COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN ENGLISH
AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
ROBERT GREENE
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
SALES AGENTS
NEW YORK:
LEMCKE & BUECHNER
30-32 WEST 27TH STREET
LONDON:
HUMPHREY MILFORD
AMEN CORNER, E.G.
EGBERT GREENE
BY
JOHN CLARK JORDAN, PH.D.
Beta got*
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
1915
AU rights reserved
Copyright, 1915
BY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Printed from type, September, 1915
PR
THE-PLIMPTON-PRES8
NORWOOD-MA88-U-D-A
TO
MY GRANDFATHER
JOHN DOWNEY
This Monograph has been approved by the Depart
ment of English and Comparative Literature in Columbia
University as a contribution to knowledge worthy of
publication.
A. H. THORNDIKE,
Executive Officer.
PREFACE
ROBERT GREENE has been written about profusely.
"More time and trouble have been bestowed than one cares
to remember," complained the late Mr. Collins as he laid
down his editor's pen. So much, indeed, has been done,
so various have been the researches as to Greene's sources,
his literary relationships, his friendships and his quarrels,
his sinning and repenting, that one who desires to study him
must go over a vast amount of material. There is the fur
ther difficulty that a few sensational remarks in Greene's
writings have been given such emphasis as to withdraw at
tention from certain other aspects of his works and to obscure
what is of more importance. I have tried to present a com
prehensive treatment, based upon the investigations of pre
vious writers and developed by what I have been able to add
of my own.
In the personality of Greene, and in the nature of his
activity, there is considerable to stir the imagination, and
to invite criticism and evaluation. These two elements, the
human and the literary significance of Greene's work, I have,
therefore, sought to bear in mind. Thus submitting Greene
to analysis, I have found the outlines of his character as a
man of letters to be rather sharply drawn. Sharply enough,
I think, to be permanent. New facts will be added, new
sources discovered. But these will only help to make the
portrait a little more distinct. They will not, I believe,
change our fundamental idea of the man or of his attitude
toward literature.
To those scholars who have made my work possible I
acknowledge my indebtedness. Especially have I benefited
ix
X PREFACE
from the labors of Dr. Samuel Lee Wolff, whose contribu
tions to the knowledge and understanding of Greene have
been of great value. To the librarians of Columbia Univer
sity, and to Miss Jennie Craig and her assistant, Miss Olive
Paine, of the English Seminar Library of the University of
Illinois, I give my thanks for generous help. To my wife I
owe much for criticism and for preparation of the manuscript
for the press.
It is a pleasure to express my appreciation for the obliga
tions I am under to the Department of English and Com
parative Literature at Columbia University: to Professor
G. P. Krapp; to Professor J. B. Fletcher, who has offered
many valuable suggestions. To Professor A. H. Thorndike,
in whose mind my work had its inception, and whose counsel
and letters have aided me greatly, I feel sincere gratitude.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 9
III. SERO SED SERIO 53
IV. NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 82
V. THE POETRY 127
VI. CHRONOLOGY OF THE NON-DRAMATIC WORK . . . 164
VII. THE PLAYS 174
VIII. CONCLUSION 201
APPENDICES
I. TABULATION OF THE FRAMEWORK TALES .... 207
II. MISCONCEPTIONS CONCERNING GREENE 211
III. EARLY ALLUSIONS TO GREENE 215
BIBLIOGRAPHY 221
••
INDEX . 227
EGBERT GREENE: A STUDY
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
ROBERT GREENE was baptized in Norwich1 on July 11,
15§S> He died in London, September 3, 1592. Of the life
that extended between these dates there is little of actual
record. On November 26, 1575, Greene was matriculated
as a sizar at St. John's Cambridge. From that college he
received his primary degree in 1578.3 In 1583, July 7, he
was at Clare Hall,4 where he was granted the degree of Mas
ter of Arts. Sometime in 1585 or '86 he was married.
Oxford conferred a degree in July, 1588; so that he was
henceforth the Academiae Utriusque Magister in Artibus of
which he was so vain. The facts which I have enumerated,
NOTE — All references unless otherwise stated are to Grosart's
edition to the Complete Works of Robert Greene, 15 vols. 8vo. 1881-3.
Huth Library Series.
1 Greene himself speaks of the "Cittie of Norwitch, where I was bred
and borne," (Repentance, Vol. XII., p. 171) and he sometimes added
Norfoldensis to his name. See Epistle Dedicatory to Lodge's Euphues,
his Shadowe, signed "Rob. Greene Norfolciensis." (Lodge's Complete
Works, Vol. II. Printed for Hunterian Club, 1883); also Epistle Dedi
catory to A Maiden's Dreame, signed "R. Greene, Nordovicensis."
Vol. XIV., p. 300.
* Register of St. George, Tombland. See J. C. Collins' edition of
Greene's Plays and Poems, 1905, Vol. I., p. 12.
1 University Register.
4 "From my Studie in Clarehall the vij of Julie." The Epistle to
the second part of MamiUia. Vol. II., p. 143.
1
2 ROBERT GREENE
together with the records on the Stationers' Register and
the title-pages of his works, are all that we have that can be
dated.
Greene talked about himself; others talked about him.
And so, while his life can never be known exactly or in de
tail, his comings and goings, the events of his existence in
the capital, the man that he was can be perceived with more
vividness than can most of his fellows. From his own works,5
and from the bitter controversy which arose after his death,
with the harsh words that passed back and forth between
Harvey and Nashe,6 we can learn much of how Greene looked
and acted.
"A jolly long red peake, like the spire of a steeple," says
Nashe,7 "hee cherisht continually without cutting, whereat
a man might hang a Jewell, it was so sharp and pendant."
. . . "A very faire Cloake," he had, "with sleeves, of ...
greene; it would serve you as fine as may bee" — this to
Gabriel Harvey, the ropemaker's son — "if you bee wise,
play the good husband and listen after it, you may buy it
ten shillings better cheape than it cost him. By S. Silver,
. . . theres a great many ropes go to ten shillings. If you
want a greasy pair of silk stockings also, to show your selfe
at the Court, they are there to be had too amongst his
moveables."
"Hee inherited more vertues than vices," says Nashe
again. "Debt and deadly sinne, who is not subject to? with
any notorious crime I never knew him tainted." ... "A
good fellowe he was;" considerable of a drinker. "Hee
made no account of winning credite by his workes, ... his
6 The Repentance and various of the Prefaces.
6 In his Introduction to the Works of Thomas Nashe, Vol. V., Mr.
Ronald B. McKerrow has a most excellent account of this quarrel.
The subject is there treated exhaustively and finally.
7 Foure Letters Confuted. Ed. McKerrow, Vol. I., p. 287.
INTRODUCTION 3
only care was to have a spel in his purse to conjure up a
good cuppe of wine with at all times." . . . "Why should
art answer for the infirmities of maners? Hee had his
faultes, and thou thy follyes."
The young Bohemians lived hard in those days. And
they died hard. Greene was only thirty-four when he went
to that "fatall banquet of Rhenish wine and pickled hearing
(if thou wilt needs have it so)."8 All through the month of
August Greene was ill, at first taking no alarm. He got his
Blacke Bookes Messenger ready for the press, and told his
plans for the Blacke Booke itself.9 Then gradually, as the
days wore on, he came to realize that he could never be well.
He was greatly troubled in his mind. If he could only pray,
he would be happy. But there was a voice ringing in his
ears, "Robin Greene, thou art damned." He tried to find
comfort in the hope of God's mercy, and be pacified. But
the battle went on. Sometimes he hoped, sometimes he
feared. "There was one theef saved and no more, there
fore presume not; and there was one saved, and therefore
despair not."
The last night came. " He walked to his chaire and back
againe the night before he departed," writes the printer of
the Repentance,10 "and then (being feeble) laying him downe
on his bed, about nine of the clocke at night, a friende of his
tolde him, that his Wife had sent him commendations, and
that shee was in good health: whereat hee greatly rejoiced,
confessed that he had mightily wronged her, and wished that
hee might see her before he departed. Whereupon (feeling
his time was but short) hee tooke pen and hike, & wrote her
a Letter to this effect.
"Sweet Wife, as ever there was any good will or friendship
betweene thee and mee see this bearer (my Host) satisfied of
8 Gabriel would have it so, and the banquet is immortal.
• Vol. XI., p. 5. 10 Vol. XII., p. 185.
4 EGBERT GREENE
his debt: I owe him tenne pound, and but for him I had
perished in the streetes. Forget and forgive my wronges
done unto thee, and Almighty God have mercie on my soule.
Farewell till we meet in heaven, for on earth thou shalt
never see me more.
This 2 of September.
1592
Written by thy dying Husband.
ROBERT GREENE. "u
Greene ended his days in poverty.12 His friends deserted
him, and he was left alone. He would indeed have died in
the streets had not the shoemaker of Dowgate and his wife
taken care of him, — a task in which they were assisted by
the mother of Greene 's illegitimate son.
Such was the manner of his death on the third of Septem
ber. Mrs. Isam crowned him with a garland of bay leaves,
and on the following day they buried him.13
"Oh Robin Greene, and unfortunate because thou art
Robin!" Greene would have said of one of the unhappy
creatures of his imagination. Let us say it of him; there is
none it fits better.
With all its sadness — with all its morbidness and senti-
mentalism, some would say — Greene's death was not a
tragedy. It does not arouse profound emotion. No manner
of death could do that for him. His life had not been big
11 This letter is given by Harvey in practically the same form in
his Foure Letters, and certaine Sonnets: Especially touching Robert
Greene, and other parties, by him abused. Harvey's Works. Ed.
Grosart. Vol. I., p. 171.
12 Nashe denies this: "For the lowsie circumstance of his poverty
before his death, and sending that miserable writte to his wife, it
cannot be but thou lyest, learned Gabriell." Ed. McKerrow. Vol.
I., p. 287.
13 Greene was buried in the New Churchyard, near Bedlam.
INTRODUCTION 5
enough. His character had been too much of the surface,
rather than of the depth. He had lived for the day that
was passing, nor heeded that eternity would come. We
need not revile him as base, believing the words that he ut
tered in his despair or remembering only his ill-starred an
tagonism to a greater, but a fellow, dramatist; we need not
apologize for his shortcomings, in order to say that Greene
was not of the strong. He was weak; he was superficial.
But we can feel a genuine sympathy for him, and a regret
that his life should have ended so miserably.
There is a statement of his, made on his deathbed, which
represents pretty well the life of the man in its activities and
its remorse. It shall serve us here to introduce the purpose
of this volume. "Many things I have wrote to get money."14
Greene was a man of letters, and as such I shall try to pre
sent him. Whatever literary form he took up, it was for
exploitation; whatever he dropped, it was because the
material or the demand was exhausted. He did what no
man before him in England had done so extensively: he
wrote to sell.
"Povertie is the father of innumerable infirmities." That
was Greene's view of the task. We of today can scarcely
appreciate the difficulty. Literature is inseparably linked
with the material conditions which make it possible. In
the success of our modern professional writers, we forget
that this relation has always existed, that it was a new
thing in the reign of Elizabeth for a man to place his
"chiefest stay of living " in an inkhorn and a pen. Greene,
however, did so for several years. We have thirteen
volumes of his work as the product of his industry. What
shall we say of them and of him?
In 1599 one Fastidious Brisk, coxcomb and gallant, was
boasting of the elegance of his mistress' language,
" Greenes Vision. Vol. XII., p. 195.
6 ROBERT GREENE
"Oh, it flows from her like nectar, ... she does observe
as pure a phrase, and use as choice figures in her ordinary
conferences, as any be in the Arcadia."
From Carlo, the jester, Fastidious got this rebuff,
"Or rather from Greene's works, whence she may steal
with more security."15
Whether or not Carlo's sly reflection upon the culture
of Fastidious' lady was meant as a disparagement
upon the works of Greene, it does suggest that character
istic which impresses most of Greene's readers, namely,
his productivity as compared with his contemporaries.
' For Greene was the most prolific of all the Elizabethan
writers.
He was the most versatile, too. No other man in the
Elizabethan period attempted so many; different kinds of
work. Greene did all that the rest did, and more. Drama,
poetry, framework tales, romances, social pamphlets, trea
tises, prodigal-son stories, repentances, — all these flowed
i from his pen with a rapidity that is amazing. "In a night
& a day would he have yarkt up a pamphlet as well as in
1 seaven yeare," his friend Nashe tells us, "and glad was that
Printer that might bee so blest to paye him deare for the
very dregs of his wit." Greene wrote only twelve years,
and he had but come into his prime when he died. Yet the
range of his activity was far greater than many another
man attains to in a lifetime. I am not saying that, although
Greene excelled his contemporaries in the matter of versa
tility, he at the same time excelled them individually in any
^one type of work. He wrote no romance worthy to rank
with the Arcadia; he composed nothing which in charm of
style is to be compared with Lodge's Rosalynde. But it is
not to be denied that Greene did have ease in writing, and
" Every Man Out of His Humour. Act III. Sc. I .
INTRODUCTION 7
that he turned his hand to various tasks with about the same
degree of proficiency.
Fertility and versatility are Greene's most obvious dis
tinctions. He manifests, along with these, a third. In
spite of his artificiality of style, his shallowness of characteri
zation, his inconsistencies of plot, his lack of seriousness,
which are real defects, Greene exhibited a freedom of liter
ary art; and although he never, even to the end of his
career, ceased to shout morality from his title-pages, yet in
practice he came to have an almost complete enfranchise
ment from the traditions of the earlier didactic writers. If
I may be permitted to restate the idea, I mean that notwith
standing the conventions of Elizabethan literature in all its
forms, which influenced no author more than him, Greene
developed an understanding of the fact that art to be suc
cessful must not be wholly for man's sake; that it must be \
partly for art's sake as well.
Closely related to this achievement is growth toward con
sciousness of method. Greene's work is full of crudities, and
some of it is not interesting. Emphasis is often misplaced,
being upon speech rather than upon action. The first half
of a novel is unduly elaborated at the expense of the latter,
and episodes in the course of the main action are frequently
too extended. But beneath the surface, the careful reader
can perceive in Greene a definiteness of plan.
The overemphasized story of Valericus' rejection of Cas-
tania16 may be used as an illustration. Though it exempli
fies all the faults just enumerated, it was meant, — however
incompetently done — to explain Valericus' later betrayal
of Castania. A lady of high degree is in love with a
stranger who has come to the court. For the progress of
the story it is necessary that the duke, her father, hear
of the love-affair. No friend will betray them; an enemy
16 Carde of Fancie, Vol. IV.
8 ROBERT GREENE
must do it. But Castania and Gwydonius are both in
high esteem. A rejected lover is the only enemy possible;
He must be provided early in the narrative, for he cannot
be deus ex machina. That is Greene's plan. Valericus'
suit is too long drawn out. He might have been trans
formed from a lover into an enemy with much more de
spatch. We do not care to listen to all his speeches or to
read all his letters. The device is not well handled, looked
at from our point of view. But that there is a device
at all is reason for commendation.
It is out of the above four characteristics that our interest
in Greene arises, and our problems too. His talent, revealing
itself in these various ways, representing multiform activi
ties in one body of work, and summing up and expressing
the ideas and conventions of the age, gives him his place as
a man of letters and entitles him to a consideration in any
study of the literary activities of his time. Greene was not
great, — but a man does not have to be great to be worthy
of study.
To the student and critic, then, there comes the task of
evaluating the product of Greene's talent. He must de
scribe, explain, and judge the work which Greene has left;
and he must show the influences which produced it, point
out the significance to be attached to it, and portray so far
as possible the personality back of it.
CHAPTER II
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM
THE motto which I have given as the name of this chapter,
Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, occurs upon the
title-page of several of Greene's works. There are other
mottoes upon other works : Sero sed serio, and Nascimur pro
patria. These three mottoes taken together represent the
entire output of Greene's prose. They indicate, too, in this
order of enumeration, the course of Greene's development.
Yet different as are the purposes which they indicate, and
as are the contents of the pamphlets to which they are pre
fixed, they are the product of the same writer, and they grew
out of the same literary past.
The outlines of Greene's activity coincide for the most
part with the three stages of development of which Professor
Atkins speaks in his chapter on Elizabethan prose fiction hi
the Cambridge History of English Literature,1 a threefold
chronological division. Professor Atkins calls attention to
the fiction of which the fundamental nature is akin to that
of the moral treatise, and of which he chooses the work of
Lyly as the chief example. Then, without implying any
development in the evolutionary sense that one form arose
out of the other, he proceeds to speak of the new type that
appeared after 1584 and continued to exist side by side with
the first, an essentially romantic fiction represented by the
the Arcadia of Sidney. And finally he characterizes the
fiction of the last decade of the century as realistic, centering
in the life of the people rather than of the court, and
» Vol. III., Chap. XVI.
9
10 ROBERT GREENE
finding exponents in such men as Deloney and, a little later,
Rowlands and Dekker. In the ten or twelve years which
his career embraced, Greene saw English fiction in all three of
these stages. He saw it pass from under the sway of Lyly
and his courtly yet didactic Euphues, through the immediate
vogue of the romances (though romance was not by any
means dead), into the phase of realism, the interest in the
affairs of contemporary life. In all three movements Greene
had a share.
Like most other novelists then and since, Greene was an
imitator and a follower of convention. But his part was at
the same time active. Not only did he do what he saw others
doing before him and around him; he also contributed. He
was a student of the times. Where there was a demand he
tried to satisfy it. Where there was none he endeavored to
create it. He merged his own line of interest, as it were,
with the larger interest of the age; and he both derived his
inspiration from that interest, and added something from
himself to make it what it was and what it should become.
Just how he did these things, and how he was associated with
the three movements, it will be the purpose of this and suc
ceeding chapters to make clear.
At the time when Greene began to write, Elizabethan fic
tion was still in the first of these three stages of creative
endeavor. It had passed through the period of translation
that accompanied the first workings of the Renaissance in
fluence in every form of English literature, poetry and
drama as well as fiction, and that always preceded the period
of original production in those various forms. It had, too,
only a short time before, been well started in the way to
original work by the Euphues of Lyly.
The history of this period of translation need not detain
us long. It is necessary to state only two facts: namely,
that the era of translation sufficed for the introduction of
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 11
certain new materials, and that it accomplished certain
results as to style and method. Both of these facts are,
however, of importance in a consideration of the subsequent
development of Elizabethan novels.
The introduction of new ideas manifested itself, in the first
place, in the influence that arose from the translation of
various continental works of which Guevara's El Relox de
Principes (by Berners, 1534; and by North, 1557) and Cas-
tiglione's II Cortegiano (by Thomas Hoby, 1561) 2 were the
most significant. The result of such translations as these
was the quickening of an already present, but older, interest
in the kind of literature represented by Elyot's Governor
(1531) and Ascham's Schoolmaster (published 1570), and nu
merous other treatises intended for instruction in letters and
in forms of refinement, into a genuine and eager desire for
the more cultivated manners and thoughts of social life. In
the second place, along with the influence of these native and
infused ideas represented by these moral treatises must be
considered that which arose from the translations of novels.
Although the collections of Painter, Fenton, Pettie, and the
rest,3 may at first appear to be translations of continental
stories, both Renaissance and classical, the fundamental pur
pose of them was not unlike that of the moral treatises them
selves. For under the form of a story of love or fortune the
translator proclaimed his moral purpose.4 It may be that
8 The translation was frequently reprinted. There was also a Latin
translation in 1571 by Bartholomew Clerke which was almost as popu
lar as the English one.
» Painter, 1566; Fenton, 1567; Fortesque, 1571; Pettie, 1576;
Whetstone, 1576; Riche, 1581; etc.
4 Painter, for example, prefixed a long discourse, sometimes running
to the length of a couple of dry, uninteresting pages, to each of the
novels he translated. Those discourses were meant to be somewhat in
the nature of an argument, but they were designed also to point out
the exceedingly great value, and the moral, of the story about to be
12 ROBERT GREENE
these professions of a moral purpose are not to be taken too
seriously.6 At the same time, it cannot be denied that such
collections, of which the ostensible aim was edification, did,
under the guise of the narrative form, do much to set forth
new ideas on such subjects as love, friendship, and fortune;
to enlarge the sphere of emotion; and to combine with the
influence of the treatises to broaden the standard of culture
in accordance with the ideals of the more advanced peoples
on the continent.
The new ideas of culture which books like II Cortegiano
represented, and the new and passionate phases of life to be
found expressed in the Italian novelle, not only, as I have
suggested, broadened the intellectual and emotional experi
ence of English writers, but gave to those writers valuable
lessons in style and method of composition. Beginning with
what were literally transcriptions, so far as invention was
concerned, the translators themselves came, by 1580, to have
a considerable independence.6 Along with the process of
translation there went the process of adaptation; and both
related. Fenton, not content with torturing his tales out of all resem
blance to fiction by means of his discoursive sermonizing within the
tales themselves, added, to that, copious remarks along his margins.
6 In the case of Pettie they are not to be taken seriously at all.
6 In 1573 George Gascoigne, pretending to translate from an Ital
ian author, Bartello by name, wrote The Adventures of Master F. J., the
first of the English novels. Certain of Pettie's tales (A Petite Pallace
of Pettie his Pleasure, 1576. Ed. Gollancz, The King's Classics Series.
Tereus and Progne, Vol. I. Scttla and Minos, Vol. II.) are not by. any
means slavish followings of their originals. Barnabe Riche, in a collec
tion of eight tales was himself the author of five of them. (Riche his
Farewell to Militarie Profession, 1581. Shak. Soc. Pub., Vol. XVI.)
"To the Readers in generall: . . . The histories . . . are eight in
number, whereof the first, the seconde, the fift, the seventh and eight,
are tales that are but forged onely for delight, neither credible to be
beleved, not hurtfull to be perused. The third, the fourth, and the sixt,
are Italian histories."
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 13
of these resulted in original production. The significance of
all three is in the fact that, while the English writers were thus
following models, they were at the same time acquiring a
knowledge of prose style. Their independence was far from
complete, but the knowledge which they got was at least
valuable hi the production of such stories as satisfied the
instinct for edification, both moral and cultural.
So much, then, had been accomplished when, following out
the tradition of narrative form for didactic purpose, Lyly
wrote his Euphues, the novel with which the first stage of the
development of Elizabethan prose fiction was inaugurated.
Euphues, it is well to recall for purposes of comparison a
little later, is the story of a young Athenian who comes to
Naples. There he is given some sound advice on the subject
of conduct. Presently he meets Philautus, with whom he is
soon on intimate terms of friendship. Philautus introduces
him to Lucilla, his betrothed. Euphues and Lucilla fall in
love and the friendship with Philautus is broken. It is not
long, however, before Lucilla deserts Euphues for one Curio,
just as she had deserted Philautus for Euphues. Then
Euphues, a wiser man, having renewed his friendship with
Philautus, betakes himself to Greece, becomes a hermit, and
sends forth letters upon various subjects to his various
friends.
Lyly intended to write a treatise. His real purpose, as Mr.
Bond says,7 "was to string together moral reflections on
grave subjects, the gathered results of various reading." Lyly
was concerned with the inculcation of ideas. Matters of
education, friendship, religion, love-making, conduct, travel,
and so forth, he discussed with the seriousness that pertains
to questions of real moment. These things were vital to him,
and indispensable. From sources here and there, from
7 The Complete Works of John Lyly. Ed. by R. W. Bond. Clarendon
Press, 1902. Introductory Essay to Euphuea. Vol. I, p. 159.
14 ROBERT GREENE
Cicero, Plutarch, Erasmus, Guevara, from his own thought,
too, he collected opinions and discourses on social affairs.
Some of these he translated just as he found them; some he
adapted to suit his purpose. The Anatomy of Wyt is, there
fore, " rather an essay in philosophy than in fiction proper."
But it is not wholly so. The compilation thus made Lyly
cast into narrative form. As such it has serious defects,
want of action, poverty of imagination, lack of human interest.
In spite of its imperfections as narrative, however, — in spite,
one might say, of the very didacticism which called it forth —
Euphues is a novel, an excellent " prototype of the novel with
a purpose."
Of the style of the celebrated work we shall not speak, its
structural and ornamental devices — anthitheses, rhetorical
questions, alliterations, puns; historical and mythological
allusions, similes from natural and unnatural history, prov
erbs, set discourses, soliloquies, " passions," asides to the
reader, letters, misogynist tirades. All this is too well known
on its own account to make necessary anything more than the
mention of it as the conscious effort to please men desiring to
"heare finer speach then the language would allow." There
can, indeed, be only one purpose in calling attention to Lyly's
work at all, the purpose, namely, of taking advantage of its
familiarity to the reader as a means of summing up more dis
tinctly, perhaps, than would otherwise be possible, the state
of the novel when Greene put forth his first production.
(A) MAMILLIA
The First Part of Mamillia (lie. 1580), the earliest extant
work from Greene's pen, is the only one of his novels (together
with the Anatomic of Lovers Flatteries appended to the Second
Part, 1583; and a few elements in the Second Part itself) of
which the form was cast in the mold set by Lyly. But
though Greene only once chose Euphues as the model for his
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 15
own work, there is no doubt that he wrote Mamillia with
Lyly's novel, and Lyly's success, in mind. Mamillia has
come from the court of Venice to be at her father's house
in Padua. She receives a letter from a friend at court as to
matters of conduct. At her father's house, one Pharicles
sees her, falls in love with her, and wins her affection. Shortly
afterward Pharicles sees Publia, woos, and wins her. Thus
treacherously engaged to both ladies at once, and fearing the
outcome of such faithlessness, he decides to leave the country.
He does so, leaving behind two faithful women, both of whom,
in spite of his fickleness, remain constant in their affection.
Publia in the Second Part enters a convent; Mamillia — a
radical departure from Euphues — marries Pharicles.
The plot of Mamillia differs in many respects from that of
Euphues; still the general plan is much the same. Corre
sponding to Euphues' departure from Athens, we have
Mamillia's departure from the court to her father's house.
The fundamental theme of infidelity is the same with sexes
reversed. This reversal is often carried out in details.
Euphues goes from home to gain worldly experience.
Mamillia is away from home in the midst of temptations,
and goes home in order to avoid them. When Euphues
arrives in Naples, he is offered advice, which he haughtily
rejects. Mamillia is offered advice, which she accepts and
earnestly tries to follow. The reversal is carried, also, to the
main characters. In Euphues there are two faithful male,
and one faithless female, characters; in Mamillia there are
two faithful female, and one faithless male, characters.
Corresponding to the fact that Euphues met Lucilla through
Philautus' introduction is the fact that it was Mamillia who
introduced Pharicles to Publia. Corresponding to the quarrel
between Euphues and Philautus when Euphues falls in love
with Lucilla, there is the falling out between Mamillia and
Publia when Pharicles and Publia fall in love. Corresponding
16 ROBERT GREENE
to Euphues' secluding himself at Silexedra is Publia's entrance
into a convent. And corresponding to Euphues' letters, are
the letters of Mamillia to her friend, the Lady Modesta.
This definite parallelism is sufficient to show what I mean
in saying that Mamillia is planned upon Euphues.3
Not in form only, but also in purpose, was Greene's first
novel written in very obvious emulation of Lyly. Although
he did not follow the exact type again, Greene began to
write in accordance with the prominent tradition of the
time; and this tradition involved not only the form of
Euphues, but its aim as well. Lyly's purpose was primarily
didactic. His method, ostensibly that of narrative, has some
of the interest which arises from pure narrative. The under
lying principle, however, is of another kind. Lyly was too
close to the older school of Painter and Fenton, too thor
oughly imbued with the newly acquired ideas of the
Renaissance, to be able to project a work of fiction which
should be free from the encumbering didacticism of the
treatise. I do not mean that he should have been wholly
free from it. The contrast is not between didacticism and
entertainment pure and simple, but between a crude didac
ticism which comes from a failure to assimilate ideas suffi
ciently to secure a true perspective, and an artistic criticism
of life. A notable work of fiction can never be mere enter
tainment. But Lyly was so filled with the significance of
the new culture, and of the refinement and polish of expres
sion, that he mistook these subordinate for the prominent
elements. His purpose was not first to create a novel in
our modern sense of the word, with its artistic proportion
8 Another very close following of Euphues is the opening part of
Lodge's Euphues Shadow, 1592. (The Complete Works of Thomas
Lodge. Ed. by Gosse, Vol. II.) The latter part of Lodge's story is
entirely different, but the opening situation is identical with that of
Euphues.
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 17
both of pleasure and of criticism, but to open new matters
of polite thought, manners, conversation, to the minds of
the English court.
Greene, although he omits Lyly's element of satire, also
was aiming at edification. He was carrying on in Mamillia
the tradition of the treatise. As well as Lyly, he perceived
the value of refinement in thought, of elegance in expression,
and of a consciousness of endeavor to make culture a part
of the life and speech of the English people. That end he
saw accomplished by Lyly; and he tried, upon the model
of his predecessor, to bring about the same result. His
method was narration; his end, instruction. He has given
us therefore a novel which is not, on the whole, unlike
Euphues.9
This is not saying that we are to attach to Mamillia the
same significance that we give to Lyly's work. Although,
as Mr. Bond10 admirably points out, Lyly found at hand
practically all the elements, both of style and content, which
he combined to produce Euphues, he is nevertheless to be
given credit as a pioneer in that he first created what is
worthy to be regarded seriously as a work of fiction. In
this sense, Lyly's novel is more important than Greene's.
It is the more important, too, on its intrinsic merits. There
is in it a somewhat firmer handling of the materials, a deeper
9 In view of such a purpose and such a production, we can hardly
agree with the statement of Mr. Gosse when he said, in speaking of
Mamittia, "It is to Greene to whom the credit is due of first writing
a book wholly devoted to fictitious adventure in prose." (Hunterian
Club. The Complete Works of Thomas Lodge. Ed. by Edmund
Gosse, 1883. Introduction, Vol. I., p. 11.) To characterize Mamillia
— the First Part at least — as "fictitious adventure" and thus to
distinguish it from Euphues, is, it seems to me, utterly to misinterpret
the nature of the work.
10 The Complete Works of John Lyly. Ed. by R. Warwick Bond,
Clarendon Press. 1902.
18 ROBERT GREENE
understanding of motive, a more effective grasp upon the
meaning of character. Not only this, perhaps because of
this, it is more mature, more steady in its aim and in its
method.
We are not, however, to be blind to the importance of
Greene's work, nor to discount it too much from the fact
that it is directly a copy, tyamillia has most of the imper
fections of the time, infinite niceties of Euphuistic phrasing,
tendency to clog the narrative with pedantic speeches and
conversations, shallowness of characterization. But super
ficial as it is, it is not ineffective. Publia, Mamillia, and
Pharicles are more than just the inverse portraits of Phi-
lautus, Euphues, and Lucilla. For all that Pharicles' trouble
of mind over his inconstancy is not, upon examination,
very convincing, it will endure a cursory reading.11 And
if the narrative element is slight (it must be remembered
that we are discussing the First Part only; the Second Part
belongs with the romances), it has at the same time a certain
degree of rapidity. Pharicles meets Publia immediately
upon his acceptance by Mamillia. The whole situation
indeed is more cleverly conceived than in Lyly. Philautus
takes Euphues to Lucilla for the purpose of introducing
him to her. The introduction is, obviously, to make oppor
tunity to reveal Lucilla's fickleness. In Greene, on the other
hand, the introduction is manifestly accidental. Pharicles
is walking with Mamillia for the sake of urging his suit. It
happens that she is going to Publia's house. Pharicles goes
along. Inasmuch as Mamillia has just granted her love by
the time they arrive, we are dumbfounded at Pharicles' sud
den passion for Publia. The events that follow, too, occur
in quick succession; almost before we know it, Pharicles
is betrothed to both, and off and away to Sicily.
11 Dr. Wolff (Eng. St., Vol. 37, p. 358) thinks that Mamillia contains
some of Greene's best characterization.
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 19
The apparent fortuitousness of Pharicles' meeting with
Publia illustrates what I think is Greene's advance over
Lyly. It shows, on Greene's part, a realization of what
narrative, as distinct from treatise, demands. Euphues is
a treatise which came near being a story; Mamillia is a
story which retains much of the treatise. Although he
was striving to imitate Lyly, Greene's nature led him to a
slightly different result. He put into a minor relation the
very things for the sake of which, perhaps, he wrote the
book, and elevated those which his fundamental interest in
events inevitably made prominent. Even in his first pro
duction, when his purpose was to teach, he developed the
ability, which he was later to develop more consciously, of
producing work with real narrative art. Omne tulit punctum
qui miscuit utile dulci. Lyly, it may be said, had stressed
the utile. Greene found the value of the dulci. Such a
discovery in those days was no small thing for a lad of
twenty.
(B) THE FRAME-WORK TALES
It was one of Greene's most deep-rooted characteristics
to write what he thought he would have a market for. All
through his life he was doing that. "After I had by
degrees proceeded Maister of Arts," we are told, " . . .
I became ... a penner of Love Pamphlets . . . who
for that trade growne so ordinary about London as Robin
Greene."12 The statement comes from the supersensi-
tive brain of a dying man, but the truth of it applies
elsewhere to Greene's work. Literature was a trade to him,
an activity to be followed shrewdly in order to be followed
successfully.
Fiction, in 1580, was didactic. Greene would therefore
be didactic. Euphues was very popular. Greene would
11 Repentance, Vol. XII., p. 17-23.
20 ROBERT GREENE
write a novel like it. Such seems to have been the origin
of Mamillia. It was none of Greene's intention, when he
began, to do more than disguise the similarity between his
pamphlet and its model. Every one still felt the need of
being didactic, or at least of pretending to be so,13 and
Greene meant to follow fashion and be as didactic as the
rest.14 Incidentally he discovered the power of ordering
events in a way to give real narrative interest. The story
did not exactly run away with him; but it broke loose.
There is in Greene's work a balancing between two pur
poses. His desire always to be in fashion brought about
these results, — one coming from his conscious aim to instruct,
the other developing as a by-product into a freedom of art.
Mamillia marks the first stage. The romances mark the
last. Between the two, both in time and in relationship,
are the frame-work tales which form the subject of this di
vision of the chapter.
To the composition of the frame-work tales the Italian
Renaissance contributed the two elements which character
ize this branch of Greene's work. There was the influence
which came from the Dialogues, like Bembo's Gli Asolani
and Castiglione's II Cortegiano; and which, we saw earlier
in the chapter, was already felt in England even before the
13 See an example in the Adventures of Master F. J., which Gascoigne
concludes in these words: "Thus we see that where wicked lust
doeth beare the name of love, it doth not onely infecte the lyght-
minded, but it maye also become confusion to others which are vowed
to constancie. And to that end I have recyted this Fable, which may
serue as ensample to warne the youthfull reader from attempting the
lyke worthless enterprise." (Gascoigne. Ed. W. C. Hazlitt. Rox-
burghe Library, 1869. Vol. I., p. 486.)
14 "I will take in hand to discourse of, (Obedience) that both we
may beguyle the night with prattle, and profite our mynds by some
good and vertuous precepts." Penelopes Web, p. 162. A character
istic statement of Greene.
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 21
time of Greene. In the Dialogue of this type, the purpose
was cultural; the center of interest was on what was said
rather than upon what was done, — upon polite conversation,
discussions upon questions of morality, love, fortune, and so
forth ; and the emphasis was about equally divided between
the frame-work and the included matter. There was, too,
the influence of the frame-work tale proper, of the kind repre
sented by Boccaccio's Decameron. Works of this sort tended
to minimize the importance of the frame-work and to throw
the emphasis upon the included stories. The purpose was
that of entertainment more than of culture.
We may begin with Morando, the Tritameron of Love.
Morando resembles the treatise in its purpose. Perhaps it
should not even be called a novel at all. The Lady Panthia,
accompanied by her three daughters and three young gentle
men, is spending three days at the house of Morando. On
each day a discussion occurs:15 first, Love doth much, but
money doth all; second, Whether or not it is good to love;
third, Whether women or men are more subject to love.
Hence the title — after the fashion of the Decameron and
the Heptameron — the " Tritameron " of Love. Each ques-'
tion is debated by one of the young couples. Considerable
opportunity is offered for a certain brilliancy of conversation
and repartee; and while there is no action, there is some inter
est in the development of the characters. By the time the
three days' discussion is over, one of the young men has
fallen in love with one of the young ladies. Then all go to
Panthia's house in town, from where, if Greene hears what
18 Morando and several other novels of the group are thus examples
of the dubii, or discussions particularly of the more subtle questions
of love, which constituted for many decades a very popular amusement
in polite circles. They dealt with just such topics as are proposed in
Morando, and were very widespread in the literature of the Renais
sance, not only in Italy but elsewhere.
22 ROBERT GREENE
success Silvestro had, he will let us have news. Greene
heard — as he always did in such cases — of Silvestro's
success, and so had plenty of reason to publish the Second
Part. This second part carries on the love affair to its
happy conclusion. Thus the story forms a setting in which
are embedded some further discourses, this time not upon
love, but upon fortune and upon friendship.16
Even so brief an analysis will serve to show the nature of
the work. It can be seen at once that the Tritameron
has more story than is to be found in the treatises proper,
but is yet distinctly akin to them. The purpose of it is not
narrative primarily, but didactic, — designed to give expres
sion to, and to infuse into the English mind, certain thoughts
upon cultural subjects, however conventional those thoughts
and purposes might be or might become.
Of all the group, Morando takes the extreme place in the
direction of cultural intention. Next to it are the pam-
16 Mr. Hart (Notes and Queries. 10th Ser. No. 5, pp. 343, 443, 444.)
has pointed out that these discourses are not original with Greene.
They were extracted by him from Primaudaye's Academy. Primaudaye
was born about 1545 of a family of Anjou, and was a man of consider
able renown in his own time. His works were chiefly of a religious
nature. The Academy was translated in 1586 by Thomas Bowes as
the "Platonical Academy & Schoole of Moral Philosophy" Greene
frequently made use of Bowes' translation. The discourse on Friend
ship (Vol. III., pp. 146-60) is taken from Primaudaye, Chap. XIII,
"Of Friendship and a Friend." Ten lines of Primaudaye are lifted
bodily. "First we say with Socrates that ... (12 lines skipped)
. . . Friendship is a communion," etc. The discourse of Peratio
upon Fortune (pp. 128-39) is from Primaudaye, Chap. XLIV. Greene
omits Primaudaye's account of Tamburlaine. The discussion on
marriage (pp. 164-6) is, incidentally, from Primaudaye, Chap. XLV.
The sexes are changed, for whereas Primaudaye writes against women,
Greene is arguing for them.
After 1586 many of Greene's writings show large verbal borrowings
from Primaudaye.
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 23
phlets which make up Greene's largest body of work. These
are the frame-work tales which have stories within them
selves in illustration of the ideas brought out in the
discussion. Closest to Morando in didactic elements is
Farewell to Follie.11 Signior Farnese goes, with his wife and
three daughters and four young gentlemen, into the country.
There they discuss Follie in a series of discourses and illus
trative tales. From the fact that the three forms of Follie
talked of are Pride, Lust, and Gluttony, and from the fact
that there are seven young people in the company, it is
surely not unreasonable to suppose with Professor Morley18
that Greene had in mind to make the Farewell to Follie a
treatise on the seven deadly sins.19
The title-page of the Censure to Philautus is undoubtedly
the best comment upon that work:
"Euphues his censure to Philautus. Wherein is presented a philo-
sophicall combat betweene Hector and Achylles, discovering in foure
discourses, interlaced with diverse delightfull Tragedies, The vertues
necessary to be incident in every gentleman: had in question at the
17 This pamphlet is often spoken of in connection with the so-called
repentance novels. The only way in which it can be so connected
with them (the way in which it usually is connected with the repent
ances) is by the prefaces. The prefaces, however, have nothing to do
with the work itself, unless the anatomizing of folly be called "re
pentance." So far as the work itself is concerned, it does in reality
belong with the treatise-narrative group.
18 English Writers, Vol. X., pp. 94-5.
w Mr. Hart (Notes and Queries, Ser. 10, No. 5) cites twenty or
more passages taken directly from Primaudaye. Among the most
important of these are the passages on marriage (Vol. IX., pp. 327-8)
which are taken from Primaudaye (Chap. XLV.) and the Tale of Cosimo
(Vol. IX., p. 298) which Greene develops into a story from the headings
of the tale of Menon in Primaudaye (Chap. XL VII.) In no other work
does Greene borrow so extensively from Primaudaye. In Farewell to
Follie he also made use of Laneham's Letter (1575). Passage (Vol. IX.,
p. 265) is taken from Laneham (Burn's reprint, 1821, p. 29, corrected
by Furnivall in Ballad Society, p. 22. 1871).
24 ROBERT GREENE
siege of Troy betwixt sondry Grecian and Trojan Lords: especially
debated to discour the perfection of a souldier. Containing mirth to
purge melancholy, holsome precepts to profit maners, neither unsauorie
to youth for delight, nor offensive to age for scurrilitie. Ea habentur
optima quae & lucunda, honesta, & utilia."
The purpose, as can be seen, is similar to that of Castig-
lione's work, in this case to set forth the qualities of the
perfect soldier. The emphasis is only apparently upon
the didactic; really the narrative elements were more im
portant in Greene's own mind. For one-fifth of the
novel is given to the frame-work and the background —
the meetings of the Greeks and Trojans, both soldiers
and women, in a time of truce; and the consequent talking
back and forth,20 with the final decision on the part of the
men to " discover" an ideal member of their own profession.
One-fifth is devoted to the set speeches such as were found
in the Tritameron of Love, in this instance on Wisdom,
Fortitude, and Liberality, the three essentials of perfection
in arms. And three-fifths are consumed in the relating of the
"delightfull Tragedies.'721
20 Professor Herford (New Shak. Soc. Ser. 1, Ft. 2, p. 186) thinks
there is some relation between Greene's conception of Cressida, as she
is shown to us here, and Shakespeare's. Greene's, he says, more
nearly approaches Shakespeare's manner than any other version in its
conception of the heroine. Greene speaks of Cressida who was "tickled
a little with a self e conceit of her owne wit" (Vol. VI., p. 166) — a sug
gestion of the pert, impudent, ingenious Cressida of Shakespeare.
I think we can agree that there is this similarity between the two
Cressidas. But I do not believe we can go so far as to say with
Grosart (Englische Studien 22:403) that "Shakespeare's treatment of
'Troy's tale divine' in Troilus and Cressida is drawn from Euphues
his Censure."
21 How definitely Greene meant to convey the impression that he
was writing a treatise can be seen by his own remark in his preface
where, attributing the work to Euphues, he speaks of it as a work
"wherein under the shadow of a philosophicall combat betweene Hector
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 25
Belonging with the Censure to Philautus and yet going a
step farther toward an openly expressed delight in the story
elements are Penelopes Web, dating from the same year
(1587), expressly a "Christall Myrror of faeminine per
fection" intended to set forth the virtues of womankind
in the same way that the Censure sets forth the idea of the
perfect soldier;22 Alcida™ in which the principal character
is an old woman who tells the stories of her three daughters,
revealing three vanities, Pride, Inconstancy, and Proneness
to Gossip, the "discourse" confirmed with " diverse merry
and delightfull Histories"; u Planetomachia, a discussion with
and Achilles, imitating Tullies orator, Platoes common wealth, Bal-
desars courtier, he aymeth at the exquisite portraiture of a perfect
martialist." Vol. VI., p. 152.
