Robert GreeneHIS PLACE IN COMEDY

"Lo, here we come a-reaping, a-reaping,To reap our harvest-fruit.And thus we pass the year so long,And never be we mute."

"Lo, here we come a-reaping, a-reaping,

To reap our harvest-fruit.

And thus we pass the year so long,

And never be we mute."

Is it too much, then, to assume that the present song is to be restored somewhat as follows?—

Lo here we come a-sowing, a-sowing,And sow sweet fruits of love.All that lovers be pray you for me,—In your sweethearts well may it prove.

Lo here we come a-sowing, a-sowing,

And sow sweet fruits of love.

All that lovers be pray you for me,—

In your sweethearts well may it prove.

They would naturally enter with motions of sowing or of reaping, and the opening words would fit the action. Moreover, "In your sweethearts wellmay it prove" must refer to requital not for the act of sowing, but for the prayers invoked. These craft-songs were common enough. InSummer's Last Will and Testamentthe harvest-men sing an old folk-song of this kind, if one may judge by theHooky, hookyof the refrain, said by one of the Dodsley editors (ed. 1825, IX, 41) to be heard still "in some parts of the kingdom." The curious in these matters may find valuable information about songs of labour in general, with imitative action and suitable refrains, in Bücher'sArbeit und Rhythmus, Abhandlungen d. phil.-hist. Classe d. königl. Sächsischen Gesell. d. Wissenschaften, Bd. XVII.

Additional Note—P.368, l. 491, for 'church stile,' P. A. Daniel queries 'church ale'?—but see Overbury'Characters(Works, p. 145), "A Sexton": 'for at every church stile commonly ther's an ale-house.'

Robert GreeneHIS PLACE IN COMEDYA Monograph by G. E. Woodberry,Professor in Columbia University,New York.

A Monograph by G. E. Woodberry,Professor in Columbia University,New York.

Ofthe group of gifted college-bred men who had some part in the fashioning of Shakespearian drama and drew into their mortal lungs a breath of the element whose "air was fame," Greene has long been marked with unenviable distinction. He had the misfortune to try to darken with an early and single shaft the rising sun of Shakespeare; and he has stood out like a shadow against that dawning genius ever since. The mean circumstances of his Bohemian career, and the terribly brutal, Zolaesque scene of his death-chamber—the most repulsively gruesome in English literary annals—have sustained with a lurid light the unfavourable impression; and, were this really all, no one would have grudged oblivion the man's memory. The edition of his collected works, however, which Grosart gave to scholars, has enlarged general knowledge of Greene, and has permitted the formation of a more various image of his personality, a juster estimate of his literary temperament, and a clearer judgment concerning his position in the Elizabethan movement of dramatic imagination; and some few, even before this, had lifted up protestation against that ready damnation which seemed provided for him by his irreverence toward the undiscovered god of our idolatry who, then fleeting his golden days, seemed to this jaundiced eye "an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, ... the only Shake-scene in a country." Never were more unfortunate words for the "blind mouth" that uttered them. But there is more to know of Greene than this one speech; and though the occasion is not apt here for so complete a valuation of his character and temperament, his deeds and works, as is to be desired for truth's sake, yet it is needful to take some notice of his total personality as evinced in his novels, plays, poems, and pamphlets,in order to determine his relative station in the somewhat limited sphere of English comedy.

Marlowe is commonly regarded as the forerunner of the heroic strain in Shakespeare, with moulding influence on the imaginative habit of his younger fellow-workman in respect to that phase of his art; and Greene, who though he will never shine as a "morning-star" of the drama was at least a twin luminary with Marlowe, has been credited with occupying a similar position as the forerunner of Shakespeare with respect to the portrayal of vulgar life. It is hardly to be expected that an antithesis so convenient for the critics should be really matter-of-fact. The narrower distinct claim that the Clown in his successive reincarnations passed through the world of Greene's stage on his way from his old fleshly prison in the Vice of the primitive English play may require less argument; and in several other particulars it may appear that fore-gleams of the Shakespearian drama are discernible in Greene's works without drawing the consequence that Shakespeare was necessarily a pupil in every school that was open to him. Not to treat the matter too precisely, where precision is apt to be illusory even if attainable in appearance, was there not a plain growth of Greene as a man of letters closely attached to his time which will illustrate the general development of the age and its art, and naturally bring out those analogies between his work and Shakespeare's that have been thought of as formative elements in him by which his successor on the stage profited? The line of descent does not matter, on the personal side, if the general direction of progress be made out.

Greene was distinctively a man of letters. He was born with the native gift, and he put it to use in many ways. He tried all kinds of writing, from prose to verse, from song to sermon, and apparently with equal interest. He was college-bred and must have been of a scholarly and receptive temperament; he was variously read in different languages and subjects; and he began by being what he charged Shakespeare with being,—an adapter. His tales, like others of the time, must be regarded as in large measure appropriations from the fields of foreign fiction. Even as he went on and gained a freer hand for expression, he remained imitative of others,with occasional flashes of his own talent; and, dying young, he cannot be thought to have given his genius its real trial of thorough originality. In the main his work is derivative and secondary and represents or reflects literary tradition and example; he was still in the process of disencumbering himself of this external reliance when he was exhausted, and perished; and it is in those later parts of his work which show originality that he is attached to the Shakespearian drama. Slight examination will justify this general statement in detail. It is agreed that he drew his earlier novels from the stock-fiction, with its peculiar type of woman and its moral lesson; and he shows in these sensibility of imagination and grace of style. He was, more than has been thought, a stylist, a born writer; and this of itself would interest him in the euphuistic fashion, then coming to its height in Lyly; and besides he always kept his finger on the pulse of the time and was ambitious to succeed by pleasing the popular taste: he adopted euphuism temporarily, employing it in his own way. In the drama his play,Orlando Furioso, harks back to Ariosto, and it was when the stage rang withTamburlainethat he brought outAlphonsus, King of Aragon, and whenDoctor Faustuswas on the boards that he followed withFriar Bacon and Friar Bungay; on Sidney'sArcadiasucceeded his ownMenaphon; and ifJames IV.with its Oberon precededA Midsummer Night's Dream—which is undetermined—it was a unique inversion of the order which made Greene always the second and not the first. In view of this literary chronology it seems clear that in the start and well on into his career Greene was the sensitive and ambitious writer following where Italian tradition, contemporary genius, and popular acclaim blazed the way; and in so doing his individual excellence lay not in originality on the great scale, but in treatment, in his modification of thegenre, in his individual style and manner and purport—in the virtues, that is to say, of an able, clever, variously equipped man of letters whose talent had not yet discovered the core of genius in itself.

