Marlowe; and he succeeded in producing a masterpiece of his own. Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, which doubtless suggested the composition of Greene’s comedy, reveals the mighty tragic genius of its author; but Greene resolved on an altogether distinct treatment of a cognate theme. Interweaving with the popular tale of Friar Bacon and his wondrous doings a charming idyl (so far as we know, of his own invention), the story of Prince Edward’s love for the Fair Maid of Fressingfield, he produced a comedy brimful of amusing action and genial fun. Friar Bacon remains a dramatic picture of English Elizabethan life with which The Merry Wives alone can vie; and not even the ultra-classicism in the similes of its diction can destroy the naturalness which constitutes its perennial charm. The History of Orlando Furioso, one of the Twelve Peeres of France has on unsatisfactory evidence been dated as before 1586, and is known to have been acted on the 21st of February 1592. It is a free dramatic adaptation of Ariosto, Harington’s translation of whom appeared in 1591, and who in one passage is textually quoted; and it contains a large variety of characters and a superabundance of action. Fairly lucid in arrangement and fluent in style, the treatment of the madness of Orlando lacks tragic power. Very few dramatists from Sophocles to Shakespeare have succeeded in subordinating the grotesque effect of madness to the tragic; and Greene is not to be included in the list.
In The Scottish Historie of James IV. (acted 1592, licensed for publication 1594) Greene seems to have reached the climax of his dramatic powers. The “historical” character of this play is pure pretence. The story is taken from one of Giraldi Cinthio’s tales. Its theme is the illicit passion of King James for the chaste lady Ida, to obtain whose hand he endeavours, at the suggestion of a villain called Ateukin, to make away with his own wife. She escapes in doublet and hose, attended by her faithful dwarf; but, on her father’s making war upon her husband to avenge her wrongs, she brings about a reconciliation between them. Not only is this well-constructed story effectively worked out, but the characters are vigorously drawn, and in Ateukin there is a touch of Iago. The fooling by Slipper, the clown of the piece, is unexceptionable; and, lest even so the play should hang heavy on the audience, its action is carried off by a “pleasant comédie”—i.e. a prelude and some dances between the acts—“presented by Oboram, King of Fayeries,” who is, however, a very different person from the Oberon of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
George-a-Greene the Pinner of Wakefield (acted 1593, printed 1599), a delightful picture of English life fully worthy of the author of Friar Bungay, has been attributed to him; but the external evidence is very slight, and the internal unconvincing. Of the comedy of Fair Em, which resembles Friar Bacon in more than one point, Greene cannot have been the author; the question as to the priority between the two plays is not so easily solved. The conjecture as to his supposed share in the plays on which the second and third parts of Henry VI. are founded has been already referred to. He was certainly joint author with Thomas Lodge of the curious drama called A Looking Glasse for London and England (acted in 1592 and printed in 1594)—a dramatic apologue conveying to the living generation of Englishmen the warning of Nineveh’s corruption and prophesied doom. The lesson was frequently repeated in the streets of London by the “Ninevitical motions” of the puppets; but there are both fire and wealth of language in Greene and Lodge’s oratory. The comic element is not absent, being supplied in abundance by Adam, the clown of the piece, who belongs to the family of Slipper, and of Friar Bacon’s servant, Miles.
Greene’s dramatic genius has nothing in it of the intensity of Marlowe’s tragic muse; nor perhaps does he ever equal Peele at his best. On the other hand, his dramatic poetry is occasionally animated with the breezy freshness which no artifice can simulate. He had considerable constructive skill, but he has created no character of commanding power—unless Ateukin be excepted; but his personages are living men and women, and marked out from one another with a vigorous but far from rude hand. His comic humour is undeniable, and he had the gift of light and graceful dialogue. His diction is overloaded with classical ornament, but his versification is easy and fluent, and its cadence is at times singularly sweet. He creates his best effects by the simplest means; and he is indisputably one of the most attractive of early English dramatic authors.