M A part of the title-page reads: "In three several discourses also
are three especiall vertues, necessary to be incident in every vertuous
woman, pithely discussed: namely Obedience, Chastitie, and Sylence:
Interlaced with three severall and Comicall Histories. By Robert
Greene, Maister of Arts in Cambridge."
Penelopes Web has borrowings from Primaudaye's Academy. (Hart,
Notes and Queries. 10th Ser. No. 5.)
23 Brie (Englische Studien, 42: 217 ff.) attempts to determine the
date of Lyly's Love's Metamorphosis on the ground of its connection with
Alcida. Without raising the question of the date of Lyly's play, I
fail to see any such intimate relationship between the novel and the
play as in any way to think the former the source of the latter. Both
involve metamorphoses, to be sure, but the similarity scarcely goes
beyond that point.
14 Storojenko (Grosart's Greene, Vol. I., p. 95) is puzzled as to what
should have caused Greene "to change his front so suddenly, and to
send the shafts of his wit against the very sex which he had always
so highly lauded." Storojenko is linking together Nashe's epithet,
"Homer of women," (Nashe's Works, Ed. McKerrow, Vol. I., p. 12)
and Greene's own words in Mamillia (Vol. II., pp. 106-7) where Greene
sets himself up against the slanderers of women. To be puzzled about
a seeming change of front is to take Greene too seriously. In the first
place, speeches against women are to be found in Mamillia itself
(Vol. II., pp. 54, 221-2), and in other works of Greene. In the second
26 ROBERT GREENE
an elaborate preface on the influence of the planets,25 con
taining two tales by Saturn and Venus, each divinity to prove
that the influence of the other is the more malignant in the
actions of men, — a theme similar to that of Lyly's Woman
in the Moon.
There are two more novels in the group, Perymedes and
Orpharion. These are at the opposite extreme from Mo-
rando. For while there is a semblance of a purpose for having
a frame-work — in the case of Perymedes to set forth a pic
ture of contented lowly life; in Orpharion to show a cure for
love — the stories which make up the novels are told for
their own sake. This, in spite of the fact that Greene in
all solemnity declares that Perymedes illustrates "a golden
methode how to use the minde in pleasant and profitable
exercise;" and that in Orpharion "as in a Diateheron, the
branches of Vertue, ascending and descending by degrees:
are counited in the glorious praise of women-kind."
In form, Greene's Vision is a frame-work pamphlet. But
the tales are really incidental both in proportion and in inter
est, although one of them, the Tale of Tompkins, is among the
most skilful of Greene's stories. The Vision, being an
account of a religious experience, may therefore be dis
place, it is not known that Nashe is referring to Greene at all (Nashe,
Ed. McKerrow, Vol. IV., p. 14). And in the third place, Alcida is not
necessarily a misogynic pamphlet. It is not against women in general.
It is merely against certain faults in women's natures — simply a
didactic narrative.
25 This preface is not original with Greene. He gets it from Pontano's
dialogue called Aegidius (Prose Works, Venice, 1519, Vol. II.). "At
the beginning of Planetomachia, Greene takes over nearly verbatim,
in the original Latin, seven pages of this dialogue (beginning at page
168), substituting his own name " Robertus Grenus" and that of his
friend "Fransiscus Handus," for the names of Pardus and Fransiscus
Pudericus respectively, wherever these occur in the original." (S. L.
Wolff. Eng. St. Vol. 37, p. 333, note 1.)
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 27
cussed in the next chapter among the repentance pamphlets.
Strictly speaking, two others of Greene's novels, Never too
Late, with its sequel, Francescos Fortunes, and Arbasto,
belong with this group. But for the reason that these two
novels contain only one tale each, and that in both novels
the included tales so put the frame-work out of mind as to
make it entirely negligible, they are best considered in the
groups where they properly belong, the latter with the
romances, the former with the prodigal-son stories.
The interest of these pamphlets for the modern reader is,
in most cases, in the tales. It is the interest which arises
from the narrative rather than from the didactic elements.
This probably was less true to Greene's contemporaries.
Although the frame-work is not entirely without significance
even for us, to them it was, no doubt, the more vital part.
For Greene imbued it with considerable of the spirit of
Renaissance thought, and he conveyed through it to his
readers much that was essentially cultural hi content and
in aim. He was, then, not merely the writer of didactic
frame-works embellished with incidental tales; he was an
apostle of the new learning and all that it represented. He
was journalistic, he made his living by putting out these
pamphlets. But such considerations do not alter the fact
that he did much, along with earning his bread, to familiarize
his readers with ideas of refinement in conversation and life,
with precepts of morality, with questions of sentiment and
passion, with discourses on the virtues and vices of mankind.26
There are in all more than twenty of the included tales.
16 For a full discussion of this subject of Greene as an introducer
of Italian culture see Dr. S. L. Wolff's article (published in Englische
Studien, 1906-7, Vol. 37) entitled, "Robert Greene and the Italian
Renaissance." Dr. Wolff discusses the influence of the Renaissance
upon Greene as being of two kinds; that which Greene assimilated
in such a way as to treat imaginatively in his own work, such as plots
28 ROBERT GREENE
The tabulation of them in chronological order will show in
the most concrete way possible the range of subject and
genre.27 Such a tabulation, however, shows nothing of the
structure or of the excellence of Greene's work. It may be
well, then, to illustrate Greene's narrative art.
We may take the story of Tompkins the Wheelwright, for
example, — Chaucer's Tale in Greenes Vision (Vol. XII.).
This tale belongs to the old fabliau type, which is in itself
well freed from ethical purpose. It is not the aim of the
type to portray character, except incidentally, or to bear in
struction. The good fabliau is primarily narrative, consist
ing always of a well-knit story. It is clear even when it is
elaborate. Its method is straightforward, ever selecting the
significant detail necessary to forward the action. It is
compact, unadorned, effective.
Near Cambridge lived a wheelwright named Tompkins.
He fell in love with a dairymaid who sold cream in Cam
bridge. Her name was Kate. She loved him too, and her
father consented to the marriage. Kate continued to sell
her cream. Tompkins became jealous of the scholars at
Cambridge and finally became jealous of everybody. Kate
perceived his jealousy and was grieved. She was friendly
with a scholar whom she asked to rid her husband of jealousy.
They devised a plan.
On Friday Tompkins took his wife to her father's while he
went to Cambridge. He met a scholar who asked him
where he lived. He said at Grandchester. Scholar asked
if he knew Tompkins, the wheelwright. Tompkins said
and motifs; and that which he used but did not so assimilate — ideas
about science, literature, education, politics, society, which became
a part of his mental content and changed his views of life, and adventi
tious material which enlarged his stock of information and furnished
literary ornament.
27 See Appendix I.
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 29
he was his neighbor. Scholar said that Tompkins was the
most famous cuckold in the country, and offered to prove
the statement the next day when Kate was in town. Tomp
kins was to meet the scholar at an inn.
The next day Tompkins bade his wife go to market, for
he was ill, he said. Then he went to Cambridge to the
inn. He met the scholar, and they went to a chamber
window. Tompkins saw his wife sitting on a scholar's
lap eating cherries. Then he and the scholar drank
together. Tompkins was given a sleeping potion, and they
all made merry, while Tompkins slept. Late at night they
carried Tompkins home.
About midnight he awoke and began to rail at his wife.
Then he saw that he was at home in bed, and he could not
understand it. He said that he had seen his wife on a
scholar's lap, eating cherries. They persuaded him that he
had been very ill, and that it was all mere fancy. Thus
was Tompkins cured of his jealousy.
The Tale of the Farmer Bridegroom in Groatsworth of Wit
belongs in the class with that of Tompkins. Not all of
Greene's tales, however, rank with these two. Some of
them are poorly done and dull; indeed the fact cannot be
overlooked that, however popular in its day, much of
Greene's work is commonplace to us. But every man has
the right to be measured by his highest attainments. In the
final consideration there is this quality which demands
recognition. When he is at his best, Greene is able to tell a
story well. He has an understanding of what a plot is, and
he makes his narrative move. Most of Greene's work is of
course impeded by Euphuistic ornament and didactic talk,
but the story is usually well conceived and developed.
Entirely different is the tale of Valdracko, — Venus' Trage-
die in Plajwtomachia. Valdracko, Duke of Ferrara, was a
crabbed man. Though he was just and politic as a ruler, he
30 ROBERT GREENE
was not liked privately. He trusted no one. Valdracko had
a daughter called Pasylla, who was loved by Rodento, son
of II Conte Coelio, Valdracko's bitter enemy. (The love
affair is long drawn out.) One day Valdracko went to his
daughter's room to speak to her. She was not there, but he
found one of Rodento's letters and Pasylla's answer to it.
He made up his mind to be avenged on the family of Coelio.
There was a great meeting of the nobles of Ferrara. Val
dracko asked Coelio to stay after the meeting, and made
proffer of reconciliation. The proffer was accepted, to the
joy of the Senate, and Valdracko took Coelio home with him
to dinner. He called his daughter to him and told her of
his plan for her to marry Rodento. Pasylla said she was
willing, Rodento was sent for, and the marriage was arranged
for the next spring.
Meantime Valdracko decided to hire a ruffian to murder
Coelio. Within a few days the ruffian had killed Coelio with
a pistol. But he was captured, and brought before the
Senate. Valdracko, pretending great sorrow at his friend's
death, ordered the man's tongue cut out. Pasylla and Ro
dento were greatly grieved at Coelio's death. Valdracko
had the murderer put to death in torment. Soon after,
Rodento and Pasylla were married with much ceremony, and
Valdracko spent great sums of money upon the marriage
feast.
After five months Valdracko began thinking how he might
be rid of Rodento. He went to a house of his three miles
from Ferrara, from where he sent a letter to his cup-bearer
to poison Rodento, promising great reward. The cup
bearer carried out the orders the next morning. Within
four hours Rodento died. Pasylla was greatly grieved. The
cup-bearer had pangs of conscience. He gave her her father's
letter, and died. When Valdracko came home he pretended
sorrow for Rodento's death, but Pasylla had vowed revenge.
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 31
When he had gone to sleep, she went to his chamber and
bound him to his bed. She awakened him and killed him
with a sword. She- took pen and ink and wrote out the story;
then she killed herself with the same sword.
This tale is distinctly a product of the Italian Renaissance.
It might well be — and may be, for all anybody knows — a
translation of one of the novelle. The story is full of Italian
incidents and motifs:28 murders, revenge, treachery. It has
in it passion of love and hate, intensity of movement. That
the action is somewhat slow in starting must be admitted,
being delayed by the conventionality of the process of young
people's falling in love. But once set going the trend of
events is sure, the movement steady toward the tragic end.
The principal characters are of course Valdracko and Pa-
sylla, the father and his beautiful daughter. About Pasylla
there is nothing of particular import. She is passionate and
faithful in her love; and she is unflinching in her revenge.
But Greene does not present her differentiated from the
type of beautiful heroines who can, on occasion, show a
ferocious fortitude — the gentle lady murderers so common
in the literature of the Renaissance. Nor does he imbue her
with a personality so distinct as to arouse in us genuine
sympathy for her revenge or for her death.
Valdracko, too, is only a type. But he is a type which
comes very near to being a character. He is a man impla-
88 "The story of Valdracko, in Planetomachia, is full of Italian
motifs. That of the old woman go-between who transmits to the lover
what is ostensibly his own love letter disdainfully returned, but what is
really an encouraging reply, may well have come from Boccaccio's story
of the confessor as go-between — Decani. III., 3 (not noticed by Koep-
pel). There is, too, a typical Italian poisoning, and a general family
slaughter — father killing son-in-law, daughter killing father and her
self — which recalls Cinthio's tragedy of Orbecche, or his narrative
version of the same story in Hecatomm. II., 2." (Wolff, Eng. Stud.,
Vol. 37, p. 346, note 1.)
32 ROBERT GREENE
cable in his hatred. There is no sacrifice too great, be it his
own daughter. There is no treachery too violent. Greene
has presented us with a unified conception. Valdracko is
consistently portrayed — with one exception. We cannot
understand the depth of his motive as co-ordinate with the
terribleness of his actions. We cannot feel that Valdracko
moves wholly from within. To the extent that he is moved
by his creator he falls short of real personality.
We are here making one of our most serious criticisms
upon Greene's art in fiction. Greene gets hold, to a remark
able degree, of the nature of narrative so far as the choice
and arrangement of events is concerned. His sense for action
is strong. His ability in characterization, on the other hand,
is not so well developed. He seldom presents more than
types. Although his presentation is often a refinement upon
that of his predecessors, and although he succeeds in idealiz
ing certain kinds of personality, his characterization is always,
in his novels, inadequate. Greene has not enough insight
into the depths of human -nature to gain a full conception
of the sources of action. He does not relate sufficiently a
motive for conduct, and the conduct itself.
This is a serious criticism. But to say so, is not also to
say that it is a severe one. We must remember that in 1585
Shakespeare had not begun to write, that Marlowe had pro
duced nothing, that Kyd had not even written the Spanish
Tragedy. Greene had few models in English Literature,29
for no one had yet opened the eyes of English men of
letters to a realization of what it was possible to do in the
creation of character when creative power was at its highest.
Greene's supreme achievement is Valdracko, which, we have
said, falls short. Greene had not intensity enough of imagi-
29 Sidney's Arcadia with its minute and keen analysis of character
was written before 1585, but there is no way of knowing whether Greene
had read it.
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 33
nation to raise him above the sphere of type into the sphere
of personality; so the story of Valdracko remains a tale, —
not a tragedy. But the wonder is not that Greene failed.
In conclusion, my discussion of the frame- work tales may
require a word of explanation. Greene's career in fiction,
chronologically, was from the treatise to the romance, —
from the uiile to the dulci, through the frame-work tales,
which were both. In view of that general development I
have taken up the frame-work tale as a progression from the
one extreme to the other. It must be remembered that I
have done so only for the sake of classification and clearness.
The order here is not at all that in which they were written.
We can easily be led astray by the evolutionary idea in the
case of a man like Greene whose work in fiction as a whole
does, at first sight, seem to have been the result of a con
scious development. For we have first Mamillia, the didac
tic treatise; then about 1586 and '87 a series of frame- work
tales; and finally in 1588 and '89 a group of romances, narra
tives pure and simple. The division, however, is by no means
exact. Greene's second work, for instance, was a romance.
And so was his third, and his fourth — this last in a prodigal-
son frame-work. Moreover, after he had left romances, and
had turned to another form of writing, Greene appeared with
one of the most didactic of his frame-work tales. Such con
siderations prevent any belief that Green's novels represent
a real progression in his mind.
The development, if there had been one, would have been
in accordance with Greene's natural ability. His real power,
if he had only known it, was in narrative. But as I shall
have occasion to state later, Greene did not fully realize
wherein his talent lay. He developed technique, methods
of meeting definite problems of literary presentation and ex
pression. In this sense there is distinct progress in his work.
Of the difference, however, between the two elements of the
34 ROBERT GREENE
frame-work tale he seems to have been unaware. The cul
tural element of the frame-work was quite as significant as
the included tale. He felt no need — there isn't much, for
that matter, — for drawing a distinction between didacti
cism, which was his crude but only criticism of life, and the
capability of giving pleasure which a work of art must have.
We cannot, therefore, regard this division of Greene's work
as more than a miscellaneous collection of pamphlets, most
of them fortuitously centered around the year 1587. To him
they were not in any way a link between the treatise and the
artistic narrative.
(C) THE ROMANCES
From these frame-work tales, we pass to the next group of
Greene's novels. This is the group which belongs to the ro
mantic fiction that was prominent for several years during
Greene's career. It is true that we most often associate the
idea of this romantic fiction with that of Sidney's Arcadia.
But the Arcadia is only one of the class of Elizabethan ro
mances, which, influenced by various models, such as Italian
and Spanish pastorals, were inspired chiefly by the translation
of the Greek Romances.30
The nature of the Greek Romances we need not take up at
length, with their emphasis upon the picturesque, the rhe
torical, the fanciful, the diversified, rather than the unified,
expression of life. For the Greek Romancer we know that
life moves not as a whole, governed by physical and moral
law, and that, for him, events follow events not in relation
of causation but of chance. The activities of life are unmoti-
vated. There is no interaction between environment and
80 In the discussion of Greene's relation to Greek Romance, I am
much indebted to Dr. S. L. Wolff who has treated this subject with
thoroughness in his The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Fiction. Colum
bia University Press, 1912.
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 35
human destiny, nor indeed between human character and
human conduct. Sentiment is mere sentimentality; nature
is mere spectacle. The dissociation of the ideas of cause
and result leaves to Fortune the direction of human activity.
To their incalculableness, the interest in events is due ; and
so the "paradoxical, the bizarre, the inconsistent, the self-
contradictory — these were the stock in trade with the writers
of Greek Romance." Such interests manifest themselves
in style — antithesis, alliteration, parallelism, tendency to
psychologize, elaborate pictures, trial-scenes, and debates;
and they lead at once to a superabundance of episodic ma
terial. The subordination of plot and character, both often
lost in digressions, elevates the significance of Fortune and of
sentiment, against the first of which many a tirade is directed,
and upon the second of which much energy of analysis is
expanded.
Concerning the accessibility, too, of these romances to
Greene, only a word is needed. The ^Ethiopian History of
Heliodorus was current in Underdowne's translation even be
fore Lyly wrote his Euphues. Angel Day published a ver
sion of the Daphnis and Chloe of Longus in 1587 which at once
had its effect upon Greene. The first translation in English
of Achilles Tatius' Clitophon and Leucippe was not made until
1597. That translation was too late to have any effect upon
Elizabethan fiction, but there were versions of the romance
in Latin, Italian,31 and French, which were well known in
England before the time of Greene.
In speaking of the influence of the Greek Romances upon
any one man in the Elizabethan period, however, it does not
» Joseph de Perott (Mod. Lang. Notes, Vol. XXIX., No. 2, p. 63,
Feb. 1914) believes that Greene used an Italian version of Achilles
Tatius, as follows: Di Achitti Tatic Attessandrino deWamar di Leudppe
et di Clitophonte libri otto Tradotti in volgare da Francesco Angela Coccio.
In Venetia, Appresso da Domenico, & Gio BattistaGuerra, fratelli, 1563.
36 ROBERT GREENE
seem to me that we must necessarily assume that all
this influence came directly from the original romances.
A particular author, Greene for instance, may not have
taken, and probably did not take, every incident which
is common to his works and to the Greek Romances
straight from the Romances themselves. This influence
was widespread throughout the literature of the continent;
and by the time that Greene began to write, many of
the most typical of the structural elements of Greek
Romance had become a part of the flesh and bone of
Elizabethan fiction. In many instances, moreover, the in
fluence of mediaeval romance must be taken into account in
discussing the directness with which any particular element
came into Elizabethan fiction.
These novels of Greene which show predominantly the
influence of the Greek Romances have in them nothing which
savors of the treatise. They may, as does Pandosto, "dis-
cour the triumph of time;" or, as Menaphon, "decipher the
variable effects of Fortune, the wonders of Loue, the triumphs
of inconstant time. " But, although they were, according to
their title-pages, printed for purposes of morality, they are
fiction pure and simple, fiction of love, adventure, jealousy,
separation, reunion of kindred, motivated largely by the
caprice of Fortune and the wilfulness of man.
The tendency of Greek Romance to minimize character and
motive, and to make Fortune become the basis of plot, was
one which fitted in well with Greene's nature, for Greene had
an eye to the narrative effect. In following out their influ
ence he was free to give sway to his native interest in
events, and he was at the same time relieved from any
considerable problems of characterization. Fortune took all
the responsibility to keep the story moving; she became the
center around which were grouped various people and actions.
In this class of romantic fiction, we should include first of
OMNE TUL1T PUNCTUM 37
all the Second Part of Mamillia. The First Part, as we
have seen, belongs to the didactic type of Euphues. The
Second Part is essentially romantic. After Pharicles has left
Padua, the two faithful women constant still, he goes to
Sicily. He grows into favor at the court, has various experi
ences, is denounced as a traitor by a courtezan of the place
whom he has spurned, is cast into prison, condemned to die,
and finally is rescued by Mamillia, the only character of the
action of the First Part, besides Pharicles, who has any defi
nite place in the action of the Second Part. Throughout the
Second Part, there are many elements, to be sure, which
come from Euphues, but the principal narrative is that of
the romantic kind.
The Second Part of Mamillia was published in 1583. The
following year Greene published two novels which are of this
same type. One of them is Arbasto, the story which an old
man living alone in a cell tells to a stranger. He had been
a prince, he said. When he was on an expedition of war, he
had fallen in love with his enemy's daughter. The princess
did not return his affection; but her sister, whom the prince
disregarded, fell in love with him. Because this sister re
leased him from her father's prison, he dissembled love and
took her with him to his own country. Later discovering
that his love was only dissimulation, she died of grief. The
haughty princess then took it into her head to love, but the
prince spurned her as violently as he had formerly loved her.
The nobles revolted to avenge his wife's death, and drove
him from his throne. So he lives in his cell, throwing the
blame for the whole affair upon Fortune, whom he spites by
his contentment with a lowly lot. The Carde of Fancie be
longs with this romantic group, but it is discussed elsewhere
on account of its relation to the prodigal-son stories.12
We come then to Pandosto, 1588. The germ of this ro-
» Chap. III., p. 66.
38 ROBERT GREENE
'mance probably goes back to an incident in the history of
Poland and Bohemia.33 A fourteenth century king, Siemo-
witsch, or Ziemowit, becoming suspicious of his Bohemian
wife, put her into prison, where she bore a son. The queen
was then strangled, and the son was sent away. The child
was brought up by a peasant woman, and was finally restored
to his father, who died deeply repentant in 1381. The story,
it is thought, was carried to England at the time when Ann
of Bohemia was married to Richard II.
Pandosto, in the general outline, follows the historical inci
dent, except that it is a daughter, not a son, who is born in
the prison. We do not know in what form the story came
to Greene. It may have been in something of the shape
that we have it from his pen, in which case the work
may be only a retelling. Greene's romance, however, is
distinctly of the Greek type. The historical elements easily
fitted in with such a method of treatment. The nucleus
was there. All that was needed was to gather about it an
abundance of Greek structural elements.
That is what Greene did. He worked out, for example,
quite in the method of Heliodorus, an elaborate trial-scene
and the use of the oracle for the vindication of chastity. He
borrowed from Longus the description of Fawnia's life among
the shepherds after she was committed to the destiny of the
sea, — the details of the Shepherd's finding her, her rural life,
and her later disclosure to her father. There was added, too,
the romantic story of the love of Fawnia and Dorastus,34 son
33 See Eng. Stud, for 1878, 1888, where the source of Pandosto is
discussed by Caro. Also Herford, Eversley Shakespeare, Vol. IV., p. 265.
34 De Perott (Englische Studien, 1908, p. 308) in an article, Robert
Greenes Entlehnung cms dem Ritterspiegel, directs attention to what he
calls a borrowing (Pandosto — Shak. Library. Vol. IV., p. 45, line 13 —
p. 49, line 14) from Le Chevalier du Solid, Vol. III., ff. 308-9). I fail
to see any resemblance worthy to be called a "borrowing." The situa
tion is one which might be found in any pastoral romance.
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 39
to the Egistus who had been the object of Pandosto's sus
picions, and to the shores of whose kingdom Fortune brought
the little outcast and her boat. He made this love the means
of Fawnia's return, for he employed the structural device
whereby the shipwreck of the eloping lovers brought Fawnia
again home.35
It is highly characteristic of Greene that Pandosto is his
first pastoral. While pastoralism had already made, and was
making, itself felt in England, Greene had not introduced it
into his works. There was no particular, no immediate, de
mand for it. Arbasto and the Garde of Fande, written earlier,
are both free from the elements of shepherd's life. But in
1587 Angel Day's version of Daphnis and Chloe appeared, a
work so distinctly pastoral as to direct Greene's energies to
an attempt at something of the same kind. There is no
doubt, therefore, that Angel Day is responsible for Pandosto
and Menaphon, its successor of the following year.36
In Menaphon, pastoralism is of much more importance
than in Pandosto. The romance does not open with pastoral
elements, to be sure, for the first part of it is devoted to telling
of the pestilence in Arcadia, and of the ambiguous oracle.
The purpose is of course to hurl us in medias res, but it is not
realized. Without making his plan entirely clear, Greene
leaves the opening situation and goes to another, the situation
with which the line of action he is to develop really begins.
Menaphon, a shepherd, walking by the sea-shore, saw
pieces bfa wreck floating near, and on the shore an old man,
and a woman with a child. He asked them who they were,
86 For a more complete account of Greene's borrowings from Greek
Romance see Wolff, p. 446 seq. In the same work see also a comparison
of Pandosto and the Winter's Tale, pp. 451-2.
34 "Greene's borrowings indicate clearly that he used a translation
by Angel Day, for he takes from it several details not to be found in
either the Greek or French version." Wolff, Greek Romances, p. 447.
40 ROBEKT GREENE
and offered to help them. Sephestia called herself Samela of
Cyprus, wife of a poor gentleman now dead; the old man was
her servant. Menaphon took them home, and immediately
fell in love with the beautiful stranger. Then the story goes
on with Sephestia's life among the shepherds and shepherd
esses, their courtships and petty fallings out, their songs
and jigs.
One Melicertus hears of Samela and confesses his love.
Both are troubled; for to each the other resembles the sup
posedly dead husband or wife. Meantime the child Pleusi-
dippus is carried away by pirates to Thessaly, where he grows
up as heir to the throne. Hearing of the Arcadian Samela,
he comes to present himself as a suitor. Democles, the king,
also comes to woo. Now, Democles is Samela's (Sephestia's)
father. And Melicertus is Maximus, her husband, with
whom she was forced to flee from the court to escape her
father's wrath, but from whom she was separated by ship
wreck. The plot is, then, that of a husband wooing his wife,
a son wooing his mother, a father wooing his daughter, all of
them royalty in disguise. Complications arise; blood is
about to be shed. Then an old woman steps forth and ex
plains the fulfilment of the ambiguous prophecy.
The story as it stands is considerable of a mixture from
several sources. The central idea, we may suppose, Greene
got from Warner's tale of Argentile and Curan in Albion's
England*7 At least he probably got from that tale the idea
of royal persons meeting in the disguise of the shepherd life,
and failing to recognize each other. Even in this point the
similarity is not particularly close, except that in Warner's
tale and in Menaphon, the lover (Curan in Warner; Melicer-
37 1586, Bk. IV., ch. 20. In Chalmer's English Poets, 1810, Vol. IV.,
pp. 498-658. See J. Q. Adams, Greene's "Menaphon" and "The Thra-
cian Wonder," Mod. Phil. III., pp. 317-8; also Wolff's Greek Romances,
p. 442.
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 41
tus in Greene) confesses to a former love affair and describes
his former mistress (who is of course identical with the new).
From Sidney's Arcadia Greene imitated various elements,
particularly the wooing of Sephestia by both father and son.
From the Greek Romances he incorporated certain structural
and verbal parallels.38
With all these borrowings, and with all the inconsistencies
of plot and character, the story of Menaphon is still Greene's.
For there is something more to it than plot and character
and borrowings. In structure it is far from being the best
of Greene's works. Its companion-piece, Pandosto, surpasses
it in this regard. But I believe that when most of the few
present-day readers of Greene's romances agree in pro
nouncing it his most charming novel they are right in their
judgment. It is as near the essence of the dulci as Greene
ever got.
Menaphon is not equal to Lodge's Rosalynde; and it had
not, moreover, the good fortune to be turned into a Shake
spearian play. But it is, nevertheless, a sweet story. There
is about it an atmosphere quite its own, — the idyllic pastoral
setting, and the songs, the country loves, the dances, the
tending of flocks, the piping in the shade of the hawthorn.
There is the sunshine of the anywhere-nowhere Arcadia,
the idealization of existence, the freedom of movement that
comes from life not lived within the bounds of the troubled
world.
"Whiles thus Arcadia rested in a silent quiet, Menaphon
the Kings Shepheard, a man of high account among the
swaines of Arcadia, loued of the Nymphes, as the paragon of
all their countrey youngsters, walking solitarie downe to the
shore, to see if anie of his ewes and lambes were straggled
downe to the strond to brouse on sea iuie, wherfore they take
* See Wolff, Greek Romances, for a discussion of these parallels of
structure and phrase.
42 ROBERT GREENE
speciall delight to feede; he found his flockes grazing upon
the Promontorie Mountaines hardlie: wheron resting him-
selfe on a hill that ouer-peered the great Mediterraneum,
noting how Phoebus fetched his Laualtos on the purple Plaines
of Neptunus, as if he had meant to haue courted Thetis in
the royaltie of his roabes. . . . Menaphon looking ouer the
champion of Arcadie to see if the Continent were as full of
smiles, as the seas were of fauours, sawe' the shrubbes as in
a dreame with delightfull harmonie, and the birdes that
chaunted on their braunches not disturbed with the least
breath of a fauourable Zephirus. Seeing thus the accord of
the Land and Sea, casting a fresh gaze on the water Nimphs,
he began to consider how Venus was feigned by the poets to
spring of the froathe of the Seas; which draue him straight
into a deepe coniecture of the inconstancie of Loue :
Some say Loue
Foolish Loue
Doth rule and gouerne all the Gods,
I say Loue,
Inconstant Loue,
Sets mens senses farre at ods."
There are cares in this land of Arcadia, hearts sore with
unrequited love. And there are wars and rumors of wars,
languishing in prisons, shipwreck, separation of kindred.
But all these will pass away, we know; the lost will be found,
hard hearts will melt, and happiness will come to her own.
The story is romantic and unreal; it could never have hap
pened. But that doesn't make any difference. There is a
charm to it for one who can disentangle himself for a moment
from the crowding business of the day to go back to the golden
times, — even don a Watteau coat and hat to sport with jolly
shepherds, make love to the beautiful shepherdesses, and,
more than all, enjoy
"The sweet content that country life affords."
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 43
Philomela need not be summarized in full. The romance
is the story of a jealous husband who falsely accuses his wife
of inconstancy, and has her banished. She goes to a distant
land and lives humbly. Then the slaves who have borne
false witness confess their wrong-doing. The jealous hus
band is himself banished. He sets out to find his wife, and
comes at length to the place in which she lives. Tired of
his vain search, he assumes the responsibility for the murder
of the Duke's son, who is thought to have been killed. The
wife hears of the self-accusation, and to save her husband
declares herself to be the murderer. Then the Duke's son
appears and the man and his wife are happy in their reunion
— so happy that the man dies of joy.39
There is one romance left, Ciceronis Amor, or Tullies Love.
Next to Pandosto, this was Greene's most popular novel.
It is a story of love, with pastoral elements intermingled
(rather, we should say, dragged in). Greene speaks of it
as his attempt "to counterfeit Tullies phrase," and as his
"indeauor to pen doune the loves of Cicero, which Plutarch,
and Cornelius Nepos, forgot in their writings."
In all these romances, it is ever necessary to bear in
mind Greene's attitude toward Fortune. His inability to
ground a plot in motives which have their sources within
the springs of personality made him perceive the value,
and the necessity, of Fortune as a narrative element.
Greene's attitude never developed into a cult. Fortune,
mysterious and incalculable, was to some people rather more
real then than now. She was a personality whose whims
determined much of the lot of man. She was one of the forces
of the universe, sharing with man himself the responsibility
for the management of the world. Such a view, I say, Greene
did not acquire. He had not enough imagination to acquire
39 Greene's novel furnished one of the plots in Davenport's City
Nightcap. 1624.
44 ROBERT GREENE
it. A conception like that would have necessitated the ability
to grasp character which was the very thing that Greene
lacked. But although he did not rise high in his conception
of Fortune, he was able to get from her that which he needed
for the success of his narrative. What he wanted was some
thing which would help him get his characters about, move
them from one situation into another, without having to
justify those activities. .Fortune could do that. One turn
of her wheel would be enough to change the face of things
completely. We should have a new and interesting com
plication, and no explanation would be necessary as to how
it came about. Fortune became, therefore, a word ever on
Greene's lips. It represented an idea to be played with,
talked about, bandied here and there, given all manner of
attributes; most important of all, Fortune became an
actual motive power in a line of action.40 But wherever
used, she was primarily a narrative element, a servant to
Greene's story-telling instinct.
In this capacity Fortune is the source at once of Greene's
strength and of his weakness : of strength, in that his use of
Fortune enables him to present interesting and (forgetting
for the moment the long speeches — which are for the most
part the fault of the age, not of Greene) rapid narrative;
of weakness, in that Fortune relieved him of what would by
nature have been to him a difficult task, the creation of
genuine characters.
Recognizing the place which Fortune holds, we can under
stand the work that Greene has constructed on that basis.
His incompetence to seize hold upon the fundamental
nature of a character and to define the principles upon which
40 Dr. Wolff (Greek Romances, p. 392) summarizes Greene's concep
tion of Fortune as having three phases: that in which she is purely
an abstraction, that in which she is a quasi-personality, that in which she
is a mistress of plot.
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 45
that character acts, his leaving the conduct of affairs pretty
much in Fortune's hands results, as we should well expect,
in many inconsistencies of plot and character. Consistency
is no virtue if there is no relation between whaf a man is
and what a man does. We are not aware of defects unless
we have an ideal of perfection. So far as consistency was
concerned, Greene had no such ideal.
The result of this disregard for making a story plausible
is easily made apparent. The situation in Menaphon, for
example, of father, husband, and son, all in love with Samela
is in itself ridiculous. The total ignoring of the elapsed
twenty years is unpardonable if we stop to think of it.
When we stop to think of it, too, Arbasto is nothing but the
tale of a whining old man. And we become almost impatient
with Greene that he should permit the quondam king the
outrageous privilege of heaping the blame for his misfortune
anywhere but on his own wilful head. The point about the
whole matter, however, is that we do not stop to think.
Realizing that Pandosto or Menaphon or whatever romance
it is we take up, is so largely the result merely of what
"happened/' we move along with the action, never pausing
to analyze or to question. Inconsistencies do not seem to
have bothered Greene; and so long as he makes no attempt
to smooth them over we are hardly aware that they exist.
Now that the account of the various kinds of Greene's
fiction is completed, it remains to speak of some general topics
which pertain to his fiction as a whole. In this connection
there are qualities of style which we may take up first.
When we speak of Greene's style, both as to its own
characteristics and as to the influences which produced it,
we naturally think first of John Lyly and his Euphues.
Rightly so, for Lyly's novel was predominant when Greene's
first one was published, and continued to be so for a number
of years. As a matter of fact, however, Lyly's manner of
46 ROBERT GREENE
writing was not originated by him, nor was it peculiar to
him. Various scholars, notably Mr. Bond, have set forth
Lyly's relations with his predecessors, and have shown that
there were at hand practically all the elements which Lyly
employed. Greene, therefore, in following Lyly was in
reality carrying on the tradition of the English novel as
established by Gascoigne and as used by Pettie, Whetstone,
Riche, and the rest of the earlier writers of fiction.
Greene was not far from the beginning of this line of
development. But even by this time, although fiction was
still tentative in its forms (it is always tentative, so far as
that is concerned), it had taken on certain fixed modes of
expression. The conventionality of Elizabethan poetry
both in form and in content has long been recognized.
Elizabethan fiction underwent the same sort of process, so
that not only form, but thought as well, and the manner of
expressing it, became to a large degree stereotyped and
impersonal. So advanced a state of conventionality was
fortunate from Greene's point of view. It made unnecessary
any large amount of originality with regard to the treatment
of any particular situation. The method of handling a
courtship, for example, was to be found ready at hand.
But the result of the taking over by Greene of these
elements of novel construction was, from the manner
in which he used these elements, that of carrying the
process still further. That is, Greene seldom rises above
the convention itself to make of it a genuine means of
character protrayal or an integral part in the motivation of
a plot. We have, therefore, in his novels an almost endless
succession of similar situations treated in a similar fashion,
a great many of which might be transferred from one novel
to another, with no harm done, — or benefit either.
It was to Greene's detriment that he did to so great an
extent become a follower of convention. He was impeded
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 47
rather than helped by his conformity to fashion. The quality
of his work, which, we have before had occasion to state, is
his characteristic and most complete attainment, is the
straightforwardness and swiftness of his narrative. If he
had left himself free to the guidance of his own natural
talent, his results would have in them more of permanent
value. Had he broken away from tradition more fully and
worked in the vein represented by the tale of Tompkins the
Wheelwright or by some of his short stories in the conny-
catching pamphlets,41 he would, however much he was
catering to the taste of his time in conforming to fashion,
have done a more effectual service in the development of a
simple narrative style.
It is apparent that Greene did not himself understand
wherein his ability lay. He has cluttered his stories up with
all sorts of decorative tinsel: letters, "passions," speeches
for every kind of situation, formal discourses, misogynist
tirades, declarations of love and their answers, digressions
and asides to the reader, proverbial philosophy, quotations
from all the tongues, stock illustrations, classical and natural
history allusions, — commonplaces in Elizabethan fiction too
familiar to need illustration. Indeed it requires on the part
of the modern reader as full a recognition as he is able to
give of the fact that after all Greene is not wholly responsible
for the presence of these features in his work to prevent a
failure to perceive its real merit, and a condemnation of it
wholesale to the literary bone-yard. But the worst is,
granting that such things were fashionable and so to be
indulged in, that Greene seems to have delighted in this
elegance of phrase and encumbering ornament.
Greene seems not to have understood that he was thus
ever striving, as it were, to get away from what his nature
would have him do. At the same time he did make progress
« See Chapter IV.
48 ROBERT GREENE
in his style. Pandosto is more direct than the Carde of Fancie.
Throughout Greene's career there is perceptible a slow but
steady turning away from the ornate and artificial to the
more natural kind of fiction. This turning is due partly,
of course, to the turning of the age in that direction. But
it is also due to Greene's own development, a development
of which he was to some extent conscious. In Menaphon
there is a passage42 which shows that "literary style" was
to Greene something which could be put on and taken off
at will. This consciousness is further evidenced by the
admirable simplicity of the social pamphlets, and by
the abrupt change in the tone of the last few pages of
the Groatsworth of Wit.
Greene possessed, when he forgot himself and was really
concerned with what he said rather than with how he said
it, a straightforwardness wholly unexpected in a writer
living before Bacon. This directness is especially notice
able, as I said, in the social pamphlets. But it is discernible
in the fiction, too. Illustrations can be found near the end
of many of the novels. Like most of his predecessors, Greene
was more interested in getting a story under way than he
was in its conclusion. Perhaps it would be more nearly
correct to say that he expended more energy of elaboration
upon the first half than upon the latter. The result of such
a process is that the opening of a story is often stilted in
its method. Too much emphasis is placed upon speech,
talking back and forth and writing letters; the movement
42 "Samela made this replie, because she heard him so superfine
as if Ephoebus had learned him to refine his mother tongue, wherefore
thought he had done it of an inkhorne desire to be eloquent; and
Melicertus thinking that Samela had learned with Lucilla in Athens
to anatomize wit, and speake none but Similes, imagined she smoothed
her talke to be thought like Sapho, Phaos Paramour.
Thus deceived either in others suppositions, Samela followed her
sute thus." Vol. IV., p. 82.
OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM 49
is slow and tedious, exasperating at times. Then suddenly,
as if all at once realizing that he has enough written to make
a salable pamphlet, Greene takes himself in hand, dis
penses with his artificiality, winds up his action, dismisses
his characters and lo! the story is done. There is a certain
precipitousness about such a performance, one must admit.
You don't always keep up with it, and you don't always
understand just what has happened. Perhaps the haste is
just as bad technique as the slowness. My point here is
that Greene can be direct; that he has, underneath the as
sumed literary form of expression, another more simple form.
Throughout the whole of my discussion of Greene's novels
I have repeatedly dwelt upon what seems to me to be Greene's
real ability, that of narration with an aim at artistic narrative
effect. I have, too, told what seems to me to be his defects
in characterization, his inability to infuse life into his men
and women. In view of what has been observed above in
regard to Greene's over-emphasis upon the first half of a
story, this element of characterization deserves just a word
more.
Greene constantly threw stones in the way of his own
narrations. There is no doubt that he did so deliberately, —
subservient to custom, and pleased with his results. I
think there is another reason, though, which helps to
account for these obstructions. Inheritances they were, —
"passions," speeches, letters, and so on, — coming from
various literary sources. There was no other phase of
Elizabethan fiction which became more stereotyped in its
form of expression. But these elements, found most excess
ively in the first part of the story, are indicative of some
thing else than just convention. They manifest an interest
in characterization.
The "passions," for example, which are scattered broad
cast throughout Elizabethan novels are attempts at char-
50 ROBERT GREENE
acter analysis. They aim to set forth the mental states
in which people find themselves under definite conditions.
The psychology upon which they are based is generally
unsound and artificial. The emotions that these people
undergo, the thoughts that they utter, are not true to life.
But the faults do not alter the necessity of our under
standing the aim of this psychologizing. With all its
imperfection it shows an inclination toward character
study. There was, clearly, on the part of the Elizabethan
novelists a growing interest not only in the art of telling a
story effective for the events in it, but also in making the
people whom those events concern appear as genuinely
human as possible. Greene was a participant in this move
ment toward fuller characterization. The fact that he
did not succeed must not lessen our recognition of the fact
that he tried.
Looked at from this point of view, there is perhaps a little
more sympathy to be felt with the feeble efforts which
Greene and the rest of them made. These men were con
forming to fashion, they were over-elaborate and affected;
but they were at the same time using the only methods
they knew of presenting character. They had not yet
learned the art of letting characters reveal their own person
alities in natural conversation, nor had they learned that
we may come to know people not only by what they do
and say but also by their reactions toward other people, and
by the reactions of other people toward them.
With the various people whom Greene endeavored to
present we need not deal at length. It may be well to take
up two of them in order to bring out the two prominent
facts about Greene's characterization.
Of all of Greene's characters Sephestia is probably the
best known. She is the victim of distressing and cruel
circumstances, but she embodies all the qualities of an
OMNE TUL1T PUNCTUM 51
ideal heroine. She is beautiful, kind, faithful, resourceful,
patient, charming. When she sings her lullaby to her
sleeping babe, when she mourns her fate, when she moves
among the scenes of pastoral life, or when in prison she
spurns the love of a king, — always she has our interest
and our sympathy. Our feeling for her is not, however,
that which comes from depth or clearness in her por
trayal. It is derived rather from a certain refinement of
atmosphere which surrounds her, from the delicacy of the
lines with which she is depicted. I introduce Sephestia
here because this refinement and delicacy which I mention
in connection with her compose one of Greene's salient
characteristics, one of the things we often think of in
relation to him. Indeed, the significant fact about Greene's
women lies not so much in an added depth of portraiture
over what his predecessors had accomplished, as in giving
to them a new interest by a process of idealization. Greene's
women are not, that is, so much more genuinely human,
nor do they necessarily act from so much more definitely
conceived motives than those of his predecessors. But
they do possess the charm which arises from a delicacy of
presentation and from a refinement of attitude toward
them as heroines.