It is observable, too, in the earlier period of his work, that in his treatment of his material so derived, he displays the qualities of the weaker, the less robust literary habit; he uses refinement, he ischecked by his good taste, he strives for effects less violent, less sensational, less difficult in the sense that it requires less of the giant's strength to carry them off well. There is little, too, in this portion of his work which lets personality burn through the literary mould; that belongs to his late and stronger time. It is true that his novels have a moral in them for edification; but, although he had the preacher's voice, it is not here in the earlier tales that it is heard; it was the immemorial privilege of the Renaissance tale, however scandalous, to wear cowl and cassock. In the cardinal point of his delineation of female character, for which he is highly praised because of the purity and grace of the womanhood he presented, he follows the Renaissance convention, as it seems to me, but with refining and often true English touches—that ideal of Italian origin which is, on the whole, one of outline, of pale graciousness, of immobile or expressive beauty, pictorial; these women seem like lovely portraits which have stepped down out of a frame, and have only so much of life as an environment of light and air and silence can give them. Are they not, for example, as truly like Spenser's women—except where Spenser's are differentiated by doing "manly" parts—as they are prophetic of Shakespeare's simpler types? Greene, no doubt, incorporated in this ideal something of his own experience of noble and patient womanhood, possibly as he had known it in his wife, as Shakespeare embodied eternal reality in his creations; but it would not occur to me to believe that Shakespeare found a model for Ophelia or Imogen in the Lady Ida and Dorothea, any more than in Una and her sisters. All these before Shakespeare are of one family—they are the conventionalized Renaissance ideal variously modified and filled with richer artistic life; but in Shakespeare they pass into that clear luminous air where art and humanity are one thing. Greene should have our admiration for his sensibility to the type, for the appreciation with which he drew it, for the charm he thereby clothed his pages with; but as to there being a line of descent, that is altogether another thing; and in respect to Greene himself, his special female characterization imports the element of refinement in him, the trait of the less robust literary habit just spoken of. Similarly, he was of too sound taste to be long content to speak in the cut phrase of euphuism, and he soon laid the fashionoff; and, in his afterplay on theTamburlainemotive, it is a matter of debate whether he was parodying or rivalling Marlowe's large-languaged rhetoric, and, whichever he was doing, he was hampered by a better taste than his model, either laughing at it, or else without the giant's strength to succeed in the worser way, and toDoctor FaustusandFriar Bacon and Friar Bungay, so far as they are compared, like remarks apply. Greene has his own virtues in all these instances, but they are not those of originating power, of creative overflow, of genius of the Elizabethan stripe; they live within the narrower circle of improvement through refined taste, or else of satirical protest or comparative failure due to the same trait.

The thought of refinement in connection with Greene, the stress laid upon it here, has not been commonly prominent in writings upon him, and is out of harmony with our traditional impression of him—the envious and dying profligate in his misery. Yet it is to be found not only in his early portraits of womanhood of the pure type (he afterward presented a baser one), nor in the fact often noted of the marked purity of his works; but more pervasively in his continuing taste, in those habits and choices in the literary field, those revolts and reforms, which show the steady rightness of the man in his self-criticism and his criticism of current successes. I seem to feel this innate refinement in the limpidity of single lines; but it is plain to every one in the lovely lyrics which have sung themselves into the hearts of all lovers of our poetry, those songs, found in all anthologies of English verse, which bear Greene's name. He was a gross man, living grossly, as all know; but it sometimes happens that in such fleshly natures—as, every one will at once think, in Ben Jonson—there is found this flower of delicacy, the very fragrance of the soul; and so it was with Greene, and the lyrics are the mortal sign of this inward grace. It belongs with this, as has been observed by several writers, that of all the men who preceded Shakespeare, Greene most lets the breath of the English country blow through his pages, and likes to lay his scene in some rural spot. He loved the country; and yet, here too, protest may well be made when it is said that in this he led the way for Shakespeare; surely all country paths were open to the Warwickshirelad in his own right; nor need the difference be allowed that the forest of Arden is a conventionalized nature, as one critic maintains, while Greene's is of the soil—that is to mistake art for convention; but to say even this one word in passing in behalf of Shakespeare's nature-reality is superfluous, except that it suggests the different road by which Shakespeare here, as well as in his dealing with madness, witchcraft, and fairyland (in all of which Greene is said to have taught him), went his own ways, irrespective of comrades of the time. In this love of the country which Greene had lies the key to the better man in him and to his own native distinctions. Beneath his literary temperament, which seems an educational and professional veneer that should finally drop away, is his genuine nature—the man he was; and, life going on to imminent wreck, it became clear in his later works that he was more and more engaged in contemporary life, in what he saw and knew, and that he took his material from these; he had written autobiographical sketches and accounts of low life and its characters, and he had displayed certain tendencies toward preaching and sympathies with the unredeemed masses of humanity, all somewhat miscellaneously, and without any other art than a strong prose style; but, at the end, is it not manifest that he had grown into realism as his material, and into an attitude of moral denunciation and popular sympathy in dealing with it, and is not this the significance of his collaboration with Lodge inA Looking-Glasse for London and England, and of his own uniqueGeorge-a-Greene? All the earlier work seems to end, and new beginnings appear both in his renderings of contemporary realism, and in his most imaginative and various play,James IV.

