-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance (1592), containing the story of Roberto, who may be regarded, for practical purposes, as representing Greene himself. This ill-starred production may almost be said to have done more to excite the resentment of posterity against Greene’s name than all the errors for which he professed his repentance. For in it he exhorted to repentance three of his quondam acquaintance. Of these three Marlowe was one—to whom and to whose creation of “that Atheist Tamberlaine” he had repeatedly alluded. The second was Peele, the third probably Nashe. But the passage addressed to Peele contained a transparent allusion to a fourth dramatist, who was an actor likewise, as “an vpstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygres heart wrapt in a player’s hyde supposes hee is as well able to bombast out a blanke-verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Iohannes-fac-totum, is in his owne conceyt the onely shake-scene in a countrey.” The phrase italicized parodies a passage occurring in The True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of York, &c., and retained in Part III. of Henry VI. If Greene (as many eminent critics have thought) had a hand in The True Tragedie, he must here have intended a charge of plagiarism against Shakespeare. But while it seems more probable that (as the late R. Simpson suggested) the upstart crow beautified with the feathers of the three dramatists is a sneering description of the actor who declaimed their verse, the animus of the whole attack (as explained by Dr Ingleby) is revealed in its concluding phrases. This “shake-scene,” i.e. this actor had ventured to intrude upon the domain of the regular staff of playwrights—their monopoly was in danger!
Two other prose pamphlets of an autobiographical nature were issued posthumously. Of these, The Repentance of Robert Greene, Master of Arts (1592), must originally have been written by him on his death-bed, under the influence, as he says, of Father Parsons’s Booke of Resolution (The Christian Directorie, appertayning to Resolution, 1582, republished in an enlarged form, which became very popular, in 1585); but it bears traces of having been improved from the original; while Greene’s Vision was certainly not, as the title-page avers, written during his last illness.
Altogether not less than thirty-five prose-tracts are ascribed to Greene’s prolific pen. Nearly all of them are interspersed with verses; in their themes they range from the “misticall” wonders of the heavens to the familiar but “pernitious sleights” of the sharpers of London. But the most widely attractive of his prose publications were his “love-pamphlets,” which brought upon him the outcry of Puritan censors. The earliest of his novels, as they may be called, Mamillia, was licensed in 1583. This interesting story may be said to have accompanied Greene through life; for even part ii., of which, though probably completed several years earlier, the earliest extant edition bears the date 1593, had a sequel, The Anatomie of Love’s Flatteries, which contains a review of suitors recalling Portia’s in The Merchant of Venice. The Myrrour of Modestie (the story of Susanna) (1584); The Historie of Arhasto, King of Denmarke (1584); Morando, the Tritameron of Love (a rather tedious imitation of the Decameron (1584); Planetomachia (1585) (a contention in story-telling between Venus and Saturn); Penelope’s Web (1587) (another string of stories); Alcida, Greene’s Metamorphosis (1588), and others, followed. In these popular productions he appears very distinctly as a follower of John Lyly; indeed, the first part of Mamillia was entered in the Stationers’ Registers in the year of the appearance of Euphues, and two of Greene’s novels are by their titles announced as a kind of sequel to the parent romance: Euphues his Censure to Philautus (1587), Menaphon. Camilla’s Alarum to Slumbering Euphues (1589), named in some later editions Greene’s Arcadia. This pastoral romance, written in direct emulation of Sidney’s, with a heroine called Samila, contains St Sephestia’s charming lullaby, with its refrain “Father’s sorowe, father’s joy.” But, though Greene’s style copies the balanced oscillation, and his diction the ornateness (including the proverbial philosophy) of Lyly, he contrives to interest by the matter as well as to attract attention by the manner of his narratives. Of his highly moral intentions he leaves the reader in no doubt, since they are exposed on the title-pages. The full title of the Myrrour of Modestie for instance continues: “wherein appeareth as in a perfect glasse how the Lord delivereth the innocent from all imminent perils, and plagueth the blood-thirsty hypocrites with deserved punishments,” &c. On his Pandosto, The Triumph of Time (1588) Shakespeare founded A Winter’s Tale; in fact, the novel contains the entire plot of the comedy, except the device of the living statue; though some of the subordinate characters in the play, including Autolycus, were added by Shakespeare, together with the pastoral fragrance of one of its episodes.
In Greene’s Never too Late (1590), announced as a “Powder of Experience: sent to all youthfull gentlemen” for their benefit, the hero, Francesco, is in all probability intended for Greene himself, the sequel or second part is, however, pure fiction. This episodical narrative has a vivacity and truthfulness of manner which savour of an 18th century novel rather than of an Elizabethan tale concerning the days of “Palmerin, King of Great Britain.” Philador, the prodigal of The Mourning Garment (1590), is obviously also in some respects a portrait of the writer. The experiences of the Roberto of Greene’s Groat’s-worth of Wit (1592) are even more palpably the experiences of the author himself, though they are possibly overdrawn—for a born rhetorician exaggerates everything, even his own sins. Besides these and the posthumous pamphlets on his repentance, Greene left realistic pictures of the very disreputable society to which he finally descended, in his pamphlets on “conny-catching”: A Notable Discovery of Coosnage (1591), The Blacke Bookes Messenger, Laying open the Life and Death of Ned Browne, one of the most Notable Cutpurses, Crossbiters, and Conny-catchers that ever lived in England (1592). Much in Greene’s manner, both in his romances and in his pictures of low life, anticipated what proved the slow course of the actual development of the English novel; and it is probable that his true métier, and that which best suited the bright fancy, ingenuity and wit of which his genius was compounded, was pamphlet-spinning and story-telling rather than dramatic composition. It should be added that, euphuist as Greene was, few of his contemporaries in their lyrics warbled wood-notes which like his resemble Shakespeare’s in their native freshness.
Curiously enough, as Mr Churton Collins has pointed out, Greene, except in the two pamphlets written just before his death, never refers to his having written plays; and before 1592 his contemporaries are equally silent as to his labours as a playwright. Only four plays remain to us of which he was indisputably the sole author. The earliest of these seems to have been the Comicall History of Alphonsus, King of Arragon, of which Henslowe’s Diary contains no trace. But it can hardly have been first acted long after the production of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, which had, in all probability, been brought on the stage in 1587. For this play, “comical” only in the negative sense of having a happy ending, was manifestly written in emulation as well as in direct imitation of Marlowe’s tragedy. While Greene cannot have thought himself capable of surpassing Marlowe as a tragic poet, he very probably wished to outdo him in “business,” and to equal him in the rant which was sure to bring down at least part of the house. Alphonsus is a history proper—a dramatized chronicle or narrative of warlike events. Its fame could never equal that of Marlowe’s tragedy; but its composition showed that Greene could seek to rival the most popular drama of the day, without falling very far short of his model.
In the Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (not known to have been acted before February, 1592, but probably written in 1589) Greene once more attempted to emulate