The other character I wish to speak of is Arbasto, who
illustrates in an extraordinary degree another phase of
Greene's characters. Arbasto is an old man who lives in
a cell and mourns. The experience of life has been un
happy for him, for he has been banished from his kingdom.
Fortune is to blame. The association of Fortune with the
affairs of men which Arbasto makes, and which Greene lets
pass unchallenged, leads to an understanding of what the
trouble is. Greene got many ideas from the Italian Renais
sance, plots and motives, and types of characters. But
there was one conception which he did not get hold of
52 ROBERT GREENE
in a way to make it effective. That was the conception
of the force of personality. I spoke of this failure in
connection with the discussion of Valdracko, but it is
apparent in all of Greene's works. Greene's interest in
characterization was not enough to counterbalance the
lack of a sweeping imagination such as Marlowe had,
and such as is necessary to transform puppets into living
heroes. And so, whether the ruling passion be revenge,
jealousy, ambition, what not, there is always a littleness
about Greene's portrayal, a dissatisfaction with the result
obtained. No one of these characters has strength to
dominate the situation in which he is placed. Fortune,
not personality, is the moving power.
One is inclined to come away from a close study of
Greene's novels with too grave an impression of him. We
may inquire what he was like as an author, what his methods
were, what influences affected him. But we must remember
that Greene wrote rapidly, that he was primarily a jour
nalist. He copied, adapted, created. He may have been
conscious in his art. There is no way of knowing, for
consciousness of effort and utilitarianism of purpose are
not mutually exclusive ideals. We must be careful,
however, not to regard as necessarily deliberate art what
may be only shrewdness. I am convinced that there is
no more fundamental element in a true conception of
Greene than a realization of the fact that he is best appre
ciated when studied with an attitude that does not take
him too seriously. We must not, in other words, over
look the journalist in our study of the artist.
SERO SED 8ERIO 69
Fortunes, "and after that my Farewell to Follie, and then
adieu to all amorous Pamphlets."21 The Never too Late is
thus apparently one of the amorous pamphlets. At the be
ginning of the promised sequel, we are told that if the work
had not been promised it would never have been written.
But here it is. Henceforth we are to look for Greene's pen
in "more deeper matters." ** By the end of the book (p. 229)
Greene has evidently forgotten his reluctance, for we find
there that if he has further news he will send us tidings in
another book. Such a statement seems to invalidate that of
the preface. But of course the first statement is meaning
less. Lyly had said the same thing, "I hope you will rather
pardon for the rudeness hi that it is the first, & protect it
the more willingly if it offend in that it shalbe the laste,"23
while he was definitely promising a second part.24
While we are waiting for the Farewell to Follie, out comes
the Mourning Garment, as "the first fruites of my new la
bours, and the last farewell to my fond desires,"26 which
was licensed Nov. 2, 1590. Now if the Mourning Garment
is the first-fruits of a new life, one wants to know what the
Never too Late and Francescos Fortunes were, — for they were
just like it. Yet Greene has deplored these as wanton. The
impression we get is that Greene had not made up his mind
in regard to this matter. Perhaps the statements are not
unlike those we are accustomed to hear in our day of the
farewell tours of prima donnas and once famous actresses.
Finally in 1591, as the "ultimum vale" to youthful vani
ties, appeared the long-heralded Farewell to Follie, Greene's
"many yeeres (he was then thirty-three) having bitten me
» Vol. VIII., p. 109. » Vol. VIIL, p. 118.
» Lyly. Ed. Bond. Vol. I., p. 180.
*4 "You shall in the seconde part heare what newes he bringeth."
p. 323.
» Vol. VIIL, p. 22.
70 ROBERT GREENE
with experience, and age growing on bidding mee Petere
graviora."2* But even here Greene cannot look upon his
past work as wholly bad, — including the three " repent
ance" pamphlets. His works were "mixed with such morall
principles," he consoles himself, "that the precepts of vertue
seemed to crave pardon."27 Of course they could not be so
bad as to hinder their sale!
Greene prefixes to the Farewell to Follie the repentant
motto. It is quite as solemnly pronounced Sero sed serio as
the rest. But this pamphlet has nothing of repentance in it.
It is nothing but a frame-work tale of the Omne tulit punctum
sort.28
All of this disbelief that Greene meant anything serious
by his professions of repentance — at least that his purpose
in talking about repentance was largely mercenary — in
cludes skepticism in regard to the experiences related in the
Vision. All we know about the religious disturbance which
is supposed to have occurred in 1590 is to be found in this
one pamphlet. Whether or not Greene had such a disturb
ance of mind, no one, I suppose, can ever actually know. I
am inclined to believe that he had not, and to say with Pro
fessor Greg29 that there is "a strong suspicion that Greene
. . . adopted the machinery of repentance by way of ex
plaining and advertising a change of style." The Cobbler of
Canterbury, which was the cause of all the trouble, was pub
lished sometime in 1590; we cannot tell just when. Now
Greene's Orpharion was licensed January 9. There would
hardly have been time before that for Greene to have been
burdened with the authorship of the Cobbler of Canterbury
and to have had the repentance. But the Orpharion —
written before the Cobbler — concludes thus: "Yet could I
not hie so fast, but ere I got home I was overtaken with re-
26 Vol. VIII., p. 228. 28 See Chap. II.
27 Vol. VIII., p. 227. » Mod. Lang. Rev. Vol. I., p. 241.
SERO SED SERIO 71
pentance."30 I do not know how to understand this last
sentence if it is not an announcement of the forthcoming
series of pamphlets, and if it does not mean that Greene was
planning the series even before the events supposed to have
happened in the Vision had occurred.81 Especially since
Never too Late, the first of the series, written before the events
described in the Vision, bears Omne tulit punctum on its
title-page. Francescos Fortunes, the sequel, is designated as
Sero sed serio. There is danger, one must admit, of going
too far to the other extreme: but in view of the evidence at
hand I see nothing sincere about the whole affair.
Misplacing of attention away from the real nature of what
Greene was doing and the consequent searching for autobio
graphical materials have obscured the significance of Greene's
work. That significance, I take it, is the fact that Greene
was able to treat the prodigal story in an imaginative way.
The three novels which I have grouped together, from
their common theme, manifest the same general qualities as
are shown in Greene's earlier works. The story was al
ready formed. In itself it was good; and it had, besides,
definiteness of treatment from its use in the Latin plays.
But it did not suffer in Greene's hands. The ability for
telling a story which Greene had already acquired was enough
to sustain interest even in so familiar a theme as that of the
prodigal son. In characterization these novels are thoroughly
in accord with Greene's failure to create living people. The
prodigals who set off on the journey are all just alike. Phila-
dor, Roberto, Francesco, Gwydonius, — their places might
be changed, and no one would be the wiser. Infida and
Lamilia are different only in their names.32
* Vol. XII., p. 94.
31 See Chapter on Chronology of Greene's Non-Dramatic Work.
32 On the subject of the courtezans in these prodigal stories a word
is needed. Storojenko and others since his time have alluded to the
72 ROBERT GREENE
Like the romantic pastoral the story of the prodigal son
offered no clearly recognized outlines to the novelist. It had
been worked out in the drama into more or less definite form
as represented by the Acolastus and the Studentes. But
quite as much as other types of fiction this one was yet in the
formative stage. There was a general scheme; there were
suggestions, incentives; yet there was no fixed tradition as
to the method of narrative treatment.
Greene took freely of what he found at hand; he was imi
tative, rather than original, in that respect. But when all is
said and done, he was an early, not a late, borrower.
The writing of three or four novels on the prodigal
motives, even though there was no great difference between
them, was therefore a noteworthy achievement. How im
aginative an achievement is well attested by our lack of per
ception hitherto that Greene was in reality presenting us
with a type of fiction, and by our failure not only to
discover unity within the group but to understand the type
as well.
The three prodigal-son pamphlets, the Farewell to Follie,
and the Vision are, then, intrinsically products of Greene's
literary imagination. But the Repentance and the concluding
pages of the Groatsworth of Wit give an impression of greater
sincerity. Both of them come from the month of the fatal ill
ness. Both were published after Greene's death, Groatsworth
of Wit on September 20, and the Repentance on October 6.
The last pages of Groatsworth of Wit are undoubtedly the
bitterness of Greene's later attitude toward women as compared to the
earlier attitude shown in Mariana, Sephestia, and the other heroines of
the romances. I had occasion to speak of this alleged change of front
in connection with Alcida (Chap. II., p. 25); and I repeat what I said
there. I see nothing which indicates an added bitterness in Greene's
mind. Just as repentance is a part of the material in a prodigal-son
story, so is a courtezan an indispensable accessory.
SERO BED SERIO 73
most famous of Greene's writings. They contain, indeed,
some lines to be numbered among the most famous lines in
the English language:
"Yes trust them not: for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with
our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes
he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and
being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely
Shak-scene in a countrie."
In addition to the celebrated allusion, the rest of Greene's
words are of value.
Roberto, the hero of what has up to this point been a prodi
gal-son story, has reached the bottom of his despair. He
recalls his father's precepts and knows that it is too late to
buy the wit he so negligently forgot to buy. His emotions
overcome him. "Heere (Gentlmen) breake I off Robertas
speech; whose life in most parts agreeing with mine, found
one selfe punishment as I have done." It would help us to
understand the Groatsworth of Wit if we could know just
when it was written. But we do not know. It seems reason
able, however, to suppose that it was begun before Greene
had realized the seriousness of his disease. "Greene though
able inough to write, yet deeplyer searched with sicknesse
than ever heretofore, sends you his Swanne-like song, for he
feares that he shall never againe carroll to you woonted
love layes [we thought he had given that up two years ago],
never discover to you youths pleasures. . . . This is ...
I feare me the last I shall write." He apologizes for
the condition of the story as an "Enbrion without shape."
Then he proceeds with his tale only thirty-four pages, when
he breaks down. His illness has probably become much
worse. He is sure that death is upon him. " Though no man
be by me to doe me good, yet ere I die, I will by my repent
ance indevor to doe all men good." His tendency toward
sentimentalism grows into morbidness. He condemns him-
74 ROBERT GREENE
self, his past life — which had no doubt been wild enough —
and his works without distinction. "Ah Gentlemen, that
live to reade my broken and confused lines, looke not I
should (as I was woont) delight you with vain fantasies,
but gather my follies altogether, and . . . cast them into
the fire. . . . O that the teares of a miserable man . . .
might wash their memorie out with me death. . . . But
sith they cannot let this my last worke witness against
them with me, how I detest them. Blacke is the remem
brance of my blacke works, blacker then night, blacker
then death, blacker then hell."
We cannot take such words at their face value, as they
pertain either to Greene's works or to his deeds. Gabriel
Harvey did indeed give Greene a pretty black reputation:
"I was altogether unacquainted with the man, never once saluted
him by name: but who in London hath not heard of his dissolute, and
licentious living; his fonde disguisinge of a Master of Arte with
ruffianly haire, unseemly apparell, and more unseemelye Company:
. . . his apeish counterfeiting of every ridiculous and absurd toy:
... his monstrous swearinge and horrible forswearinge: ... his
continuall shifting of lodgings: ... his keping of the foresaid Balls
sister, a sorry ragged queane, of whome hee had his base sonne, 7n-
fortunatus Greene: his forsaking of his owne wife, too honest for such
a husband: particulars are infinite. ..' . . He never envyed me so
much, as I pittied him from my heart: especially when his hostisse
Isam with teares in her eies, & sighes from a deeper fountaine, (for
she loved him derely) tould me of his lamentable begging of a penny
pott of Malmsey; and, sir reverence how lowsy he, and the mother of
Infortunatus were . . . and how he was faine poore soule, to borrow
her husbandes shirte, whiles his owne was a washing: and how his
dublet, and hose, and sword were sold for three shillings: and beside
the charges of his winding sheete, which was foure shillinges: and the
charges of hys buriall yesterday, in the New-churchyard neere Bedlam,
was six shillinges, and four pence; how deeply hee was indebted to her
poore husbande: as appeared by hys own bonde of tenne poundes:
which the good woman kindly shewed me."33
33 Harvey's Works. Ed. Grosart, Vol. I., pp. 168-71.
SERO SED SERIO 75
But Harvey was an enemy. Perhaps Nashe was more nearly
right.
"Debt and deadly sinne, who is not subject to? With any notori
ous crime I never knew him tainted."
Greene had lived hard. There is unquestionably much truth
in the picture that Harvey paints of Greene's last days and
of his ignoble death. But so were they all wild. Greene
was probably no better, no worse, than the rest. These
young University Wits were somewhat beyond the pale of
substantial citizenship, anyway.
Whatever his life had been, Greene's dying words are not
literally true. They represent him as a man depraved;
and Greene was not that. But they reveal clearly the state
of mind in which he was, — a sensitive being, friendless and
in poverty, sick unto death, with conscience torturing him
into anguish through memories of a wasted life. As for his
works, Greene need not have been so troubled about
them.34
After this self -vituperation Greene writes a letter "to
those Gentlemen his Quondam acquaintance, that spend their
wits in making plaies," with the address to Marlowe, Nashe,38
84 "Justice demands the acknowledgment that Greene's imagina
tion is entire and undefiled: in all these tales I cannot recall a single
sneaking allusion or prurient image or lascivious detail." S. L. Wolff,
Eng. St., Vol. 37, p. 350.
Such statements are common among Greene's critics. Without
depreciating the purity of Greene's writings, I think we have been
inclined to underestimate that of some other writers of fiction. I
fail to see that Greene stands out in striking distinction to Lyly, Lodge,
Sidney, or several others that might be mentioned.
* Upon the identification of "young Juvenall" much energy has
been expended — "that by ting Satyrist, that lastlie with mee together
writ a Comedie." For summary of various contentions see McKerrow's
edition of Nashe, Vol. V., p. 143. Also Gayley's Representative English
Comedies, p. 424, seq., where "A Knack to Know a Knave" is offered
AS a solution for the unknown "Comedie."
76 ROBERT GREENE
and Peele, and the attack on Shakespeare; a fable of the
grasshopper and the ant; and finally a letter to his wife,
committing to her the charge of their son. All three
reiterate the repentance for sin.
"Well, my hand is tired, and I am forst to leave where I
would begin; for a whole booke could not containe these
wrongs, which I am forst to knit up in some few lines of
words."
The Repentance was published after the Groatsworth of
Wit. This pamphlet, like the former, "dooth lay open the
graceles endevours of my selfe." It is divided into two parts :
the first being the Repentance; the second, the Life and
Death. We have the same upbraidings and self-accusa
tions. "I was the mirrour of mischief e, and the very pat-
terne of all prejudiciall actions." Greene was, too, he says,
"a meere Atheist," and a despiser of death. "Tush, what
better is he that dies hi his bed than he that endes his life
at Tyburne, all owe God a death: if I may have my desire
while I live, I am satisfied, let me shift after death as I may."
And again, "Hell (quoth I) what talke you of hell to me?
I know if I once come there, I shall have the company of
better men than my selfe, I shal also meete with some madde
knaves in that place, & so long as I shall not sit there
alone, my care is the lesse." So the young blasphemer goes
on.36
All this was to change: the day of judgment came. With
it came much grief.
The second part deals very briefly with a few events of
Greene's life, his parents "in the Cittie of Norwitch," his
* "There was no cryme so barbarous, no murther so bloudy, no
oath so blasphemous, no vice so execrable, but that I could readely
recite where I learned it, and by roate repeate the peculiar crime of
everye particular Country, Citie, Towne, Village, House, or Chamber."
Lyly, Euphues and His England. Ed. Bond. Vol. II., p. 24.
SERO SED SERIO 77
early schooling, his dissipation at Cambridge, his travel
abroad,87 his going to London, his marriage to "a gentle-
17 There has never been any doubt expressed as to the actuality of
this trip, and I do not know that there is necessity for expressing any
such doubt here. It is interesting to note, however, that there is in
Greene's writings not a single reference (with perhaps one possible
exception) which can be cited as indicating that Greene had any direct,
first-hand knowledge of the Continent. Even in a case like that in
his Never too Late (1590) in which an opportunity seems to have been
created expressly for descriptions of continental scenes, Greene gives
only the vaguest of generalities.
The passage referred to (Vol. VIII., p. 20-32) is rather interesting
in this connection. The palmer, "My native home is England, the
ende of my journey is Venice, where I meane to visit an olde friend of
mine, an Englishman." Then follows, "Sir (quoth I) if I might with
many questions be not offensive, I would faine be inquisitive to knowe,
as you have passed along France, Germanic, the Rine, and part of
Italic, what you have noticed worthie of memorie." To this the
palmer answers, "After I had cut from Dover to Calice, I remembred
what olde Homer writte of Ulysses, that he coveted, not onely to see
strange Countries but with a deepe insight to have a view into the
manners of men: so I thought as I passed through Paris, not onely to
please mine eie, with the curious Architecture of the building, but
with the diverse disposition of the inhabitantes." The palmer proceeds
to speak of the court and the subserviency of the French courtiers,
and of the amorousness of the French gentlemen. He then turns to
the Germans. But "Nay stay sir (quoth I) before you passe the
Alpes, give me leave to holde you an houre still in Lions." This leads
to the palmer's discourse on the French gentlewomen. After this is
finished, he speaks briefly of a few characteristics of the Germans.
But he did not become interested in the German customs, and so
"sicco pede past them over, so that I travelled up as farre as Vienna,
where I saw a thing worthie of memorie": not the description of any
definite scene or observation of national customs, as we might expect,
but — a hermit in a cell! a hermit who spoke most edifyingly in "rough
hie Dutch verses"! From the hermit's cell, says the palmer, he went
"to Vienna, and from thence coasted up into the borders of Italy."
This passage from Never too Late is the only instance of its kind in
Greene's works. It seems to have been written especially to reveal
78 ROBERT GREENE
mans daughter of good account, with whom I lived for a while :
but for as much as she would persuade me from my wilful
wickedness, after I had a child by her, I cast her off, having
spent up the marriage money which I obtained by her.
Then I left her at six or seven, who went into Lincolnshire,
and I to London." There is, too, an account of a religious
experience (not the one told of in the Vision; this one was
sometime before 1585 or '86. See Vol. XII., p. 177) which
occurred in Norwich, when Greene heard the words of a
minister in Saint Andrew's Church.
As to the authenticity of this pamphlet there can be no
doubt.38 The problem involved is quite a different one. It
is the problem of interpretation. Can we, or can we not,
accept the repentance set forth here (and in the Groatsworth
of Wit) as sincere? I believe that we can. Greene foisted
an intimate knowledge of the Continent. Instead it contains only
indefinite statements, and those the most commonplace or insignificant,
such as might easily have been gleaned from books.
Judging from the works alone, one might well doubt the reality of
the Italian journey. We must remember, however, that Greene did not
in any of his novels make use of the element of background. The ab
sence of specific continental allusions in those stories of which the
scenes are laid on the Continent is therefore no more noticeable than the
absence of similar allusions in the few stories whose scene is England.
In none of his novels did he develop the element of background to
the extent that he did, for example, in Friar Bacon.
The Repentance speaks of Greene's having been in Italy and Spain
(p. 172). The Notable Discovery has this passage: "I have smyled
with the Italian ... I have eaten Spanishe mirabolanes . . . .
Fraunce, Germanic, Poland, Denmarke, I knowe them all, yet not
.affected to any in the fourme of my life." Vol. X., p. 6. This pas
sage resembles one in Euphues and his England. Ed. Bond. Vol. II.,
p. 24. "If I met with one of Creete, I was ready to lye with him.
... If with a Grecian, I could dissemble. ... I could court it
with the Italian, carous it with the Dutch-man," etc., to Egypt and
Turkey.
38 See Collins' edition of Greene. Vol. I., Introduction, pp. 50-53.
SERO SED SERIO 79
upon us a series of prodigal stories under pretext of "reformed
passions." In spite of that, I think the final repentance is
genuine. When a man comes to die, it is a different matter.
Greene was stricken with remorse. That, to be sure, was
mostly because he was also stricken with fear. He was
terrified to his inmost soul. But the cause of remorse does
not alter its reality.
"After he had pend the former discourse (then lying sore sicke of a
surfeit which hee had taken with drinking) hee continued most patient
and penitent; yea he did with teares forsake the world, renounced swear
ing, and desired foregiveness of God and the worlde for all his offences:
so that during all the time of his sicknesse (which was about a moneths
space) hee was never heard to sweare, rave, or blaspheme the name of
God as he was accustomed to do before that time." *
When he wrote the paragraph quoted above, Cuthbert
Burbie, the enterprising young publisher, no doubt had an
eye to the edifying effect of such a complete repentance.
At least his details do not agree with Gabriel Harvey's,
whose account of Greene's death is most sordid. The truth,
it may be, lies between the two. It is, after all, only a human
picture as we think of Greene, conscience-smitten for his sins,
renouncing his blasphemy and swearing, asking forgiveness
of God and the world; at the same time, begging piteously
for "a penny pot of Malmesy" at the hand of Mistress
Isam.
Numquam sera est ad bonos mores via. It may be. But
for Greene the day never came. Greene had the two ele
ments in him of the flesh and the spirit, and he could never
reconcile them. "This good motion lasted not long in mee,"
is his own comment of the experience at Norwich. A frank
confession, — and very true, the confession of a weak will
in terms of the excuse for the return to wrong-doing. The
impression was vivid while it lasted. So was the final
»• Vol. XII., p. 184.
80 ROBERT GREENE
repentance. Only then, there was no chance for Greene to
lose it.
In concluding this chapter, perhaps we can relieve the
darkness a little by a characteristic, and almost humorous,
statement of Greene's. Here he is on his death-bed, poor
fellow, trying to pray and condemning himself more severely
than any other man who would be charitable could con
demn him. "I was the child of perdition," is his judgment
upon himself, and the punishment which will come is just
and deserved. For his life has been bad and his pamphlets
wanton. "But I thanke God," he says, — the old journalism
instinct reviving, the pride in work accomplished, the desire
to advertise his wares — "that he put it in my head to lay
open the most horrible coosenages of the common Conny-
catchers, Cooseners, and Crosbiters, which I have indif
ferently handled in those my several discourses already
imprinted."40
We may summarize this chapter briefly. Its subject
Sero sed serio is applicable to all the works herein discussed.
But those works are of two kinds. Never too Late and
Francescos Fortunes, Mourning Garment, Groatsworth of Wit,
are prodigal-son stories; Farewell to Follie is a didactic
narrative of the frame-work kind. Greene's Vision is an
account of the repentance which inaugurated the series. All
of these works I have not considered as different in any
respect from the writings prepared before 1590. In the
second class are the last few pages of Groatsworth of. Wit
and the Repentance.
It is not unlike calling an actor before the final curtain
just after we have seen him die in the tragedy, to continue a
discussion of Greene's works after we have witnessed the
death-scene. But the actor, even if we are a little startled
« Vol. XII., p. 178.
SERO SED SERIO 81
to realize it, is just as much alive as ever. So for our pur
poses, Greene is still alive and writing. In the latter half
of 1590 he began that division of his works which deals in
one way or another with repentance. By the end of the
next year he had adopted a new motto — " We are born for
the good of our country."
CHAPTER IV
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA
IN 1591 Greene began a series of social pamphlets which,
at very short intervals, continued to appear for several
months. The first of these, A Notable Discovery of Coosnage,
was licensed December 13. In that year also, and licensed
the same day, appeared another, The Second Part of Conny-
catching, with still a Thirde and last Part, entered on the
Stationers' Register, February 7, 1592. Later were published
the Disputation Betweene a Hee and a Shee Conny-Catcher,
the Quippe for an Upstart Courtier, July 21, and the Blacke
Bookes Messenger, August 21. This list should include, too,
The Defence of Conny Catching, April 21, concerning the
authorship of which there has been some discussion.
These pamphlets may, on account of their differences in
social significance and depth, be divided into two groups;
one group containing the Disputation and the Quippe, the
other containing the rest of the works enumerated above.
Of the pamphlets which constitute the second, and larger,
group, the three parts of conny-catching belong together.
Rather, it should be said that the Notable Discovery and the
Second Part belong together, and that the Thirde Part is
really only a sort of appendix.
The Notable Discovery of Coosnage, the first of the series,
opens with an epistle of eight pages "To the Reader," in
the course of which Greene tells of his plan to expose the
deceits practised upon "yong gentlemen, Marchants, Appren-
tises, Farmers, and plain Countreymen" by the conny-
catchers, the sly confidence men of the Capital. There are
82
NA8CIMUR PRO PATRIA 83
two chief abuses in London: the art of conny-catching,
deceit at cards; and the art of cross-biting, or the extortion
of money from victims by the pretended (or real) husbands of
the courtezans. Greene gives a brief account of the origin
of card-playing, speaks of the evils done to innocent persons
by the cheaters at cards, and develops his Epistle with an
explanation of the old Barnard's Law,1 or the process of
cheating at cards. The body of the pamphlet consists of
setting forth the art of conny-catching (a retelling in different
terms of the Barnard's Law) illustrated by two tales; and
of the manner in which the city harlots aid in " cros-biting "
the silly connies, together with the story of a victim who
turned the tables. The exposure of these two vices was not
quite enough to fill up the pamphlet. In conclusion, then,
there is the exposure of a deceit in no way related to the
other two, the evil practices of the sellers of coals, illustrated
by two tales.
The Second Part contains the "discovery of certaine
wondrous coosenages, either superficiallie past over or
utterlie untoucht in the first." 2 It reveals the Prigging
Law (horse-stealing), the Vincents Law (deceit at bowling),
a discussion of the Nip (who cuts purses) and the Foist (who
steals with his hand) , the Lifting Law (larceny) , the Courbing
Law (hooking linen out of windows), and the Blacke Arte
(picking of locks). The pamphlet contains nine tales.
The Thirds Part consists entirely of tales of deceit, the tales
being ten in number.
Greene sets forth the purpose of these works with con
siderable ostentation. His title-pages are no longer bespread
with the Omne tidit punctum of the romances, or the Sero
sed serio which announced the repentance of the prodigal
1 "There was before this many yeeres agoe a practise put in use
by such shifting companions, which was called the Barnard's Law."
Vol. X., p. 9. J Title-page to the Second Part, Vol. X.
84 ROBERT GREENE
son. There is instead the patriotic — but not for that
reason, the less shrewd — Nascimur pro patria. Not con
tent with printing the motto on the title-page, twice within
the Notable Discovery itself Greene wishes a most unhappy
end to these "base and dishonest caterpillars." He bids us
farewell, shouting as he goes, vauntingly, loudly that all may
hear, his new found battle-cry.3
The statement of the patriotism which inspired the social
pamphlets is repeated in the preface to the reader,
"those mad fellowes I learned at last to loath, by their owne graceless
villinies, and what I saw in them to their confusion, I can forewarne
in others to my countries commodity." 4
It may be very true as Dr. Wolff5 says of such statements as
these that Greene "believed that he was rendering a public
service," and that he was carrying on the ideal of the human
ists that it is the business of a writer to serve the State.
But I do not think that we do well to say much about the
humanitarian purpose of these, or any other of Greene's
works. In the case of his fiction, Greene was quite as much
— even more — interested in the production of what would
sell as of what would edify. The two aims may have hap
pened sometimes to coincide. But the fact that Greene tells
us, and insists, that he means to edify cannot hinder our
notion that at heart he was first of all a pamphleteer for
profit. So with these social tracts. Greene may have been
patriotic. There is no incompatibility, necessarily, between
patriotism and journalistic instinct. What I am saying,
and here I agree most fully with Mr. W. W. Greg,6 is that the
3 Vol. X., pp. 36, 50.
4 Vol. X., p. 6. Also p. 69, "no pains nor danger too great that
groweth to the benefit of my countrie;" p. 97, "so I may profit my
countrimen." Also Preface to the Third Part.
5 Eng. Stud., p. 337, Vol. 37.
8 Modern Lang. Rev., April, 1906, Vol. I., p. 241.
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 85
avowed intention for writing the conny-catching pamphlets
is not to be regarded too seriously.7
The relation between the Notable Discovery and the Second
Part will illustrate my statement. In the first, as we have
seen, Greene tells us of his plan to expose the wicked arts of
conny-catching and of cross-biting. In the second, he carries
on the exposure of other cheating practices, most of which
are announced in the Notable Discovery (p. 51). But there
are too, in this Second Part, references which have nothing to
do with the exposures. These are the references to Greene
himself and to the first pamphlet. The trade, Greene says,
is "greatlie impoverished by the late editions of their secret
villanies" (p. 88). A prospective conny avoids the snare
with "Maisters, I bought a booke of late for a groate that
warnes me of Card-playing. ... I have forsworne cards
ever since I read it" (p. 89). Not long afterward, a man
who had been cozened chanced to come to Greene's chamber,
"where he found a book of Cony-catching new come out
of the presse. . . . Sir, said he, If I had scene this booke
but two dayes since, it had saved me nine pound in my
purse " (p. 96).
Greene answers the objection "that some inferred against
me, which was, that I shewed no eloquent phrases, nor fine
figurative conveiance in my first booke as I have done in
other of my workes" (p. 71). 8 And finally he refers to the
7 Harman tells us on the title-page of his Caveat or Warning, for
Commen Cursetors (1566? 1567) that he is writing "for the utilitie and
proffyt of his naturall Countrey." And again he says in his epistle
"To the Reader" that "faithfullye for the proffyt and benyfyt of my
countrey I have don it." (The Rogues and Vagabonds of Shakespeare1 8
Youth, Ed. by Viles and Furnivall. Shakespeare Library 1907.)
Greene has several similarities to Harman.
» In the failure to use "eloquent phrases" Greene resembles Harman
when he wrote the Caveat. "Although, good Reader, I wright in plain
termes — and not so playnly as truely — concerning the matter,
86 ROBERT GREENE
threats that have come to him from the conny-catchers that
they will "cut off my right hand, for penning doune their
abhominable practises: but alas for them, poore snakes,
words are wind, & looks but glances: every thunderclap
hath not a bolt, nor every Conny-catchers oath an execution.
I live still, & I live to display their villanies" (p. 70) .9
All these references to the first pamphlet sound perfectly
natural, appearing as they do in the second; and we are
really led to believe that Greene's works were making con
siderable of a stir and that he himself was manifesting much
bravery to continue in such dangerous revelations of the
underworld. But our belief in the genuineness of the whole
performance is considerably shattered when we remember
that in all probability the Notable Discovery and the Second
Part were published at the same time,10 and that the refer-
meaning honestly to all men, and wyshe them as much good as to myne
owne harte; yet, as there hathe been, so there is no we, and hereafter
wylbe, curyous heds to finde fauttes: — well, this delycat age shall
have his tyrne on the other syde. Eloquence have I none; I never
was acquainted with the muses; I never tasted of Helycon. But
accordinge to my plaine order, I have set forth this worke, simplye
and truelye, with such usual words and termes as is amongst us wel
known and frequented." (Ed. Viles and Furnivall, 1907, pp. 27-8.)
Greene's reason for the simple style is different from Harman's.
Whereas Harman declared himself unable to use any other, Greene had
already manifested repeatedly his ability to do so. His reply to the
objection made against him is that he thinks a "certaine decorum is
to bee kept in everie thing, and not to applie a high stile in a base
subject: . . . Therefore humbly I crave pardon and desire I may
write basely of such base wretches." (Vol. X., p. 71.)
9 Cf. Harman, p. 22. "Now, me thinketh, I se how these pevysh,
perverse, and pestilent people begyn to freat, fume, sweare, and stare
at this my booke, their lyfe being laid open and apparantly poynted
out, that their confusion and end draweth one a pase."
10 Both works were licensed 13 Dec., 1591. Both bear the date
1591 on their title-pages. And they were put out by different publishers.
It is only reasonable, then, to suppose that both were written about
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 87
ences to the former are, therefore, most likely pure fictions.
This theory is borne out by the mention near the end of the
Notable Discovery11 of several of the "laws" exposed in the
Second Part, — as if the Second Part were already planned but
there was found to be room for "legering" (cheating with
coal) in the Notable Discovery — and further by Greene's
manner of speaking of the threats and the conny-catchers.
In the epistle "To the Reader" of the Notable Discovery
Greene "foresees" the danger that will come to him from
his exposures. "Yet Gentlemen am I sore threatened
by the hacksters of that filthie facultie, that if I set
their practises in print, they will cut off that hande
that writes the Pamphlet,"12 a statement in no wise
different from that in the Second Part as follows: "I know
I shall have many braves uttered against me for this
invective."13
Greene, viewed in this light, is not, then, a patriotic
champion ready to die for a cause. He is a self-advertising
the same time, inasmuch as by 7 Feb., 1592, Greene had the Thirdeand
last Part on the market.
11 Vol. X., p. 51. "I omitted divers other divelish vices; as the
nature of the lift, the black art &."
» Vol. X., p. 12.
11 Vol. X., p. 97. Again like Harman. See above, note 9. See
also Audeley, The Fraternity e of Vacabondes. Ed. Viles and Furnivall,
p. 2.
"But if my fellowes do know (sayd he)
That thus I dyd, they would kyll me."
The Printer to the Reader.
Greene has another point of similarity to Harman. Harman unites,
he says, for the benefit of the thieves as well as of the country. He
hopes that "in the world to com they may save their Soules" so that
his writing "shall do them more good than they could have devised for
them selves." (p. 22). Greene puts it thus: "Were it not that I hope
for their amendment, I would in a schedule set doune the names of
such coosening cunny-catchers." Vol. X., p. 12.
88 ROBERT GREENE
journalist.14 This is not at all to be severe on him, or even
disparaging. What it means is that our conception of
Greene must be less serious. Although the conny-catching
pamphlets do lose some of their sociological value, their inter
est is not lessened. Instead of regarding their author as an
ardent defender of the common weal, we are to enjoy him as
a literary artificer. Two smaller pamphlets — a First and
a Second Part — sold to two publishers would bring more
than a larger pamphlet put out by one man.
There is no doubt that the seriousness with which
Greene's conny-catching pamphlets have been regarded has
come partly at least from certain statements of his in the
earlier works, statements which have been interpreted as
meaning that Greene had long contemplated the writing of
these disclosures.15 The whole question of the understand
ing of these passages is, of course, bound up with the ques
tion of the 1590 religious experience spoken of in the Vision.
That question cannot be taken up here.16 But so far as these
passages and the conny-catching pamphlets are concerned,
I can see no reason for thinking that there is any definite
relation between them.
In the first place, the promise of "deeper matters " does not,
perhaps, mean anything more than a conventional phrase.17
14 The putting out of the conny-catching pamphlets with their dis
play of patriotism is not the first time in Greene's life that he adapted
himself to the occasion. In 1585 when he put out the Planetomachia
he was "Student in Phisicke." In 1589, when any pamphlet with
"Spanish" in its title would sell, Greene was on hand with his Spanish
Masquerade under the pretext of adventuring "to discover my con
science in Religion."
JlH16 See Greene, ed. Dickinson, Mermaid Series, 1909, Introduction,
p. xxvii. 16 See pp. 70-71.
$3j " See above, pp. 69-72. Also A Petite Pallace of Pettie His Pleasure,
Ed. by Gollancz, p. 7. "Thus have I sent you in that book some
fruits of my former folly, and in this letter the profession of my present
faith. ... I mean ... the next Spring to go on pilgrimage."
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 89
In the second place, it does not seem reasonable to think
that if Greene had had definitely in mind the task
of writing exposures he would have continued putting out
pamphlets for which he had to, or at least did, apologize.
It is possible, to be sure, that the prodigal stories sold
better than he anticipated, and that he was keeping the
conny-catching pamphlets in reserve. But it does not seem
likely, from what we know of Greene, that he would have
waited for a year and a half (from the middle of 1590 when
he first promised to do serious writing until the end of 1591)
to put into effect an idea which had suggested to him a new
line of work.
Another consideration which causes me to think that the
conny-catching pamphlets were written as a journalistic
venture purely, and not that they were written because
Greene had definite information to convey in regard to the
dangerous practices of the metropolis is the fact that the
inspiration of conny-catching, apparently, (and the material,
certainly) came from a little pamphlet published in England
a good many years before. This pamphlet was the Manifest
Detection of Dyce Play (1552), from which, to be brief,
Greene got all he knew about cheating at cards. In his
Epistle to the Reader, Greene copies verbatim two pages from
the earlier pamphlet, the very important passage, that is, in
which the modus operandi of the Barnard's Law is ex
plained.18 This old Barnard's Law of the Manifest Detec-
19 Barnard's Law: — Four persons are required, the Taker-up, the
Verser, the Barnard, and the Rutter. The Taker-up makes the
acquaintance of the victim and draws him to a tavern. With him goes
the Verser, who hath "the countenaunce of a landed man." They all
sit down. In comes the Barnard, like an old farmer. The Barnard
teaches the Verser a "new" card game he has just learned. They
begin to play for money. If the victim "smoake them" and starts
away, the Rutter creates a disturbance. A crowd gathers, and the
Barnard steals away with all the money.
90 ROBERT GREENE
tion constitutes without change, except in very minor
details,19 Greene's art of conny-catching in the Notable Dis
covery, and forms the basis of the long and " pleasant tale of
the connie-catchers"20 in the Second Part. Mum-chance,
the only game mentioned in Greene, is, in other words, copied
from a pamphlet forty years old.
From the Manifest Detection, Greene copies also the
passage21 regarding the use of the word "law" among the
members of the underworld and the passage 22 in which a
conny-catcher refuses conversion on the ground that no
man can live honestly. Such borrowings as these, in addi
tion to that spoken of above, show very definitely where
the impulse to write conny-catching pamphlets came from,
19 The principal change is in the names of the persons taking part.
The following extract from Rowlands is of considerable interest in
this connection as showing that the names for these parties either
were numerous at any one time or changed from year to year: "There
hath beene of late daies published two merrie and pithie Pamphlets
of the arte of Conicatching: wherin the Author hath sufficiently
expressed his experience, as also his loue to his Countrie. Neuerthe-
lesse with the Authors leaue, I will ouerlooke some lawe tearmes ex
pressed in the first part of Conicatching: whereunto, as the Author
saith, is necessarilie required three parties: The setter, the Verser and
the Barnacle. Indeed I haue heard some retainers to this ancient
trade dispute of his proceedings in this case and by them in a full Synode
of quart pots it was thorowlie examined and concluded, that there
were no such names as he hath set downe, nor anie cheating Arte so
christened as Conicatching. . . . But all this breakes no square, so
long as we concurre in eodem subiecto." Greenes Ghost haunting Coni-
catchers, 1602. Rowlands' Works, Vol. I., p. 7. Hunterian Club.
20 Vol. X., p. 91. I do not accept Mr. Aydelotte's discussion of
Greene's borrowing. "In so far as Greene has a literary original for
his conny-catching books, it is this pamphlet." (p. 120). . . . "These
plagiarisms are all in comparatively unimportant passages" (p. 125).
Oxford Historical and Literary Studies, Vol. I., Elizabethan Rogues
and Vagabonds. By Frank Aydelotte.
21 Vol. X., p. 33.
22 Vol. X., pp. 34-5.
NA8CIMUR PRO PATRIA 91
and make me disinclined to believe that they were the
outcome of any long premeditation.23
In connection with the question of the attitude which
we are to take toward these pamphlets of Greene's there
is still another point to be borne in mind. That is his boast
of the accuracy, and directness of the sources, of his informa
tion. We may hear Greene's own words:
"Though I haue not practised their deceits, yet conuersing by
fortune, and talking uppon purpose with such copes-mates, hath
geuen mee light into their conceipts, and I can decipher their qualities,
though 1 utterly mislike of their practises."24
For such insistence upon the truth of his writing Greene
may very well have gotten the hint from a work like Har-
man's Caveat or from Lodge's Alarum against Usurers, of
which the authors say that what they write is direct, the
information of the former obtained from the beggars with
whom he talked at his gate,25 that of the latter from personal
observation or the testimony of victims.28 Whether these
** The haphazard manner in which the Second Part is put together
is another indication of haste. M Vol. X., p. 6.
M "I . . . have kepte a house these twenty yeares, where unto
poverty dayley hath and doth repayre, not without some relief e, as
my poore callinge and habylytie maye and doth extende: I have of
late yeares gathered a great suspition that all should not be well.
... I, havinge more occation, through sicknes, to tary and remayne
at home then I have bene accustomed, do, by my there abydinge,
talke and confere dayly with many of these wyly wanderers ... by
whom I have gathered and understand their depe dissimulation." Ed.
Viles and Furnivall, p. 20.
18 " What is sette downe heere, eyther as an eye witnesse I will
avowe, or informed even by those Gentlemen, who have swallowed
the Gudgen." Lodge. Hunterian Club. Vol. I.
There are many points of similarity between Lodge's Alarum against
Usurers and such works as the Manifest Detection and Greene's conny-
catching pamphlets, particularly in the manner in which a victim is
first approached.
92 ROBERT GREENE
two men are truthful it is not for us to inquire. My belief
in regard to Greene is that he, taking his attitude from them
and pretending to be a personal observer, is not necessarily
so, — from anything that Greene's pamphlets indicate.
When one examines closely, one finds that there is really
very little in Greene's first three social pamphlets which is
in the nature of information, and that there is a gradual
progression in the amount of the narrative portion through
out the series. The Notable Discovery has a comparatively
small number of tales, the Second Part increases the number,
and the Thirde Part consists entirely of stories, — with no
new "laws" added whatever.
The increase in the number of included tales is an indication
that in his conny-catching pamphlets Greene has done the
same thing that he did in many of his earlier works. Just
as in Perymedes, for example, where he starts out, avowedly,
to show us how to spend our time in quiet, but where he
becomes more interested in his illustrative stories than in
his frame-work and develops them for their own fiction's
sake, so here in, these pamphlets he grows to be interested
in telling snappy tales which are justified by their own
vivacity and narrative excellence. Harman, for all his
sociological insight, enjoyed telling the few tales he has
included,27 and he told them well. It was characteristic
of the whole type of pamphleting to include tales.28 But
Greene carries the idea farther than it had been carried before
and farther than it was carried after. That is, in a sense,
the conny-catching pamphlets come in his hands to be a
series of frame-work tales.
To say this is putting it too strongly, of course. Greene
27 Especially those on pp. 37, 42, 61, 68, of his Caveat, Ed. Viles
and Furnivall.
28 See Lodge's Alarum against Usurers and the works of Rowlands
and Dekker.