The gradual substitution, then, as Greene came to his time of strength, of frank English realism for cultured Italian tradition and contemporary vital literary example, seems to be the true line of his growth. It shows distinctly in his choice of the English subject of Roger Bacon in place of Doctor Faustus, in his satire of certain aspects of court life, when he translated an Italian plot of Cinthio into apocryphal history asJames IV., in his presentation of the state of London in collaboration with Lodge, and in the half-rebellious play ofGeorge-a-Greene. This is the imaginative and artistic sideof what is practical in his pamphlets of personal repentance and cony-catching. Personally I seem to detect Puritanism morally in the one half, and Puritanism politically in the other half, of this late dramatic work; but it cannot be maintained that the case is certain. Apart from that, Greene was—what so few ever are, even in an Elizabethan environment—a humourist; and he used the old English comedy tradition as an element in his purely English work. The matter is so plain and comparatively so slight as to require the fewest words. In comedy specifically he gave examples, which he may be said to have first given in the sense that he gave them in an original or a developed form, of the court fool in Ralph, of the country bumpkin or crass fool in Miles, of the highly developed and wholly humanizedVicein Adam, of a special humouristic type (aptly characterized as the ancestor of Andrew Fairservice) in Andrew, otherwise not born till Sir Walter Scott's day, and of the true Shakespearian clown, the unmistakable one, in Slipper. Such was his definite service to comedy in respect to type; and criticism can only point it out, because the substance can be given only by reading the characters attentively. In regard to humour at large, it appears to me that in his hands, apart from linguistic felicity and wit, he presents a humour of situation tending toward pure farce, and a humour of intention tending toward pure satire of the social variety, and a humour of manners tending toward pure pleasantry as in the "Vail Staff" episode. The single link binding him with Shakespeare, in comedy is through the character of Slipper; and yet here, as in the other instances of female type, love of country scenes, and also in madness, witchcraft, and fairyland, I cannot believe that Shakespeare may not have arrived at his end—in this case, Launce—without necessarily being obliged to Greene for assistance. The bent toward contemporary realism, toward a well-languaged and winning clown, toward Englishry, which is another name for nature in human life and its setting, is plain in Greene; this was the running of the stream; but no larger inference follows from it in my mind than that Greene had worked out his growth, as Shakespeare in his apprenticeship also did, in similar directions, but that Greene had done it on national lines, whereas Shakespeare did it on universallines, that Greene had done it in a practical, whereas Shakespeare did it in an ideal way, and that Greene had done it largely under personal conditions, being at war with his fate as a mere man, whereas Shakespeare did it as a human spirit above the reach of material vicissitude. What one owed to the other is an insignificant detail at best; what is important is to observe in Greene the advancing movement of the drama in moral intention, in higher characterization, in original phases of humanity, in humour of more body and intellect, in comedy and fantasy approaching the goal of the Elizabethan spirit. Greene, it must be acknowledged, opened some veins that no one followed up; some of his characters and much of his sympathies were his own in an unshared way; but his work of all kinds ended with him, and, so far as he was an explorer of the way, he was most like one who, in our own time, may be an experimenter in some new force—his name is not associated with scientific history, with new invention, with discovery, but such success as he had was because his eye was on the element which men of his craft were working out more thoroughly than he himself.

It is pleasant to close this brief note on one of the most unfortunate of men whom our literature remembers, with a kindlier appreciation of him than has hitherto obtained. The mere volume of his writings indicates great industry; the criticism of them witnesses our respect for his endowments, his taste, his fundamental manhood; the analysis of them shows improvement in himself, and the power of mastery over the material given him in the direction of the true progress of art in his day; the very violence of his fate or of his repentances suggests that the nature so ruined may have been of finer and better metal than those who died and made no such sign of conscious self-obstruction: there remain the ideal women, the clear-cut comedians, the lovely lyrics, to plead for him as an accomplisher of art; and, in view of this, may we not forget the unhappy incident that has made him like the flitting bat in the slow dawn of our golden poet, and remember the much that he, dying so young, at thirty-two, accomplished before the day of his disappointment, the night of his deserted solitude, and the tragic ignominy of his death?

G. E. Woodberry.

Robert GreeneTHE HONORABLE HISTORIE OFFRIER BACONEdited with Critical Essay and Notesby Charles Mills Gayley, LL.D.,Professor in the University ofCalifornia.

Edited with Critical Essay and Notesby Charles Mills Gayley, LL.D.,Professor in the University ofCalifornia.

Life.[1137]—Robert Greene was born in Norwich of estimable parents, and "in his non-age" sent there to school. He was entered November 15, 1575, at St. John's, Cambridge. According to hisShort Discourse, he was even then "in his first yeares." We may, therefore, date his birth about 1560. At the university he "light amongst wags" as lewd as himself, and was by them drawn, probably after he had taken his B.A., 1578, "to travell into Italy and Spaine," where he "practizde such villainie as is abhominable to declare." After his return (probably before Part I. of hisMamilliawas entered for printing, October 3, 1580,—certainly by March 20, 1581, when his ballad ofYouthe[1138]was registered), he "ruffeled out in silks" posing as "malcontent"; but having in 1583,[1139]"by degrees proceeded M.A.," he betook himself to London, where as "Author of Playes and penner of Love Pamphlets" none soon was better known "than Robin Greene." Perhaps he was in Cambridge, September 6, 1583, when theSecond Part of Mamilliawas registered, for it is dated "from my Studie in Clare hall." Till about August 13, 1584, he was writing similar tales; and, despite a dissolute habit, he maintained favour with some of honourable calling. HisPlanetomachiaappeared in 1585; an edition of hisMorando[1140]is licensed during the next year. Between 1584 and 1586 he visited his former home, made a fleeting effort at reform, married a "proper young woman" of Lincolnshire,[1141]had a son by her, "cast her off," and returned to London. Here he gave himself "wholly to the penning of plaies," which with "other trifling pamphlets" were henceforth his "chiefest stay of living." Both kinds brought him popularityand envy.[1142]In July, 1588, he was incorporated M.A. at Oxford. In February, 1589, this "arch play-making poet" steps forth in the rôle of patriot with hisSpanish Masquerado; soon after with hisMourning Garment(S. R.November 2, 1590) in that of moralist. The didactic note had been already struck inThe Royal Exchange, early in 1590, and the penitential in theFarewell to Follie(S. R. 1587; pub. 1591); but both prevail inNever Too Late,[1143]1590. The disposition to serve the Commonwealth is further displayed in his series for the exposure of "coosnage," 1591-92. Whatever else he had written he now counts for "apples of Sodom." In July, 1592, he[1144]"canvazed" the brothers Harvey in hisQuip for an Upstart Courtier, but of this we have only the eviscerated remains. Soon afterward he indulged in that memorable surfeit of pickled herring and Rhenish wine. The ensuing sickness at the shoemaker's in Dowgate,—Greene's friendless lot, "lousie circumstance," mistresse,[1145]bastard, and corpse,—Gabriel Harvey[1146]has embalmed with the foul peculiar juices of his spite. Those last weeks Greene spent writing hisGroatsworth of Witwhich is partly, and hisRepentancewhich is wholly, autobiographical, to dissuade men from a like "carelesse course of life." He sent back their son to his wife; and the night of his death received "commendations" from her "whereat he greatly rejoiced," and wrote a pathetic farewell. That was September 3, 1592. Mrs. Isam, his hostess, garlanded the dead poet with bays; and he was laid in the New Churchyard, near Bedlam.