Greene’s dramatic works and poems were edited by Alexander Dyce in 1831 with a life of the author. This edition was reissued in one volume in 1858. His complete works were edited for the Huth Library by A. B. Grosart. This issue (1881–1886) contains a translation of Nicholas Storojhenko’s monograph on Greene (Moscow, 1878). Greene’s plays and poems were edited with introductions and notes by J. Churton Collins in 2 vols. (Oxford, 1905); the general introduction to this edition has superseded previous accounts of Greene and his dramatic and lyrical writings. An account of his pamphlets is to be found in J. J. Jusserand’s English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare (Eng. trans., 1890). See also W. Bernhardi, Robert Greenes Leben und Schriften (1874); F. M. Bodenstedt, in Shakespeare’s Zeitgenossen und ihre Werke (1858); and an introduction by A. W. Ward to Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (Oxford, 1886, 4th ed., 1901). (A. W. W.)
GREENFIELD, a township and the county-seat of Franklin county, in N.E. Massachusetts, U.S.A., including an area of 20 sq. m. of meadow and hill country, watered by the Green and Deerfield rivers and various small tributaries. Pop. (1890) 5252, (1900) 7927, of whom 1431 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 10,427. The principal village, of the same name as the township, is situated on the N. bank of the Deerfield river, and on the Boston & Maine railway and the Connecticut Valley street railway (electric). Among Greenfield’s manufactures are cutlery, machinery, and taps and dies. Greenfield, originally part of Deerfield, was settled about 1682, was established as a “district” in 1753, and on the 23rd of August 1775 was, by a general Act, separated from Deerfield and incorporated as a separate township, although it had assumed full township rights in 1774 by sending delegates to the Provincial Congress. In 1793 part of it was taken to form the township of Gill; in 1838 part of it was annexed to Bernardston; and in 1896 it annexed a part of Deerfield. It was much disaffected at the time of Shays’s Rebellion.
See F. M. Thompson, History of Greenfield (2 vols., Greenfield, 1904).
GREENFINCH (Ger. Grünfink), or Green Linnet, as it is very
often called, a common European bird, the Fringilla chloris of
Linnaeus, ranked by many systematists with one section of hawfinches,
Coccothraustes, but apparently more nearly allied to the
other section Hesperiphona, and perhaps justifiably deemed the
type of a distinct genus, to which the name Chloris or Ligurinus
has been applied. The cock, in his plumage of yellowish-green
and yellow is one of the most finely coloured of common English
birds, but he is rather heavily built, and his song is hardly commended.
The hen is much less brightly tinted. Throughout
Britain, as a rule, this species is one of the most plentiful birds,
and is found at all seasons of the year. It pervades almost the
whole of Europe, and in Asia reaches the river Ob. It visits
Palestine, but is unknown in Egypt. It is, however, abundant
in Mauritania, whence specimens are so brightly coloured that
they have been deemed to form a distinct species, the Ligurinus
aurantiiventris of Dr Cabanis, but that view is now generally
abandoned. In the north-east of Asia and its adjacent islands
occur two allied species—the Fringilla sinica of Linnaeus and the
F. kawarahiba of Temminck. (A. N.)
GREENHEART, one of the most valuable of timbers, the
produce of Nectandra Rodiaei, natural order Lauraceae, a large
tree, native of tropical South America and the West Indies. The
Indian name of the tree is sipiri or bibiru, and from its bark and
fruits is obtained the febrifuge principle bibirine. Greenheart
wood is of a dark-green colour, sap wood and heart wood being so
much alike that they can with difficulty be distinguished from
each other. The heart wood is one of the most durable of all
timbers, and its value is greatly enhanced by the fact that it is
proof against the ravages of many marine borers which rapidly
destroy piles and other submarine structures of most other
kinds of wood available for such purposes. In the Kelvingrove
Museum, Glasgow, there are two pieces of planking from a wreck
submerged during eighteen years on the west coast of Scotland.