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 93
did have a certain body of information to convey. But
that information does not seem, of necessity, to have been
obtained from direct knowledge. Indeed, it does not seem
to have been obtained so at all. If Greene were as well
acquainted with the vices of London as he would have us
believe, we are at a loss to understand why it is that he
knows only one "cheating law," and why he should have
copied that one law verbatim in on,e portion of his pamphlet
and have merely varied it slightly in others. And again,
one is at a loss to understand such passages as those in the
foot-note29 if they do not mean that Greene had no definite
information upon that particular matter. That is, a man who
29 "Were it not I hope of their amendment I would in a schedule
set downe the names of such coosening cunny-catchers." Vol. X., p. 12.
This setting forth of names was something which Greene was ever
threatening but which he never performed, even when he knew that
his recovery was hopeless. The nearest he comes to it is the mention
by name of Lawrence Pickering of Kent street, brother-in-law to Bull
the hangman, in whose house the crew is accustomed to meet weekly.
(Harman describes the weekly meeting.) But as a matter of fact, there
is no guarantee that Lawrence Pickering (the pickpocket) is not a
fictitious being
"by chance fel among cony-catchers, whose names I omit, because
I hope of their amendment." p. 31.
"Pardon me Gentlemen for although no man could better than
myself discover this lawe and his tearmes, and the name of their
cheats, Barddice, Flats, Forgers, Langrets, Gourds, Demies, and many
other, with their nature, and the crosses and contraries to them upon
advantage, yet for some special! reasons, herein I will be silent."
These "tearmes" are mentioned, but not explained, in the Manifest
Detection, pp. 27-8
"they will straight spotte him (the horse) by sundry pollicies, . . .
which secretes I omit, least I shoulde give too great a light to other to
practise such lewd villanies." p. 77.
"for every sundry fashion thay have a sundry term, but I
am ignorant of their woords of art, and therefore I omit them."
p. 128. See other similar statements, Vol. X., pp. 91, 145, 164.
172.
94 ROBERT GREENE
can explain nine laws from his own observation surely cannot
be expected to fail on the tenth.
Greene's statement of accuracy, "I have seen, but I did
not participate/' implies that, though he may never have
actually helped in conny-catching, Greene knew the lowest
classes of society and led a wicked life with those companions
who, he says, "came still to my lodging, and then would
continue quaffing, carousing, and surfeting with me all the
day long."30 But the statement seems to imply also that
this acquaintance is the basis for the disclosures about to
be made. I am not going to deny, in any way, that
Greene's life was not praiseworthy and that he did not asso
ciate with such persons as those of whom he speaks. I am
making no attempt to build up Greene's shattered reputation.
I am only asking whether, after all, we should not deprive
him, in connection with these conny-catching pamphlets,
of the title he lays claim to as "comrade of the disreputable,"
and confer upon him another, — that of being a "literary
liar." In short, may the "accuracy" have been manufac
tured for the sake of the verisimilitude it then, and has since,
afforded? "I have shotte," Greene confesses in one of his
latest writings, "at many abuses, over shotte myself e in
describing of some: where truth failed my invention hath
stood my friend."31
What I have said about Greene thus far in the present
chapter has been mostly negative, in the way of discarding
certain views which have been held with regard to him.
Greene claims, and has been considered, to be original, to
be serious, to be patriotic. I fail to see wherein we can
justifiably concede any one of these epithets.
This portion of his work which we have been discussing,
I am aware, is usually thought of — however little we may
50 Vol. XII., p. 178.
» Greenes Vision, To the Gentlemen Readers. Vol. XII., pp. 195-6.
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 95
agree to Greene's own description of the rest of it as the
offspring of Follie — as his most genuine, most earnest prod
uct. I formerly held this opinion. "Once into the thing,"
I wrote, "Greene goes to work with zest. For the first time,
perhaps, in his life, he is really in earnest. All his faculties
are awakened, and he enjoys the conflict he has on his
hands."
But there is this fact about a continued study of Greene.
The more one knows of him, the less one finds that is sincere,
that comes from depth of character, from bigness of attitude
toward life, from definiteness of personality at all, — the less
one finds that is in reality Greene's; the more one finds that
is only a new expression (and often not very new either) of
some one else's thought and plan and purpose.
The becoming aware of the state of things cannot, how
ever, be called exactly a disillusionment. For it is not
disillusionment, even when one by one the attributions to
Greene's own originality grow smaller and smaller, as
scholars investigate the sources of his work and as we cease
to be surprised when we learn that a pamphlet or a plot we
thought to be his is only a copy or an imitation of another's.
It is very necessary, though, if such a process as that I
speak of is not to result in utter disregard for Greene, to
formulate our conception of him in a way such as will enable
us to look beyond the mere borrowing and imitating and to
unify these various activities of his and make them, for all
their superficiality, have some significance. If we cannot
judge him on the basis of a sober litterateur, for the reason
that he is, on that basis, unstable, intangible, we can at
least estimate him as a man of letters who sometimes rose
almost to the plane of artistic writing, who sometimes fell
to the plane of cheap journalism. In this second class I
should place the pamphlets we have been discussing. In
fact, I should say that in none of his other work is Greene
96 ROBERT GREENE
so much the charlatan as in these social pamphlets of the
first group.
We have seen Greene's methods and his attitude as they
are revealed in the three parts of conny-catching. It is time
now to turn to the later works.
On April 21, 1592, there was entered on the Stationers'
Register "The Defense of Conny Catching, or A Confuta
tion of Those two injurious Pamphlets published by R. G.
against the practitioners of many nimble-witted and mys-
ticall Sciences. By Cuthbert Cunny-catcher." The author
pretends to be a "Licentiate in Whittington Colledge,"32
and promises to tell what he has learned in that place and in
his subsequent travels about England. He is very angry, he
says, that Greene should have omitted entirely the many
grosser evils which abound in London, and he is going to
undertake the task with which he thinks Greene should
have been occupied.
Of real exposition, however, there is very little in the
book. Cuthbert Cunny-catcher seems to have been unin
terested in his subject itself, or else to have had little direct
information to convey. What knowledge he had, he gives
indirectly. The bulk of the material is comprised in six
stories, clever in themselves, and not different from those
32 The author of the Defence took the idea from Greene's mention
of Whittington College in the Preface to the Last Part. "In the time
of king Henrie the fourth, . . . lived a worthie Gentleman . . .
called sir Richard Whittington, the founder of Whittington Colledge
in London." Vol. X., pp. 139-40.
From a gloss in the margin, "Newgate builded by one Whittington,"
it is clear that he means the Newgate prison rebuilt by Whittington's
executors, and not the Whittington College proper also established
by his directions, which Greene had in mind in the Last Part. (Founded
1424; suppressed 1548) For article on Whittington see the Dictionary
of Nat. Biog. Whittington was the subject of popular tradition,
which may account for the mention of him here.
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 97
of the three parts of conny-catching. Indeed, taken out of
the frame-work in which they occur, or found in any of the
other pamphlets known to be Greene's, these six tales would
pass readily for Greene's own.
One of them, the tale of Will Sommers, is an adaptation of
the old story of the division of a nut among the disputants
for it, telling how the fool as arbitrator divides the nut-shell
between two lawyers, and bestows the kernel upon a friend
of his, the " Yoeman of the Pantry." Another is a tale of a
usurer and of how the wife of his victim secured her revenge;
one of a miller and a boy who discovers his trickery; a fourth,
of a false tailor whose deceit is revealed by pretended
necromancy. The remaining two deal with marriage, one
showing how a pauper's son under disguise manages to
marry a rich man's daughter; the other being the story of a
man in England who has sixteen wives, and of the means
by which he meets his punishment at the hands of two of
them.
The story of Will Sommers, the fool, is insignificant.
That of the pauper's son is good until near the end. There
the story is stopped rather than finished, so that the conclu
sion is far from satisfactory.33 The other four tales are of
some merit. They are told with the firmness and directness
which characterize the good examples of the novelle, and
they carry the reader with them whether in the spirit of
comedy, as in the stories of the miller and of the tailor; or
of revenge, as in the stories of the usurer and of the man
with the many wives. All four are genuinely interesting;
all four are told with skill.
For all that the pamphlet is made up principally of these
n At the discovery of her new husband's estate, the "wife began
to weepe, all was dasht, and what she thought God knowes." . . . But
they could not change matters; so "for al that he had the wench."
Vol. XL, p. 84.
98 ROBERT GREENE
six stories, the Defence of Conny-catching is, however, osten
sibly an attack upon Greene. The author brings a severe
charge, that Greene might have been better employed with
exposing these great and far-reaching vices than with
writing against the "poore conny-catchers " who are, when
the worst is said, only as gnats compared to elephants.
Cuthbert is, therefore, to champion his fraternity against
the common enemy.
He is not a particularly valiant defender. His attack is
by no means venomous. The method which he uses is that
of shouting abusive language34 and of hurling taunts at
Greene because he did not include these very important
exposures in his books.35 The ardor he displays is assumed,
not genuine. In fact, this very quality of non-abusiveness
(clearly perceivable, even beneath the show of invincible
hatred), has linked Greene's own name with the pamphlet
under the view that Greene and Cuthbert Cunny-catcher
are one and the same person.
Dr. Grosart has included this pamphlet in his collection of
Greene's works,36 but he does not believe that Greene is the
author of it. He is positive in his belief. "The most super
ficial reading of the clever 'Defence'" he says, "would
have shown that it is against not by Greene."37 If the
reading were superficial enough, we may grant that the
34 As for example: "I meane to have a bout with this R. G. and to
give him such a veny, that he shalbe afrayd heereafter to disparage
that mysticall science of conny-catching." p. 47.
"I cannot but wonder maister R. G. what Poeticall fury made you
so fantasticke, to write against conny-catchers? Was your brain so
barren that you had no other subject?" p. 49.
36 "Why write you not of these Conny-catchers maister R. G.?"
p. 52. "Was not this Miller a Conny-catcher maister R. G.?" p. 68.
"I pray you call you not these fine witted fellowes Conny-catchers
Maister R. G.?" p. 75.
» Vol. XI., pp. 3£-104. « Vol. XI., p. 40.
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 99
Defence might be so understood. But as I have intimated,
the combativeness is very slight indeed. To the support of
Grosart comes Prof. H. C. Hart in his notes on "Robert
Greene's Prose Works."88 Professor Hart does not believe
the attack upon Greene to be in any way more than sheer
pretence. But he maintains that Greene is not the author
of the Defence on grounds which he believes to be sufficient
evidence for a decision. With the exception of Professor
Hart's notes the question of authorship has received no
discussion. It may be worth while, therefore, to deal with
the problem here, for I do not agree with Professor Hart
that the case has been definitely settled against Greene.
Professor Hart notices in the first place that the Defence
is written against " those two injurious Pamphlets," when
there are in reality "the three parts of Connie Catching and
the Disputation." He believes that the writer of the Defence
lumps the first three as one, counting the Disputation as the
second. Without saying so, he lets us infer that he considers
this discrepancy as an objection to Greene's authorship. I
do not see how the reference to the "two" pamphlets
rather than to three or four has anything to do with the
question of authorship. But even if it has, I cannot agree
to this disposition of the pamphlets. The Disputation is
not entered on the Stationers' Register, but there is no
reason for believing that it was necessarily written before
April 21, the date of the Defence, and not between that date
and July 21, the date of the Quippe. This makes the
Disputation and the Quippe contiguous in date as they are,
indeed, in significance, and leaves then only three pamphlets
appearing before the Defence. But even with these three,
there is no difficulty in explaining the two on the title-page
of the Defence. Only the first two parts contain exposures
of deceits. The Last Part is made up wholly of stories.
" Notes and Queries. 10th Ser. V., p. 84, Feb. 3, 1906.
100 ROBERT GREENE
There was thus no reason for including the Last Part among
the " injurious pamphlets published by R. G." Professor
Hart's objection is, therefore, without value until the date
of the Disputation is established.39
If the Defence is really by Greene, Professor Hart expects
to find some mention of it in Greene's later works. He does
not give the basis for his expectation. Again I find no per
ceivable relation between Greene's failure to mention the
Defence in his subsequent works and Professor Hart's state
ment that he did not write it. The Quippe contains no men
tion of the Disputation, which certainly preceded it.40 Nor
does The Blacke Bookes Messenger, the last of them all,
mention either the Disputation or the Quippe. Why should
Greene's later work, then, be expected to mention the
Defence? And what justification have we for saying that
the failure to do so is an adequate basis of decision?
So far as Professor Hart's next point is concerned, that
of the celebrated reference to Greene's having sold the play
of Orlando Furioso to the Lord Admiral's men while the
Queen's players, to whom he had sold it earlier, were in the
country, — the failure on Greene's part to refute the charge
cannot, it seems to me, be taken to prove that Greene did
not write the Defence. "No doubt," says Professor Hart,
"every one knew it, and it was useless to attempt to do so."
39 In the Disputation Greene mentions only the first of the series.
"R. G. hath so amply pend them doune in the first part of Conny-
catching " (Vol. X., p. 206). Also, "since the setting out of my booke"
(p. 236).
Samuel Rowlands mentions only two: "There hath beene of late
daies published two merrie and pithie Pamphlets of the arte of Coni-
catching." Greenes Ghost Haunting Conicatchers. 1602. Hunterian
Club, p. 7.
40 The Quippe was licensed July 21. Greene's activities and his
illness during the month of August make it impossible that the
Disputation followed the Quippe.
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 101
It is quite as reasonable to believe that the play was not re
sold at all. We have only Cuthbert Conny-catcher's word
for it. May not the reference be merely another of the
kind used in the Second Part to give an air of verisimili
tude to the attack?
The final objection to Greene's authorship is a list of
words and phrases to be found nowhere else but in the
Quippe. The presence of the words in the Quippe cannot,
of course, be taken as a final argument either for or against
Greene's authorship of the Defence. If Greene had wanted
the words in the Quippe, he would have taken them whether
the Defence were his own or belonged to some one else. But
as for the Defence, Professor Hart concludes on the basis
of this word list that Greene did not write it, saying that
"it was written by some confederate or friend jointly
perhaps."
This word list is of considerable importance. The presence
of many of the words in the Quippe, however, detracts from
its decisiveness. Greene's habit of miscellaneous appro
priations makes his vocabulary variable. How are we to
tell whether this pamphlet of the Defence was written "by
some confederate or friend" whose identity is unknown, or
by Greene himself, who interspersed it with words picked
up from some unknown source? It is not necessary to
look for these strange words in Greene's works before
April 21, 1592. And when we come to examine the later
ones, we actually do find many of the words repeated in
the Quippe.
Professor Hart admits that the Defence is not in reality, as
Dr. Grosart said it was, against Greene, and that the attack
is only a pretence. He thinks that perhaps Greene had a
hand in the production of it. Having gone so far in the
acknowledgment of Greene's authorship, I do not see why
we cannot go the rest of the way, at least tentatively.
102 ROBERT GREENE
There are no objections which can be held with certainty.
And there are considerations which I believe make it more
reasonable than not to regard Greene as the author.
There is a statement in the Second Part which favors the
idea of Greene's authorship.
"... they in their huffes report that they have got one ( ) I
will not bewray his name, but a scholler they say he is, to make an
invective against me."
Now the Second Part was published in 1591, at the same time
as the Notable Discovery*1 It looks a little strange, there
fore, if Greene was not himself contemplating the writing
of the Defence, that he should have known, in the week or
two before his pamphlets had had time to create any appre
ciable effect, that the conny-catchers had employed a
scholar42 to come to their defence. Nor does it seem at
all far-fetched to presume that Greene is taking the oppor
tunity to advertise the Defence just as he advertised a great
many of his works before and after, and just as we shall
presently find the author of the Defence doing.43
41 See p. 85 seq.
42 In the Defence Cuthbert speaks of Greene as a scholar. " I began
to enquire what this R. G. should bee. At last I learned that hee was
a scholler, and a Maister of Artes." p. 47. Greene was proud of being
a "scholler" and of his "Utriusq. Academiae in Artibus Magister."
One can easily infer that if Greene is announcing an anonymous work
by himself, he would very naturally proclaim it to be by a "scholler."
43 This idea of advertisements and continuations appealed to Greene's
journalistic instinct. After Pharicles departed from Padua at the end
of the First Part of Mamillia, "as soone as I shal either hear, or learn
of his aboad," says Greene, "looke for newes by a speedy Post." The
"newes" came, and with it came the Second Part of Mamillia. It is
one of the interesting things to note in connection with this idea of
continuations that, at the end of the Second Part, Greene promises
still a Third, a promise not fulfilled, so far as we know. ("Whether
Pharicles proved as inconstant a husband as a faithless wooer, I knowe
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 103
A second consideration that connects Greene and the au
thorship is that of certain similarities between the Defence
and Greene's acknowledged works. One of these is the identity
in tone between the reference to the Notable Discovery and
the Second Part in the Defence, and the references to the
Notable Discovery in the Second Part.44 A second similarity
is that existing between a passage in the Defence and one
in the Disputation;4* still a third is that between the Defence
not: but if it be my hap to heare, looke for newes as speedilie as may
be.") Other novels by Greene have this same promise of continuation,
sometimes fulfilled, sometimes not: Morando, Vol. III., p. 109; Pen
elopes Web, Vol. V., p. 233 (but it is not known what Greene means
by his reference to the "Paraphrase"); Perymedes, Vol. VII., p. 85;
Never too Late, Vol. VIII., p. 109; Francescos Fortunes, Vol. VIII., p. 229,
promises further news of the palmer; Farewell to Follie, Vol. IX., p. 348,
is sometimes understood to imply a continuation.
The instinct for journalism which prompted these continuations
was also manifested in the promise of other works soon to appear.
Thus in the Preface to Perymedes, Greene speaks of Orpharion to make
us merry with at the next term (Vol. VII., p. 9). At the end of Never
too Late (Vol. VIII., p. 109) he promises not only a continuation in
Francescos Fortunes, but also alludes to his Farewell to Follie. The
Disputation definitely promises the Blacke Booke, Vol. X., pp. 225, 236.
44 For example these passages:
1. "Yet I have for 3. pence bought a little Pamphlet, that
hath taught me to smoke such a couple of knaves as you be."
Defence, p. 45.
2. "Maisters, I boughte a booke for a groate that warnes me
of Card-play." Second Part, p. 89.
See also Defence, p. 47.
46 1. "I got one of those bookes . . . wherein I found our art
so perfectly anatomized, as if he had bene practitioner in our
facultie forty winters before." Defence, pp. 45-6.
2. "I need not describe the lawes of villanie, because R. G.
hath so amply pend them downe in the first part of Conny-
catching, that though I be one of the facultie, yet I cannot
discover more than hee hath layde open." Disputationt
p. 206.
104 ROBERT GREENE
and The Blacke Bookes Messenger.46 And lastly there is
the resemblance between one of the stories in the Defence
and the story of Valdracko in Planetomachia. The likeness
may be purely coincidental. At any rate, Pasylla's tying
her father to his bed is repeated in the story of the man
with the sixteen wives, two of whom tie him to his bed in
the same way.
The next indication of Greene's authorship of the Defence
is in the method of its conclusion. The idea of advertising
a following pamphlet is carried out. "It is informed us,"
says Cuthbert, "that you are in hand withe a booke named
The repentance of a Conny-catcher." This work is the same
as that mentioned in the preface to The Blacke Bookes
Messenger which Greene had intended to publish along
with the life and death of Ned Browne, and which he still
intended to put forth.47 In another respect the conclusion
to the Defence is interesting. It is marked by a strikingly
paradoxical tone. Throughout the work, the author has
been professedly Greene's bitter enemy. At the end he
urges Greene most heartily to publish this repentance he
has in mind. "If you doe so, ye shal do not onely a chari
table, but a meritorious deed." And he threatens that if
Greene fails to do so, he will have the "crue of Conny-
catchers sweare themselves your professed enemies for ever."
44 The passages are about the Conny-catchers' pretended acquaint
ance with the Continent, whereas they have never been out of England.
They are too long to transcribe. See Defence, pp. 74-5, and Blacke
Bookes Messenger, pp. 24-7.
47 "I had thought to have joyned with this Treatise, a pithy discourse
of the Repentance of a Conny-catcher lately executed out of Newgate,
yet forasmuch as the Methodeof the one is so far differing from the other,
I altered my opinion, and the rather for that the one died resolute and
desperate, the other penitent and passionate. For the Conny-catchers
repentance which shall shortly be published, it containes a passion of
great importance."
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 105
It may be said in connection with the Defence as a whole
that if Greene wished to write another conny-catching
pamphlet he would scarcely have gone to all this trouble of
posing as his own enemy, and that he would have put out a
Fourth Part or something of that nature. Yet we have
only to remember that in the Disputation, which we shall
discuss presently, Greene actually does write from the point
of view of those whom he is attacking. For in the Dis
putation, Lawrence and Nan are quite as bitter against the
"scholler" R. G. as ever Cuthbert Conny-catcher was.
In concluding this matter I should like to call attention
to what is apparently a step in the Greene-Harvey-Nashe
quarrel.48 The quarrel was already on its way when Richard
Harvey in 1590 published his Lamb of God in which he
attacked Nashe as being impudent. Then, as Mr. Mc-
Kerrow says, "some two years seem to have elapsed before
any attempt was made by the writers criticised to reply."49
There is no explanation for this long silence. "But there
seems to be nothing," Mr. McKerrow adds, "in any of
Greene's works at least, before the Quip, which can be
interpreted as a hit at him. It is possible that there were
intermediate links in the quarrel, of which we know nothing."
It is one of these intermediate links that is to be found in
the Defence.
"Wert not a merry jeast to have a bout againe Maister R. G. with
your poetical Brethren: amongst the which one learned Hypocrite,
that could brooke no abuses in the Commonwealth, was so zealous
that he began to put an English she Saint in the Legend, for the holinesse
of her life: and forgot not so much as her dogge, as Tobies was remem-
bred, that wagged tayle at the sight of his olde Mistresse. This
pure Martinist (if he were not worse) had a combat betweene the flesh
48 Mr. McKerrow, in his edition of Nashe (London 1904-10) has
traced out in detail (Vol. V., pp. 65-110) the account of this whole
wretched affair.
• McKerrow's Nashe, Vol. V., p. 77.
106 ROBEKT GREENE
and the spirite, that he must needes have a wife, which he cunningly
conny-catcht in this manner. A pleasant Tale how a holy brother
Conny-catcht for a Wife.60
The story which follows of the pauper's son who married
the rich man's daughter is no doubt fictitious. But the
story and the passage I have quoted were meant in all
probability as a slur upon the Harveys, Richard in particular.
That this inference is well grounded is shown by two similar
references to Richard Harvey in subsequent pamphlets:
1. "The best is, the persons abused, are not altogether unknowen,
they have not so evell a neighbor, that ever reade, or hearde those
opprobrious villainies (it is too-mild a name, for my brother Richardes
most abhominable Legend, who frameth himselfe to live as chastely
as the leawde writer affected to live beastly) but hath presentlie broken
out into some such earnest, or more passionate speeches: o pestilent
knavery, who ever heard such arrant forgeries, and ranke lies?"
Thirde Letter, September 8 and 9, 1592. Harvey, Ed. Grosart, Vol. I.,
p. 186.
2. "It was not for nothing brother Richard, that Greene told
you you kist your Parishioners wives with holy kisses, for you that
wil talk ... in a Theological Treatise, and in the Pulpit, I am
afraide in a privater place you will practise as much as you speake.
. . . Farewell uncleane Vicar, and God make thee an honest man."
Foure Letters Confuted, January 12, 1593. Nashe, Ed. McKerrow.
Vol. I., p. 273.
The passage to which Nashe refers is no doubt the lost
passage in the Quippe,51 in which Greene attacked all the
Harveys at once. It is clear at any rate, that Greene did
accuse Richard Harvey of loose living. My conviction is
that we have here in the Defence, three months before the
publication of the Quippe, the same kind of attack (or
perhaps the same attack) as that which Nashe has in mind.
I do not wish to be understood, in passing from the
Defence to the last pamphlet of the first group, as thinking
60 Vol. XI., p. 79. « Nashe, Vol. V., p. 77.
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 107
that the intrinsic importance of the Defence is entirely
proportional to the length of the discussion bestowed upon
it. But tedious as it is, such a discussion is not without
value as emphasizing what I believe is the method back of
all of these social pamphlets of Greene's. The very fact
that there is a problem of authorship connected with the
Defence only urges the more strongly the idea that Greene's
work is not the product of a serious, patriotic purpose to
convey definite, accurate information. Rather we owe the
existence of the pamphlets to Greene's necessity. Nashe
tells us that "in a night and a day" Greene would have
"yarkt up a Pamphlet as well as in seavenyeare" . . . and
this too because "his only care was to have a spel in his
purse to conjure up a good cuppe of wine with at all
times."62 Nashe knew Greene pretty well.
The Blacke Bookes Messenger is the last number of the
first group. It was licensed August 21, 1592, and was
published as a substitute, or messenger, for the Blacke Book
itself which was announced in the Disputation.63 Greene's
illness prevented his preparing the Blacke Book, which from
his account of it in the Disputation was to have contained
a full list of the vices and the names of all the wrong-doers
in the Capital. The Blacke Bookes Messenger was written
before Greene's fatal illness came upon him, and was sent
"as a Fayring" until such time as Greene should have
recovered.
In this work Greene lays open "the Life and Death of
Ned Browne, one of the most notable Cutpurses, Cros-
biters, and Conny-catchers, that ever lived in England."
The pamphlet is in the first person and represents Ned
Browne "standing in a great bay windowe with a halter
about his necke ready to be hanged." Ned Browne is brazen
" Nashe, Vol. I., p. 287.
M Vol. X., pp. 225, 236.
108 ROBERT GREENE
in the face of death. He tells his listeners that they need
not expect to hear a repentance, for he will be resolute to
the end.
We have an account of Ned's childhood and of the virtues
of his parents. We are told of how he was always a dis
obedient son, and of how he early started on the way to
villainy, disregarding the advice of his parents, blaspheming
God, and following after the wickedness of the world. The
pamphlet, only thirty-seven pages in all, contains five tales
occupying twelve pages by which Ned illustrates the course
of his life. Now he deceives a maltman, now he outwits a
priest, now he kisses a gentlewoman and cuts her purse,
now he lets fall a key, and lastly he tells how his wife was once
cross-bitten in her own art. Between the tales Ned mentions
various of his exploits, how he robbed a church, for example.
Having finished his autobiography, he springs out of the
window and dies. After he is buried, a company of wolves
come in the night-time, tear him out of his grave, and eat
him up.
Greene evidently forgets all about Ned's determination to
persevere in the attitude of non-repentance which he uttered
so boldly on the opening page of the book. For the cutpurse,
the worst that ever lived in England, preaches a vehement
and orthodox sermon just before he leaps from the window.64
All his defiance is gone. He would have us trust not in our
wits, in our strength. We are to follow the good counsel of
our friends, harken to God's ministers, scoff not at the
magistrates, beware of strange women, who are the Sirens
which draw us on to destruction.
What a show we have! Ned Browne is only a pup
pet, a mechanical figure dressed up, with a halter about
his neck. There he stands, totally without life, a ven-
64 In Painter's tale, the Countess of Celant "miserably and repent
antly died," and asked the people to pray for her.
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 109
triloquist's doll whose mouth is pulled open and shut by
strings. When the speech is over, Ned is pitched out.
But nobody cares. It was only an entertainment any
how.
The quality of entertainment is characteristic not only
of The Blacke Bookes Messenger but of the whole series.
We have already pointed out that there is in the first three
pamphlets a diminution in the amount of information to
be conveyed, and an increase in the amount of illustration,
so that the Last Part contains nothing else. The Defence
and The Blacke Bookes Messenger continue in the same
kind of development, both in the inclusion of tales and in the
fiction of the frame-work too. "Obviously," as Professor
Chandler aptly remarks, "in these pamphlets Greene was
progressing from an account of rogues* tricks to the more
interesting business of using rogues as anti-heroes in fic
tion."65 Greene, the exposer of social vices, that is, had
little to say; Greene, the teller of tales, had much. It
does not follow, as one might think, that to speak of Greene's
conny-catching pamphlets as the product of his tastes, and
necessity for journalistic activity, is to deprive them of their
importance. Indeed, so speaking of them only calls our
attention to the real interest, which is not sociological but
dependent upon the illustrative tales as examples of Eliza
bethan narrative art.
The stories are somewhat allied to the stories of the jest-
books so common before and after the time of Greene.66 This
relation is especially true in connection with the emphasis
upon the trick, the performance of a clever deed. But Greene's
collections are different from these. They have not the
unity to be found in a jest-book like the contemporary Merrie
66 The Literature of Roguery, by F. W. Chandler. Vol. I., p. 98.
68 See Chandler, Literature of Roguery, Vol. I., p. 59. Also Cambridge
History of English Literature, Vol. III., for bibliography.
110 ROBERT GREENE
Conceited Jests of George Peelef1 wherein we gain some
definiteness of conception of the roguish hero; nor do they
have the anecdotic quality of the earlier collections like the
C. Mery Talys (1526). There is not in Greene's stories the
personal element of the former, in that Greene's men and
women are almost as uncharacterized as the absence of their
names indicates; and yet we are made aware that the
crudity, or undevelopedness, of the latter has disappeared
under a method of artistic handling. We are not presented
to people in whom we are interested for their own sakes.
At the same time our attention is not centered wholly upon
the event. I think the reason for this is the very thing that
Professor Chandler speaks of, the using of rogues as anti-
heroes. So that we do not have from Greene a collection
of jests, but genuine fictitious narrative of such merit as to
mark a step in the employment of the anti-heroic as a
subject for artistic treatment.
Although Greene made some advance over the jest-book
by giving the significance of a literary form to his work,
he did not produce anything which should be called pica
resque romance. The tales, for the most part, are complete
in themselves, and have no bearing upon any of the tales
before or after them. There is no conception of unity in
Greene's mind, no desire to paint a roguish person. Not
withstanding the fact that there is present in many of the
tales much of the subtlety in the formulation of the trick
and much of the adroitness in extrication from difficult places,
there is not the breadth of view nor the extensiveness of
interest which characterizes the genuine picaresque. The
confession of Ned Browne is no exception.
The tales, then, are individual units embedded in a frame
work either expository like the first two parts of conny-
67 Entered in the Stationers' Register December 14, 1605. Works
of George Peele, ed. Bullen. Vol. II.
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 111
catching and the Defence, or fictitious biography like that
of Ned Browne. Or the tale may have no frame-work at
all, like those of the Thirde Part. However found, each must
be judged as a unit on its own basis.
There are about thirty-five of the tales scattered through
out the pamphlets. Many of them are very short, although
a number run to the length of six or eight pages, or even a
little more. Some are genuinely amusing, and some are
very clever. One or two not in themselves humorous at all
are told with such forced gusto that it is the artificial gaiety
we smile at rather than the narratives. Some of them are
slight, and more than one needs Greene's parting "Let each
take heede of dealing with any such kinde of people," or
his "Let this give them warning to beware of any such
unprofitable guests" to apologize for its lack of weight and
to justify its inclusion in the series. The truth is, that
Greene is sometimes compelled to do his manufacturing out
of scant material.
Many of the tales are good reading. The brevity of them
necessitates directness and clearness. They are unified in
idea and in treatment, for they are by their nature limited
to the telling of one event. In style they are simple. For
tunately Greene conceived the proper language in which to
write of such base subjects to be itself "base" and devoid
of refinement. Of the thirty-five stories as a group, the
impression one gets is that Greene has accomplished satis
factorily the end he had in mind, "Let this suffice, and now
I will recreate your wits with a merry Tale or two."
Here is one of them:
"How a cunning knave got a Tranche well stuffed with linnen and cer-
taine parcetts of plate out of a Citizens house, and how the Master of the
house holpe the deceiver to carry away his owne goods.
Within the Cittie of London dwelleth a worthy man who
hath very great dealing in his trade, and his shop very well
112 ROBERT GREENE
frequented with Customers: had such a shrewd mischaunce
of late by a Conny catcher, as may well serve for an example
to others leste they have the like. A cunning villaine, that
had long time haunted this Cittizens house, and gotten many
a cheat which he carried awaye safely : made it his custome
when he wanted money to helpe him selfe ever where he
had sped so often: divers thinges he had which were never
mist, especially such as appertained to the Citizens trade,
but when anye were found wanting they could not devise
which way they were gone, so pollitiquely this fellow alwayes
behaved him selfe: well knew he what times of greatest
business this Cittizen had in his trade, and when the shop
is most stored with Chapmen: then would he step up the
staires (for there was and is another door to the house
besides that which entreth into the shop) and what was next
hand came ever away with. One time above the rest in an
evening about Candlemas, when daylight shuts in about
six of the clock, he watched to do some feate in the house,
and seeing the mistresse goe foorth with her maid, the good-
man and his folkes very busie in the shop: up the staires
he goes as he was wonte to doo, and lifting up the latch of
the hall portall doore, saw nobody neere to trouble him:
when stepping into the next chamber, where the Citizen
and his wife usually lay, at the beds feete there stood a
hansome truncke, wherein was very good linnen, a faire guilt
salte, two silver french bowles for wine, two silver drinking
pots, a stone Jugge covered with silver, and a dosen of silver
spoons. This truncke he brings to the staires head, and
making fast the doore againe, drawes it downe the steppes so
softlye as he could, for it was so bigge and heavy, as he could
not easily carry it: having it out at the doore, unseene of
any neighbour or anybody else, he stood strugling with it to
lift it up on the stall, which by reason of the weight trobled
him very much. The goodman comming foorth of his shop,
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 113
to bid a customer or two far well made the fellowe afraide
he should now be taken for all togither: but calling his
wittes together to escape if he could, he stood gazing up at
the signe belonging to the house, as though he were desirous
to knowe what sign it was: which the Cittizen perceiving,
came to him and asked him what he sought for? I looke for
the sign of the blew bell sir, quoth the fellowe, where a
gentleman having taken a chamber for this tearme time,
hath sent me hether with this his Troncke of apparell:
quoth the Citizen, I know no such sign in this streete, but in
the next (naming it) there is such a one indeede, and there
dwelleth one that letteth foorthe chambers to gentlemen.
Truely sir quoth the fellowe, thats the house I should go
to, I pray you sir lend me your hand but to helpe the Trunke
on my back, for I thinking to ease me a while upon your
stall, set it shorte, and now I can hardly get it up againe.
The Citizen not knowing his owne Trunke, but indeede
never thinking on any such notable deceite: helpes him up
with the Truncke, and so sends him away roundly with his
owne goods. When the Truncke was mist, I leave to your
conceits what householde greefe there was on all sides, espe-
ciallye the goodman himselfe, who remembering how hee
helpt the fellow with a Truncke, perceived that heereby
hee had beguyled himselfe, and loste more then in haste
hee should recover againe. How this may admonish others,
I leave to the judgement of the indifferent opinion, that see
when honest meaning is craftilye beleagerd, as good fore
sight must be used to prevent such daungers."
The story is typical for it illustrates the characteristics
I have enumerated above. It is short, it is clever, it is
simple, and, moreover, it is interesting. I believe that its
effectiveness is the result of a conscious effort. Greene wrote
these tales with a long experience back of him. Starting out
as the ape of Euphues when a boy of twenty, to enter the
114 ROBERT GREENE
perilous career of a man of letters in Elizabethan London,
a man of his versatility and quickness would naturally de
velop independence and consciousness of method. This
tale which I have printed in full shows such consciousness.
There is careful but rapid sketching of the setting and of
the conditions which make possible the event about to be
related. There is just enough character drawing to show
us the unsuspecting citizen and the cunning thief, and to get
us ready for their respective actions when the unexpected
moment of meeting arrives. There is concreteness of de
tail — the contents of the trunk are given, which make it
so desirable a prize. The dialogue is good. There is sus
pense, — What will the thief do when he finds himself dis
covered? There is admirable climax when Mr. Goodman
helps the conny-catcher on with his trunk. In its way, the
piece is excellent. And it contains less than seven hundred
words.
An understanding of this narrative importance of the
social pamphlets of the first group associates Greene at
once with the writer of fiction as we have seen him in con
nection with his novels. What we said of him there applies
even more strongly here. Greene is at his best when he is
concerned with the development of events, and when he is
not encumbered with the task of presenting character. In
the illustrative tales of the conny-catching pamphlets all the
conditions for success for a man like Greene are inherent
in the nature of the material. A rogue is pretty much a
rogue anywhere. It is not his character as an individual
that we are interested in; it is what his character leads him,
and enables him, to do. So that Greene is left, in the writ
ing of these tales, to follow out his own natural inclination
in presenting action and clever situation rather than person
ality. His results are often worthy of high praise.
The pamphlets of Greene's first group are superficial as
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 115
exposures of deceits, and light in their aim. Their greatest
merit is not in their sociological value, but rather in their
qualities to afford entertainment. The two pamphlets of the
second group 68 are differentiated from those of the first by
their keener insight into certain social forces and by their
greater understanding of Elizabethan society, one of them
manifesting an intelligence of the element of sex as an
active power toward crime, the other furnishing a knowl
edge of social estates at once extensive and deep.
These two pamphlets were not, it is probable, thus differ
entiated in Greene's own mind. Professor Collins, speaking
of the significance of one of them, noted that significance as
" being the more effective, as it is obviously neither intended
nor perceived by the writer."69 I believe that what Pro
fessor Collins said is true. Greene apparently did not
regard these two pamphlets as unlike the Notable Dis
covery or The Blacke Bookes Messenger, and apparently he
did not publish them for any different purpose. The
"Reade, laugh, and learne" on the title-page of the Dispu
tation would indicate as much. But although Greene was not
aiming at the production of anything different and was not,
it may be, aware of the greater significance of the two pam
phlets, the difference does exist, as -I shall try to make clear.
Of the two, the Disputation is the nearer to the pamphlets
of the first group. We can, therefore, take it up first.
88 A DISPUTATION Betweene a Hee Conny-catcher, and a Shee
Conny-catcher, whether a Theefe or a Whoore, is most hurtfull in
Cousonage, to the Common- wealth. DISCOVERING THE SECRET
VILLAnies of alluring Strumpets. With the Conversion of an
English Courtizen, reformed this present yeare. 1592. Reade, laugh,
and learne. Nascimur pro patria.
A QUIP FOR AN UPstart Courtier: Or, a quaint dispute
between Veluet breeches and Cloth-breeches. Wherein is plainely
set downe the disorders in all Estates and Trades.
88 Collins' Edition of Greene. General Introduction. Vol. I., p. 31.
116 ROBERT GREENE
This work is in two parts of about equal length, some
forty pages each. The first part, from which the pamphlet
derives its name, consists essentially of a dialogue between
a thief and a courtezan, who happen to meet, and who,
after they have conversed a few minutes on the street, go
to a tavern, take a room, and order supper. While the
meal is preparing, they debate their respective abilities at
cozenage.60 Nan wins, and Lawrence pays for the supper.
The dialogue is interspersed with four or five tales.
There are similarities to the other pamphlets which tend
to identify the Disputation with them. For the Disputation
is full of references to Greene himself, advertisements of
the Blacke Booke soon to appear, and of the Conny-catching
pamphlets already published. There are the same boasts
of patriotism and of bravery despite the threats which have
come; there is a stirring account of how, while he was at
supper one night in St. John's Head within Ludgate in the
company of a certain gentleman, some "fourteene or fif-
teene of them met, and thought to have made that the
fatal night of my overthrowe"; but the citizens came to his
aid and he escaped, though the gentleman who was with
him was sore hurt. There is the same pride in the effect
iveness of the exposures, "I cannot deny but they beginne
to waste away about London. ... I will plague them to
the extreamitie: let them doe what they dare with their
bilbowe blades, I feare them not."61 Throughout the first
half of the pamphlet there is, in short, such stir and noise
60 Professor Collins was mistaken in thinking that this "dialogue
is carried on in bed." Vol. I., p. 31. He mis-read Nan's remark
"Lye a little further & give mee some roome," (Vol. X., p. 205) and
did not perceive that Nan was only rebuking Lawrence. "What
Lawrence," she went on, "your toong is too lavish." Nan's proposal
"Let us to the Taverne," occurs within five lines of the remark which
led Professor Collins astray.
61 Vol. X., p. 236.
NA8CIMUR PRO P ATRIA 117
and clatter, such raising of the dust, no wonder we are
deafened and blinded. With all this palaver about us, no
wonder we lose ourselves and take Greene for what he is
striving his utmost to impress upon us that he is. But
in such respects as these Greene is still the quack.
In other respects, however, the Disputation is different
from the pamphlets I have just associated it with. It is
more vital. In the first place, it is genuinely humorous.
The whole affair of these conny-catchers is humorous, to
be sure, if regarded from the point of view I have tried to
set forth. We cannot but laugh at Greene for the face he
puts on. And there are humorous passages in some of the
pamphlets, too. But the humor of the Disputation is all
its own. It is not the humor evoked by the confession of
Ned Browne, the laughter aroused from hearing the speech
of a wooden doll, even though the wooden doll be put to
death at the end with a string about its neck. It is not the
knowing smile in which Greene indulges over some of the
more simple tales which he thinks funny; it is not the keen
appreciative delight over a cleverly turned trick; nor the
sympathy we bestow upon the rascal when we know well
enough that we should be sad for the victim. And it is
not the flippant, saucy humor of the oft-repeated, "Was
not this a pretty conny-catching, Maister R. G.?" The
humor of the Disputation is none of these. It is deeper;
grim, but not cynical. It comes partly from the situation,
and partly from Greene's method of treatment. It is uncon
scious, unaffected. Nan and Lawrence talk naturally, never
thinking for a moment that they are being overheard. Our
enjoyment of their conversation is that of an eavesdropper.
We have no business to be there, but we have not the will
to go away. Nan and Lawrence have been so complaisant
in their views of life, in the shrewdness of their wits, that
we delight to see them wriggle under the sting of their
118 ROBERT GREENE
recent exposure. We rejoice in their discomfiture, and their
bitterness. A primitive sort of humor, no doubt, to laugh
at another's pain, but nevertheless universal, and never
theless effective.
In the second place, Greene somehow got a hold, in this
little pamphlet of his, of one of the most fundamental forces
in the whole world of wrong-doing. He reveals, by the
dialogue between the thief and the courtezan, the power of
sex. In villainy, Lawrence is supreme. But Nan is greater
than he; for most of his arts are at her command. She can
nip purses with the best. She can steal, cheat, lie. She
can equal him at his own trade. And then she can do more.
Her strength is threefold. Evil she can do for herself; she
can entice her victims to her and destroy them herself; she
can demand tribute from those who would retain her favor.
For hers is the allurement of the strumpet.
". . . why the Lawrence what say you to me? haue I
not prooued that in foysting and nipping we excell you,
that there is none so great inconuenience in the Common
wealth, as growes from whores, first for the corrupting of
youth, infecting of age, for breeding of brawles, whereof
ensues murther, in so much that the mine of many men
come from us, and the fall of many youthes of good hope,
if they were not seduced by us, doe proclaime at Tyborne,
that wee be the meanes of their miserie: you men theeues
touch the bodie and wealth, but we ruine the soule, and
indanger that which is more pretious then the worldes
treasure: you make worke onely for the gallowes, we both
for the gallowes and the diuel, I and for the Surgian too,
that some Hues like loathsome laizers, and die with the French
Marbles. Whereupon I conclude that I haue wonne the
supper.