Misapprehensions concerning Greene.—On the title-page ofPlanetomachia, 1585, Greene subscribes himself "Student in Phisicke"; and from this it has been inferred by most of his biographers that he was then studying medicine. But for Greene, as for Chaucer and Gower, whom he diligently perused, 'phisicke' sometimes meant natural philosophy,[1147]and always included a groundingin 'astronomie.'[1148]The word is here used with reference to the 'magic natural' of his subject,—the book being a narrative dispute of astrological influences.

According to popular assertion, substantiated by the arguments of Dyce, Fleay, Grosart, and others, Greene was at one period a parson. Careful investigation convinces me that this assertion is untrue. Our dramatist cannot have been the Robert Greene who, asunus Capellanorum nostrorum Capellæ nostræ Regiæ, was in 1576 presented by Elizabeth to the rectory of Walkington in Yorkshire; for at that time he was but a freshman at Cambridge. Nor can he[1149]have been the Robert Greene who from June 19, 1584, to February 17, 1586, was Vicar of Tollesbury in Essex; because according to his own story,[1150]that period was covered by other events: to wit, the conviction of sin in St. Andrew's at Norwich (while he was yet "newly come from Italy," end of 1584 or beginning of 1585), a "motion" which vastly amused his "copesmates," but lasted "no longer than the present time"; the relapse; the marriage "soon after to a gentleman's daughter" (sometime in 1585); the brief sequel of "wickedness" during which he "spent up" his wife's marriage-money; the "casting off" of the wife; and the return to play-writing in London. This last, six years before his death; therefore in 1586. Such manner of life is not that of the Vicar of Tollesbury; nor is the recital that of Greene if he ever was vicar of anything.

Mr. Fleay[1151]attempts to identify Greene, as Robertthe parson, with one Robert Persj or Rupert Persten of Leicester's troupe acting between December, 1585, and July, 1587, on the Continent. There is, however, no proof that Greene was with these "instrumentalists and acrobats"; nor is the namePersjorPersten, as it appears in the Danish and Saxon records, either the English nameParsonor a translation of the calling of parson into Danish orGerman. Actor King becameKoningandKonigk, and actor Pope,PapeandPabst,—but Persj, Percy, Persten, or Preston was untranslatable. Indeed, if the argument proves anything, it proves too much. For if Mr. Fleay's Persten (or as he coerces it,Priester)is Greene, Vicar of Tollesbury, this Vicar must have been acting abroad three months of the period during which he was preaching at home;—a dual activity terminated, moreover, not by the vestry of Tollesbury, which would appear to have enjoyed this unusual programme, or by the bishop, but by the Vicar himself, whose resignation is recorded as "free and spontaneous."[1152]

It is certainly safer to accept Greene's own story and the publishers' records, which, taken together, show that his marital estate was a debauch with rare intervals of business activity. During this periodArbastoand the enlargedMorandowere registered andPlanetomachiawas printed.

A writer of Greene's self-exhibitive temper would not have hesitated, and one of his didactic tendency could not have failed, to present the world with an account of an episode which, if it existed, was the most sensational of his moral experiences. But in none of his writings, autobiographical, or quasi-autobiographical, does Greene give even remote intimation of taking orders. On the contrary he speaks as a layman, and a very wicked layman, too; as one who from infancy was bred in sin, and who held aloof from God's ministers. So far was he from the possibility of orders that when, in his youth, "once and yet but once" he "sorrowed for his wickedness of life," his comrades could conceive of no huger joke in the world than to wish that he "might have a pulpit."Robertoof theGroatsworth, "whose life in most part agreed" with his, was never a minister, nor was either of Greene's other understudies,PhiladorandFrancesco. InGreene's Vision, which, whether authentic or not, is contemporaneous, the advice given to our dramatist "Be a devine, my sonne," is dismissed as out of the question, though that consummation were most devoutly to be desired. None of his associates of later years[1153]betrays acquaintance with his ministerial career,not Nashe or Burbye or Dekker or Heywood or Chettle. None of his panegyrists. And of his enemies not even Gabriel Harvey.

We may therefore conclude that the famous passage inMartine Marsixtuswhich (with a context partly relative to Greene) announces that "every red-nosed minister is an author" does not apply to Greene, but to any "unauthorized author who serves a drunken man's humor," or that the insinuation has reference to some sobriquet born of Greene's paroxysms of pentitence and mourning pamphlets. And, indeed, a nickname may have attached itself to this wayward child of circumstance, as early as that critical period in Norwich when his copesmates called him "Puritane and Presizian ... and other such scoffing tearmes." What more likely than "Parson," since they had gone so far, Greene tells us, as towishhim a pulpit? But if he had a pulpit, what becomes of the joke? and of his own word—"the good lesson went quite out of my remembrance ... I went forward obstinately in my misse"?

As to the manuscript notes in the 1599 copy ofThe Pinner of Wakefield, the first of which states that Shakespeare said that the play was "written by ... a minister who ac[ted] ye piñers pt in it himself," and the second, in another hand, that Juby said that "ys play was made by Ro. Gree[ne],"—it must be remembered that both attributions are hearsay; that both notes are anonymous; that one or both may be fraudulent; that there is no certain proof that they were written by contemporaries; and finally that, unless their contents are shown to be accurate as well as authentic, and to refer to the same author, they do not connect any Robert Greene with the ministry. Since our Greene's writings show that he was no minister, there is but one hypothesis upon which, assuming the accuracy and relevancy of both these manuscript notes, he can be the person indicated; namely, that the designation, minister, used by Shakespeare, was a nickname. And, conversely, Shakespeare's remark can be credited in its literal significance only if the play wasnotby our Greene. In the latter event, the attribution of authorship to a minister, taken in connection with Ed. Juby's attribution to a certain Ro. Greene, would denote some parson-playwright to whom no other play has been traced—Robert of Walkington, or Robert of Tollesbury, or some other of this not unusual name.And in that case it would be easy to understand how the name of an obscure author, if mentioned by Shakespeare, should have slipped the memory of the title-page scribe. Internal evidence, as will later be seen, is not conclusive of Greene's authorship; but even if it were, it would not prove that he was a minister.