Law. I confesse it Nan, for thou has tolde mee such
wondrous villainies, as I thought neuer could haue been in
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 119
women, I meane of your profession; why you are Croco
diles when you weepe, Basilisks when you smile, Serpents
when you deuise, and diuels cheefest breakers to bring the
world to destruction. And so Nan lets sit downe to our
meate and be merry."
"Vivid" and " graphic" are the words which have been
applied to this dialogue.62 Vivid and graphic it is. But it
does not stop there. It is true, — true, that is, in the largest
sense. In this pamphlet we cannot quibble over details; we
cannot inquire whether this statement or that has foundation
in the facts of Elizabethan times, whether the picture it pre
sents is accurate or not. We cannot judge this pamphlet as
we judged the pamphlets of the first group. Fot this one is
based upon a universal principle of truth. Whoever Nan
and Lawrence may be — creations of Greene's own imagina
tion — they are a man and woman at any time and in any
place. Be the woman a conny-catcher, she is Nan; be she
an Egyptian queen, she is Cleopatra; be she a sorceress,
she is Circe. And the man, — he is any man who does not
like Ulysses bind himself to the mast.
The second part of the pamphlet is, I think, of less social
significance than the first. It is concerned with the story
of an English courtezan who is converted from her life of
sin to one of virtue. The reformation is brought about by
a young man who, going with the beautiful courtezan into
a very dark room, reminds her that even there God can see
them. He pleads with her to change her life. She does
so. Then he takes her from the house of shame and she
becomes his wife. "Not a fiction, but a truth of one that
yet lives," Greene tells us, is this wonderful "life of a
Curtszin" whose reformation took place "this present
yeare. 1592."
One need not believe, in spite of Greene's declaration,
0 Collins. General Introduction. Vol. I., p. 32.
120 ROBERT GREENE
that we have the account of a real person. Within this
story there is a second story of similar nature, "a pleasant
discourse, how a wife wanton by her husbands gentle warn
ing, became to be a modest Matron," which, I have
pointed out before, Greene took from Gascoigne's Adventures
of Master F. J. (1573) ,63 the story of how a man won back
his faithless wife from his faithless friend by paying her as
a courtesan, and by his kindly manner. Whether Greene
had some similar source for the story of the English courtezan
is not known. The method of the young man in taking the
woman to the darkest room in the house is somewhat similar
to that which the wife of the usurer's victim in the Defence M
used in getting the usurer into a remote room. In that room
she confined him. In this present story the young man
pleads with the sinful woman. The aims of the two were
different, perhaps too much so for us to say that one story
influenced the other. But whether a source will ever be
discovered or not, the identity of the woman and the origin
of her story have no relation to the significance of her con
version. That significance is dependent upon Greene's im
aginative treatment.
I have throughout this chapter looked upon Greene
lightly, and I have placed little faith in his words or in his
purposes. Even the dying words of Ned Browne, the cut-
purse, I have regarded mostly as clap-trap. The story of
the courtezan is apparently like that of Ned Browne, but in
reality I believe the two are different. I cannot see that
it is a mistake to perceive more sincerity in the prayer of the
young man and in the woman's turning from sin than is to be
found in most of Greene's work. Such passages are very few
with him, in which we get genuine emotion and sincerity
63 Gascoigne, Ed. W. C. Hazlitt, Vol. I., p. 473. Modern Language
Notes. Vol. 30, No. 2, p. 61.
" Vol. XI., p. 58.
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 121
of expression. When we do come upon one which seems
to be sound, we pause suspicious. We hesitate; we fear
that it may turn out mere sentimentality and that our feel
ings may be trifled with. The reformation of the courtezan,
however, appears real. I mean not that the story of it —
the manner in which it is brought about — is affecting, but
that the emotion which the account of it arouses is real.
Here, for one of the rare times in Greene, one may let one
self go and not feel that one is mawkish, too easily moved,
unperceptive.
In the two respects that I have indicated, one in the
recognition of an important sociological factor in crime,
the other in the expression of a true emotion, the Disputa
tion is worthy to be separated from the larger and less pro
found group of Greene's social pamphlets. The Quippe for an
Upstart Courtier also has this same depth of interest.
In the Quippe we are no longer concerned with the conny-
catchers and the harlots. In it Greene does not deal with
one class only, but with some sixty professions and trades,
from the knight down to the lowest and humblest workman,
all of which are passed in review, commented upon, and
branded as good or bad. Greene's method is as follows.
One day in the Spring, he is in the fields gathering flowers.
There are many people around. Suddenly they all dis
appear and Greene is left alone. In a few moments he sees
coming toward him a pair of gorgeous velvet breeches : from
the opposite direction appears a pair of plain cloth ones.
These two, representing pride and lowliness, debate their
right to hold the realm of Britain. They can reach no
agreement. A jury is proposed, the selection of which fills
the important part of the pamphlet. Finally, however, the
twenty-four men are chosen, with the knight at their head.
The jury debates briefly and renders its decision that cloth
breeches is the older and rightful possessor of the land.
122 ROBERT GREENE
Greene got the plan and many details, sometimes verbal
borrowings and paraphrases, from a poem written a number
of years before. This was The Debate between Pride and
Lowliness by one F. T.,65 the relation between which and
Greene's tract was first pointed out by Mr. J. Payne Collier
in 1841. Of this poem "the most remarkable circumstance,"
Collier says,66 is that Greene " stole the whole substance of
it, and, putting it into prose, published it in 1592, in his
own name, and as his own work." Storojenko does well to
object to Collier's statement.67 It is indeed true, as he says,
that while the work is by no means entirely original Greene
did much more than transform dull poetry into interesting
prose. Greene took the plan and the purpose of the old
debate; but he omitted and he added. He did not in any
sense permit himself to be a slave to his original.
The result is that Greene's pamphlet is much better than
the poem on which it is based. Instead of the eighty pages
of stiff unreadable quatrains with their awkward versifica
tion and their lack of emphasis, Greene gives us sprightly
prose which is as free from monotony as the method of the
work would well allow. The plan, in itself, is not conducive
to the production of enthusiasm. Sixty orders are to be
brought into view, talked about, and gotten rid of. That
is a tremendous task. And those sixty orders must be dis
cussed with sufficient distinctness to warrant the selection
of twenty-four of them to serve as a jury. There are indi
cations that Greene realized the enormity of the under
taking and that he planned definitely to meet it. In the
first place he lets the debate between velvet breeches and
65 Formerly thought to be Francis Thynne, but shown not to be
by Furnivall in his Preface to the Animadversions of Thynne, Chaucer
Society, 1876, p. cxxviii.
66 Shak. Soc. Pub. Vol. XVII. Introduction, p. v.
87 Grosart's Edition of Greene's Works, Vol. I., p. 143.
NASCIMUR PRO PATRIA 123
cloth breeches rise to a high pitch before he proposes the
settlement by jury. Then he does not tell us whether the
case is to "be tried by a verdict of twelve or four and
twenty." If only twelve, we think, it will not take long.
The jury is hard to select. First comes a tailor in velvet
and satin, pert, as dapper as a bridegroom. Greene invites
him to be of the jury.
"Not so," quoth cloth breeches, "I challenge him."
"And why?" quoth I.
Whereupon cloth breeches lays bare the vanity of tailors,
their deceits and dishonesties, their catering to pride, their
disregard for simplicity of fashion, and so on. Then the
tailor steps aside. He will not do.
Presently comes a broker. He is refused. Then a barber,
a physician, an apothecary, a lawyer. All are open to some
criticism. Finally the twelfth man is accepted, a rope-
maker.68 We are relieved. One man has been chosen.
But alas! the next three are refused for their villainy. We
give up in despair.
Now for a stroke of luck. Three men arrive together, the
knight, the esquire, the gentleman. They must be of the
jury, and we have four.
Here is the best news of all. "Ther came a troope of men
in apparell seeming poore honest Citizens, in all they were
eight." They were content to serve. Nobody had serious
objections, and so they took their places with the other
four. We are quite as glad as Greene that "there were so
many accepted of at once, and hoped that now quickly the
jury would be ful." In a moment the thirteenth man is
chosen.
Apparently things are going well. We shall soon be
through. Then nine in succession are refused!
•* This was the celebrated passage from which the Greene-Harvey-
Nashe quarrel immediately arose.
124 ROBERT GREENE
Well, the jury is finally chosen. But that is not the
point. What I wish to emphasize is that Greene made a
conscious effort to counteract a fundamental difficulty. If
he was going to succeed in presenting sixty orders in a
salable pamphlet he had to do something more than enu
merate; and what Greene accomplished was considerably
more than enumeration. He came to the writing of the
Quippe with a twelve years' experience as a man who had
made his living with a pen. He had been obliged, as never
an Englishman before him, to learn the art of successful
composition, and he had come to a realization of the fact
that the manner of expression counted much. Greene
brings before us, then, the sixty orders; but his method is
one which has interest in itself. He manages to shift our
attention away from the monotony of counting off trades
men to the more human and interesting task of being sorry
for ourselves that the selection of a jury for this ridiculous
quarrel should take so long.
Founded though it is upon the work of another, the Quippe
marks the highest point in the development of Greene's
prose style. Notwithstanding that the first part of the piece
is not closely related to the rest of it, and that these opening
pages are marked distinctly by the artificialities of Euphuism,
the body of the tract is well written and thoroughly mature.
It has the simplicity which characterizes the other social
pamphlets; and it has also a dignity which they lack. It
has humor — not so much as the Disputation — and clear
ness of outline. The sentences are firmly constructed, and
contrast with the straggling ungrammatical creations of the
earlier works. There is vigor and strength and stability.
In addition to the qualities which arise from the style,
the Quippe made improvement over the Debate in the trans
formation of the abstractions of personality. The butcher,
the baker, the bellows-mender, the goldsmith, the cook, —
NA8CIMUR PRO PATRIA 125
all these, as types, belong of course to the genre of character-
writing. Greene's (rather F. TVs) idea of presenting them
is, therefore, by no means new. And Greene's attitude
toward these personages is not unique either, for they are in
his work still representatives of a type. This is necessarily
so; else they would have no place in a work of this kind —
any more than the Knight or the Lady Prioress would
have in the company of the immortal pilgrims if they did
not personify definite social classes. But types as they are,
Greene has made over the bloodless and boneless unrealities
of the poem, and has given them a degree of reality. They
are not abstract types, but semi-living types, if it be not a
paradox to say so. They are the product, not of an exposi
tory, but of a dramatic mood. It cannot be maintained that
Greene has secured total freedom from the method of his
predecessor. But he has done much. He has secured for
the types of which he writes the attention which we pay to
personality rather than to a discussion of estates and con
ditions of life.
It is entirely in accord with Greene's nature that he should
not have succeeded in endowing the people in the Quippe
with complete individuality. Had he been Chaucer he could
have done so. But Greene was not, as we saw in his fic
tion, able to progress to a sharp presentation of character.
His talent lay in the direction of the ordering of events.
The Quippe is another illustration of this fact. I endeav
ored to show how Greene made definite provision for his
reader's interest in his narrative. But he did not, and
could not, make the same provision in the way of character.
So far as the Quippe is story, therefore, it is successful. So
far as it is presentation of character, it is not wholly so.
Defective in the element of characterization the Quippe
is, despite the vast amount of improvement which Greene
made. But after all, I do not believe that the greatest
126 ROBERT GREENE
importance of the pamphlet attaches to its quality either
as narrative or as study of character. The real significance
I take to be the firmness of its grasp upon an understanding
of social values.
In turning from the underworld of London Greene was
broadening his view of society. He was dealing not with
the problems of a particular time and place, but rather
with the universal struggle between haughtiness on the one
hand which leads to tyranny, and lowliness on the other
which leads to the development of a substantial common
wealth and the establishment of democratic ideals.
Satires of the estates compose an established literary
tradition. Greene is carrying on this tradition of the
satire, of course. Perhaps he meant only satire, an expo
sure, in this quaint dispute and in the judgment of the
classes of society who are to make up the jury, of the traits
of good and bad, of uplifting and degenerating, which con
stitute everywhere the society of men. There is no way of
knowing whether Greene meant anything else than just that.
CHAPTER V
THE POETRY
IF we exclude the lost ballad, of which we know nothing
but the title,1 Greene's career as a poet extends over nine
years, from the time of the Second Part of Mamillia in 1583
down until his death. In this period of time Greene ran
the number of his poems up to almost ninety. His poems,
with few exceptions, are lyrics; and all but one are found
embedded, either incidentally or integrally, in the romances
upon which he was engaged.
Greene was not unique, of course, in his mingling of prose
and poetry. There were plenty of examples in the work
of the Italian writers, notably of Sannazaro. His immediate
predecessors in the field of English prose fiction — Painter,
Fenton, Gascoigne, for instance — had employed the method.
And Greene's own contemporaries were doing the same thing,
men like Riche and Lodge, and above all, Sir Philip Sidney.
For the most part, Greene's poems, like those of the
other writers, bear little relation to the romances in which
they occur. They are inserted, often on the flimsiest pos
sible excuse, to afford their author a means of publication
for what are not infrequently experimental effusions, and
1 Edward White: Vicesimo die Marcii (1581) Lycenced unto him
under th(e) (h)andes of the Bishop of London and the wardens, A
Ballad Intituled, youthe seinge all his wais so Troublesome abandon
ing vertue and learninge to vyce, Recalleth his former follies with
an inwarde Repentaunce By Greene. Stationers' Register, Arber Vol.
II., p. 391.
127
128 ROBERT GREENE
what are in any event only poetical by-products which would
otherwise have had no chance of circulation.
Sometimes a passage is put into poetry, and so introduced,
which might just as well, as prose, have formed a part of the
romance, or have been omitted altogether. How far this
habit is carried can be seen in the Description of Maesia.2
"She was passing fair," says Greene, "for this I remember
was her description. " And the poem of eighteen lines which
follows is not merely incidental, but obviously dragged in.
Certain poems are, however, by Greene's own statement,
meant to be incidental. One of the best-known poems, his
Sonetto in Menaphon, What thing is Love?3 is so intro
duced: — "Since we have talkte of Love so long, you shall
give me leave to shewe my opinion of that foolish fancie
thus." More frequently, though, than for any other reason,
the poems, be they of ever so little importance to the develop
ment of the story, are put forward on the pretext that they
are expressions of mental states of various characters. And
so we have Doralicia, who "to rid hir selfe therefore from
these dumpes, took hir Lute, whereupon she played thys
dittie";4 Barmenissa, who "was overcharged with melan
choly: to avoyde the which . . . she warbled out this
Madrygale";6 Isabel, who "cald for pen and inck and
wrote this mournfull Sonnet";6 and many another dis
tressed heroine or repentant hero.
In many cases, to be sure, there does exist a definite, and
often a necessary, connection between the poem and the
novel. Occasion for Arion's discourse upon the nature of
2 Farewell to Follie, Vol. IX., p. 266.
3 Vol. VI., p. 140. Mr. Crawford (Notes and Queries. Ser. 10.
No. 9. May 2, 1908) points out that Allot in England's Parnassus
wrongly ascribes this poem to the Earl of Oxford.
4 Arbasto, Vol. III., p. 248.
6 Penelopes Web, Vol. V., p. 179.
6 Never too Late, Vol. VIII., p. 157.
THE POETRY 129
women was given by the song of Arion.7 Eurimachus'
Madrigal was overheard by the mistress, who stepped to
the lover and "drave him . . . abruptly from his pas
sions."8 Under the story of the fly which would perch
beside the eagle, Menaphon pleaded his love.9 Melicertus
fell in love with Samela after he heard Boron's song in
description of her.10 Mullidor sent his Madrigal to his
lady, in a letter.11 And lastly, Infida and Lamilia sang
their courtezan's songs, deliberately to allure and retain
their victims.12
There are numerous other poems which have this same
relation to plot development. For all these the modern reader
feels the justification. But on the whole, the impression of
Greene's poetry, so far as its place in his romances is con
cerned, is that it has no particular reason for existence.
The question of its intrinsic value is another matter.
Whether or not it has merit, it must be considered on its
own basis and not on that of its pretended relationship.
II
The themes of Greene's poems connect him with more
than one poetic movement. He was in several ways the
descendant of the poets who had preceded him during the
last thirty years, for few indeed are the subjects employed
by them which do not find a place in his work. At the same
time, he was strongly affected by the newer influences which
kept coming in from Italy and France, and which did much
to change the character of English poetry during this period.
As a result, Greene is, in this division of his work, as in
7 Orpharion, Vol XII., p. 65. » Alcida, Vol. IX., p. 99.
• Menaphon, Vol. VI., p. 59. l° 76., p. 65.
11 Francescos Fortunes, Vol. VIII., p. 217.
« Never too Late, Vol. VIII., p. 75.
Groatsworth of Wit, Vol. XII., p. 113.
130 ROBERT GREENE
everything else that he did, a fairly accurate mirror of the
literary activity of the age.
Like the other Elizabethan lyrists, Greene sang mostly
of love. Love is his prevailing theme, and he treats it in
various ways. "What thing is Love?" he asks. It is a
power divine, a discord, a desire, a peace.13 Love has no
law.14 Life without love is lost, just as sheep die without
their food.15 Greene praises chastity16 and constancy17 in
love, and he writes of lightness18 and jealousy19 in affection.
Six poems preach definitely the warning to beware of love.
Three have their basis in the Eros motiv. After the manner
of Petrarchists, Greene deals with the pangs of the lover.
At least six of his poems are on this theme. But there is
in none of them that exquisite restlessness and analytic
subtlety shown by Wyatt and the other poets of the early
Miscellanies, and by the Sonneteers.
Greene, besides reflecting the interest of his time in the
poetry of love, reflects also its interest in the pastoral devel
opment which had been strengthening for some time, and
which, given decided impetus by the Shepherd's Calendar,
first gained real importance in the decade following upon
1580.
This element of pastoralism Greene uses in several ways:
whether for adornment as when Menaphon sang
"When ewes brought home with evening Sunne
Wend to their foldes.
and to their holdes,
The shepheards trudge when light of daye is done," 20
13 Menaphon, Vol. VI., p. 140. " 76., p. 87.
16 Never too Late, Vol. VIII., p. 50.
" Philomela, Vol. XI., pp. 123, 178.
17 76., p. 149; also Alcida, Vol. IX., p. 87.
« Alcida, Vol. IX., p. 87. Orpharion, Vol. XII., p. 21.
19 Ciceronis Amor, Vol. VII., p. 123.
20 Menaphon, Vol. VI., p. 59.
THE POETRY 131
in introduction to his plea for love; or whether as a medium
by which to extol love's sweetness,
"If countrie loves such sweet desires do gaine,
What Lady would not love a Shepheard Swaine?" 21
Pastoralism in Greene's poetry, however, found its chief
expression in the seven poems which recount the stories of
shepherds' loves. In the case of Boron's Jigge,22 the poem,
to be sure, is mostly jingle, with only a few lines of narra
tive to make a slight story. Again when Doron and Car-
mela join in an eclogue,23 the story is of slight importance.
The interest in this dialogue poem centers rather upon the
rustic characters themselves and upon their speech, an
interest which is not in any degree changed, whether we
consider the poem as a serious attempt on Greene's part
to imitate country talk or as fun-poking at country manners.
"When Phillis kept sheepe along the westerne plaines,"
however, "and Condon did feed his flocks hard by,"24 we
have as a result a poem in which the love-story is of some
value. There is the conventional, but ever charming,
beauty of the shepherdess which sets the shepherd's heart
on fire. There is Coridon's leaving of his flocks to begin
the wooing, his ineptitude in speech, and his declaration of
love. There is Phyllis' coyness, and questioning, and eva
sion, and final consent. And so "this love begun and ended
both in one." In the Shepheards Ode,26 too, we have re
counted the love of this same youthful couple, or of another
youthful couple with the same delightfully pastoral names.
These are the stories of happy loves. The maiden is
kind, and all ends well. But the event is not always
» Mourning Garment, Vol. IX., p. 143a.
22 Menaphon, Vol. VI., p. 69.
» 76., p. 137.
24 Perimedes, Vol. VII., p. 91.
26 Ciceronis Amor, Vol. VII., p. 180.
132 ROBERT GREENE
thus.26 Poor Tytirus "did sigh and see" . . . "where
Galate his lover goes," — Galate with the green chaplet on
her head and the beautiful face, as fair as a maid's could be.
But she said him nay and was off with a smile. And so
was Tytirus turned to scorn the smiles and faces of woman
kind, and to,
"say to love, and women both,
What I liked, now I do loath."
Old Menalcus went even farther than disdain. He had
loved, but all in vain. And so he had learned to repent,
and, from his unhappy outcome, to stand as a warning to
youth that it should beware of love.27 One more pastoral
theme Greene uses in this group of poems. I refer to the
unhappy love of Rosamund and Alexis, to Rosamund's
grief, lamentation, and death, — the sad result of abandon
ment by the faithless shepherd Alexis.28
Greene has another pastoral poem, The Description of the
Shepherd and his Wife, which may serve as a transition
to the next group which we take up. This poem29 is pas
toral only in the sense that it deals with conventional
country people. It does in reality belong to another type
of poetry which Greene was fond of writing, — namely,
descriptions of persons. He describes both men and
women, not because an idea of their appearance is neces
sary in any connection, but merely because he delights to
compose such descriptions for their own sake.
Aside from this description of the shepherd, there are
six poems which are pure descriptions of men. The most
noticeable group is that found in Greene's Vision, in which
we have three poems obviously planned together. These
26 Mourning Garment, Vol. IX., p. 201.
27 Never too Late, Vol. VIII., p. 17.
28 Mourning Garment, Vol. IX., p. 159.
29 76., p. 141.
THE POETRY 133
are the descriptions of Chaucer, Gower, and Solomon,80
very elaborate, with some attempt at characterization, but
with more attention to outward detail of bodily appearance
and garments. Another rather interesting poem on this
theme is Infida's Song in Never too Late.*1 Here we have
a poem, written as a description of a man, which, except
that it is sung by a courtezan to entice her lover, and that
it contains what might easily be said to be adaptations to
the sex of the singer, cannot in any way be distinguished
from the conventional descriptions of women. There are
the same cherry cheeks, vermilion lips, silver-white neck,
and flaming eyes which fill the fond one's thoughts with
"sweet desires"; there is the same appeal for mercy that
may be found in any other Elizabethan song of the kind
sung by a man. Indeed, we wonder whether there was
any clear-cut difference as to how the descriptions should
read, and whether all such descriptive poems were not
made purely in accordance with a convention which would
fit either men or women. We have at least seen such to
be the case in Infida's Song. And besides, Solomon and
the Palmer32 both had amber locks — as what Elizabethan
beauty, save an occasional dark-haired maiden, had not?
Whether all poets so conventionalized their ideas of hand
some men we do not have any adequate way of knowing.
For outside of Marlowe's celebrated description of Leander,
these descriptions of men are rare in the poetry of the age.
We have observed frequently that Greene is both a mirror
and an experimenter. Perhaps in these descriptions he is
showing us his experimental side.
In his descriptions of women, however, Greene was by
no means unique. Such poems were common enough in
80 Vol. XII., pp. 209, 210, 275.
31 Vol. VIII., p. 75.
» Never too Late, Vol. VIII., p. 13.
134 ROBERT GREENE
Elizabethan poetry, as they are in all poetry. There were
beginnings of them even in Totters Miscellany. Wyatt has
a reference to " tresses of gold."33 Surrey speaks of his
mistress' " golden tresses" and "smilyng lokes."34 Grim-
aid35 mentions his lady's eyes, head, foot, etc., even though
he does not describe them. But in the poems of the uncer
tain authors we find examples of elaborate description.36 We
find them also in Turberville 37 — yellow hair, eyes like stars
or sapphires, little mouth, coral lips, teeth white as whale
bone, body blameless, arms rightly proportioned, and .hands
well-shaped. And so on in the works of many of the mis
cellaneous lyrists.38 Thomas Watson has the same sort of
description in his Passionate Century of Love. Watson's lady,
too, is of the golden-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned type,
whose cheeks are of lilies and roses.39 As Professor Erskine
remarks, "the important thing about it (this method of
description) is that the picture immediately became con
ventionalized with the Elizabethan poets, and it is the ideal
of beauty for the whole period."40
Slavishly, almost, Greene conforms to this ideal in his
33 Arber's Reprint, p. 68. 34 Ib., p. 12.
36 76., p. 98. * Ib., p. 214; p. 270.
" Ed. Chambers, Vol. II., p. 644; p. 648.
38 "If I should undertake to wryte in prayse of a gentlewoman, I
would neither prayse her chrystal eye, nor her cherrie lippe, . . .
For these things are trita and obvia." Gascoigne. Notes of Instruction,
1575. Gregory Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays. 1904. Vol. I., p. 48.
39 Hecatompathia. Spenser Society, 1869, p. 21, "This passion of
love is lively expressed by the Authour, in that he lavishlie praiseth
the person and beautifull ornaments of his love, one after another as
they lie in order. He partly imitateth here in Aeneas Silvius, who
setteth downe the like in describing Lucretia the love of Euryalus;
and partly he followeth Ariosto Canto 7, where he describeth Alcina;
and partly borroweth from some others where they describe the
famous Helen of Greece"
40 The Elizabethan Lyric. 1905. p. 91.
THE POETRY 135
poems.41 His women look just alike, created, as they are,
all of them thoroughly in accordance with the accepted
model. But on this set convention, Greene rings all possible
changes, with variations in simile and mythological adorn
ment. Now my lady's lips are ruby red, now roses over-
washed with dew; her cheeks are lilies steeped in wine, or
strewn with roses red and white; or
"Lilly cheekes whereon beside
Buds of Roses shew their pride." «
Her stature is like tall cedar trees,43 her pace like princely
Juno's, she is fairer than Diana, or Thetis, or Venus. And
so on, ad infinitum, in the fifteen or twenty poems on this
theme.44 But her locks are always golden, and her eyes are
always as sapphires or as twinkling stars. There are in
Greene's work none of those somewhat rare exceptions to
this blonde ideal, exceptions which eulogize dark-complexioned
women, such as Sidney praises in Astrophel and Stella,46 and
such as reach their best-known delineation in the "dark
41 There is a passage in his prose works which indicates very clearly
how fully Greene recognized this type of beauty as wholly conventional.
Young men, he says, "worke their own woe, penning downe ditties,
songs, sonnets, madrigals, and such like, shadowed over with the
pensell of flatterie, where from the fictions of poets they fetche the
type and figure of their f ayned affection : first, decyphering hir beauty
to bee more than superlative, comparing hir face unto Venus, hir
haire unto golde, hir eyes unto starres," etc. Vol. IX., p. 292.
« Vol. VIII., p. 62.
*• Vol. III., p. 123. Greene had a habit of repeating himself. This
description of Silvestro's Lady is used again, with some variations
and omissions, as the description of Maesia in Farewell to Follie, Vol.
IX., p. 266.
44 An interesting example of this variation of description is to be
found in the singing match (the only real example of this type of
poetry in Greene) between Menaphon and Melicertus, both singers
aiming to set forth the beauties of the same woman.
46 Sonnet No. 7.
136 ROBERT GREENE
lady" of the Shakespeare Sonnets, — exceptions which Sir
Sidney Lee maintains 46 are distinctively the reflection of
French influence from men like Amadis Jamyn.
These poems in praise of women's charms, which connect
Greene with the newer movements in English poetry, lead
easily to another of his themes, which connects him definitely
with the older school in a tradition which extends back into
the Middle Ages. Greene's first extant poem belongs to this
class — the satires on women. His interest in this theme,
however, seems to have been slight. He has only four
poems on it: one attacking particularly women's following
of fashion, and their desire for fine clothes; 47 one on the
curse of women's beauty;48 one on their pride in their
beauty; 49 and the last one on the censure of their "blab
bing."50 As a variation to the satires on women, there are
a couple of poems against courtezans.51
Another interest which connects Greene with the past is
his group of poems on gnomic themes. The gnomic poems
belong to the latter half of his career, none being earlier
than 1587. After this date, he wrote on various subjects,
jealousy, the shortness of life, the triumph of truth, ambition,
discontent, gluttony, wit, and fortune. We have seen how
strongly Greene was dominated in his romances by the idea of
Fortune, and so we are surprised to find only two poems on this
theme — both of them on the despising of Fortune's power.
Fortune's anger was thought to strike most violently in
lofty places. The lowly life was therefore considered safest;
and he who was contented with his humble lot thus held
the power of Fortune in despite. This theme of contentment
was common enough among the Elizabethan poets. Greene
46 The French Renaissance in England. 1910. p. 273.
47 Vol. II., p. 249. « Vol. IX., p. 24.
49 Vol. IX., p. 25. 60 76., p. 88.
61 Vol. X., p. 200. Vol. XII , p. 129.
THE POETRY 137
wrote three poems on it,52 among them his perhaps most
celebrated song,
"Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content,
The quiet mind is better than a crowne."
We pass now to another group of poems, — the Anac
reontics. In 1554 there was published in France, by Henri
Estienne, an edition of the poems of Anacreon, or rather
of the poems thought to be his. This edition had great
influence upon the poets of the Pleiade. It was almost
immediately translated in full by Remy Belleau, and was to
be seen thenceforth in many forms — translations, adapta
tions, imitations — by various of Belleau's colleagues. The
Anacreontic vein, and to some extent, that of the Greek
Anthology with which they were already familiar, the
French poets shortly assimilated. And through the work
of these men (and possibly through the original tongue as
well) the Anacreontic poems became influential in England.
We find Greene a sharer in this movement, nowhere more
clearly than in a direct translation from the Pseudo-
Anacreon itself. This is the celebrated Number Thirty
One, which he translates as " Cupid abroade was lated in
the night." This poem was one evidently which appealed
to him, for he used it, with very slight changes, in two
different novels.58 Needless to say, after the manner of
other Elizabethan poets, he nowhere indicates either the
source of the poem itself or the fact that he is reproducing
his own translation.54
M Vol. V., p. 179; Vol. VIII., p. 29; Vol. IX., p. 279.
« Alcida, Vol. IX., p. 99; Orpharion, Vol. XII., p. 73.
M Greene's translation is printed also in Davison's Poetical Rhapsody
(Ed. Bullen, 1891. Vol. II., p. 86) where there are translations of three
of Anacreon's Odes by A. W. Two of these three are translated "other
wise," the second by Thomas Spelman (or Spilman) and the third by
Greene.
138 HOBERT GREENE
Of the other poems of the group, it cannot be said whether
they are original with Greene or not. Perhaps he is again
trying his hand at experimentation; at least no originals,
either Greek or French, are known. Whether original or
copied, some of these poems are in Greene's lightest style,
and mark him clearly as distinct from the older poets of
the Miscellanies. Mars in a rage at Venus moves against
her in arms.55 Cupid is afraid for his mother's life. She
bids him be not afraid. Trimming her hair, making herself
beautiful, carrying a fan of silver feathers, she goes in a
coach of ebony past the place where Mars is standing. She
frowns. In fear Mars throws his armor down and vows
repentance. Venus becomes gracious. Thus can woman's
looks subdue the greatest god in arms. All this in twenty-
four lines of a degree of polish unknown before the time of
Greene, and known only to a few of his contemporaries,
such as Lyly, Peele, or Spenser.
In another song of Greene's we have the same delicacy of
execution, but the delicacy is mingled with a suggestive
sensualness which somewhat mars the poem,
". . . then though I wanton it awry,
And play the wag: from Adon this I get,
I am but young and may be wanton yet." M
One other only of these poems need be spoken of, the song
in Ciceronis Amor,57 "Fond faining Poets make of Love a
god," worth notice as reflecting the then prevalent poetizing
about the nature of Cupid and the extent of his power.
Greene says he is no god, as many foolish poets think, and
proves him "but a boy not past the rod."58
« Vol. VII., p. 133. 56 Vol. VII., p. 88. B7 Vol. VII., p. 136.
68 A similar conception is to be found in Thomas Watson's Tears
of Fancie, 1593. Sonnet I. "I helde him (Cupid) as a boy not past
the rod."
Another playful disbelief in the divinity of Cupid is expressed by
THE POETRY 139
There is one group of poems left, a rather large group
of repentance poems. Dyce, and Grosart especially, have
emphasized the repentant note in Greene's work as a char
acteristic of him, and have attempted to establish a canon
thereby by which to judge certain works, the authorship
of which has been discussed in connection with Greene's
name. It is natural, perhaps, in view of the prodigal-son
romances, to emphasize this side of Greene's activity. But
it may be seriously doubted whether there is more than a
reflection of the general tendency toward this sort of poetic
theme, and whether Greene is not merely doing the thing
which had begun long before his time, and which con
tinued long after. At least many examples of repentant
poems can be found among the poets of the age, some
of which show a degree of real religious feeling, but more
of which reveal, as Greene's most often do, only the con
ventional repentant ideas, sorrow for the sins of youth, and
so forth.
The one of Greene's poems which really contains what
has been called the "characteristic" repentant note of
which Grosart spoke so often is the group of verses hi the
Groatsworth of Wit,
"Deceyving world that with alluring toys,
Hast made my life the subject of thy scorne,
O that a yeere were graunted me to live,
And for that yeare my former wit restorde,
What rules of life, what counsell would I give?
How should my sinne with sorrow be deplorde?
But I must die of every man abhorde,
Time loosely spent will not againe be woone,
My time is loosely spent, and I undone." w
Thomas Howell in his Devises, 1581 (Ed. Raleigh, 1906, p. 69).
Howell says that Cupid is no god at all, but — a devil.
w Vol. XII , p. 137.
140 ROBERT GREENE
These verses are seemingly autobiographical. At least they
are as autobiographical as the novel in which they were
printed. But whether or not they express repentance for
an actual past line of conduct, they certainly do convey a
considerable amount of genuine feeling from a real or an
imagined experience.
The rest of Greene's repentant poems are, I think, purely
conventional. In a few cases he mingles the conventional
repentance with the conventional description of a woman,
the beauty of the woman being the cause of the manner of
life for which repentance later on is necessary. Francesco
is thinking of Isabel,60 his wife, and of how he has gone
astray with Infida. His wanton eyes drew him to gaze on
beauty; he saw her charms — her milk-white brow, her face
like silver tainted with vermilion, her golden hair, — and
these beauties entrapped him to sin. By these he slipped
from virtue's path. Now despair and sorrow overcome him.
"Wo worth the faults and follies of mine eie."
In the song which the country swain sings "at the return
of Philador" we have a repentant poem intermingled with
narrative elements. There is an elaborate description of
evening61 and of old Menalcus who sits mourning. He is
bewailing his past. He had fed sheep, secure from Fortune's
ire. Then he had become ambitious and had gone to the city,
where he followed in evil ways. In conclusion he has repented
of his wickedness, and has come back to the country to sing,
"... therefore farewell the follies of my youth." 62
60 Vol. VIII., p. 92.
61 There are several other instances of elaborate settings. In Never
too Late (Vol. VIII., p. 50) the scene is a riverside, there are flowers.
It is April. A lady enters, sits down, and begins to speak. In the same
novel (p. 68) a poem opens with Nature quiet, the sky clear, the air
still, the birds singing. In Philomela (Vol. XI., p. 133) the time is
winter, there are frosts, and leafless trees. A shepherd is sighing.
62 In the Paradise of Daintie Devises (Ed. Brydges and Haslewood,
THE POETRY 141
In Francescos Fortunes occurs M a series of repentant stanzas.
There is a stanza for each sign of the zodiac, dealing with
the season (and often with country life), and ending with
the statement that the seasons will call repentance to mind.
The lines are written on the wall as a "testament" to serve
Francesco as a remembrancer of his follies, and, in spite of
their monotony of style, have a dignity and effectiveness of
movement which one would not expect in a poem of this
kind.
Another repentant poem is the dialogue between the grass
hopper and the ant,64 entirely along the lines of the fable, —
the spendthrift and repentant grasshopper, and the frugal,
inhospitable, unforgiving ant. Greene is like the grass
hopper. Too late he has realized that night, and that
winter, would come.
There remains a final group of three or four miscellaneous
poems which cannot be classed with any of the groups spoken
of above. One of these is an Epitaph65 on the heroine of
a romance, one an oracle,66 one a hermit's exordium,67 — a
curious poem on the power of the Bible to overcome Satan.
The last one is among the best-known of Greene's poems,
Sephestia's Lullaby, the
"Weepe not my wanton smile upon my knee,
When thou art olde there griefe inough for thee."
Lullabies are comparatively rare in Elizabethan poetry, so
rare that one does not expect to find an example, so exquisite
an example, among the poems of Greene.
The British Bibliographer, Vol. III., p. 97), M. Hunnis has a poem with
a similar refrain,
"Good Lord with mercie doe forgive the follies of my youth,"
merely an illustration of a common theme and a common phraseology.
M Vol. VIII., p. 223. " Vol. XII., p. 146.
« Vol. IV., p. 264. •• Vol. VI., p. 34.
•7 Vol. VII., p. 29.
142 ROBERT GREENE
All the poems so far spoken of were written in connection
with the romances. We turn now to the one poem from
Greene's pen which was not so written, A Maiden's Dreame,™
printed in 1591, "upon the Death of the right Honorable Sir
Christopher Hatton Knight, late Lord Chancellor of Eng
land," 69 who died on November twentieth of that year.
It is an example of the dream, or vision, poetry so common
in our earlier literature. A maiden falls asleep and dreams.
She seems to be near a spring, about which are sundry god
desses. A knight lies there dead, clad all in armor. Over
the body of the knight each of the goddesses utters her
complaint, — Justice, Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance,
Bountie, Hospitalitie, Religion. All these grieve bitterly.
More than anything else it is their uncontrolled passion
which mars the poem. The oft-repetitions of the ending of
each complaint,
"At this her sighes and sorrowes were so sore:
And so she wept that she could speak no more,"
become, far from effective, after a while even ridiculous.
There is another poem not found in a novel which has
been associated with Greene's name. This is A Most Rare
and Excellent Dreame, Learnedly Set Downe by a Woorthy
Gentleman, a Brave Schollar, and M. of Artes in Both Univer
sities, printed in the Phoenix Nest, 1593. 70 As Mr. Child
suggests,71 this may be the work of Greene. We know that
<* Vol. XIV., p. 301.
69 "This poem had long disappeared, and was not known to be in
existence till 1845, when it was discovered by Mr. James P. Reardon,
who sent a transcript of it to the Council of the Shakespeare Society,
among whose papers it was printed (Vol. II., pp. 127-45)." Collins,
Introduction to A Maidens Dreame. Plays and Poems of Robert Greene.
1905. Vol. II., p. 219.
70 Collier's Reprint, p. 45.
71 Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. IV., p. 135.
THE POETRY 143
certain papers of Greene's were in the hands of printers
after his death in the previous year. The "M. of Artes
in Both Universities" sounds like Greene, surely. And
there is nothing in the poem which is contrary to Greene's
genius. Still there were other "Masters of Artes in Both
Universities," there were other poets who wrote poems of
the type of the Excellent Dreame. There was so much that
was conventional in poems of the kind, and there is so little
in this poem — except its rather unusual length — to dis
tinguish it from a hundred other poems on the same theme,
that I do not believe that we can say definitely either that
it is or that it is 'not the work of Greene.
The poem opens with an extended discussion on the cause
of dreams, after the mediaeval manner. Then follows the
visit of a lady to her sleeping lover. The lover (in the first
person) describes her beauties and tells of his restless and
hopeless state. The lady and he discuss the subject of love
at some length. She is firm in her denials, and he faints
away in a swoon. Thereupon she, fearing that he is dead,
relents; and the lover comes back to life and the waking
state.
We may now summarize briefly. Throughout, we have
seen in Greene a mirror of the poetical interests of the time.
It is true that there are many of its phases which are not
represented in his work. He has not the vaunt of immor
tality which so obsessed the poets of the Pleiade, and which
came to be characteristic of the English sonneteers of the
following decade. There are many themes at which he does
not try his hand. He has no poems which are plays on
words, no epistles between personages of classical history,
no songs to Spring, no wedding songs, no poems in praise of
virginity, or on the theme of "try before you trust," no
tributes to deceased friends, no epitaphs. These and other
themes find no representative in Greene's volumes. But in
144 ROBERT GREENE
spite of these omissions, Greene's poetry does to a very con
siderable degree coincide with the main currents of endeavor.
We have noted his love poems, with their variations of theme,
his pastoralism, his descriptions of people, his satires on
women, his gnomic verse, his Anacreontic, and repentant,
poems. All of these together identify him with the past,
the present, and the future of his time. Sometimes in his
choice of themes he is continuing a tradition which comes
down from the Middle Ages, sometimes he is pushing his
way forward in experimentation. Most often he is simply
doing what he sees others doing, — a follower of fashion.
Ill
Greene is typical of the period, both in his use of metres
already developed and in his love of making experiments in
verse forms. Most of the poetical measures attracted his
attention. These he sometimes employed just as he found
them at hand. Often, however, he employed them as the
bases of experimentation which, more frequently than in
any other way, took on the shape of new combinations of
old forms.
Greene's favorite metre, and it was the favorite metre of
most of the poets who wrote between the time of the decay
of the poulter's measure and that of the revival of the
sonnet, was the six-line iambic pentameter stanza riming
ababcc. About twenty-five of his poems, or more than a
hundred stanzas, have this structure. He uses it, without
discrimination as to theme, for all conceivable subjects:
love songs, songs of contentment, Anacreontics, pastorals,
repentances, or gnomic verses. More often than not, the
metre is used in its ordinary, simple form.
This six-line stanza is also used in other ways. In several
poems the concluding couplet of the stanza takes on the
THE POETRY 145
nature of a refrain and is used in the same form, or in an
appropriate variant form as the individual stanza may re
quire, throughout the poem. In one case,72 the sixth line
only is so used. In the Song of Arion,73 there are three
stanzas of this form, plus a concluding stanza of two heroic
couplets. Lamilia's Song in the Groatsworth of Wit74 con
sists of two stanzas. The first four lines of each are in con
formity to the type, but the couplet at the end, very slightly
in the nature of a refrain, is of hexameters instead of the
regular pentameters. The poem is made somewhat more
elaborate, too, by the use of a light-tripping refrain, thrice
used, — before the first stanza, after the second, and between
the two. This refrain is a quatrain, abab, a being feminine,
and each foot consisting of an iambic and an anapestic:
"Fie, fie on blind fancie,
It hinders youths joy:
Fayre Virgins learne by me,
To count love a toy."
Finally in the fable of the grasshopper and the ant,75 we have
three stanzas of this metre, intermingled with quatrains and
prose.
The ababcc stanza was in use in both pentameter and
tetrameter forms. Greene nowhere uses the tetrameter
form in its strict application. But he does write a variant
tetrameter stanza 76 in which the first and third lines do not
rime, as one expects, so that we have the scheme, xbybcc.