It may be conceded that, like other Elizabethan dramatists, he assumed a part upon the stage. But that he adopted the calling, or ever stood a chance of enjoying "its damnable excessive gains," is only less improbable than that he was a parson. Dyce's quotation from Harvey to the effect that Greene was "a player" misapprehends the "puissant epitapher" who was merely enumerating the "thousand crotchets" that littered Greene's "wilde head, and hence his stories."[1154]None of his contemporaries hints that Greene was an actor; none regards him in that light. He himself despised the profession.

In respect of his relations with Shakespeare, I cannot but feel that he has been harshly judged. We shall be justified in calling theShakesceneremarks unduly rancorous when it has been ascertained that the "admired inventions" of Greene and of those whom he was addressing in theGroatsworthhad not been borrowed by the young actor-playwright; or that Greene should have let himself be plundered without protest by this revamper of plays because the revamper was destined some day to be illustrious, in fact to be the Shakespeare. I have not observed that dramatistset id omne genus, nowadays, offer the cheek with any more Christian grace than characterized Robert Greene.

His Development as a Dramatist: Order of Plays.[1155]—A painstaking investigation of the evidence leads me to conclude that none of the plays assigned to Greene was produced before the end of 1586, or, probably, the beginning of 1587; that their order is as follows:Alphonsus,Looking-Glasse,Orlando,Friar Bacon,James IV.; and that ifSelimusand thePinnerare his, they range respectively withAlphonsusandJames.

1. The earliest extant exemplar ofThe Comicall Historie of Alphonsus, King of Aragon, by R. G.,[1156]and without motto, "as it hath bene sundrie times acted" was "brinted" by Thomas Creede, London, 1599. The play is generally supposed to have been written in emulation of theTamburlaine, which was on the stage in 1588,—perhaps, indeed, as early as the end of 1586.[1157]While similarity of diction and conceit might indicate a contemporaneous production, the lines inAlphonsus,—

"Not mighty Tamburlaine,Nor soldiers trained up amongst the wars,"[1158]

"Not mighty Tamburlaine,

Nor soldiers trained up amongst the wars,"[1158]

are proof presumptive of the priority of Marlowe's play. Indeed, Dr. Grosart is justified in asserting that "to takeAlphonsuswithout a tacit reference toTamburlaineis to miss the entire impulse of its writer"; for the dramatist appears to be attempting a burlesque; and the vainglorious claim that he makes for his hero[1159]is a manifest challenge to Marlowe and that bombastic brood. Greene may have been writing the play as early as 1587; he was, at any rate, interested in the hero then, for he mentions him in theDedicationtoThe Carde of Fancie.[1160]That theAlphonsuswas well known in the early spring of 1589 would appear from an allusion in Peele'sFarewell,[1161]which couples it withTamburlaineso closely as further to suggest that it already clung like a burr to its magniloquent predecessor. Whether the series of satiric reprisals in which, between 1588 and 1590, Greene and Nashe indulged at Marlowe's expense,[1162]was stimulated by some counter-burlesque ofAlphonsusis uncertain; but that Marlowe shortly before March 29, 1588, had been privy to some public burlesque of a production of Greene's, may reasonably be inferred from Greene's preface to thePerymedesof that date.For there we learn that two "gentlemen poets" had recently caused two actors to make a mockery of his mottoOmne tulit punctum, because his verse fell short of the bombast and blasphemy with which Marlowe captivated the vulgar. If it was the verse of theAlphonsusthat was derided by these "madmen of Rome," we have here a date before which the play had been both acted and burlesqued. Now, it is interesting to note that our earliest copy ofAlphonsus(1599) has neither motto nor colophon. This is strange, for in all other respects the edition is uniform with that ofJames IV., which had been brought out by the same publisher, Creede, only the year before, with Greene'sOmne tulit punctumupon its title-page. In fact, all other plays written by Greene alone, and bearing his name, have a motto of some kind. One may naturally query whether it was to Creede's advantage to dissociate this particular play from some eleven or twelve years' old derision; or, whether he was following, without definite purpose, the policy of some previous edition, now lost, which likewise had omitted the motto.

Be this as it may, there is, in the preface of March 29, 1588, undoubted allusion[1163]to Greene and Lodge'sLooking-Glasse, which, as will presently be shown, was written before June, 1587. TheAlphonsusmust be assigned to a still earlier date, because, in its prologue,[1164]it gives evidence of priority to Greene's other efforts in serious or heroic style. This conclusion is confirmed by an examination of the play. The copious crude employment of mythological lore, the creaking mechanism of the plot, the subordination of vital to spectacular qualities, betray an inexperience not manifest in Greene's other dramatic output. Moreover, in spite of the fact that our edition ofAlphonsusappears to preserve the details of the author's holograph, the versification makes a clumsier showing than in the rest of his plays. The lines are frequently rhymed, sometimes within the speeches, but more often in a perfunctory fashion at speech-ends. And, though this practice wanes as the play proceeds, the verses are throughout more frequently endstopped,and the rhythm more mechanical, than in the other dramas. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of the lines have the monotonous cæsura at the end of the second foot; and of the lyric cæsuræ, which shouldpar excellencelend variety to the verse, about eleven-twelfths fall in the middle of the third foot. We may indeed say that in four-fifths of the lines these sources of sameness prevail. Of prose there is no sign. Both in material and style the play is inelastic, only too easily open to attack. That Greene should prefix theOmne tulit punctumof his popular prose romances was natural, but it was also courting the attack of Marlowe, Kyd, or any gentleman-poets derisively inclined.

2.A Looking-Glasse for London and Englandmade by Thomas Lodge, Gentleman, and Robert Greene,in Artibus Magister, is called by Professor Brown the "finest and last" of the plays in which Greene had a hand, and is assigned to a date "after Lodge's return from Cavendish's expedition in 1591." This conjecture may at once be dismissed,[1165]for that expedition did not start till August 26, 1591; none of its ships returned before June 11, 1593; and, by that time, Greene was dead. The play was registered in May, 1594, and our earliest exemplar (Creede) was printed in the same year. Henslowe records the presentation of the play, but not as new, March 8, 1591-92. We have abundant proof of its popularity. Therefore, since only four representations are recorded during the remainder of that season, which lasted till June 22, 1592,[1166]it must have had its run at an earlier date. Spencer's line inThe Tears of the Muses, 1591, about the "pleasing Alcon" has been regarded as an allusion to Lodge's authorship of that character in theLooking-Glasse; and with some show of reason, for nearly all the speeches of Alcon are distinctively the work of Lodge.[1167]But an earlier reminiscenceof the play may be found in Greene's mention of Ninevie and Jonas in the dedication and epilogue of theMourning Garment, 1590. Since it appears, moreover, from a passage inScillaes Metamorphosis, that Lodge had renounced play-writing as early as 1589,[1168]Storojenko and Grosart date the composition ofLooking-Glassebetween the close of 1588 and the summer of 1589. I am sure that the date was earlier still; for, since theMetamorphosisfollowed immediately upon Lodge's return from a voyage with Captain Clarke to Tercera and the Canaries, any such playwriting as that of theLooking-Glassemust have been done before the departure of this expedition. According to Mr. Lee,[1169]the Expedition sailed "about 1588." Now the play contains no allusion to the Armada; it is, therefore, antecedently improbable that it was written in 1588later than the 29th of May. And since a modernized morality of God's wrath impending over London, if written in that year, could not have failed to echo the first mutterings of the Spanish thunderstorm, I am led to fix the composition before June, 1587, when Philip and Sixtus concluded their treaty against England.

The date of first presentation must have been appreciably before March 29, 1588, for a character, the 'priest of the sun,' which figured in theLooking-Glasse, but "in no other early play,"[1170]is mentioned in the introduction toPerymedes, already cited. Here, Greene asserts that even if his verse did not always "jet upon thestage in tragicall buskins," or his "everieworde" blaspheme, he could, an he pleased, fill the mouth "like the fa-burden of Bo-Bell, daring God out of heaven with that Atheist Tamburlan"; and, by way of proof, he sets side by side with Tamburlan, the impious ranting of his own "mad preest of the Sonne." The reference is, of course, to the scene in theLooking-Glasse, where the mitred priests of the sun, "carrying fire in their hands," hail Rasni as a "deitie";[1171]and he assumes that the mention of one of the characters will indicate the play,—a justifiable expectation if the play had been before the public for nine or ten months.

Though affected by its moral configuration, theLooking-Glasseis well constructed. In plot, characterization, manners (especially those of low life), in worldly wisdom and fervour, it leavesAlphonsusfar behind. The subtler handling of classical adornment and the bubble of the humour would, of themselves, justify us in assigning it to the same period withOrlandoandFriar Bacon. The advancing maturity is manifest also in its verse and prose. I do not attribute Greene's improvement in blank verse entirely to Lodge's coöperation; for Lodge's verse in theCivill War, 1587, was not markedly easier than that of theAlphonsus, and his verse in this play[1172]is but a trifle more elastic than in theCivill War. Taking at random fifty-seven of Greene's verses,[1173]I find that some fifty-two avoid the monotone, and, of these, no fewer than twenty-five escape the penthimimeral cæsura as well. In other words, five-sixths of the rhythms are free, and one-half of these skilfully varied. In the prophetic verses the monotone is properly more prevalent. About thirty per cent of Greene's have it. But even there almost half of the 'free' rhythms display artistic handling. Speech-end rhythms are fewer than inAlphonsus; rhyme, indeed, is altogether less in evidence—except in the prophetic rhapsodies. Lodge's lines for Oseas rhyme, however, more than Greene's for Jonas. Not only is the proportion of prose larger than in any other ofGreene's plays,—a feature which is, perhaps, due to the fact that each collaborator had his own set of mechanicals to exploit,—but the style of it is more conversational than in any preceding English play.

3. Our earliest impression ofOrlando Furioso, One of the Twelve Peeres of France, "as it was playd before the Queenes Maiestie," is published by Burbye, 1594. It had been entered for Danter, December 7, 1593, but was transferred to Burbye on the ensuing May 28. He issued a second edition in 1599.[1174]Greene was accused in 1592[1175]of having sold the play to the Lord Admiral's men while the Queen's company, to which he had previously disposed of it, was "in the country." Now the Queen's men had acted at court for the last time, December 26, 1591; and they did not reappear in London till April, 1593.[1176]But the Admiral's, meanwhile (February, 1592), had entered into a temporary alliance with Lord Strange's,[1177]through Henslowe and Edw. Alleyn; and under the auspices of the latter company almost immediately (February 21) theOrlandowas acted in one of Henslowe's theatres.[1178]It was already an old play; and Henslowe records no later performance. During the same period three or four other plays formerly belonging to the Queen's passed into the hands of Lord Strange's company.[1179]The date of the second sale ofOrlandowould accordingly seem to have been during January or February, 1592. It appears, then, that up to December 26, 1591, it belonged to the Queen's men; and it had probably been presented at court by them, for its classical and Italian features were evidently from the first designed to suit her Majesty's taste.[1180]

That the play was written later than July 30, 1588, may be deduced from a mention (ll. 89-95) of the "rebate" of "mightie Fleetes" which "Came to subdue my Ilands to their king;" for the allusion to the Armada is historically minute (note the conjunction of 'Portingale' with 'Spaniard' in reference to the start from Lisbon), the sequence does not savour of afterthought or actor's clap-trap, and the theme receives attention in other parts of theplay.[1181]Now, between the "rebate" of the Armada and the disappearance of the Queen's men from London that company acted at court ten times;[1182]and upon at least one of these occasions I conclude that theOrlandowas played. During the year that followed the Armada there are but two such occasions on record, December 26, 1588, and February 9, 1589; and of the latter the notice is open to question.[1183]In any case the former is more likely to be the date of the presentation ofOrlando; for the reference to the Armada, and the championing of Elizabeth under the figure of Angelica, would be the policy of a court play acted on the St. Stephen's day following the Spanish defeat. If this was the play, we may be sure that it won her Majesty's approval; and that the dramatist seized the opportunity to further his good fortune. And that is precisely what Greene did. In February, 1589, he brought out hisSpanish Masquerado, which was hailed with such enthusiasm that his friend Lodge declared that the name of Greene was become a terror to thegens seditieux, that his laurel was deathless, and that from a mortal he had become a companion of the gods.[1184]Now I incline to think that the success ofOrlandocontributed to this popularity; there is certainly not enough of political or literary worth in theMasqueradoalone to account for it. There is further reason for dating theOrlandobefore 1590 if the resemblances between it and theOld Wives Tale[1185]are due, as I think they are, to Peele's acquaintance with the former. And if, in hisFarewell, the same poet is alluding to our play, under the title ofCharlemagne,[1186]—which, considering Orlando's frequent brag of kinship with the emperor, is not unlikely,—the play must have been acted before the spring of 1589. That Greene was occupied with theOrlandoat a still earlier date would appear from his repeating in it no less than five of the character-names which he had used in one of the storiesof thePerymedes.[1187]Nor does the tracing of certain resemblances to their common source in the epos lessen the general probability that Greene's story and play were written at approximately the same period; the latter following, as the former had preceded, the summer of 1588. Mr. Fleay would, indeed, push the date back to 1587 "when the Admiral's men re-opened after the plague,"[1188]and Professor Brown sets it with that ofAlphonsusandBacon, between 1584 and 1587;[1189]but I do not think that the contents warrant either of these conclusions.