Greene's next most important metre is the tetrameter
couplet. This metre he uses in fifteen poems, and in doing
so is following a fashion by no means so common as that of
72 Franceses Roundelay, Vol., VIII p. 92.
» Vol. XII., p. 65.
74 Vol. XII., p. 113.
76 Vol. XII., p. 147.
» Vol. III., p. 180; Vol. IV., p. 264.
146 ROBERT GREENE
the stanza just spoken of. The use of the form itself was
comparatively rare before Greene's time, and the employ
ment of trochaics in that form was even rarer. In fact the
use of any foot but the iambic was unusual.77 Tusser, to
be sure, regularly used the tetrameter couplet in anapests,
sometimes combining seven such couplets to make a " son
net."78 But Tusser's work is sporadic rather than typical.
In the Paradise of Dayntie Devises the tetrameter couplet
is used,79 but here it is in iambics. And the tetrameter
couplet was used to a considerable extent by Turberville.80
In Turberville, however, as in the older poets where the form
is occasionally found, the foot is almost invariably iambic.
It is not until we come to the work of Greene and Nicholas
Breton that we find the trochee a staple element in verse
construction, — thenceforth common enough, in the seven
syllable, or truncated four-accent line, with many a later
song writer. Indeed it may perhaps be said that this
couplet, in the poetry of Greene, Breton, Shakespeare,
Barnfield, Browne, and Wither, supplanted the ababcc
form just as that itself had taken the place of the poulter's
measure and the fourteener as the popular verse form.
Professor Schelling thinks it reasonable to regard the
English trochaic measures "not so much as attempts to
follow a foreign metrical system, as a continuance of the
original freedom of English verse as to the distribution of
77 Gascoigne: — "Note you that commonly now a dayes in English
rimes (for I dare not call them English verses) we use none other order
but a foote of two sillables, wherof the first is depressed or made short,
and the second is elevate or made long; and that sound or scanning
continueth throughout the verse." Certayne Notes of Instruction.
Elizabethan Critical Essays. Ed. Gregory Smith, 1904. Vol. 1.,
p. 50.
78 British Bibliographer, ed. Brydges and Haslewood, Vol. III., p. 20.
79 76. The perfect tryall of a faythfull freend. Yloop.
8° Ed. Chambers, Vol. II.
THE POETRY 147
syllables."81 And he proceeds to state that "most English
trochaics show a tendency to revert back to the more usual
iambic system by the addition of an initial unaccented
syllable." In illustration of the tendency, he cites Greene's
Ode,82 a poem of thirty-six lines, of which ten are, as he says,
iambic, the rest trochaic. In this particular case, the illus
tration bears out the statement.83 But unless we expand with
an unusual looseness the meaning of the word tendency I
cannot believe that the statement of Professor Schelling is
of great significance, so far as Greene is concerned. To be
sure, several of his poems are about evenly divided as to
iambic and trochaic feet. On the other hand, we must
acknowledge that Greene's feeling for trochees is pretty
well developed when we find him writing a poem of thirty-
eight lines84 of which practically one hundred per cent are
in strict conformity to rule, and when we find ten other
poems in which the per cent of trochees is equal to ninety
or above.
The next in importance of Greene's metres is his blank
verse. He has ten poems in this metre, about 225 lines.
It cannot be said that he used blank verse to any great
advantage (I am not referring to the dramas at all), or that
he had any conception of its possibilities. He very seldom
ends a thought elsewhere than at the end of a line, and he
makes nothing of the caesura as an element of artistic con
struction. His blank verse has more of the qualities of the
heroic couplet than of blank verse proper, except that it
does not rime. Very often indeed, he intermingles heroic
81 Elizabethan Lyrics, ed. Schelling, 1895. Introduction, p. xl.
81 Vol XL, p. 123.
M An even better illustration might have been the poem (Vol. IX.,
p. 201) of eighty-eight lines in which twenty-five per cent only are
trochaic; or the description of Chaucer (Vol. XII., p. 209) of which only
one-fifth is in this measure.
84 Vol. VIII., p. 13.
148 ROBERT GREENE
couplets in his blank verse; and nearly all of his blank
verse poems have one or more couplets at the end.
Like his trochaic tetrameter couplet, Greene's blank verse
is of some interest in the history of English prosody. The
use of blank verse in Tottel's Miscellany, by Surrey and
Grimald, has often been spoken of, as has the blank verse
of Gascoigne's Steel Glas (1576). 85 But outside of these
instances and of the drama, blank verse was very rare in the
sixteenth century. It was especially rare in the use to which
Greene put it. As a matter of fact, blank verse lyrics are
so seldom to be met with in the history of English poetry
in any of its periods as to make even the rather insignificant
ones of Greene worth a casual mention.
Nine of Greene's poems are in quatrains. Five of these
are iambic pentameter, riming abab. One of these abab
quatrains86 is a little irregular in having after each two
lines a short line of five or six syllables. Three poems are
in iambic pentameter quatrains, but these rime abba. One
other poem87 is not really a quatrain at all, being merely
fourteeners printed as broken lines, as was the custom of
the day.88
Of the heroic couplet there is very little use in Greene's
poetry. He has but one poem in that kind of couplets,
and it is very short — only six lines.89 We have seen,
86 One might perhaps mention the blank verse of Spenser's earlier
translation of the Visions of Bellay (Grosart, Vol. III., p. 231). These
Spenser later rewrote.
« Vol. VI., p. 65.
87 Vol. III., p. 248.
88 The absence from Greene's poetry of fourteeners, with this one
exception, and of the poulter's measure altogether, is interesting as
showing to what extent these metres had decreased in popularity as
lyric forms. From being the almost universal measures of the sixties
and seventies, they have become by Greene's time almost archaic.
89 Vol. X., p. 200.
THE POETRY 149
however, that Greene almost always used pentameter
couplets in connection with his blank verse.
Various other metres were used by Greene at different
times. These may be dismissed somewhat briefly, before
we come to the elaborate stanzas which he was so fond of
using. One of these metres is the rime royal, in which
Greene's longest poem is written.90 Another use to which
Greene put the rime royal is the combination of two such
stanzas to make what he called a "sonnet."91 It is hard
to say whether Greene meant these to be sonnets or not.
The fact, however, that in the short poems the stanzas of
rime royal always occur hi groups of two or four may, even
though the stanzas are printed separated, indicate that
Greene had in his mind a poem to consist of fourteen lines
or a multiple of fourteen lines, no matter of what those
fourteen lines might consist.
Of the sonnet proper Greene makes practically no use.
In view of the excessive amount of sonneteering which had
already begun before his death this absence is interesting.
There are only three real sonnets, — if a sonnet may be de
nned as merely a one-stanza poem of fourteen lines, — and
no two of these are alike. One of them follows92 the rime
scheme abbaaccadeedff, with the division in thought into the
octave and sestette, but not into the smaller divisions of
quatrain and triplet. Another93 consists of three abba
quatrains (all different) with a concluding couplet. Still a
third M — if it be Greene's — is of the regular Shakesperiantype.
90 A Maidens Dreame. Whether or not the Rare and Excelent
Dreame of the Phoenix Nest is Greene's, it also is in rime royal.
M For example, Vol. XI., p. 142; Vol. XII., p. 137.
M Vol. XII., p. 129. •» Vol. VIII., p. 169.
»4 Collins' ed. Vol. II., p. 248. None of the earlier editions of
Menaphon contain this poem entitled, "Dorastus (in Love-passion)
writes these lines in Praise of his loving and best-beloved Fawnia."
Although Collins and Dyce reprint it from editions of the late seven-
150 EGBERT GREENE
Ten-line sonnets were not uncommon during the period;
Greene has two of them, — Shakesperian sonnets with one
of the quatrains left out. One of these ten-line sonnets
forms the second stanza of the third poem just mentioned
above.
The ottava rima has one example, the repentance poem
spoken of above, which devotes a stanza to each of the signs
of the zodiac. Another poem95 seems to consist of two
ten-stress couplets with lines divided to make eight five-
stress lines, plus two five-stress couplets, twelve lines in all.
The last of these isolated metres is in Menaphon's Song to
Pesana.96 Here we have a poem of twelve lines of which
the simplest analysis seems to be that it consists of iambic
pentameter couplets, each line followed (thus breaking up
the couplet) by a short line of five or six syllables, and the
short lines also riming. Thus:
U-|U-|0-|U-|0- a
<j - j <J - | O b
0_|U_|0-|U-|U- a
U - | O - | U b
In the experiments with classical metres Greene took
little part. He attempted a couple of poems 97 in Latin, one
in the Sapphic, and one in the elegiac, measure. But with
neither of these, nor with any other stanzaic measure did
he work in English. His sole experimentation was con
fined to the writing of English hexameters. In the four
poems which he wrote in this measure,98 Greene in no way
teenth century, it seems reasonable at least to retain some doubt as
to its authenticity.
» Vol. III., p. 125.
M Vol. VI., p. 105.
»7 Vol. VII., p. 125; ib., p. 145.
s« Vol. II., p. 219; Vol. IX., p. 151; 76., p. 159; Ib.., p. 293.
THE POETRY 151
followed the laws of Roman verse construction. Instead he
preserved the customary English accents, and made them
coincide with the metrical stress.
It is not surprising to find that the classical metres made
small appeal to Greene whose real poetic ability lay in
fanciful and sentimental songs in short-lined, and, we shall
soon see, in capriciously elaborate measures. With a talent
of such a nature he would have felt himself bound down by
the restrictions of the Latin models, and so it is true that
"he could never have cultivated the classic metres with any
considerable result." "
In two of his poems Greene revives an old-time custom
of intermingling French and English. One of these poems100
consists of nine stanzas, each of two lines of English and
four lines of French, — the French portion being the same
in all the stanzas.
Sweet Adon', darst not glaunce thine eye,
N'oserez vous, mon bel amyf
Upon thy Venus that must die,
Je vous en prie, pitie me:
N'oserez vous, mon bel, mon bel,
N'oserez vous, mon bel amyf
Greene's second poem of this kind is one of seventeen lines
divided into three parts.101 These parts are all extremely
irregular, and contain, between them all, six lines of French.
We now come to the numerous elaborated stanzas which
Greene employed. These may perhaps be best taken up
singly in the order in which they occur in the novels. The
first of these, and one of the most complicated stanzas not
99 8. L. Wolff, Englische Studien, Vol. 37, p. 334.
100 Mr. Alfred Noyes has a poem in this same stanza form, ("Our
Lady of the Sea." Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, p. 935) except
that his stanza consists of eight lines, the additional number being
caused by the insertion of two lines just before the last two lines of
French. »» Vol. VIII., p. 217.
152 ROBERT GREENE
only in Greene's work but in the whole period, is in Mena-
phon's Song.102 The poem is one of two stanzas of fourteen
lines each. This stanza Professor Erskine103 resolves into
the equivalent of Sidney's ten-line epigrammatic form,
which is the Shakespearian sonnet minus one quatrain, by
saying that it is composed "of two quatrains in tetrapodies,
followed by a pentapody couplet"; and that, of the stanza
thus resolved into ten lines, the first, third, fifth, and seventh
lines "are broken by a syncopated foot at the second accent."
The explanation seems even more complicated than the
stanza. Perhaps it would be better to take the stanza
just as it is, and simply say that it consists of a group of
four triplets and one couplet. Each triplet consists of two
truncated two-stress trochaic feet plus a third line of
iambic tetrameter. The rime of the short lines is uniform
throughout; the longer lines rime in pairs, the first two
going together, and the last two. The couplet at the end
is heroic and has still a third rime. The scheme is thus
aab aab aac aac dd.
Lodge in his Rosalynde, 1590, in Montanus' Sonnet, imi
tates this stanza of Greene's. He omits, however, the con
cluding couplet, his two-stress lines do not all end in the
same word — most frequently they do not rime at all, —
and the long lines rime in alternation. In Tarlton's News
out of Purgatory, issued anonymously in 1590, we have
another variation of Greene's stanza. Whether this 104 poem
is, or is not, meant to be a parody on Lodge's poem, as Mr.
Bullen suggests,105 is not of interest here, but the metre as
102 Vol. VI., p. 41.
103 The Elizabethan Lyric, p. 238.
104 Ronsards Description of his Mistris, which he Weres in his Hands
in Purgatory.
io6 Lyrics from the Dramatists of the Elizabethan Age. Ed. Bullen.
1901, p. 287.
THE POETRY 153
worked out in that poem deserves notice. The stanza there
is reduced to eight lines, two triplets and an iambic tet
rameter (instead of pentameter) concluding couplet. The
short lines of the triplets do not rime, the long ones do.
The second of Greene's elaborate stanzas is to be seen in
Sephestia's Song to her Child.106 This is a stanza of eight
lines riming in couplets, the fourth couplet ending in the
same word and employing nearly the same phraseology in
all three stanzas. The couplets are truncated trochaic
tetrameter, and a certain syncopated effect is produced by
the frequent, but irregular, omission of the unaccented
syllable in the second trochee. The song has a refrain,
used, as Elizabethan refrains almost always are, before the
first, after the last, and between all of the middle stanzas.
This refrain is a couplet of four-stress lines made up of ten
syllables, and is interesting both for the use of the dactyls
and the lightness of movement produced by the six un
accented syllables. Thus:
"Weepe not my wanton smile upon thy knee,
When thou art olde thers griefe inough for thee."
In Menaphon's Roundelay107 we again have a stanza of ten
lines. It seems to consist of two quatrains plus a concluding
heroic couplet. Of these quatrains, the first rimes abba,
and has the first and fourth in five-stress, and the second
and third in two-stress. The second quatrain rimes cdcd,
having the second and fourth in five-stress, and the first
and third in two-stress. The measure throughout is iambic,
except for an occasional trochee at the beginning of a line.
The complicated six-line stanza used in Boron's Jigge 108
consists of a tetrapody iambic couplet, the two lines of which
are separated by a couplet of two-stress dactylic lines; the
10« Vol. VI., p. 43. 107 Vol. VI., p. 59. 1M Vol. VI., p. 69.
154 ROBERT GREENE
whole is followed by a two-stress anapestic couplet. The
rime scheme is thus abbacc, and the rime bb occurs in all the
stanzas. Greene calls this song a roundelay; rightly so,
in as much as a roundelay is a " light poem, originally a
shepherd's dance, in which an idea or phrase is repeated,
often as a verse, or stanzaic refrain." 109
Another variety of six-line stanza is that consisting funda
mentally of an abab iambic pentameter quatrain followed by
two iambic trimeter lines, unrimed. There are four stanzas,
and the trimeter lines after the first quatrain rime with
those after the second quatrain in cdcd fashion. Those after
the third quatrain rime with the lines after the fourth.
A curious stanza110 is that made up of nine lines and
riming abc abc ddb. All the lines are iambic pentameter
except dd which are dimeter.
On three different occasions111 Greene made use of an
eight-line stanza. This stanza consists of four pentameter
lines with the second and fourth riming, but with the first
and third unrimed. Following these four lines are two one-
stress iambic lines unrimed. The stanza is completed by
a heroic couplet.
Radagon's Sonnet in Francescos Fortunes112 consists of ten-
line stanzas. The stanzas are made up of two iambic pen-
tapody quatrains each followed by an iambic dimeter line.
All the dimeter lines have the same rime. The two quatrains
of each stanza exchange rimes, the first being abba, the second
being baab.
One of the most elaborately complicated metres is an
eight-line stanza consisting of one-, two- and five-stress
lines, all of which are iambic. The first, third, fifth, and
109 Schelling, Elizabethan Lyrics. Introduction, p. liii.
110 Vol. VIII., p. 157.
111 Vol. VIII., p. 175; Vol. IX., p. 214; Vol. XII., p. 242.
112 Vol. VIII., p. 200.
THE POETRY 155
eighth are pentameter; the second and fourth are dimeter;
and the sixth and seventh are one-stress. The first two
pentameters rime with each other; and the last two. The
dimeters rime with each other; the one-stress lines have no
rime, either with themselves or with anything else in the
stanza.
The last of Greene's elaborate metres111 is one of six
lines. It consists of two tetrapody couplets (about half
trochaic, half iambic) with a dimeter trochaic couplet between
them.
This tendency toward the elaborate stanza, which we
have been discussing at perhaps tedious length, was a late
development in Greene's career. The lyrics in the earlier
romances are simple in form, being for the most part in
the ababcc stanza, in blank verse, or in quatrain. In Mena-
phon and Francescos Fortunes (1589 and 1590), however,
his fancy for experiment ran wild, and he produced multi
tudinous effects with long and short lines, and combinations
of long and short lines, employing in the process all varieties,
and combinations of varieties, of poetic feet.
This keen interest in experimentation which Greene mani
fests is a very striking characteristic of his time. All the
poets show this interest, Breton, Sidney, Lodge. But in
no one of them, Sidney perhaps excepted, is there greater
fertility in the production of new and unique effects.
IV
Greene's poetry is best appreciated when it is recollected
in tranquillity. Under such conditions that portion which
has no especial interest drops out of mind; and the memory,
thus rid of its impedimenta, not only retains with vividness
111 Vol. VIII., p. 212.
156 ROBERT GREENE
certain individual poems, but creates for itself a unity of
impression which arises from the contemplation of the
ensemble. Not all poets demand this remoteness, for what
the reader gets from them is something immediate which
comes directly from contact with their works. But with
a man like Greene, it is better to remove oneself to a
little distance in order to obtain from him the pleasure
which it is his to give.
There is no message in Greene's poems, no criticism of
life, no truth and high seriousness. Greene as a poet is
not great any more than he is great as a dramatist or as a
writer of romance. But he is, when he is at his best, grace
ful and charming. There is an atmosphere about some of
his poems, a fragrance which lingers and becomes the more
fragrant from being remembered.
Greene is not a personal singer. Except as no artist can
fail to manifest somewhat of his individuality, these songs
are not an expression of Greene himself. They are largely
conventional, — poetical exercises rather than an outpouring
of lyric emotion. The origin of them is in an impulse of
art rather than of feeling. It is not a song of himself that
Greene sings, nor is he giving the record of any emotional
experience. Not for this reason, then, can we cherish his
poems.
The quality which pervades the poetry is the same as
that which gives the charm to Menaphon. Greene's was a
sensitive nature. It took over much of sentiment and of
the manner of expression from the whole movement of the
Renaissance; it caught the spirit of that age so full at once
of activity and of romantic thought. All of these it used;
but it idealized them. It imparted a spirit of freshness
and refinement, an elevation which was at the same time
beautiful and idyllic. So it was in the poetry. Greene
sang because others were singing and he sang much the
THE POETRY 157
same things. But he did it with a sweetness of voice and
a delicacy of understanding, whether he piped his songs in
Arcadia, or trilled and carolled the pangs of love, or exe
cuted graceful turns of melody. Always, in those poems
which we remember, there is charm.
I shall not attempt here to make a representative selec
tion from Greene. The poems we choose are not always
representative. Here and there, we take from out a poet's
work a little phrase, a line, a stanza, or refrain, often iso
lated — somewhat meaningless even, as it stands alone.
But we remember it. And we wrap up in it very often the
whole significance of that poet's life. It has, like Brown
ing's star, opened its soul to us and therefore we love it.
THE SHEPHEARDS WIVES SONG
Ah what is love? It is a pretty thing,
As sweet unto a shepheard as a king,
And sweeter too:
For kings have cares that waite upon a Crowne,
And cares can make the sweetest love to frowne:
Ah then, ah then,
If countrie loves such sweet desires do gaine,
What Lady would not love a Shepheard Swaine?
His flockes are foulded, he comes home at night,
As merry as a king in his delight,
And merrier too:
For kings bethinke them what the state require,
Where Shepheards carelesse Carroll by the fire.
Ah then, ah then,
If countrie loves such sweet desires gaine
What Lady would not love a Shepheard Swaine.
158 ROBERT GREENE
MAESIA'S SONG
Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content,
the quiet mind is richer than a crowne,
Sweet are the nights in carelesse slumber spent,
the poore estate scorne fortunes angrie frowne,
Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such blis
beggers injoy when Princes oft do mis.
The homely house that harbors quiet rest,
the cottage that affoords no pride nor care,
The meane that grees with Countrie musick best,
the sweet consort of mirth and musicks fare,
Obscured life sets downe a type of blis,
a minde content both crowne and kingdome is.
PHILOMELAS ODE
Sitting by a River's side,
Where a silent streame did glide,
Muse I did of many things,
That the mind in quiet brings. . . .
LAMILIAS SONG
Fie, fie on blind fancie,
It hinders youths joy:
Fayre Virgins learne by me,
To count love a toy.
SONNET
Cupid abroade was lated in the night,
His winges were wet with ranging in the raine,
Harbour he sought, to mee hee tooke his flight,
To dry his plumes I heard the boy complaine.
THE POETRY 159
I opte the doore, and graunted his desire,
I rose my selfe and made the wagge a fire.
Looking more narrow by the fiers flame,
I spied his quiver hanging by his back:
Doubting the boy might my misfortune frame,
I would have gone for feare of further wrack.
But what I drad, did mee poore wretch betide:
For forth he drew an arrow from his side.
He pierst the quick, and I began to start,
A pleasing wound but that it was too hie,
His shaft procurde a sharpe yet sugred smart,
Away he flewe, for why his wings were dry.
But left the arrow sticking in my breast:
That sore I greevde I welcomd such a guest.
INFIDAS SONG
Sweet Adon', darst not glaunce thine eye.
N'oserez vous, mon bel amyf
Upon thy Venus that must die,
Je vous en prie, pitie me :
N'oserez vous, mon bel, mon bel,
N'oserez vous, mon bel amyf
SEPHESTIAS SONG TO HER CHILDE
Weepe not my wanton smile upon my knee,
When thou art olde ther's griefe inough for thee.
Mothers wagge, pretie boy,
Fathers sorrow, fathers joy.
When thy father first did see
Such a boy by him and mee,
160 ROBERT GREENE
He was glad, I was woe,
Fortune changde made him so,
When he left his pretie boy,
Last his sorrowe first his joy.
Weepe not my wanton smile upon my knee :
When thou arte olde ther's griefe inough for thee.
PHILOMELAES SECOND OADE
Fields were bare, and trees unclad,
Flowers withered, byrdes were sad :
When I saw a shepheard fold,
Sheepe in Coate to shunne the cold:
Himselfe sitting on the grasse,
That with frost withered was :
Sighing deepely, thus gan say,
Love is folly when astray: . . .
Thence growes jarres thus I find
Love is folly, if unkind;
Yet doe men most desire
To be heated with this fire:
Whose flame is so pleasing hot,
That they burne, yet f eele it not : . . .
Here he paused and did stay,
Sighed and rose and went away.
DORONS JIGGE
... I gan to woo
This sweete little one,
This bonny pretie one.
I wooed hard a day or two,
Till she bad:
Be not sad,
THE POETRY 161
Wooe no more I am thine owne,
Thy dearest little one,
Thy truest pretie one:
Thus was faith and firme love showne,
As behooves
Shepheards loves.
MENAPHONS SONG
Some say Love
Foolish Love
Doth rule and governe all the Gods,
I say Love,
Inconstant Love
Sets mens senses farre at ods.
Some sweare Love
Smooth 'd face Love
Is sweetest sweete that men can have :
I say Love,
Sower Love
Makes vertue yeeld as beauties slave.
A bitter sweete, a follie worst of all
That forceth wisedome to be follies thrall.
BORONS ECOLOGUE JOYND WITH CARMELAS
Carmela
Ah Doron, ah my heart, thou art as white,
As is my mothers Calfe or brinded Cow,
Thine eyes are like the glow-worms in the night,
Thine haires resemble thickest of the snow.
162 ROBERT GREENE
Doron
Carmela deare, even as the golden ball
That Venus got, such are thy goodly eyes,
When cherries juice is jumbled therewithall,
Thy breath is like the steeme of apple pies.
Thy lippes resemble two Cowcumbers faire,
Thy teeth like to the tuskes of fattest swine,
Thy speach is like the thunder in the aire :
Would God thy toes, thy lippes and all were mine.
Carmela
I thanke you Doron, and will thinke on you,
I love you Doron, and will winke on you.
I seale your charter pattent with my thummes,
Come kisse and part for feare my mother comes.
The reader familiar with Elizabethan poetry will recog
nize much that is conventional. He will perceive readily
that Greene is the child of his time. They were all a family
of poets, — Greene, Breton, Lodge, Barnfield. Shakespeare
was only a more gifted brother. But such a reader, or one
who is not so aware of Greene's likeness to his fellows,
cannot fail to see the delicacy with which these poems are
executed.
We have here only eleven of the ninety, it is true, and
not all of those — a selection in miniature. It contains,
nevertheless, the best of Greene as a poet, and small as it is,
it makes up the most pleasing part of his works. Greene
is often insincere; he is interested in literature for what it
yields him. These lyrics he wrote because they were the
fashion. But of songs imbedded in a romance or tale of
any sort we do not expect much. We judge them for their
THE POETRY 163
beauty, and are satisfied if they give us pretty sentiment
or musical verses. We come to them disinterestedly.
Perhaps we do not quite, with Carlyle, make our claim a
zero and get infinity for our quotient. But when we get
pleasure, the pleasure is gain.
The selection reveals, too, a phase of Greene as a man.
It shows the more tender, graceful side of his nature. There
is nothing garish about it. Greene's taste in discrimination
between the fanciful and the ultra-fanciful was not always
sure. His fondness for fine clothes and his manner of wear
ing his beard are characteristics which appear in his writings.
There is manifested a feeling for the artistic; at the same
time, there is no limit before which to stop. If he is writing
a romance, he has it romantic to excess; a didactic pamphlet,
he forces ideas upon us at every turn. In his poetry, taken
altogether, the same defect is present. But with the poetry
— something which is impossible with the prose works —
we can cut away the parts which are bad, and leave that
which is good discernible and clear. Reduced thus to
minute compass, sublimated, what is either dull or fan
tastic in the mass becomes pure and undefiled. It can be
recognized as the product of a genuinely artistic imagination.
Greene has not the honor of a place in the Golden Treasury.
CHAPTER VI
CHRONOLOGY OF GREENE'S NON-DRAMATIC WORKS
FOB most of Greene's works a statement of the date is an
easy matter. In connection with a few of them there are
difficult problems.
The first novel which we have from Greene's pen is
Mamillia, a Mirrour or looking-glasse for the Ladies of Eng-
lande. This work is by "Robert Greene, Graduate in
Cambridge," and it was "Imprinted at London for Thomas
Woodcocke, 1583." Of this 1583 edition, one of two things
must be true. Either it was not the first edition, or the
work was delayed in publication. That it was written
earlier is clear from an entry in the Stationers' Register
(Arber, II., 378) as follows:
3rd October, 1580.
Thomas Woodcock: Lycenced unto him "Manilla," a lookinge
glasse for ye ladies of England.
If the year 1580 saw an edition, all copies have been lost.
On the other hand, there is no satisfactory explanation for
the three years' delay of publication, especially when we
remember that it was licensed in 1580 to the very man for
whom it was printed in 1583.
Mamillia: the second part of the triumph of Pallas offers
a similar problem. It is dated "From my Studie in Clare-
hall the vij of lulie," presumably in 1583. Two months
later it was entered on the Register (II., p. 428) :
6 September, 1583.
Master Ponsonbye: Licenced to him under Master Watkins hande
a booke entituled "Mamilia, The seconde parte of the tryumphe of
Pallas wherein with perpetuall fame the constancie of gentlewomen
is Canonized."
164
CHRONOLOGY OF THE NON-DRAMATIC WORKS 165
The title-page declares it to be "by Robert Greene, Maister
of Arts, in Cambridge," and to have been printed at London
by "Th. C. for William Ponsonbie." The date, surprisingly,
is 1593. We have here a difference of ten years, a difference
as strangely unaccountable as that of the First Part, for
the Second Part, too, was both licensed by, and printed for,
the same man. Various theories have been propounded,
among them those of Bernhardi,1 as an explanation of these
facts; but the wisest course seems to be that of saying merely
that there is no explanation.
Of the Myrrour of Modestie there is nothing to state
except that there was apparently only one edition, that
"Imprinted at London by Roger Warde" 1584, and that
there is no entry of the pamphlet in the Stationers'
Register.
The year 1584 saw the production of four other works.
The first of these was Greenes Carde of Fancie. Of this work
the earliest known edition is that of 1587. I think there
can be no doubt, however, that the pamphlet published in
1587 by Ponsonby is to be identified with that entered by
him on April 11, 1584, that "yt is granted unto him that if
he gett the card of phantasie lawfullie allowed unto him,
that then he shall enioye yt as his own copie."
As regards Arbasto, in spite of the fact that Grosart
found in the S. R. no early notice of it, the pamphlet was,
nevertheless, entered therein on the thirteenth of August,
1584.2 It was published that same year by Jackson, and
it is the first of Greene's works to bear on its title-page his
celebrated motto, "Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile
dulci."
1 Robert Greenes Leben und Schriften. Eine historisch-kritische
Studie. Leipzig. 1874.
* Hugh Jackson: Receaved of him for printinge a booke intituled
Arbasto the Anatomie of fortune . . . vj d.
166 ROBERT GREENE
Concerning Morando, the Tritameron of Love, there is some
doubt as to the date of its first appearance. There is an
entry in the S. R. by Edward White for August 8, 1586;
but this entry, it is more than likely, refers to an edition
in two parts (the only edition of which we have any knowl
edge) by the same publisher in 1587. Grosart (Vol. III.,
p. 44) mentions a "Part 1st, of 1584, in the Bodleian,"
and it is probable that there was such an edition. For
as Storojenko (Gros. Vol. I., p. 75) points out, the Earl of
Arundel, to whom the work is dedicated, "was committed
to the Tower for high treason in the following year"3 and
he remained in the Tower for the rest of his life. It is not
likely that Greene would have dedicated a pamphlet to him
after that event.
One work only dates from 1585. This is the Planetomachia:
or the first parte of the generall opposition of the seven
Planets. It was imprinted for Thomas Cadman.
After 1585 we have no new work of Greene until 1587.
But for June 11 of that year, the S. R. has an entry:
Edward Aggas: Received of him for Grene his farewell to follie
. . . vj d.
No copy of an edition of 1587 has come down to us. The
earliest that we have is of the edition of 1591, printed by
Thomas Scarlet, and giving as Greene's title, "Utriusque
Academiae in Artibus magister." Now there is no reason
for believing that an edition of 1587 was ever made. That
it was written then in some form or other, is possibly true.4
»y April 25, 1585. See D. N. B. for Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel.
Arundel had become a Catholic in September of the preceding year.
4 The fact that the Farewell to Follie is, as we have seen (p. 23)
related definitely to that large group of didactic and quasi-didactic
frame-work tales which were so abundant in Greene's work about 1587,
and the fact that it, of all of Greene's work, shows the largest amount
CHRONOLOGY OF THE NON-DRAMATIC WORKS 167
It is also true that it may have been published later in the
form in which it was originally written. There is no way
of knowing about that. But, it is evident that the prefatory
addresses at least, as we now have them, were not written
before the end of 1590. The statement, "I presented you
alate with my mourning garment"6 fixes November 2, 1590,
as the earliest date, for that was the date on which the Mourn
ing Garment was licensed.6
Of the Farewell to Follie, Edward Aggas either was, or
was to have been, the publisher. He actually was the
publisher of Penelopes Web which was prepared about this
time and which may, of course, as Simpson suggests,7 have
been substituted for the Farewell to Follie. Penelopes Web
was licensed June 26, 1587, and was printed that year.
Three months later, on September 18, Euphues his Censure to
Philautus was licensed to Edward White, and this book too
was published in 1587.
On March 29, 1588, there was allowed unto this same
publisher, Edward White, the pamphlet "intytuled Perymedes
the black smith; and on December 9, Alcida Greenes Meta
morphosis was entered by John Wolf. Whether for Edward
White is not known, for the earliest edition we possess is that
printed by George Purslowe in 161 7. 8 Sometime between
of borrowing from Primaudaye's Academy (translated 1586) may put
probability upon the year 1587, as the date of composition.
* Vol. IX., p. 230.
• References to Tomliuclin (Tamberlaine [?] pub. 1590) and to
Martin Marprelate are taken by Simpson (School of Shakespeare, Vol.
II., p. 349) as further evidence that 1591 is the date of the first edition.
7 School of Shakespeare. Vol. II., p. 350.
8 There can be no doubt that there was an earlier edition than
that of 1617. The piece is mentioned among Greene's most popular
works by R. B. the author of "Greene his funeralles" which was licensed
to John Danter February 1, 1594. I fail to see any force to Storo-
jenko's argument that the book was not published at once after Decem-
168 ROBERT GREENE
March 29 and December 9, 1588, it is most likely that
Pandosto should be placed. This celebrated pamphlet was
printed by Thomas Orwin for Thomas Cadman in 1588.
There is no entry of Pandosto in the S. R.
On February 1, of the next year, was licensed the Spanish
Masquerade, the first of Greene's extant works which was
not a novel. It was reprinted the same year.
Thomas Orwin also printed, this time for Sampson Clarke,
Menaphon, of which the entry in the S. R. was made
August 23, 1589. During this same year Ciceronis Amor
also was printed,9 although there was no entry of it in
the S. R.
The earliest novel of 1590 is Orpharion, which was licensed
on January 9.10 This work must have been planned and pos
sibly written nearly a year before the date of licensing,11 for
Greene mentions it in his preface to Perymedes, March 29,
1588, when he speaks of "Orpharion, which I promise to make
you merry with the next tearme." In the preface to theOrpha-
rion itself he apologizes for the long delay, when he says, "I
have long promised my Orpharion ... at last it is leapt into
the Stacioners Shoppe, but not from my Study . . . the
Printer had it long since : marry whether his presse were out
of tune, Paper deere, or some other secret delay drive it off,
it hath line this twelve months in the suds." The earliest
edition of which we have an example is that of 1599.
On April 15, the Royal Exchange was licensed. This work
contained "sundry aphorisms of Phylosophie," and was
"Fyrst written in Italian and dedicated to the Signorie of
ber 9, 1588. Storojenko argues that it must have been published after
Nashe's Anatomie of Absurditie, else, Alcida being against women,
Nashe could not have spoken of Greene as the "Homer of Women."
(Gros. Vol. I., p. 95.)
9 For Thomas Newman and John Winington.
10 Not licensed in 1589 as Grosart (Vol. XII., p. 3) thought.
11 Licensed by Edward White.
CHRONOLOGY OF THE NON-DRAMATIC WORKS 169
Venice, nowe translated into English and offered to the Cittie
of London." The author of La Burza Reale is unknown.
With regard to the other works of 1590, the situation is
complicated. The only date that we can fix is that of the li
censing of Greene's Mourning Garment on November 2, 1590.
That two other novels belong to this same year, is shown
by their title-pages; the Never too Late and the Francescos
Fortunes: or the second part of Greenes never too late. But
it is not certain to what part of the year to assign them,
for there are no entries in the S. R. There is a complica
tion, too, which arises from the uncertainty of the date of
Greene's Vision, which may, or more likely may not, belong
to this same year.
The title-page of the Vision (which was undoubtedly one
of the many papers which Chettle, in Kind-harts Dream, tells
us were left in booksellers' hands) states that it was "Written
at the instant of his death." Thomas Newman, the pub
lisher, in his dedicatory address tells us that "it was one
of the last works of a wel known Author," and assures us
that although "manie have published repentaunces under
his name," yet there are "none more unfeigned than this,
being euerie word his owner his own phrase, his own method."
Greene's address to the Gentlemen Readers is, I think, clearly
a genuine statement from his own pen, and may, it seems
to me, be considered as having been among the latest of
Greene's writings. There is no reason, that I can see, for
the doubt expressed by Mr. Collins as to this fact;12 nor
for not thinking that the Vision was prepared for publication
11 "It would be interesting to be able to determine whether the
Address to the Gentlemen Readers was written, as it may have been,
by himself at the instant of bis death, or whether it was written in
1590 under the stress of a severe illness when he thought himself on
tbe point of death, or whether, finally, it was a forgery of the pub
lisher." (Collins, Vol. I., General Introduction, p. 26, note 2.)
170 - ROBERT GREENE
very shortly before Greene's death in an attempt to relieve
if possible the dire poverty of those last days.
The saying, however, that the work was prepared for
publication late in August, 1592, is not saying that it was
necessarily written then. Indeed, I am inclined to believe
that it was not written then. The style is much less direct
than that of the ending of the Groatwsorth of Wit and of
the Repentance. Moreover, the pamphlet seems rather to
be a frame-work tale for the two stories by "Chaucer" and
by "Gower" than to partake of the nature of the other
repentance pamphlets. Neither do the three poems which
the work contains resemble the poems of the more serious
novels. And so it does not seem unreasonable to suppose
that it may have been written at any time between a date a
few months subsequent to the date of the events to which
it relates (the publication of the Cobbler of Canterbury in
1590 and the subsequent repentance for folly on Greene's
part) and the time of Greene's last illness. That it may have
been written as a frame-work tale and at the last moment
made over into a repentant pamphlet is not an altogether
impossible supposition.
The Vision is of considerable importance in determining
the order of the three novels, besides Orpharion, which date
definitely from 1590, for it contains a reference to two of
them: "Only this (father Gower) I must end my nunquam
sera est, and for that I craue pardon: . . . looke as speedily
as the presse will serue for my mourning garment."13 Mr.
Collins, on the basis of these references, places the composi
tion of the Vision in the midst of the composition of the
other two. As I have said, I do not see how all of it at least
can be put there. "After I was burdened with the penning
of the Cobbler of Canterbury" does not sound like a state
ment immediately following the publication of that las-
13 Vol. XII., p. 274.
CHRONOLOGY OF THE NON-DRAMATIC WORKS 171
civious pamphlet. And there is another consideration
against the Vision's having been written just then. The
events described in the Vision undoubtedly occurred in
1590. But never in 1590, nor until much later, was Greene
personal in his writings. We think of him as having talked
a great deal about himself, and the death-bed pamphlets
are those we usually read first. But we must remember
that by 1590 Greene had really said very little, and that
it was not until August, 1592, that he wrote of himself
personally — in the Groatsworth of Wit and in the Repentance.
We can hardly, therefore, place the Vision as early as 1590.
This dating does not in any way conflict with the references
to the Never too Late and the Mourning Garment. Greene
in the Vision was looking back upon events as they occurred,
and from that point of view did have those books still to
finish.
To come back now to the other novels. Greene evidently
was writing the Never too Late when the events described
in the Vision occurred, for he asked Father Gower for per
mission to finish it before he took up the Mourning Garment.
At the end of the Never too Late, however, Greene promises
us a sequel: "As soone as may bee Gentlemen, looke for
Francescos further fortunes, and after that my Farewell to
Follie, and then adieu to all amorous Pamphlets."14 The
Francescos Fortunes soon followed, which with more show
of protestation than of sincerity, perhaps, Greene says
would not have gone to press "had it not been promised."16
And then, before preparing the Farewell to Follie which had
been promised at the end of Never too Late, Greene turned
to write the Mourning Garment to which he makes reference
in the Vision, and which he speaks of in the preface to the
Farewell to Follie.16
" Vol. VIII., p. 109. » Vol. VIII., p. 118.
» Vol. IX., p. 230.
172 ROBERT GREENE
So much then for the novels of 1590, with Orpharion first
on January 9, and Mourning Garment last, on November 2.
Between these two dates come Never too Late and Fran-
cescos Fortunes. As for the Vision, it may belong anywhere
from the latter half of 1590 on to 1592.
In 1591 the Farewell to Follie was the only novel published.
This pamphlet we have already discussed.
On December 6, 1591, Greene published A Maidens Dreame,
his only extant poem which is not part of a work of fiction.
One week later, December 13, were entered the first of the
conny-catching pamphlets:
Edward White and Thomas Nelson: Entred . . . The arte of Connye
hatching.
William Wright: Entred for his copie to be printed always for him
by John Wolf The second parte of Connye hatching.
The Thirde and last Part was entered February 7, 1592,
by Thomas Scarlet, for Cutberd Burbie. The Defence of
Conny-Catching was licensed April 21. A Disputation
Betweene a Hee and a Shee Conny-Catcher dates from about
this time, a little later perhaps.
Philomela was licensed July 1, 1592. Greene says it was
written earlier.17 From its dissimilarity to the realistic
pamphlets among which it appears, and from its striking
likeness to some of the earlier work, the romance may be, no
doubt, placed, as Dr. Wolff says,18 with the 1584-7 group or
with the Pandosto-Menaphon group of 1588-9. It is rather
characteristic of Greene that in addition^ to his apology for
publishing a love pamphlet after the promises made in the
Mourning Garment and the Farewell to Follie, he should
change his motto from the Omne tulit, which he used on
17 "... which I had writen long since & kept charily." Vol. XI.,
p. 109.
18 Greek Romances, p. 405.
CHRONOLOGY OF THE NON-DRAMATIC WORK 173
similar romances, to the Sero sed serio of the prodigal-son
romances. On July 20, A Quippe for an Upstart Courtier
appeared. The Blacke Books Messenger, or the Life and
Death of Ned Browne, was entered August 21.
The last novel from Greene's pen is the Groatsworth of Wit.
When this was started there is no way of knowing. But
the last part of it, surely, was written during Greene's last
days when the seriousness of his illness was making itself
felt. It was not published until after his death, having
been licensed on September 20, 1592. The earliest known
edition is that of 1596.
The last date we have to mention is October 6, when
the Repentance appeared.
CHAPTER VII
THE PLAYS
(A) THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE PLAYS
THERE is no doubt that The Comical History of Alphonsus,
King of Arragon,1 is the earliest play that has come to us
from Greene's pen. Upon this fact scholars are agreed.
In addition to the crudity of the play in regard to general
style and mechanism, which show immaturity, there are
Greene's own lines in the Prologue,
"And this my hand, which used for to pen
The praise of love and Cupid's peerless power,
Will now begin to treat of bloody Mars,
Of doughty deeds and valiant victories/'2
1 The earliest examplar "as it hath been sundrie times acted" was
printed by Thomas Creede, 1599; this is the only one of Greene's
plays which has no motto.
2 This passage in Greene's prologue may be a challenge to Marlowe,
or it may be an imitation of Marlowe's prologue to Tamburlaine:
"From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits,
And such conceits as clownage keeps in play,
We'll lead you to the stately tent of war."
Passages like Marlowe's and Greene's may, however, both be just
following a fashion. Such passages were at least not unknown in
poetry. In England's Helicon (Ed. Bullen, p. 240) there is "An
Heroical Poem" which contains these lines:
"My wanton Muse that whilom wont to sing
Fair beauty's praise and Venus' sweet delight,
Of late had changed the tenor of her string
To higher tunes than serve for Cupid's fight.
Shrill trumpet's sound, sharp swords, and lances strong,
War, blood, and death were matter of her song."
174
THE PLAYS 175
which have been taken to mean that in Alphonsus Greene
turned from novels to plays, inspired to do so, it is further
agreed, by the success of Tamburlaine.
But though Alphonsus is recognized as his earliest dramatic
production, the date at which Greene began to write plays
has been a matter of discussion. Especially so, since the
appearance of the edition of Greene's plays3 by the late Mr.
Churton Collins, who argued for a much later date than any
hitherto proposed.4
Granting the relation between Alphonsus and Tamburlaine
as that of copy and model, Mr. Collins, nevertheless, places
Alphonsus as not earlier than 1591. Most important among
his reasons for this date is the similarity between the pro
logue to Alphonsus and Certain passages in Spenser's Com
plaints (published 1591). In The Teares of the Muses,
Spenser, through the mouth of Calliope, deplores the
decay of poetry and the want of heroic themes. The
Muse threatens eternal silence. Alphonsus as a hero satis
fies Calliope, according to Greene's prologue, and she deter
mines to break her silence. Greene's play is, therefore, a
response to Spenser's Complaints. Certain parallels of
In the heroical poems of Daniel and Drayton there are indications
of this same kind of ostentatious introduction.
Recognition of the prevalence of such passages as that of Greene's,
while it casts a little doubt upon Greene's challenge to Marlowe, does
not alter the relation between the two plays; nor does it in any way
lessen the probability that Alphonsus is Greene's first play.
8 The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene, Ed. with Introductions
and Notes, by J. Churton Collins. Clarendon Press, 1905.
4 The whole matter, it may be said, is very difficult. The problem
of the dates — and the authorship, too — of Greene's plays is perhaps
unsolvable, and it is to be doubted whether anything more definite
than approximations can be reached. To the discussions of dates and
authorship I have little to add. What I say, largely by way of sum
mary, may be found in the writing of Gayley, Greg, Storojenko, and
Collins.
176 ROBERT GREENE
thought and diction bear out this same conclusion. Addi
tional reasons Mr, Collins finds as follows: In none of his
works before 1591 does Greene mention his plays, although
he mentions his novels; Nashe says nothing of Greene's
plays in the Preface to Menaphon (1589) ; nor do the com
mendatory verses to Meiaphon (1589), to Perymedes (1588),
to Alcida (1588), have ai;y such references. The possible
objection that, since Taniburlaine was produced as early as
1587, 1591 would be a rather late date at which to be paro
dying it, is answered by the statement that Tamburlaine had
continued to be popular upon the stage and that additional
prominence had been given to it by its publication in 1590.
Such are, briefly, Mr. Collins' reasons for his choosing
1591 as the date of Alphonsus. Mr. W. W. Greg, reviewing
Collins' work,5 attacked the theory. Mr. Greg says that the
question turns "upon the interpretation of an important but
obscure passage in the Preface to Perymedes", dated 1588:
"I keepe my old course, to palter up some thing in Prose, using
mine old poesie still, Omne tulit punctum, although latelye two Gentle
men Poets made two mad men of Rome beate it out of their paper
bucklers: & had it in derision, for that I could not make my verses
jet it upon the stage in tragicall buskins, everie worde filling the mouth
like the faburden of Bo-Bell, daring God out of heaven with that
Atheist Tamburlan, or blaspheming with the mad preest of the sonne." •
The full meaning of Greene's words cannot be known, but
two interpretations may be given to the passage as a whole.
One is to the effect that Greene is taunted for not having
written plays; the other, to the effect that he has done so
and failed. Collins, arguing for a late date for Alphonsus,
believes the latter to be the more sensible interpretation.
Greg agrees.7 But he would place Alphonsus immediately
6 Modern Language Review, Vol. I. « Vol. VII., p. 8.
7 This is the interpretation given by Mr. Gayley also. (Repre
sentative English Comedies. Vol. I., p. 403.)
THE PLAYS 177
after Tamburlaine, not later than 1588. As for the simi
larities to Spenser, Mr. Greg considers them of little worth.
" Supposing the parallels to have the least force, which it is
difficult to grant, nothing follows, since, as Professor Collins
himself admits, the poems in question circulated in MS. for
several years before they issued from the press."8
In addition to his refutation of Collins' statements, Greg
brings forward another argument for the year 1587. It is
this. Delphrigus and the King of the Fairies are men
tioned as famous parts by the player who in Groatsworth
of Wit induced Roberto to become a maker of plays. The
detail in Groatsworth of Wit is, Mr. Greg thinks, a personal
recollection, and indicates that these plays were popular
when Greene began to write plays. Now Nashe, in the
Preface to Menaphon speaks of the "company of taffety
fools" who "might have antickt it untill this time up and
downe the countrey with the King of Fairies, and dined
every day at the pease porredge ordinary with Delphrigus."
The plays, that is, were old in 1589. Hence Greg con
cludes, in 1587 — immediately after the success of Tambur
laine — Greene wrote his Alphonsus.
On account of the closeness of the relationship between
Alphonsus and Marlowe's play, 1587 or 1588 has been
accepted by Fleay, Storojenko, Dickinson, Gayley, and
Greg. Against the belief of these men, the argument of
Professor Collins for a later date seems unconvincing.
Greene's second play, it is almost generally believed, was
A Looking Glasse for London and Englande. This play
Gayley assigns to 1587. Storojenko and Grosart place it
late in 1588 or early in 1589. Collins puts it in 1590 or
1591, as a part of Greene's "repentant" work. The state
ment of Collins, in view of what has been said in an earlier
chapter regarding Greene's repentance, need not detain us
8 Mod. Lang. Rev. Vol. I., p. 244.
178 ROBERT GREENE
here. As for the others, they agree that 1589 may be safely
considered as the latest possible date, on account of a pas
sage at the end of Lodge's Scillaes Metamorphosis,
"To write no more of that whence shame doth grow,
Or tie my pen to penny-knaves delight,
But live with fame and so for fame to write."9
I can see no particular force to the argument. In the
first place, inasmuch as the lines occur at the end of a poem
and not of a play, I cannot see that Lodge is referring to plays
particularly and not to all kinds of writing for penny-knaves'
delight. In the second place Lodge is not to be taken too
seriously. His statement is nothing more than the con
ventional apology for the "trifle" therewith presented.10
As for 1589, however, it is likely that the Looking Glasse
was written before that date.
About 1588 Lodge sailed with Captain Clarke to Tercera
and the Canaries. He wrote some commendatory verses for
Greene's Spanish Masquer ado (licensed February 1, 1589), and
published his own Scillaes Metamorphosis on September 22.
He and Greene may have collaborated during the summer, after
Lodge's return. But Gayley's point is well taken that, since
the play contains no reference to the Armada (and such a
play might very naturally contain such references), Lodge
and Greene produced it before Lodge left England in 1588.
It does not seem necessary, however, to put the date as
early as Gayley does, — June, 1587, the time when Spain and
the Pope joined forces in a treaty.
The Looking Glasse was printed for Thomas Creede in 1594,
j having been entered on the Stationers' Registers on March 5
)f that year. This play is mentioned in Henslowe's Diary
9 Lodge's works, Hunterian Club. Mr. Gosse inclines to place this
poem as early as 1585 or 1586.
10 Similar to the utterances of Gascoigne and of Greene himself.
THE PLAYS 179
among the performances of 1592: March 8, March 27, April
19, and June 7.
The earliest impression of Orlando Furioso, "as it was
playd before the Queenes Maiestie," was published in 1594,
having been entered on December 7, 1593. The Queen's
players left the court on December 26, 1591. The play
must have been written before that date. Orlando was
already an old play when it was performed in Henslowe's
theater by the Admiral's and Lord Strange's men on
February 21, 1592. If there is any truth in the passage in
the Defence of Conny-Catching, "you sold Orland Fourioso
to the Queens players for twenty nobles, and when they
were in the country, sold the same play to Lord Admirals
men, for as much more," it would indicate that the play
had been resold early in 1592, and that it had belonged to
the Queen's company until December 26, 1591.
It is very likely that December 26, 1591, marks the latest
date for composition. A passage within the play ll sets July
30, 1588, as the earliest. This passage, as Prof. Gay ley says,12
is historically minute, referring to the departure of the
Armada from Lisbon; it does not "savour of afterthought
or actor's clap-trap," and it agrees with a later passage in
the play which has to do with Orlando's defense of Angelica
(lines 1485-6),
"Yet for I see my Princesse is abusde,
By new-come straglers from a forren coast."
That the play was written after the defeat of the Armada
seems clear.
" Lines 82-85: Scene I.
"And what I dare, let say the Portingale,
And Spaniard tell, who, mann'd with mighty fleets,
Came to subdue my islands to their kings,
Filling our seas with stately argosies."
11 Rep. Eng. Com. p. 408.
180 ROBERT GREENE
Between July 30, 1588, and December 28, 1591, the Queen's
company acted at court ten times.13 The performance of
February 9, 1589 (being assigned also to the Admiral's men),
is open to question, which leaves December 26, 1588, as the
only date within the year that followed the Spanish defeat.
This is a probable date for the performance, for references
to the Armada would be likely to occur in a play to be per
formed at court at such a time. There may be further
ground for thinking that Orlando was acted before the
spring of 1589 in that Peele may be alluding to Orlando
in his Farewell,14 written that year.
The Honorable Historie of frier Bacon and frier Bongay,
according to Gayley,15 dates from the end of 1589 or the
beginning of 1590, sometime within a year after the produc
tion of Dr. Faustus. The play is the first entered in Hens-
lowe's Diary, under the date February 19, 1592. It was
not then a new play.
The play of Faire Em is of considerable importance in
the problem of dating Friar Bacon. Faire Em is obviously
imitation of Greene's play. Greene reproaches its author16
for having consumed "a whole yeare" in the process of
writing. Whatever "a whole yeare" may mean, Friar
Bacon precedes Faire Em by several months at least.
Professor Gayley dates Faire Em 1590. It very likely
followed the fresh editions of Yver's Printemps d'lver (the
source) in 1588 and '89. It was written between November 2,
13 1588, Dec. 26; 1589, Feb. 9 (?), Dec. 26; 1590, Mar. 1, Dec. 26;
1591, Jan, 1, 3, 6, Feb. 14, Dec. 26. (Fleay, Hist, of Stage, pp. 76-80.)
14 See Collier, Memoirs of Alleyn; Fleay, Life of Shakespeare,
p. 96; Gayley, Rep. Eng. Comedies, p. 409.
15 Rep. Eng. Comedies, p. 411.
16 O, tis a jollie matter when a man hath a familiar stile and can
endite a whole yeare and never be beholding to art? but to bring
Scripture to prove anything he says — is no small piece of cunning."
(Vol. IX., p. 233.)
THE PLAYS 181
1590, and the middle of 1591, — between the preface to
Greene's Mourning Garment, which has only general refer
ences to those who may reject his repentance, and the
preface to Farewell to Follie, which contains the specific
reference to the author of Faire Em. A year preceding
would place Friar Bacon in the second half of 1589 or very
early in 1590.
Mr. Fleay 17 brings forward another argument to indicate
1589 as the date of Friar Bacon. Inasmuch as playwrights
using dates in their plays always, Mr. Fleay says, used the
almanac of the current year; and inasmuch as 1589 is the
only possible year which fulfils these conditions, the earliest
possible date is thus determined.
Collins, it should be said, believes that Friar Bacon fol
lowed, rather than preceded Faire Em, believing that
Greene's play is an imitation of the anonymous one. He
assigns it, therefore, to the end of 1591 or the beginning
of 1592.
The last of Greene's undoubted plays is James IV. This
play was entered on the Stationers' Registers on May 14,
1594, but no copy earlier than that of 1598 is known. As to
the date of its composition, Mr. Collins has nothing to say,
further than that it is among Greene's latest dramatic
work.
It is probable that James IV. dates from the end of 1590
or the beginning of 1591, following upon the line of develop
ment started in Friar Bacon. Mr. Gayley makes consid
erable of what he thinks is a definite relationship between
Dorothea's song in James IV. (Act I., lines 270-9) and
some lines in Peele's Hunting of Cupid, which he dates as
1590. In the resemblance of Dorothea's song to Greene's
lines and in the further resemblance to Greene's own song in
Mourning Garment (November 2, 1590) I can see no argument
17 In Ward's O. E. D., cxliii-cxliv.
182 ROBERT GREENE
of weight. "Ah, what is love?" was too common a theme
to make reasoning upon its occurrence at all stable. There
seems to be more foundation to Gayley's statements that the
boast of Dorothea,
"Shall never Frenchman say an English maid
Of threats of forraine force will be afraid,"
contains a reference to Elizabeth's landing of troops in
France in 1590 and 1591; and that the reference to the
Irish wars may have come from the contemporary troubles
in Fermanagh. On the whole, the conclusion that the play
was presented at court on December 26, 1590, is not bad.
The conclusions stated above are by no means certain.
Long years ago Dyce prophesied that it would be impos
sible to determine with exactness the date of any one of
Greene's plays. Since Dyce's time, not enough definite
information has been secured to prevent the fulfilment of
the prophecy. To date Alphonsus 1587 or 1588; Looking
Glasse the same years (more likely, 1588); Orlando 1588,
December 26; Friar Bacon, 1589 or 1590; James IV., 1590,
December 26, — is to come as near the truth, however, as,
at present, is possible.
(B) ATTRIBUTIONS TO GREENE
Aside from the problems of dates, the student of Greene's
plays is confronted by the further problem of determina
tions of authorship. With this problem, as with the other, I
shall endeavor to state briefly what arguments have
been advanced.
Of the numerous plays which have at times been assigned
to Greene it is necessary to mention the following: First
and Second Parts of Henry VI., The Pinner of Wakefield,
Selimus, and A Knack to Know a Knave. With regard to
THE PLAYS 183
the Henry VI. plays the long-standing attribution of a share
to Greene by Miss Lee18 has been argued to be without
foundation by the author of a recent discussion of the
Henry VI. problem.19 A Knack to Know a Knave has been
proposed by Professor Gayley,20 following a suggestion of
Simpson, as a solution for the puzzling passage in Greene's
Groatsworth of Wit. Greene, writing to Marlowe, says,
"With thee I joyne young Juvenall, that by ting satirist,
that lastly with mee together writ a comedie." The identi
fication of "young Juvenall" and of the "Comedie" has
caused much discussion, into the merits of which it is not
necessary to enter.21
Opposed to the theory favoring Lodge and the Looking
Glasse, Professor Gayley believes that Nashe and a Knack
to Know a Knave better fit the problem. With the exception
of Collins, who somewhat arbitrarily favors Lodge, opinion
has come to rest largely upon Nashe. But Gayley is alone
in his proposed solution of the "comedie" in which Greene
says he had a share. His argument is that the subject is
not foreign to Nashe, that certain characters resemble two
others in Summer's Last Will, that Greene had been engaged
18 Miss Jane Lee. The New Shakespeare Society Transactions.
1875-6, p. 219. "On the Authorship of the Second and Third Parts
of Henry VI. and their Originals."
19 C. F. Tucker Brooke. "The Authorship of 2 and 3 Henry VI."
The main points to Mr. Brooke's discussion are as follows:
1. The approach of the subject from the side of Shakespeare
cannot yield results.
2. Marlowe is the author of the Contention and the True
Tragedy.
3. Neither Greene nor Peele had any connection with the
plays.
4. Shakespeare revised Contention and True Tragedy, deep
ening the characters and changing many passages and lines.
20 Rep. Eng. Comedies. Vol. I., pp. 422-6.
21 A good summary may be found in McKerrow's Edition of Nashe
184 ROBERT GREENE
in knave pamphlets, that it has certain parallels to Friar
Bacon, that it is called a "comedie" while no authenticated
play of Greene's is so called, that its date is in accord with
Greene's statement, and that it was played by a company
then acting three of Greene's known dramas. All these
points are suggestive, even though not conclusive.
The remaining two, Selimus and George-a-Greene, have
more importance in this question of authorship. Dr.
Grosart first " reclaimed" Selimus for Greene and included
it among Greene's plays. This he did on the basis of ex
ternal and internal evidence. The external evidence con
sists in the fact that two passages from Selimus — on Delaie
and Damocles — are attributed to Greene by Robert Allott
in England's Parnassus (1600), — a collection of quotations
from the then extant poetry of England. The internal
evidence has to do with the resemblance between certain
lines in Selimus and Greene's song, " Sweet are the thoughts
that savour of content"; with the fact that Greene promised
a second part to Alphonsus, for which, in view of the failure
of Alphonsus, Greene substituted Selimus', and finally that
there are many resemblances between Alphonsus and
Selimus.
The most earnest upholder of Dr. Grosart is Mr. Hugo Gil
bert, whose dissertation22 argues strongly for Greene's author
ship of Selimus. Gilbert believes in Allott's trustworthiness
in England's Parnassus, in which he finds six passages from
Selimus — an increase over Dr. Grosart's two. Mr. Gilbert
finds what he thinks are certain resemblances between the
character of Bullithrumble in Selimus to the clowns in
Greene's authenticated plays. He sees in Selimus the same
praise of country life that is to be found in some of Greene's
works. The natural history allusions, the archaisms, the
** Robert Greene's Selimus. Eine Litterarhistorische Untersuchung.
Kiel, 1899.
THE PLAYS 185
Machiavellian doctrine, the proper names, all occur in
Greene's acknowledged work, and so all prove Greene's
authorship of Selimus.
Gilbert pointed out that the source of Selimus is to be
found in Paulus Jovius' "Rerum Turcicarum commentarius
ad Invictissimum Caesarem Carolum V. Imperatorem
Augustum"; and he cites as proof that Greene knew Paulus
Jovius passages in Farewell to Follie (p. 337) and Royal
Exchange (p. 254). Professor Hart corrects Mr. Gilbert by
showing that Greene got his plot for Selimus not from
Paulus Jovius directly, but indirectly from Primaudaye's
Academy.™ The belief that Selimus was written about 1587,
and the fact that then was a time when Greene was borrow
ing very extensively from Primaudaye, especially in the
Farewell to Follie, Professor Hart regards as proof of
Greene's authorship.
Having set down the arguments advanced for Greene's
authorship of this play, I now give those against it. The
first is that of Dr. Wolff,24 who doubts Greene's authorship
on the ground of the characterization. This matter he thinks
would alone be decisive, for Selimus, Acomat, Corcut,
Bajazet, are characters so well rounded and individual as
to seem beyond Greene's power.
Professor Gayley declines to think Greene the author of
Selimus. Allott, he says, is not trustworthy, for he assigns
to Greene passages which do not belong to him — two, for
instance, which belong to Spenser. Professor Gayley fails
to see in Selimus any traces of Greene's diction, sentiment,
poetic quality, or rhythmical form. As a suggestion, he
proposes Lodge's name in connection with Selimus, on the
grounds of relationship to Civill War and Mucedorus.
M Chap. LIX., p. 642. "Of the Education of a Prince in Good
Manners and Conditions."
* Eng. Stud., Vol. 37, p. 359, note.
186 ROBERT GREENE
Collins does not print Selimus in his edition of Greene,
inasmuch as he finds Grosart's arguments unsatisfactory.
The latest word on the subject is that in the Cambridge
History of English Literature,25 of which the material is taken
from an unpublished article by Mr. F. G. Hubbard. Mr.
Hubbard pointed out (1) that the comic scene in Locrine
which is paralleled in Selimus stands alone in the latter play,
while in Locrine there is much low humor of the same kind
in connection with the same characters; (2) that Locrine pre
ceded Selimus because Locrine has many lines from Spenser's
Complaints not found in Selimus; but that with one possible
exception, Selimus has nothing from the Complaints not to
be found in Locrine; (3) that, moreover, one of these bor
rowed lines in Selimus is followed by five other lines not in
the Complaints but in Locrine; that Locrine and Selimus
are not by the same man, since Selimus has borrowings
from the Faerie Queene while Locrine has none [Collins
believed that Locrine and Selimus were written by the
same man]; (5) that Locrine was not completed before
1591, when the Complaints were published [As a matter of
fact the Complaints circulated widely before their publica
tion]; (6) that a line near the end of Act V., "One mischief
follows on another's neck," is apparently copied from Tan-
cred and Gismond (published 1591, with preface dated August
8) — a line not given in the earlier MS. version of the play;
(7) that since Selimus is later than Locrine (which is later
than August 8, 1591), and since Greene died September 3,
1592, the issue of Greene's authorship is brought within
narrow limits.
Such at length are the arguments for and against the
attribution of Selimus to Greene. The only conclusion which
can be justified, so far as I can see, is that the problem has
not been, probably cannot be, settled.
25 Vol. V., p. 96.
THE PLAYS 187
With regard to George-a-Greene, which has been included
among Greene's plays by Dyce, Grosart, Collins, and Dick
inson, the problem is quite as complex as that of Selimus.
No one of these men is satisfied with the grounds on which
he included the play, but no one is quite content to leave
the play out. It may be well to state the situation.
On the title-page of the 1599 edition are the following
manuscript notes:
Written by ... a minister who acted the piners pt in it himselfe.
Teste W: Shakespeare.
Ed. Juby saith that the play was made be Ro. Greene.
These notes were made by different persons. The hand
writing is of the style of the Elizabethan age. Upon the
value of these memoranda the validity of the ascription of
the play to Greene partly depends. And it can be said at
once that, so far as that validity is concerned, all scholars are
agreed that the notes are of decidedly questionable worth.
In the first place it can only be assumed that they are the
notes of contemporaries; and in the second place it can only
be assumed that they are genuine. As Mr. Greg says,
no one can judge without examining the original notes, and
without being familiar with the Ireland and Collier forgeries.26
The attribution of Georges-Greene to Greene on the basis
of the notes is, therefore, made on very slender evidence.
The other basis for belief or disbelief in Greene's author
ship has been found within the play itself. The internal
evidence has been variously interpreted. Mertins27 thought
the play was not by Greene. It lacks, Mertins says, the
pompous style and classical references, the imaginative ele
ments, the poetical diction, the Latin, French, and Italian
phrasing, the unusual word compounds, the ornate epithets,
* See Appendix II., where these notes enter into the discussion of
whether or not Greene was at one time a minister.
27 Robert Greene and the Play of George-a-Greene. Breslau, 1885.
188 ROBERT GREENE
so common in Greene's other plays. The grammatical
forms are different from Greene's; the meter is unlike
that of Greene's plays; as for the similarity between George-
a-Greene and Friar Bacon, that may be due merely to the
similarity in material.
To most of Mertins' objections, Professor Collins agrees.
Yet he believes the play to be Greene's, and he includes
it in the edition of Greene's works. The play is built, he
says, as Greene built plays; the types of character are like
Greene's; there are similarities between this play and Friar
Bacon and James IV. And so Professor Collins, "though
the evidence ... is far from conclusive," thinks the play
should be given to Greene because "there is no dramatist
of those days known to us to whom it could be assigned
with more probability."
Professor Gayley28 is non-committal. He finds in George-
a-Greene the skilful plot, the popular material, such as
Greene used in Friar Bacon. And he finds here and there a
rhetorical style like Greene's. But he does not find "the
curious imagery, the precious visualizing, the necromantic
monstrous toys," nor the "conscious affectation of uncon
scious art." The conversations, while sometimes like
Greene's, are not on the whole equal to his "humorous
indirection and his craft."
Thus the matter stands.
Henslowe records five performances of the play between
December 29, 1593, and January 22, 1594. But the first
entry is not marked as that of a new play. The title-page
states that the play had been acted by the Sussex company,
a company which is not known to have acted at that time any
of Greene's unquestioned plays, although the Sussex men
soon afterwards joined Greene's company in the production
of Friar Bacon.
28 Rep. Eng. Com. p. 418.
THE PLAYS 189
George-a-Greene was entered to Cuthbert Burbie on April 1,
1595. The earliest known copy is that in the library of the
Duke of Devonshire, dated 1599, and uniform as to printer,
publisher, year, vignette, and motto with Orlando Furioso.
As to date, nothing is known. If the play is by Greene,
it belongs undoubtedly just before or just after James IV.
The only indication of date within the play is that in line
42 the Earl of Kendal says,
"Lest I, like martial Tamburlaine, lay waste
Their bordering countries."
(C) GREENE AS A DRAMATIST
It was following fashion which turned Greene to the writ
ing of plays. Just as the popularity of Euphues started him
off on the production of Mamillia, and as Daphnis and Chloe
gave the impulse for Menaphon with its pastoralism, so the
great success of Tamburlaine was sufficient to focus Greene's
attention.
Before the day of Marlowe and Kyd, great progress had
been made in both tragedy and comedy; but the evolution,
even after the building of the theaters, had been gradual.
With the exception of Lyly no man stands out in sharp dis
tinction from his fellows as having made this or another
contribution to the art of play-writing. The plays written
before 1585, for the most part, gave an impression of their
impersonality. Not that they were authorless, but that
they are today significant more as types and as mani
festations of varied dramatic interests than as products
of individual men possessed of individual personalities.
It is not remarkable, therefore, that Greene, busy with
the exploitation of prose narrative, and engrossed in the
discovery of his own powers in the writing of fiction, and
eager in his inculcation of new standards of refinement,
190 ROBERT GREENE
should not have turned to the writing of plays before he did.
Nor is it remarkable that he turned when he did. How
ever closely engaged in one kind of activity, Greene was
never so indifferent to contemporary literary movements
as not to be aware at once of the entrance of a new force
within the sphere of popular favor. And so it was that
the plays of Kyd and Marlowe at once caught his eye.
It has often been remarked that Greene's plays fall into
two distinct classes, his failures and his successes. The
explication of this one fact involves what is essential to an
understanding of Greene as a dramatist. There is Alphonsus,
which attempts the bloody deeds of Mars; and there is
Friar Bacon, which invites refreshing drinks of milk in the
dairy-house at Fressingfield. Both classes spring from very
definite qualities of Greene's mind; and both are of necessity
what they are.
Greene's first play was a direct outgrowth from Tanibur-
laine. Because of that fact, it was a failure. Tamburlaine
is essentially a play dependent upon the character of its hero
to sustain interest. The march of events, as the Scythian
shepherd advances to his kingship of the world — conquest
following conquest, — has no dramatic interest in itself as
compared with the interest with which we behold the revela
tion of character which those events show. The action of
Tamburlaine, lacking in complexity and in unity, forms only
a succession of gorgeous scenes bound together by a unity of
characterization, and supported by the power of the im
agination with which the hero is conceived. Indomitable
ambition, unflinching will, unlimited self-confidence working
themselves out to their desired end constitute the theme of
the play, and give English literature the great prototype of
Richard III., Macbeth, and Milton's Satan. Tamburlaine
is a tremendous personality swept on by his lust for power.
In his greatness, he is a hard character to imitate.
THE PLAYS 191
Another characteristic of Marlowe's play made it dis
tinctive. Abandoning rhyme, Marlowe chose blank verse,
and in so doing was free to let his fancy run. He was able
to infuse into the verse of the play something of the spirit
of his protagonist. Thus form and matter harmonized, and
combined to make the effect, the Marlowesque, full of
vaunting thoughts proclaimed through sonorous and high-
sounding language. The sublimity of Tamburlaine gave it
power, — the power which Greene felt, but could not copy.
Alphonsus — whether Alphonsus V., king of Aragon,
Sicily, and Naples (died 1454) or Alphonsus I., king of Ara
gon and Navarre (died 1134), is not quite clear — is Tambur
laine emasculated. So far as the arrangement of scenes is
concerned, Greene's play is as good as Marlowe's. We learn
of the young man's plans to regain his father's throne, of
the successive steps in the realization of ambition, of
Amurack's opposition to the conquest, of Alphonsus' fall
ing in love with the Sultan's daughter. Throughout the
play, incident follows incident naturally and effectively.
The trouble with the play is not in the development of the
action. It is rather in the fact that Greene was not able
to grasp the conception of the forceful personality necessary
to the success of a play which depended so largely upon that
conception of character. The abundance of strength, the
buoyancy of spirit, with which Tamburlaine compels interest,
were not in Greene's power to portray. Tamburlaine was
the very worst model Greene could have chosen.
The weakness of Alphonsus is very apparent. The line
of action, though developing naturally, falls into two parts.
There is, in reality, the play of Alphonsus, followed by the
play of Amurack the Turk. The lack of unity in action
results in lack of unity of character. Alphonsus, nominally
the hero, shares his prominence with his opponent. Indeed
Amurack is given the more prominence. He has the same
192 ROBEKT GREENE
elements which Alphonsus has; and in addition he is en
grossed in his troubles with his wife and daughter, and he
is involved in various kinds of magic incantations which
give a clap-trap interest to his career.
But the lack of unity in Alphonsus is of no great conse
quence in view of the play's failure to convince. Even the
faintness and the inconsistencies of characterization are ab
sorbed in this fundamental defect. Marlowe's Tamburlaine
gathers momentum as it goes, a huge ball rolling faster and
faster, moved by an invisible force within. Alphonsus
gathers no momentum at all. Always it is Greene, behind,
pushing with all his might, and laboriously trying to move
an immovable weight. He makes much noise, and you
would think his exertions effective if it were not that the
ball is ever in the same place.
Greene's imagination could not encompass intense char
acter. Neither could his poetic fancy attain the necessary
height. Nowhere in the play is there a passage which so
combines poetry and passion as any random passage in the
work of Marlowe.
"Slash off his head! as though Albinius' head
Were then so easy to be slashed off:
In faith, sir, no; when you are dead and gone,
I hope to flourish like the pleasant spring."
ACT II., Sc. 2.
"As for this carping girl, Iphigena,
Take her with thee to bear thee company,
And in my land I rede be seen no more,
For if you do, you both shall die therefore."
ACT II., Sc. 2.
"Pagan, I say thou greatly art deceiv'd:
I clap up fortune in a cage of gold,
To make her turn her wheel as I think best;
And as for Mars whom you do say will change,
He moping sits behind the kitchen-door,
Prest at command of every scullion's mouth,
THE PLAYS 193
Who dares not stir, nor once to move a whit,
For fear Alphonsus then should stomach it."
ACT IV., Sc. 3.
Some critics have said that Alphonsus is not an imita
tion at all — that it was not meant as imitation, but as
parody. Marlowe had had one hero. Greene would have
two. Tamburlaine had met with no opposition. In the
parody, let there be two conquering boastful heroes bump
ing their heads together and endeavoring to beat each other's
brains out. Or, say, it would be as if one should turn from
admiring a fine specimen of a cock, alone in his splendor,
to the spectacle of that same fowl with bloody head and
ruffled feathers, engaged in the most ridiculous of contests, —
a rooster fight.
I do not believe that Alphonsus is a parody. A parody
is either humorous or satirical. Now Alphonsus is not obvi
ously humorous. And it is not satirical. To interpret it
as such is to misunderstand Greene. Even the Quippe for
an Upstart Courtier is not satirical, abundant as its possi
bilities for satire are. Alphonsus is a bad play, but not
because it is poor satire. There is a better explanation.
Experimenter though he was, Greene was no critic. He »
seems never to have learned what he could not do. In the
mass of his work there is good and bad mingled all together.
When Greene took up his pen it was with no discrimination. .
His instinct, not his judgment, is to thank for what is good.
His misdirected effort is to blame for what is bad. Alphonsus
was the outcome of misapplied energy. There was no par
ody about it. Tamburlaine was popular. Greene, with the
impulse derived from his ever wishing to follow a leader,
attempted a play of the same kind, — and produced one of
the worst of the many bad Elizabethan dramas.
Orlando Furioso is the dramatization of the incident in
Ariosto's Romance in which Orlando goes mad through love
194 ROBERT GREENE
of Angelica and through jealousy of his supposedly success
ful rival. At the palace of Marsilius, emperor of Africa,
various suitors are urging their suit for the hand of Angelica.
Orlando is successful. Sacripant desires Angelica and plots
to secure her. He bids his servant carve the names of
Angelica and Medor on the trees. Orlando, believing the
treachery of Angelica, goes mad, and creates the famous
scenes of entering upon the stage "with a leg on his neck"
and of ranging through the woods saying "Woods, trees,
leaves; leaves, trees, woods." Angelica is banished for her
supposed unfaithfulness. In the woods she meets Orlando,
who does not recognize her. After a time Melissa, an
enchantress, restores Orlando's wits. There is much fighting
— "they fight a good while, and then breathe," — Angelica
is restored to her home, and everything ends well.
This play has been interpreted as a parody on The Spanish
Tragedy. Greene, it is said, was satirizing the use of mad
ness on the stage, an element in the drama made very popu
lar by Kyd's play. The mad Orlando wandering through
the forest is a burlesque on the raving Hieronimo. And
"woods, trees, leaves" is only ridicule of the Grand Mar
shal's discovery of his dead son's body, and other similar
scenes.
Orlando is universally regarded as a poor play; some are
inclined to regard its badness as intentional. I do not
agree to any interpretation which regards the play as a
parody. I think that it is a failure; and a failure for the
same reason that Alphonsus is. To portray insanity well
on the stage is a great imaginative achievement, as King
Lear proves. The imagination required is of a different kind,
from that required to produce Tamburlaine. Less sweeping
but none the less intense. Intensity, keen insight — without
his being aware of the deficiency — were what Greene lacked.
Orlando Furioso is an imitation just as Alphonsus is. Both
THE PLAYS 195
plays were meant to be heroic. Both are unpardonable fail
ures. It is hard upon Greene to say so. But there is no
justice in trying to excuse failure under the name of parody.
Better to say at once that Greene was trying to do what
could not do.
Friar Bacon was written in emulation of Dr. Faustus.
The play is both a failure and a success. Inevitably so:
it is a combination of two elements. There is the story of
Bacon and the brazen head which he had constructed —
how he had pursued learning and had become a powerful
magician, how he had made the head which should enable
him to encircle England with a wall of brass, how Miles, the
dull servant, was set to watch, how the devil came and
marred all. There is also the story of Margaret, the maid
of Fressingfield, with whom Prince Edward fell in love but
whom he relinquished in favor of his friend who had been
sent to woo for him. This second story is a development
of the hint in the old Friar Bacon ballad of the maid who
had two suitors, and who preferred the lowly one to the one
of high degree.
With regard to Friar Bacon himself, Greene was endeav
oring to copy the figure of Faustus, all-wise, all-powerful
magician. He did not succeed. There is nothing sublime
about Bacon, nothing dignified. His sorcery is nothing but
clap-trap; his contests with Vandermast only stage show,
poor spectacle at that. Even the brazen head, as manifes
tation of Bacon's power, is foolish, however much a source
of comedy it may be when seen through the eyes of Miles.
Friar Bacon bears the same relation to Dr. Faustus that
Alphonsus bears to Tamburlaine. Friar Bacon, Alphonsus,
Orlando, all demand greatness of imagination; and Greene
had no greatness to bestow. All three are, therefore, not
so much characters which are true but only faintly por
trayed, as they are mechanical figures poorly constructed.
196 ROBERT GREENE
If Friar Bacon were just a play with a conjurer as hero
(as Greene meant it to be), it would belong with Alphonsus
and Orlando among the things that would better not have
been. It is, however, successful. Greene found in the old
\ ballad upon which he based his play the hint of a story
j which he developed. It is this story, originally incidental,
which differentiates Friar Bacon from the plays that had
preceded it. For the story and the character of Margaret
and her lover predominate over the story and character of
Friar Bacon. In the success of the love story, and in the
fusing of it with the story of Bacon, the weakness of the
magician is unheeded.
Emphasizing the love story as he did, Greene became for
the first time original in the drama. Marlowe had been
his model in the earlier plays, and Marlowe had provided
the starting-point for Friar Bacon. But Friar Bacon — the
Friar Bacon we remember — belongs to Greene alone. For
the very reason that there is nothing of Marlowe in it, it is
in a new class. Greene could not copy Marlowe, but he
could write plays of his own, plays distinctively his own.
James IV. is a continuation of the work begun in Friar
Bacon. It is a dramatization of a tale in Cinthio's Heca-
tommithi (3:1), made with considerable skill and some
changes from the source.29 James IV. of Scotland is mar
ried to Dorothea, the daughter of the king of England. He
immediately confesses his love for the Countess Ida, a
confession overheard by Ateukin. Ateukin devises plots.
29 The greatest change is in the opening of the play. The long
process of the development of the false love is dispensed with, and in
the opening of the play James is shown to be in love with Ida at the
time of his marriage with Dorothea. In the play Ateukin overhears
the king's statement of love rather than hears of it, through some one
else as in the novel. Greene's changes, on the whole, make for con
densation and dramatic effectiveness.
THE PLAYS 197
Dorothea is at length persuaded of her husband's faith
lessness and flees in disguise, accompanied by her dwarf,
Nano. James hires an assassin who attempts to put Doro
thea to death. The king of England arrives with an army.
James is defeated. Dorothea comes from her disguise.
James is sorry for his misdeeds and everything ends happily.
This play, too, is free from the influence of Marlowe, and
like Friar Bacon it is successful.
Failure and success, then, were Greene's results. The
cause for the failure has been shown to be Greene's lack
of an intense imagination and of an elevation of style which
could enable him to follow the model created by Marlowe.
It remains to analyze the cause of Greene's success in the
plays in which he displayed his originality.
A study of Greene as a dramatist is analogous to a study
of him as a novelist. Alphonsus and Orlando Furioso corre
spond to the tales of Valdracko and Arbasto; Friar Bacon
and James IV. correspond to Menaphon and Pandosto —
the former failures, and the latter successes. The qualities
which make Friar Bacon and James IV. good plays are,
therefore, the same qualities which make Menaphon and
Pandosto good novels. The success in all cases is due to
the charm with which the story is told.
Whether in novel or in play, when Greene had a theme
centering around a heroine rather than around a hero, he
was at his best. Greene was not effeminate. But he did
have a delicacy about him, a refinement, which somehow was
displayed in two charming ways. In the first place, his
imagination when dealing with women characters was able
to bring forth creatures for whom his reader can feel genuine
interest and sympathy. I do not mean that Greene created
great women characters; but he did create wholesome
women. In the second place, Greene could blow through
his pages the freshness of the out-of-doors.
198 ROBERT GREENE
Medea, Iphigena, Melissa, Angelica, all these are worth
less figures. But three of the women in Greene's plays
are of importance. These are Margaret, Ida, and Dorothea.
Ida is the least fully protrayed. But she is a fine character.
Whether at the court or on her porch in the country she is
the same, firm in her morality to resist the love of the king,
bright, clean-minded, calm, serious. Dorothea is descended
from the type of faithful women who are true in the face of
all disaster. When she is told of her husband's falseness,
she refuses to believe. She even maintains that the letter
is forged which contains the order for her assassination.
But Dorothea is not an abstraction of faithfulness. She
is human in her faith, she is virtuous, she is lovely. Trem
blingly she sets off in disguise to avoid danger. Affectionate
toward the little Nano who accompanies her in her distress,
ready to forgive wrong before forgiveness is asked, beloved
by all who surround her, she is an admirable woman.
Margaret is Greene's best character; and she is charming
indeed. Margaret is a lodge-keeper's daughter, young,
vivacious, witty, beautiful. She is clearly portrayed. She
arouses interest as she goes about her work, as she gives the
prince a drink from her dairy, as she goes with the young
country folk to the fair, as she talks with Lacy and falls in
love with the dashing courtier. She is faithful to the man
of her choice even though her other suitor is the king's own
son. When Lacy's letter comes, telling that he no longer
loves her, she decides to be a nun; and if you do not know
that so beautiful a play must perforce end happily, you
would feel sorry for her as she makes her adieu,
"Now farewell, world, the engine of all woe!
Farewell to friends and father! welcome Christ!
Adieu to dainty robes! this base attire
Better befits an humble mind to God
Than all the show of rich habiliments.
THE PLAYS 199
Farewell, O love, and, with fond love, farewell,
Sweet Lacy, whom I loved once so dear! "
Strangely inconsistent is her renouncing of the convent when
she learns that Lacy has but tried her love. Yet happily
so. And beautiful is her joy in the new clothes with which
she decks herself for her marriage, to go off to the court to
live. Pure, unspoiled, fresh, Margaret is a rare creation.
Lovely as those heroines are, and important as they are
in the development of Elizabethan drama, the figure of
Nano is, Professor Woodberry thinks, the real connecting
link between Greene and Shakespeare. Certainly there is
much about the dwarf which is of interest. He does stand
in a very striking way between the Vice of the moralities
and early comedies on the one hand, and Launce and Touch
stone on the other. Yet he is significant for his own sake.
Nano is the product of the same imagination which pro
duced the delightful women. He is delicately drawn. His
little body, his lightness of foot, his sprightliness, his wit, his
loyalty to his mistress, make him a lovable personality. Yet
personality is scarcely the correct word. Our affection for
Nano is not that for a fellow human being. It is rather that
given to a pet or a living big doll. " What wouldn't one give
to have him in a box and take him out to talk!" — as Mrs.
Carlyle might say.
The figures of Ida, Dorothea, Margaret, Nano, do much
to give charm to Greene's successful plays, and constitute
no small part of Greene's contribution to the drama. The
second element which made Greene's success was the out-
of-doors which is to be found most delightfully in Friar
Bacon. The surcharged atmosphere of courts and battle
fields clears away for the calm air of Fressingfield and the
activity of the Harleston Fair, where Margaret shines
" amongst the cream bowls" and where cheese is safely "set
upon the racks."
200 ROBERT GREENE
"Well, if you chance to come by Fressingfield,
Make but a step into the Keeper's Lodge;
And such poor fare as woodmen can afford,
Butter and cheese, cream and fat venison,
You shall have store, and welcome therewithal."
i
Freshness and delicacy are Greene's contributions, mani
fested in the brightness of the out-of-doors, the idyllic
country life, the attractive women of his comedies. The
rant and superficiality of the earlier plays are Greene's, too.
They are a part of his work, and reveal a definite side of his
make-up. But they are not contributions. Marlowe had
made an advance. For Greene to have copied Marlowe —
even to have done well what Marlowe had done — would
have been no addition. To have copied Marlowe and to
have failed, is loss. In the later plays, however, there is
originality and gain.
CONCLUSION
IT cannot but be, with all the tangled threads of discussion
and the intricate analyses, that the idea of Greene emerges
somewhat blurred and indistinct. I propose, then, as shortly
as possible, to bring together the results of the foregoing
chapters into a summary. Such a process may perhaps
make the portrait a little clearer.
I have presented Greene as, fundamentally, a man of
letters. To this one fact all other facts are subordinate. (
The statement that he wrote for his living explains Greene
as fully, I think, as any single statement can. It was this
keeping his finger on the pulse of the day, as it were, which
determined the course of his career and which developed his
characteristics both personal and literary.
Greene produced many works of many kinds. Beginning
with the didactic narrative of Lyly, he changed, as fashions
changed, in order to follow closely the general trend of
Elizabethan fiction. Frame-work tales, romances, prodigal
stories, repentances, social pamphlets both serious and not
serious, he wrote and arranged under one or another of
his three mottoes. And because no one of those forms died
out hi his lifetime he continued occasionally to publish
pamphlets of an earlier kind after he had for the most part
proceeded to a later one. Once Marlowe and Kyd had
drawn his attention to the drama, he began to write plays.