Though theOrlandomust be of later date than theAlphonsus,[1190]it betrays the influence of the still earlierTamburlaine. But it is more than a sensational or spectacular play; it is a parody of the ranting "mad plays" which were then the rage. Numerous characteristics which appear to some critics to be defects of construction are proof of this. Orlando's sudden insanity and the ridiculously inadequate occasion of it, the headlongdénouement, the farcical technique, the mock-heroic atmosphere, the paradoxical absence of pathos, the absurdly felicitous conclusion,—all seemingly unwitting,—are purposive and satirical. Of such a burlesque the author ofThe Spanish Tragedy,[1191]perhaps of the pre-ShakespearianHamlet, may have been the butt. Greene and Nashe had no affection for Kyd. The raving and bombast of this play—the stuff, too, that the actor Alleyn injected—suggest a parody of Kyd; and the dates accord. At any rate I think it likely that theOrlando[1192]was produced while the pre-ShakespearianHamletwas fresh; and this consideration also looks toward 1588.

Many similarities of style may be pointed out betweenOrlandoand other of Greene's productions during 1588 and 1589.[1193]The resemblances toFriar Baconnot merely in diction, imagery, and allusion,[1194]but in quality of verse, are numerous. In respect of this last the plays may be considered together since they are of a piece. They were apparently written within a year of each other, both with a view to presentation at Court.

4. The earliest impression ofThe Honorable Historie of frier Bacon and frier Bongay(as it was plaid by her Maiesties servants) is of 1594, and was printed for Edward White, in whose name (substituted for Adam Islip's, erased) it had been entered, S. R. May 14, of the same year.[1195]The earliest record of its presentation is Henslowe's of 1591-92: "Rd at fryer bacone, the 19 of febrary, satter-daye ... xvijˢ iij.ᵈ" The play is first in the list of those performed by "my Lord Strange's men"; but is not marked "new." It is, however, a drawing play: Strange's men act it about once every three weeks, between February 19 and May 6; and once a week, between the ensuing January 10 and January 30, while Queen's and Sussex act it twice in an engagement of a week beginning April 1, 1593-94. It must have preceded the anonymous playFaire Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester, which imitates it[1196]—perhaps with ironic intent. Indeed,Baconwould seem to have been acted as much as twelve months beforeFaire Emappeared. For in Greene's Epistle (about the middle of 1591) prefixed to theFarewell to Follie, where he reproaches the imitating dramatist with general lack of invention and with profane borrowing from the Scriptures, he further twits him with having consumed "a whole year" in "enditing" his foolish and inartistic play.[1197]That is to say, a whole year from the production of the play which it so evidentlyimitated. Now, what was the date ofFaire Em? If, as Professor Schick[1198]points out, its main source was Jacques Yvers'sPrintemps d'Iver, it would probably follow the fresh editions of that book of 1588 and 1589. And it did. I place its date between that of Greene'sAddress to the Gentlemen Schollersprefixed to theMourning Garmentand that of theAddressprefixed to hisFarewell. For in the former he undertakes to forestall, in general, the "fooles" who may "scoffe" at his repentance, and in the latter while he makes a show of ignoring the "asses" that "strike" at him (i.e.at hisMourning Garment) he specifies one "ass" who may be expected to flout hisFarewell, viz., the author ofFaire Em,—that being indicated by quotations. In other words theFaire Emis to be dated between November 2, 1590 (when theMourning Garmentwas registered),[1199]and the middle of 1591 (when theFarewellwith this prefatoryAddress) appeared.[1200]Since the "blasphemous rhetoricke" ofFaire Emwas well known when Greene criticised it, we may suppose that the play had been in existence since November or December, 1590. And if its author had been "a whole year enditing" this imitation ofFriar Bacon, Friar Baconmust have been a notable play in November or December, 1589. But ifEnglands Mourninge Gowne, which was registered July 1, 1590, be Greene'sMourning Garmentunder another name,[1201]thenFaire Emmay have appeared as early as July or August of the same year; andFriar Bacon, precedingFaire Emby a twelvemonth, might be dated July or August, 1589. Even if we do not strictly construe Greene's "whole year," we must allow some such opportunity for the vogue ofFriar Bacon, and for the composition, presentation, and vogue ofFaire Em, before the publication of Greene's retort in the 1591 edition of theFarewell to Follie. Hence the period between July and the end of 1589 will probably cover the production ofFriar Bacon; but the latter limit might include the spring of 1590.

Mr. Fleay,[1202]reasoning from the insertion of Greene's longer motto as colophon to the 1594 exemplar, placesFriar Baconearlier than theMenaphon(S. R. August 23, 1589), in which he says Greene's shorter motto[1203]is first used. Of the validity of this test I am not convinced. Much more convincing is the argument based by the same indefatigable scholar upon a date suggested within the drama. St. James's Day, July 25, is mentioned (Sc. i.) as falling on a Friday. Mr. Fleay insists that in such cases dramatic authors used the almanac for the current year; and he shows that 1589 is the only year of such coincidence that will meet the conditions of this play. Since the attribution of the exact day of the week to a movable feast is more likely to follow than to precede the observance, I should regard July 25, 1589, the limit before which theBaconwas not finished. Now, not only the eulogy of Elizabeth at the end, but the euphuistic and classical style of the play, shows that it was intended for presentation at court. The only dates within the limits above prescribed on which the Queen's men played before her Majesty were December 26, 1589, and March 1, 1590. I lean to the former, St. Stephen's Day, as that on whichFriar Baconwas performed.