Whenever he saw an opportunity, in season or out, he was
ready in a moment with something for the market. Hasty
in publication, and desiring nothing beyond the immediate
sale, Greene took no thought for finishing his work to a
201
202 ROBERT GREENE
degree of perfection, or for removing from it flaws that might
easily have been removed. Certain qualities of style he j
wanted it to have for it to be successful. Further than that
there was no need to go. Much of it, consequently, is slip
shod. It could not well have been otherwise in view of the
rapidity with which Greene wrote it and of the end he had
in mind. There is about it, however, that which deserves
praise. Greene, for all his making no attempt at " winning
credite," had enough of real ability in him to impart signif
icance to most of his writings, whether in the way of intro
ducing continental ideas or of creating narrative.
To us, much of the culture is commonplace and dull.
We are no longer interested, except in a historical way, in
the new ideas on manners and speech which were of so much
concern to the Elizabethans. But in the narratives we can
still find some pleasure. In all of them Greene manifests
skill in getting the story along. Slow as the action appears
to be, with the obstructing speeches and passions and tears,
it is, in truth, usually swift. Characterization is less strong.
There are few people hi Greene's works whom we remember
for the vividness with which they are conceived. Some of
them have a delightful air of refinement and charm; some
of them are sufficiently distinct for us to know them and to
become interested in their welfare as characters. But none ,
are great.
It cannot be said that there is an evolution in the works of
Greene as regards the kinds of pamphlets. His romances
are not a higher literary form than the frame-work tales,
nor did the former arise out of the latter. The prodigal
stories, again, were a progress in time only, and developed
from an interest not associated with the romances. The
conny-catching pamphlets came from no broader attitude
toward life than did any of the works which had preceded
them.
CONCLUSION 203
The earlier novels are encumbered with all the Euphuistic /
adornment that Greene could well bestow. The later ones
are comparatively simple. The difference results partly, of
course, from the gradual turn of the age in the direction
of simplicity; but it seems to me that there was also a
growth in the art of expression by Greene himself. While
he kept morality as the pretext for his writing, he more
and more appreciated the story for its own sake. His sen
tences became shorter, and grammatical to a degree unknown
in the beginning. The style was more compact, more direct,^,
and, to us at least, more effective.
These are the main points about what and how Greene
wrote. There is one other. Back of the matter and the
method there was the man. We began with the man, and^/
we shall end with him.
If we do not approach Greene in the right way, he is exceed
ingly tiresome. There is much about him that is superficial.
If we cannot see beyond the didacticism and the literary '
mannerisms, — speeches, letters, long-drawn courtships, and
the rest of it — Greene is very stupid. And his personality
has no attraction for us if we are wholly unsympathetic for
the young wits who attempted to flourish in Bohemia, who
lived their short lives and died untimely deaths.
But if our nature is not too unlike his, we find much that
interests us. When we come to know him, Greene appeals 1
to our imagination. About the idea of him in his green |
cloak, his hair a little over-long, his reddish, pointed beard j
"whereat you might hang a jewel" — perhaps a slightly
fantastic figure if we judge him closely — about this pic
ture, we gather the characteristics which Greene had, and
we endeavor to recreate him in our mind's eye. We think
of his carelessness and his lack of providence, his wilful ways,
his separation from his wife, and his last thought of her. We j
remember his bravado, a certain little swagger in his walk,
204 ROBERT GREENE
a pride in his work that he could never quite down. And
his sentimentality, his aphorisms, his tendency to preach,
all these we put into the picture.
We pardon the tediousness. We take pleasure in the charm
and refinement which is present in his romances and his
poems, and in the freshness of his better plays. The illus
trative tales of the conny-catchers give us keen delight.
But we must have humor enough not to interpret them too
seriously.
About our whole conception of Greene there should,
indeed, be something humorous. We need to laugh at his
oddities rather than to be provoked to indignation by them.
Greene is not a man to whom life unfolds infinite possi
bilities. He has no visions of greatness. Yet he does not
tell us to the contrary. His interest is in the affair of the
day; his trade is his chief concern. But he never cracks a
smile as he sets about to expose the vices of London, never
acknowledges for a moment that he is not the social investi
gator he pretends to be. He publishes stories of repentance,
and leaves it to us to discover that repentance is only his
necessary machinery.
He lies continually. We cannot accept a word he says
without the support of our own judgment. It is not the
kind of lying, however, that we censure harshly; it does
nobody harm. We are inclined to be a little out of temper
sometimes; we wish he were more trustworthy, for it would
save us trouble in understanding him. But after all, it's
pretense and we must recognize it as such.
Greene is interested in appearances. He does not care
about the real worth of what he writes. If it looks well,
he is satisfied. Sincerity is not among his ideals. He
gathers up all sorts of information from widely scattered
sources, he attributes quotations now to one man and now
to another, he repeats himself, he is inconsistent over and
CONCLUSION 205
over again. None of these things disturbs his peace of mind.
He says nothing about them; he seems to be unaware that
they exist. So he goes calmly on. Naive we might almost
think him to be if we did not know otherwise.
There is a dark side, too. Part of the repentance was
genuine. Although we may laugh up our sleeve at the
childish faith in the credulity of man, we cannot but pity
Greene that he was driven so hard. "This booke hath
many things, which I would not have written on my
Tombe," he said in one of his Prefaces;1 and the cry
cannot fail to reach us. The works had not been bad; nor
the life, it may be, so bad as he thought. But the anguish
for them both was not lessened thereby.
Pity does not grant a man a place in literature. He must
deserve it on other grounds. Greene's place is secure to
him for the historical reason that he was one of the Eliza
bethans. It is secure also through the charm of his poems
and romances, and through the clever social pamphlets.
Finally, it is secure through the personality of the man
himself.
1 Vol. XII., p. 196.
APPENDIX I
TABULATION OF THE FRAME-WORK TALES
Planetomachia, 1585.
VENUS TRAGEDIE. — Italianesque, on the model of the
novella. Analyzed in the text, p. 29.
SATURNES TRAGEDIE. — To show the evil influence of love.
The story of Rhodope and Psamneticus of Memphis,
the courtezan who became queen.
Penelopes Web, 1587.
FIRST TALE. — To show wifely obedience. A queen put
away and taken again. There are speeches (p. 172,
p. 173, Vol V.) practically like some in Saturnes Tra-
gedie (p. 125, p. 127, Vol. V). The situation is much
the same. There is no doubt that Greene had the earlier
story in mind when he wrote the latter. This tale is
from Cintio, III, 5.
SECOND TALE. — To illustrate chastity. A woman loved by
a nobleman is imprisoned by him. She escapes and
joins her husband. The nobleman repents and gives
them riches.
THIRD TALE. — To praise silence in women. A king gives
his crown to the son whose wife is most virtuous, that
is, best able to keep silence.
Censure to Philautus, 1587.
ULISSES TALE. — A woman elopes with a gentleman of the
court whom she later poisons. Fearing treachery in
her husband's reconciliation, she kills herself.
207
208 ROBERT GREENE
HELENUS TRAGEDIE. — How a queen outwitted her enemy
who was in possession of her city.
HECTORS TRAGEDIE. — To illustrate fortitude hi a soldier.
The eldest of three brothers defends his crown against
the rebellion of his united younger brothers.
ACHILLES TRAGEDIE. — On liberality. Roxader of Athens
on account of his liberality was able to save his native
city and to be made dictator.
Perymedes, 1588.
FIRST TALE. — Story of Marcella and Prestynes, an imita
tion of Decameron, II. 6. The tale of a separation of
husband and wife and children by Fortune. Of their
reunion.
SECOND TALE. — A romantic story of a poor man and a rich
girl. The man goes away to make his fortune. She
follows, but is shipwrecked. She is cast upon the same
shore. He has become famous. They are married
and go back to their home. The story is from Decam
eron, V. 2.
THIRD TALE. — A young woman loves a poor man; her
father has another suitor selected. It happens that
the father and daughter and selected suitor are ban
ished. They lead humble lives. The poor man follows
them, wins renown, and marries the girl.
Alcida, 1588.
FIRST TALE. — Story of Fiordespine, who for her haughti
ness in love was turned into a marble pillar.
SECOND TALE. — Story of Eriphila, who for her fickleness
was turned into a camelion. (Some passages identical
with passages in Mamillia.)
THIRD TALE. — Marpesia, for her inability to keep a secret,
was turned into a rose-tree.
TABULATION OF THE FRAMEWORK TALES 209
Ciceronis Amor, 1589.
THE SHEEPHEARDES TALE. — A pastoral. How Phillis and
Coridon made up and were married.
Orpharion, 1590.
ORPHEUS TALE. — Tale of Lydia, from Ariosto, 34:7-43.
ARIONS TALE. — How Argentina preserved her chastity by
promising to consent to her lover after he had been
confined for three days without food, and how the lover
broke the agreement by first eating meat.
Mourning Garment, 1590.
THE SHEPHEARDS TALE. — A pastoral. How Alexis aban
doned Rosamond for Phillida, and how Rosamond
died of grief. Whereupon Alexis hanged himself upon
a willow-tree.
Francescos Fortunes, 1590.
THE HOSTS TALE. — The shepherdess Mirimida had three
suitors. Letters from them all arrived at the same
instant. She appointed a meeting with them all.
When they had promised to abide by her decision, she
told them all nay.
Farewell to Follie, 1591.
PERATIOS TALE. — Tale of Pride. Vadislaus, king of Buda,
was deposed for his pride and tyranny, and went forth
to wander as a beggar.
COSIMOS TALE. — Of Lust. Story of Semiramis.
BERARDINOS TALE. — Of Gluttony. A poor man unjustly
judged by the drunken ruler, invited the ruler to a feast.
While the ruler was drunk the poor man built a scaf
fold and invited the citizens. When the ruler found
that he was to be hanged, he hanged himself.
210 ROBERT GREENE
Groatsworth of Wit, 1592.
LAMILIAS TALE. — An animal story with a hidden meaning.
Accounts for the enmity between dogs and badgers.
ROBERTOS TALE. — Of the fabliau type. Story of the farmer
bridegroom, who is cheated out of his wife and forced
to marry another girl.
Vision, 1590-92?
CHAUCERS TALE. — Of the fabliau type. Analyzed in the
text, p. 28.
GOWERS TALE. — A tale of jealousy. A man who has put
away his wife on account of jealousy, is cured of his
jealousy by a magician who transforms him into a young
man. In this shape he tries his wife's faith, and find
ing her true takes her back again.
APPENDIX II
MISCONCEPTIONS CONCERNING GREENE
THERE are a few matters which remain to be treated
here. These, perhaps, demand an apology for being con
sidered at all. At least, if they cannot be totally ignored
they are no longer of sufficient importance to warrant their
inclusion elsewhere than in an appendix. Although unmis
takably founded on errors, they have so continued to be
discussed seriously by Greene's biographers as almost to
make them traditional, and a discussion of them unavoidable.
I. One of these misapprehensions is that of Greene's
connection with the church. Since the days of Dyce various
biographers, Bernhardi, Fleay, and Grosart, have argued that
Greene was at one time a minister. Fuller investigation has
shown that he was not. The situation may be briefly sum
marized as follows:
1. In 1576, a Robert Grene was presented by the Queen
to the rectory of Walkington in Yorkshire.1 There is no
reason, however, on the basis of this fact, for assuming that
Greene was connected with the church, inasmuch as he was
at that tune a freshman in the University.
2. Greene cannot have been he who was Vicar of Tolles-
bury in Essex from June 19, 1584, to February 17, 1586; 2
1 Rymer's Foedra, Vol. XV, p. 765.
* The entry (in Newcourt's Repertarium, Vol. II, p. 602, which uses
as its authority Bp. Grindal's Register, fol. 213; fol. 225) is as follows:
"Tollsbury.
Rob. Grene cl. 19 Jun. 1584, per mort. Searles.
Earth. Moody, cl. 17 Feb. 1585, per resign. Grene."
211
212 ROBERT GREENE
for that period in Greene's life was, by his own account,
filled with other events.
3. He cannot, as Mr. Fleay thought,3 be identified, as
Robert the parson, with the Robert Persj or Rupert Persten
who was with the Earl of Leicester's troupe on the Continent
from December 1585, to July, 1587. We have no evidence
that Greene formed a part of this troupe. It is, moreover,
useless to attempt to make parson out of the Persj or Persten
as it appears in the Saxon and Danish records. Besides,
if Greene was Vicar of Tollesbury, as Fleay said he was, he
must have been abroad as a member of a troupe of players
during three months of the time that he was preaching in
Essex.
4. Greene himself does not speak of having been a
minister. Nor do any of his contemporaries, Nashe, Burbye,
Dekker, Heywood, Chettle, — not even the arch-enemy,
Gabriel Harvey.
5. A passage in the Epistle Dedicatorie to the anon
ymous tract Marline Mar-Sixtus has been taken to refer to
Greene as a minister. This tract was issued in 1591, and
was re-issued with change of date only in 1592. The epistle
is signed R. W.4 and clearly refers to Greene in the words
about those who "are faine to put on mourning garment,
and cry, Farewell." But the words, "I loathe to speake it,
every red-nosed rimester is an author," whether they refer
to Greene or not, are those from which the misunderstand
ing has come. It is, though, a misunderstanding which is
removed at once when the word is seen to be not minister,
as Dr. Grosart read, but rimester.
6. Much has been made, at times, of certain manuscript
3 Life of Shakespeare pp. 92, 105; Hist. Stage, p. 82.
4 This Epistle is reprinted in Notes and Queries, 10th Ser., No. 2,
Dec. 17, 1904; and the suggestion is there made that R. W. was Richard
Willes.
MISCONCEPTIONS CONCERNING GREENE 213
notes on the title-page of the 1599 edition of The Pinner of
Wakefield. These notes are:
(a.) " Written by ... a minister who acted the piner's
pt in it himselfe. Teste W. Shakespeare."
(6) "Ed. Juby saith that the play was made by Ro.
Greene."
Reasoning on the evidence of these notes is unsound for
it must be remembered, as Mr. Gayley well says,8 "that
both attributions are hearsay; that both notes are anon
ymous, that one or both may be fraudulent; 6 that there
is no certain proof that they were written by contempora
ries; and that, unless their contents are shown to be accu
rate as well as authentic, they do not connect any Robert
Greene with the ministry."
II. Another of the misapprehensions concerning Greene
is that he was at one time an actor. That Greene was an
actor was held particularly by Dyce and Fleay, the former
of whom misinterpreted certain of Harvey's remarks about
Greene's "wilde head, full of mad brain and a thousand
crotchets;" the latter of whom was anxious to identify
Greene the parson as an actor in Leicester's troupe. There
is, however, no reason on the grounds taken by Dyce or
Fleay, nor on any other grounds, for thinking that he was
ever professionally an actor. Neither he nor any of his
contemporaries says anything about it.
III. That Greene was once studying to become a physi
cian has often been stated in biographies of him. The basis
of the statement has of course been the occurrence of the
phrase " student in phisicke" on the title-page of Planeto-
1 Representative English Comedies, p. 401.
6 It seems good to call attention to a remark made by Mr. Greg in
Mod. Lang. Rev. 1906, p. 244. He said, "One to be competent to
judge (in regard to these manuscript notes) must examine the original
notes, and also be familiar with the Ireland and the Collier forgeries."
214 ROBERT GREENE
machia, 1585. But the presence of these words does not in
any way warrant the assumption that Greene was a student
of medicine. Inasmuch as Planetomachia is a pamphlet de
signed to set forth the opposition of the planets and to be
an exposition concerning their influence, it seems better to
interpret the phisicke in the sense of natural philosophy, in
which sense it is used, for example in Thomas Bowes' trans
lation of Primaudaye's French Academy (1586) as "the
studie of naturall things: metaphysycke, which is of super
natural things;" and to believe that Greene used the word
merely that he might speak with pretended authority on
the subject of the stars.
APPENDIX III
EARLY ALLUSIONS TO GREENE
IN the following pages no attempt is made to bring together
all the early allusions to Greene. Only those are printed
which seem to help in forming an estimate of how Greene
was regarded by his contemporaries.
1. Letter by Christopher Bird. Aug. 29, 1592. Harvey's
Works, Ed. Grosart. Vol. I, p. 160.
"In steed of other novels, I sende you my opinion, in a plaine, but
true Sonnet, upon the famous new worke, intituled, A Quippe for an
upstart Courtier; or, forsooth, A quaint Dispute betweene Velvet-breeches,
and Cloth-breeches; as fantasticall and fond a Dialogue, as I have
scene: and for some Particulars, one of the most licentious, and in
tolerable Invectives, that ever I read."
A due Commendation of the Quipping Autor.
Greene the Connycatcher, of this Dreame the Autor.
For his dainty devise, deserveth the hauter.
A rakehell: A makeshift: a scribling foole:
A famous bayard, in Citty, and Schoole.
Now sicke, as a Dog: and ever brainesick:
Where such a raving, and desperate Dick?
Sir reverence, A scurvy Master of Art.
He sweared inough . . .
Aunscornes ther Aunswere: and Envy Salutes
With Shortest vowels, and with longest mutes.
For farther triall, himself he referres
To proofe, and sound judgment, that seldome erres.
Now good Robin-good-fellow, and gentle Greene-sleeves,
Give him leave to be quiet, that none aggreeves.
2. Harvey's The Second Letter. Sept. 5, 1592.
My next businesse was to enquire after the famous Author: who was
reported to lye dangerously sicke in a shoemakers house near Dow-gate:
215
216 ROBERT GREENE
not of the plague, ... as a Gentleman saide, but of a surfett of pickle
herringe and rennish wine, or as some suppose, of an exceeding feare.
For in his extreamest want, he offered ten, or rather then faile twenty
shillinges to the printer (a huge som with him at that instant) to leave
out the matter of the three brothers, p. 162.
I was suddainely certified, that the king of the paper stage (so the
Gentleman tearmed Greene) had played his last part, & was gone to
Tarleton: whereof I protest, I was nothing glad . . . because I was
Deprived of that remedy in Law, that I entended against him, in the
behalfe of my Father, p. 167.
Looke for my Confutation of his fine Quippe . . . whome his sweete
hostisse, for a tender farewell, crowned with a Garland of Bayes: to
shew, that a tenth Muse honoured him more being deade, than all the
nine honoured him alive, p. 172.
Here lies the man, whom mistrisse Isam crown'd with bayes;
Shee, shee, that joyed to heare, her Nightingales sweete layes.
p. 1.
3. Harvey's Third Letter. Sept. 8 & 9, 1592.
Thanke other for thy borrowed & filched plumes of some little
Italianated bravery; & what remaineth, but flat Impudencie, and
grosse Detraction: the proper ornaments of thy sweete utterance?
p. 187.
I am not to extenuate or prejudice his wit, which could not any
way be great, though som way not the least of our vulgar writers, &
mani-waies very ungracious: but who ever esteemed him either wise,
or learned, or honest, or any way credible? p. 189.
The second Toy of London; the Stale of Poules, the Ape of Euphues,
the Vice of the Stage, the mocker of the simple world: . . . Peruse his
famous bookes: and in steede of Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile
dulci (that forsooth was his professed Poesie) Loe a wilde head, ful
of mad braine and a thousand crotchets: A scholler, a Discourser, a
Courtier, a ruffian, a Gamester, a Lover, etc., p. 189.
But I pray God they have not done more harme by corruption of
manners, than by quickening of witte: and I would, some Buyers had
either more Reason to discerne, or lesse Appetite to desire such Novels.
p. 190.
The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia is not greene inough for queasie
stomackes, but they must have Greenes Arcadia: and I beleeve most
eagerlie longed for Greenes Faerie^Queene. p. 191.
EARLY ALLUSIONS TO GREENE 217
4. Chettle. Kind-harts Dreame. Dec. 8, 1592. Ed.
Rimbault. Percy. Soc. Vol. 5.
About three moneths since died M. Robert Greene, leaving many
papers in sundry Booke sellers hands, among other his Groats-worth of
wit, in which, a letter written to divers play-makers, is offensively by
one or two of them taken . . . For the first, whose learning I reverence,
and, at the perusing of Greenes booke, stroke out what then, in con
science I thought, he in some displeasure writ: or had it been true, yet
to publish it was intollerable: him I would wish to use me no worse
than I deserve. I had onely in the copy this share, it was il written,
as sometime Greenes hand was none of the best, ... To be briefe, I
writ it over. p. iv.
With him was the fifth, a man of indifferent yeares, of face amible,
of body well proportioned, his attire after the habite of a scholler-like
gentleman, onely his haire somewhat long, whome I supposed to be
Robert Greene, maister of Artes. ... He was of singular pleasaunce,
the verye supporter, and, to no mans, disgrace bee this intended, the
only comedian, of a vulgar writer, in this country, p. 11.
5. Nasbe, Foure Letters Confuted. Jan. 12, 1593.
Ed. McKerrow.
Had hee liv'd, Gabriel, ... he would have made thee an example
of ignominy to all ages that are to come, and driven thee to eate thy
owne booke butterd, as I sawe him make an Apparriter once in a
Tavern eate his citation, waxe and all, very handsomely serv'd twixt
two dishes, p. 271.
Is my stile like Greenes or my jeaste like Tarltonsf Do I talke of
any counterfeit birds, or hearbs, or stones, or rake up any new-found
poetry from under the wals of Troy? p. 319.
Of force I must graunt that Greene came oftner in print than men
of judgment allowed off, but neverthelesse he was a daintie slave to
content the taile of a Tearme, and stuffe Serving mens pockets, p. 329.
What Greene was, let some other answere for him as much as I have
done; I had no tuition over him; he might have writ another Galatoeo
of manners, for his manners everie time I came in his companie: I
saw no such base shifting or abhominable villanie by him. Something
there was which I have heard, not seene, that hee had not that regarde
to his credite in, which had beene requisite he should, p. 330.
218 ROBERT GREENE
6. Greenes Newes both from Heaven and Hell, Anon.
1593.
You have beene a busie f ellowe with youre penne, it was you that writ
the Bookes of cony-catching, but sirra, could you finde out the base
abuses of a company of petty varlets that lived by pilfering cosonages ,
and could you not as well have descryed the subtill and fraudulent
practises of great conny-catchers, such as rides upon footeclothes, and
sometime in coatches, and walkes the streets in long gownes and velvet
coates?
7. Greenes Funeralls. 1594. By R. B.
(A series of verses eulogizing Greene most highly. Valuable for its
list of Greene's works.)
8. Warner. Pan his Syrinx. 1584. In 2nd Ed. 1597.
A scholler better than my selfe on whose grave the grasse now
groweth green, whom otherwise, though otherwise to me guiltie, I name
not.
(Warner is probably accusing Greene of plagiarism in that he took
the plot of Never too Late from his Opheltes.)
9. Francis Meres. Palladis Tamia. 1598. An English
Garner. Critical Essays and Literary Fragments, with an
Introduction by J. Churton Collins.
As Achilles tortured the dead body of Hector; and as Antonius and
his wife Fulvia tormented the lifeless corpse of Cicero; so Gabriel
Harvey hath showed the same inhumanity to Greene, that lies full low
in his grave, p. 19.
10. Rowlands. Tis Merrie when Gossips Meete. 1602.
Hunterian Club. A conference between a gentleman and
an apprentice.
PBENTICE
What lacke you Gentle-man? See a new Booke new come foorth.
Sir: buy a new Booke, sir.
GENTLEMAN
New Booke say'st: Faith I can see no prettie thing come foorth
to my humours liking. There are some old Bookes that I have more
delight in than in your new, if thou couldst help me to them.
EARLY ALLUSIONS TO GREENE 219
PRENTICE
Troth sir, I thinke I can shew you as many of all sorts as any in
London, sir.
GENTLEMAN
Can'st helpe mee to all Greenes Bookes in one volume? But I will
have them every one, not any wanting.
PRENTICE
Sir; I have the most part of them, but I lacke Conny-catching, and
some halfe dozen more: but I thinke I could procure them. There
be in the Towne I am sure can fit you.
11. Dekker. A Knights Conjuring. 1607. Percy So
ciety. Ed. Rimbault, Vol. 5. p. 76.
These were likewise carowsing to one another at the holy well,
some of them singing Paeans to Apollo, som of them hymnes to the
rest of the Goddes, whiTst Marlow, Greene, and Peele had got under
the shades of a large vyne, laughing to see Nash (that was but newly
come to their Colledge) still haunted with the sharpe and satyricall
spirit that followed him here upon earth.
12. Overbury. Characters. Ed. Rimbault. 1890. p.
101. A Chamber-maide.
She reads Greenes works over and over.
13. Taylor. The Water Poet. Works, Ed. 1630.
Spenser Soc. 1869. Praise of Hemp-Seed, p. 72.
In Paper many a Poet now survives
Or else their lines had perish'd with their lives,
Old Chaucer, Gower, and Sir Thomas More,
Sir Philip Sidney who the Lawrell wore,
Spencer, and Shakespeare did in Art exceil,
Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniel,
Silvester Beaumont, Sir John Harington.
14. Heywood. Hierarchic of the Blessed Angels. 1635,
p. 206.
Greene who had in both Academies ta'en
Degree of Master, yet could never gaine
To be called more than Robin.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ADAMS, JOSEPH QUINCY, Jr. Modern Philology vol. 3, p. 317, Jan.,
1906. Greene's Menaphon and The Thracian Wonder.
Mod. Lang. Notes, XXII. 225, Nov. 7, 1907. Robert Greene's ^
What Thing is Love?
AMEIS, THEODORUS. Jahresbericht hohere Burgerschule zu Langensala.
1869. On Robert Greene's Dramatical Style.
ARBER, EDWARD. A Transcript of the Stationers' Registers. 5 vols.
Privately printed. 1875-1894.
ATKINS, J. W. H. Cambridge History of English Literature. Chap.
XVI. Vol. III., p. 886. Elizabethan Prose Fiction.
AYDELOTTE, FRANK. Oxford Historical and Literary Studies. Vol. I.
Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds.
BAKER, G. P. Cambridge History of English Literature. Vol. V.,
Chap. VI., p. 136. The Plays of the University Wits.
BERNHARDI, WOLFGANG. Robert Greenes Leben und Schriften. Eine
historisch-kritische Studie. Leipzig, 1874.
BOAS, F. S. Shakespeare and his Predecessors. New York, 1908.
BODENSTEDT, F. M. VON. German Edition of Greene's Plays. Marlowe
und Greene als Vorldufer Shakespeares. Brunswick, 1858.
BOND, R. WARWICK. The Complete Works of John Lyly. 3 vols.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902.
BRADLEY, HENRY. Mod. Lang. Rev. vol. I., 3, 208 flf. Some Textual
Puzzles in Greene's Works.
BRERETON, J. LEGAY. Mod. Lang. Rev. Vol. II., p. 34. The Rela
tion of The Thracian Wonder to Greene's Menaphon.
BRIE, F. Eng. Stud. Vol. 42, p. 217. Lyly und Greene.
BROOKE, C. F. TUCKER. The Authorship of 2 and 3 Henry VI.
The Tudor Drama. A History of English National Drama to the
Retirement of Shakespeare. Houghton Mi ill in Co. 1911.
BROWN, J. M. New Zealand Magazine, No. 6. April, 1877. pp.
97-133. An Early Rival of Shakespeare. Reproduced substan
tially in Vol. I. of Grosart's edition of Greene's Works.
BULLEN, A. H. Article on Greene in Dictionary of National Biography.
221
222 BIBLIOGRAPHY
CARD, J. Eng. Stud. Vol. 2, p. 141. Die Historischen Elemente in
Shakespeares Sturm und Wintermarchen.
CHANDLER, F. W. The Literature of Roguery. Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1907.
COLLIER, J. P. The History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of
Shakespeare: and Annals of the Stage to the Restoration. 3 Vols., 1831.
COLLINS, J. C. The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene. Clarendon
Press, 1905. 2 vols.
CONRAD, HERMANN. Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft.
XXIX-XXX, 1894, p. 210. Robert Greene als Dramatiker.
COOPER, C. H. Athenae Cantabrigiensis.
COURTHOPE, W. J. A History of English Poetry. Macmillan and
Co., 1906.
CRAWFORD, CHAS. Collectanea, First Series, 1906. Edmund Spenser,
"Locrine," and "Selimus."
CREIZENACH, W. Anglia, 1885, Vol 8, p. 419. Zu Greene's James
the Fourth.
CUNLIFFE, J. W. Cambridge History of English Literature. Vol. 5,
Chap. IV, p. 68. Early English Tragedy.
DANIEL, P. A. Athenaeum, Oct. 8, 1881, p. 465. Greene and Cinthio.
ibid. April 16, 1898, p. 512. "Locrine" and "Selimus."
DEBATE BETWEENE PRIDE AND LOWLINESS. By F. T. Shak. Soc.
Pub., Vol. XVII., 1841.
DELIUS. N. Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft. XV.,
1880, p. 22. Greene's Pandosto und Shakespeare's Winter's Tale.
DICKINSON, T. H. The Complete Plays of Robert Greene. Mermaid
Series, 1909.
DISRAELI, ISAAC. Calamities of Authors: Literary Ridicule. Illus
trated by some Account of a Literary Satire.
DYCE, ALEXANDER. Collected Plays and Poems of Robert Greene, 2
vols., 1831. Contains an account of author and list of works.
Dramatic and Poetical Works of Robert Greene and George Peele.
1 vol., 1858.
ERSKINE, JOHN. The Elizabethan Lyric, A Study. Columbia Uni
versity Press, 1905.
FLEAY, F. G. A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William
Shakespeare, Player, Poet, and Playmaker. New York, 1886.
A Chronicle History of the London Stage, 1559-1642. 1890.
A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama.
FURNIVALL, F. J. The Shakespeare Library, 1907. The Rogues and
Vagabonds of Shakespeare's Youth.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 225
SYMONDS, J. A. Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama, v
New Edition, 1904.
TOYNBEE, PAGET. Athenaeum, Feb. 15, 1902, p. 216. References to
Dante.
VETTER, Verhandlungen der 44 Versammlung dtsche Philologen und
Schidmdnner. Robert Greene und Seine Prosa.
VILES, EDWARD. (See under Furnivall.)
WARD, A. W. A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of v
Queene Anne. London, 1875.
Marlowe's Faustus and Greene's. Friar Bacon. Oxford, 1901.
4th ed. Old English Drama.
WILSON, JOHN DOVER. Library, 1909, p. 361. New Ser., 10. Euphues
and the Prodigal Son.
WOLFF, SAMUEL LEE. Eng. Stud. Vol. 37. Robert Greene and the
Italian Renaissance.
The Greek Romances and Elizabethan Prose Fiction. New York, 1912.
INDEX
Achilles Tatius, 35
Acolastus, 54, 55, 56 (summary),
58, 67, 72
Adventures of Master F. J., 120
Ethiopian History, The, 35
Alarum against Usurers, 91, 92 n.
Albums England, 40
Alcida, 25, 72 n., 167, 168 n., 176
Allott, Robert, 184, 185
Alphonsus, 174-177, 184, 190-193,
194, 196, 197
Anacreon, 137
Anatomie of Absurditie, 168 n.
Ann of Bohemia, 38
Arbasto, 27, 37, 39, 45, 59, 165
Arcadia, 6, 32 n., 34, 41
Ariosto, 193
Astrophel and Stella, 135
Audeley, John, 87 n.
Bacon, Francis, 48
Barnfield, Richard, 146, 162
Belleau, Remy, 137
Blacke Booke, 3, 103 n., 116
Blacke Bookes Messenger, 3, 82,
100, 104, 107-109, 115, 173
Breton, Nicholas, 146, 155, 162
Browne, William, 146
C. Mery Talys, 110
Carde of Fancie, 7, 37, 39, 48,
65-66, 165
Caveat or Warning for Commen
Cursetors, 85 n., 91, 92
Censure to PhUautus, 23-24, 167
Chettle, Henry, 169
Chevalier du Soliel, Le, 38 n.
Cinthio, Giraldi, 31 n., 196
City Nightcap (Davenport's), 43 n.
Clitophon and Leucippe, 35
Cobler of Canterbury, The, 54, 70,
170
Complaints (Spenser's), 175, 186
Daniel, Samuel, 175 n.
Daphnis and Chloe, 35, 39, 189
Day, Angel, 35, 39
Debate between Pride and Lowli
ness, 122, 124
Decameron, 21
Defence of Conny Catching, 82,
96-107, 109, 111, 120, 172,
179
Dekker, Thomas, 10, 92 n.
Deloney, Thomas, 10
Diary (Henslowe's), 178, 180
Disputation belweene a Hee and a
Shee Conny-Catcher, 82, 99, 100,
103 n., 105, 107, 115-121, 124,
172
Doctor Faustus, 195
Dowgate, The shoemaker of, 4
Drayton, Michael, 175 n.
El Relox de Principes, 11
Englands Helicon, 174 n.
Englands Parnassus, 184
Estienne, Henri, 137
227
228
INDEX
Euphues, 10, 13-17, 35, 37, 45, 47,
55, 63, 76 n., 78 n., 189
Euphues Shadow, 16 n.
Faerie Queene, 186
Faire Em, 180, 181
Farewell to Follie, 23, 69, 70, 72,
80, 103 n., 166 n., 167, 171, 172,
181, 185
Fenton, Geoffrey, 11, 16, 127
Francescos Fortunes, 27, 59-62, 63,
65, 68, 71, 80, 103 n., 141, 154,
155, 169, 171, 172
Fraternitye of Vacabondes, The,
87 n.
Friar Bacon, 78 n., 180-181, 184,
188, 190, 195-196, 197, 199
Gascoigne, George, 12 n., 20,
120, 127, 134 n., 146 n., 148,
178 n.
George-a-Greene, The Pinner of
Wakefield, 182, 184, 187-189
Gli Asolani, 20
Glasse of Government, 55 n.
Gnaepheus, 54
Governor (Elyot's), 11
Greene, Robert, brief summary of
his life, 1-2; personal appear
ance and character, 2-3; last
illness and death, 3-4; letter to
his wife, 3-4; general attitude
toward literature, 5; general
literary qualities, 5-8; his mot
toes, 9; his Mamillia, 14-19;
his Morando, 21-22; his Fare
well to Follie, 23; his Censure to
Philautus, 23-24; his Penelopes
Web, 25; his Alcida, 25; his
Planetomachia, 25; his Pery-
medes, 26; his Orpharion, 26; as
an introducer of Italian thought,
27; his Tompkins the Wheel
wright, 28; his story of Val-
dracko, 29; the narrative art
of his frame-work tales, 28-34;
his relations with Greek Ro
mance, 34 seq.; his Second Part
of Mamillia, 37; his Arbasto, 37;
his Pandosto, 37-39; his Mena-
phon, 39-42; his Philomela, 43;
his Ciceronis Amor, 43; his
attitude toward Fortune, 43;
conventionality of his style in
fiction, 45-49; his character
ization, 49-52; his Spanish
Masquerado, 53; his Royal Ex
change, 53; his adoption of the
motto, sero sed serio, 53—54;
influence of the prodigal son
story upon him, 55 seq.; his
Mourning Garment, 56-59; his
Never too Late, and Francescos.
Fortunes, 59-62; his Mirrour of
Modestie, 61; his Groatsworth of
Wit, 62-65, 72-76; his Garde
of Fande, 65-66; interpreta
tion of his prodigal son pam
phlets, 66-72; Gabriel Harvey's
account of his death, 74;
purity of his writings, 75;
his Repentance, 76-79; his
travel on the continent, 77 n.;
a list of his social pamphlets, 82;
his Notable Discovery of Coos-
nage, 82-83; his Second Part
and his Thirde Part, 83; his
adoption of the motto, nascimur
pro patria, 84 seq.; his de
fence of the style of the social
pamphlets, 85 n.; the serious-
INDEX
229
ness of his social pamphlets,
87 seq.; his use of the Manifest
Detection of Dyce Play, 89-91;
his accuracy in the social
pamphlets, 91-96; the Defence of
Conny Catching, and his author
ship of it, 96-107; a new step in
the Greene-Harvey-Nashe quar
rel, 105-106; his Blacke Bookes
Messenger, 107-109; signifi
cance of his social pamphlets as
narrative, 109-114; his Disputa
tion, 115-121; his Quippefor an
Upstart Courtier, 121-126; his
lost ballad, 127; relation of his
poems to his romances, 127-129;
his poetic themes, 129-144;
his Maidens Dreame, 142; his
metres, 144-155; merit of his
verse, with selections from
his poetry, 155-163; his Al-
phonsus, 174-177, 190-193; his
Looking Glasse for London and
Englande, 177-179; his Orlando
Furioso, 179-180, 193-195; his
Friar Bacon, 180-181, 195-196;
his James IV., 181-182, 196-
197; summary of the dates of
his plays, 182; his character
istics as a dramatist, 189-200;
summary of Greene's character
istics as a man and as an author,
201-205
Greenes Ghost Haunting Coni-
catchers, 90 n., 100 n.
Greenes Vision, 26, 71, 88, 94 n.,
132, 169, 170-172
Grimald, Nicholas, 134, 148
Groatsworth of Wit, 48, 59 n., 62-
65, 72, 73, 80, 139, 145, 170,
171, 173, 177, 183
Harman, Thomas, 85 n., 86 n.,
87 n., 91, 92, 93 n.
Harvey, Gabriel, 2, 74, 79, 105,
106
Harvey, Richard, 105, 106
Heliodorus, 35, 38
Henry VI., 182
Henslowe, Philip, 178, 179, 188
Heptameron, 21
Howard, Philip, Earl of Arundel,
166
Howell, Thomas, 139 n.
Hunting of Cupid, 181
II Cortegiano, 11, 12, 20
Isam, Mrs., 4, 79
James IV., 181-182, 188, 189,
196-197
Jamyn, Amadis, 136
Kind-Harts Dreame, 169
King Lear, 194
Knack to Know a Knave, A, 75 n.,
182, 183
Kyd, Thomas, 32, 189, 190, 201
La Burza Reale, 169
Lamb of God, 105
Laneham's Letter, 23 n.
Locrine, 186
Lodge, Thomas, 75 n., 91, 127, 125,
156, 162, 178, 183, 185
Longus, 35, 38
Looking Glasse for London and
Englande, 177-179, 183
Love's Metamorphosis, 25 n.
Lyly, John, 9, 10, 13, 16, 17, 35,
45, 46, 64, 69, 75, 138, 189,
201
230
INDEX
Macbeth, 190 Orpharion, 26, 53, 70, 103 n., 168,
Maidens Dreame, 142, 149 n., 170, 172
172
Mamillia, 14-19, 25 n., 33, 66, Painter> WiUiam> U' 16> 1(l8 n'
102 n., 164, 189
Mamillia, The Second Part, 37,
102 n., 127, 164
Pandosto, 36, 37-39, 45, 48, 66,
168, 197
Paradise of Daintie Devices, 140 n.,
1 A_f\
Manifest Detection of Dyce Play,
89_91 93 n Passionate Century of Love, 134
Marlowe, Christopher, 32, 52, 75, ^ulus Jovius, 185
Peele, George, 76, 138, 180, 181
Penelopes Web, 25, 103 n, 167
Perymedes, 26, 92, 103 n., 167, 168,
176
Petite Pallace of Pettie His Pleas
ure, A, 88 n.
Pettie, George, 11, 46, 88 n.
Philomela, 43, 140 n., 172
Phoenix Nest, 142, 149 n.
Planetomachia, 25, 29, 88 n., 104,
166
Poetical Rhapsody (Davison's),
137 n.
Pontano, his Aegidius, 26 n.
Primaudaye, his Academy, 22 n.,
23 n., 25 n., 167 n., 185
Printemps d'lver, 180
Nashe, Thomas, 2, 4 n., 6, 75, 105, P^^o-Anacreon, 137
168 n., 176, 177, 183 Quippefor an Upstart Courtier, A,
82, 99, 100 n., 101, 106, 121-126,
173, 193
133, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193,
196, 200
Martin Marprelate, 167 n.
Menaphon, 36, 39-42, 45, 48, 53,
128, 149 n., 155, 156, 168, 176,
177, 189, 197
Merrie Conceited Jests of George
Peele, 110
Milton, John, 190
Mirrour of Modestie, 61, 165
Morando, 21-22, 103 n., 166
Most Rare and Excellent Dreame, A,
142, 143, 149 n.
Mourning Garment, 56-59, 67, 69,
80, 167, 169, 171, 172, 181
Mucedorus, 185
Never too Late, 27, 59-62, 68, 69,
71, 77 n., 80, 103 n., 133, 140 n.,
169, 171, 172
News out of Purgatory, 152
Notable Discovery of Conny-Catch- 170, 171, 173
ing, 78 n., 82-83, 84, 85, 86, 87, Richard III., 190
90, 92, 102, 115
Noyes, Alfred, 151 n.
Repentance, 3, 66, 72, 76-79, 80,
Opheltes, 60, 65
Orlando Furioso, 100, 179-180,
188, 193-195, 196, 197
Riche, Barnabe, 11, 12 n., 46,
59 n., 65 n., 127
Rosalynde, 6, 152
Rowlands, Samuel, 10, 90 n., 92 n.,
100 n.
Royal Exchange, 53, 168, 185
INDEX
231
Sannazaro, 127
Schoolmaster (Ascham's), 11
Scillaes Metamorphosis, 178
Second Part of Conny-catching, 82,
83, 85, 86, 87, 89, 91 n., 101,
102, 172
Selimus, 182, 184^186, 187
Tarlton, Richard, 152
Teares of the Muses, The, 175
Thirde and Last Part of Conny-
catching, 82, 83, 92, 99, 100,
109, 111, 172
Tompkins the Wheelwright, 28
Tottel's Miscellany, 134, 148
Shakespeare, William, 32, 76, 136, TurberviUe, George, 134, 146
146, 152, 162, 199 Tusser, Thomas, 146
Shepherd's Calendar, 130
Sidney, Sir Philip, 75 n., 127, 135, Underdowne, Thomas, 35
152, 156
Siemowitsch (or Zeimowit), 38
Spanish Masquerade, 53,88 n., 168,
178
Spanish Tragedy, 32, 194
Visions of Bellay, 148 n.
Warner, William, 40, 60, 62 n., 65
Watson, Thomas, 134, 138 n.
Spenser, Edmund, 148 n., 175, 185 Watteau, 42
Steel Glas, 148
Studentes (of Stymmelius), 55, 72
Whetstone, George, 46
Whittington College, 96
Summers Last Witt and Testament, Whittington, Richard, 96 n.
183
Surrey, Earl of, 134, 148
Tamburlaine, 167 n., 174 n., 175,
176, 177, 189, 190, 191, 192,
193, 194
Tancred and Gismond, 186
Winter's Tale, 39 n.
Wither, George, 146
Woman in the Moon, 26
Wounds of Civill War, 185
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 134
"Young Juvenall," 75 n., 183
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Mary Astell. By FLORENCE M. SMITH, Ph.D. In press.
St. Jean de Crevecoeur. By JULIA POST MITCHELL, Ph.D. In press.
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