The relation of this play toDr. Faustusthrows additional light upon the question under discussion. We must first eliminate the assumption that Marlowe's "wall of brass"[1204]was borrowed fromFriar Bacon. The sources of the conception were common to both playwrights: theFamous Historie of frier Bacon, a story-book popular at the time, and "the tradition already borrowed from Giraldus Cambrensis by Spenser."[1205]And it is evident that Marlowe drew the scene where Robin conjures with one of Faustus's books directly from the story-book, not at all from Greene's play.[1206]I agree with Dr. Ward that Greene's play was suggested by Marlowe's, and that "it is hardly too great an assumption to regard Bacon's victory over Vandermast as a cheery outdoing by genuine English magic of the pretentious German article in which Faustus was the representative traveller." Greene's play is a romantic buthumorous, sometimes burlesque, treatment of a theme like Marlowe's, but familiar to the audience, and attractive because domestic. It may, indeed, be surmised that some scenes inFriar Baconare parodies of their pompous analogues inDr. Faustus.[1207]I think it has not been noticed that in the title of Greene's play we have a clue to his intention: the 'Honorable Historie' is in evident contrast with the 'Tragical Historie' of Dr. Faustus. For the word 'honorable' was not derived from the title of the story-book. That is a 'Famous Historie.' If he had acted in accordance with custom, Greene might have replaced 'famous' by 'comical,' to indicate the fortunate ending of his fable. No other drama that I know of, up to 1589, had been denominated an 'honorable' history. But, in this case, Greene had every provocation to emphasize the quality 'honorable.' For his purpose was to vaunt the superiority of the English magician above the tragically concluding German.

This consideration confirms the assignment ofFriar Baconto some time within a year after the production ofDr. Faustus(1588endor 1589beginning). So, also, the resemblances in style to Greene's other writings of that period. The love theme inFriar Baconis similar to that inTullie's Love(1589); the style is akin to that ofOrlando(December, 1588). These two are also closely related as dramatic productions. The earlier, to be sure, confines itself more narrowly to the satirical intent, while the later aims in æsthetic respects, also, to surpass its Marlowan predecessor. It is, consequently, an improvement uponOrlandoin construction and characterization. The dramatist is now working with free hand, and, for the first time in this field, employs the ease and invention for which, as a story-teller, he was already famous. In versification these two plays continue the methods of theLooking-Glasse;but the rhymed lines are sensibly fewer. InOrlandothey appear at the end of the first half-dozen speeches; inFriar Baconthey are to seek. In both plays, about three-quarters of the verses avoid the singsong pause at the end of the second foot. In theOrlando,I should say that more than a third of the verses escape, in addition, the penthimimeral cæsura; in theFriar Bacon, almost a third.The dodecasyllable with which Greene is experimenting in the interest of freedom, is somewhat frequent in both plays. For the reason already given, there is not so much prose as in theLooking-Glasse, perhaps only half as much. Still, ofOrlando, one-fifth is written in prose, and ofFriar Baconnearly a fourth.

5. Storojenko[1208]holds thatThe Scottish Historie of James the Fourthbetrays a novel tendency toward native themes and simple style, and that, withBaconandThe Pinner, it furnished the model for Shakespeare's romantic comedies. Professor Brown, pointing out thatJames IV.is "among the first plays to have an acted prologue and interplay," thinks that Shakespeare followed Greene's example in theTaming of the Shrewand theMidsummer Night's Dream; and he groupsJames IV.withThe Pinnerand theLooking-Glasseas later than the three other plays of Greene, and free from their "alluring pedantry."[1209]But we have already seen that theLooking-Glassepreceded bothOrlandoandBacon; and I think it can be proved thatJames IV.followed them. The unique exemplar, printed by Creede, "as it hath bene sundrie times publikely plaide," is of 1598, and is probably a reprint of a lost edition of 1594.[1210]Henslow makes no mention of the play; nor have we record of its acting. Storojenko conjectures some date after the summer of 1589 for its composition; Brown, some date between 1587 and 1592; Ward, about 1590; Fleay, after August 23, 1589,[1211]because it uses the shorter motto (but elsewhere,[1212]1591—probably in collaboration with Lodge).

The following observations will, I think, fix the limits as 1590-1591. Ida's lines, 270-279 in Act I., beginning "And weele I wot, I heard a shepheard sing,"[1213]are a reminiscence of theHeard-groome wᵗ his strawberrie lassein Peele'sHunting of Cupid: "Whatthing is love? for (wel I wot) love is a thing," etc.[1214]Notice the recurrence in Drummond's version of the "weele I wot." The "shepheard" to whom Ida has reference is, of course, one of the swains of theHunting, or Peele himself. TheHuntingwas not registered for printing till July 26, 1591; but then with the proviso "that if it be hurtful to any other copy before licensed ... this to be void." The proviso was frequently mere form, but it suggests that Greene may have drawn the verses from a manuscript copy, or from the public performance before July 26, 1591. I do not think that theHuntingwas written very long before it was registered, because the atmosphere and phraseology are still fresh in Peele's mind when he writes hisDescensus Astrææ, October, 1591. But it is interesting to note that there occurs a premonition or echo of these same verses on Love in Greene'sMourning Garment,[1215]which had been registered in 1590, from eight to twelve months before the registration of theHunting. We may, with reasonable latitude, assign the composition of theHuntingto the year 1590, and that ofJames IV. to a later date in proximity to that of Greene'sMourning Garment—say about July, 1590. Confirmation of this conclusion may be found in other resemblances of sentiment and style betweenJames IV. and theMourning Garment,[1216]as well as in Dorothea's reference to the Irish wars, which may havebeen suggested by the contemporary rising in Fermanagh; for, since the suppression of Desmond, in 1583, there had been comparative quiet in Ireland. Though the play exhibits little of the affected style which Elizabeth demanded, it is courtly, and the graceful compliment to the queen and the (English) rose in the laudation of Dorothea's attributes, together with that heroine's forecast of a union between Scotland and England,[1217]might indicate a view to court presentation, and a date of composition when such union was favourably contemplated. The further boast of Dorothea:—

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