Chapter II: Introduction (2)

About 1585 there was produced Thomas Kyd's _The Spanish Tragedy_, a tragedy of blood, of madness, and revenge, with many ingredients of the Senecan plays. This play and Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_ were the chief sensations of the English stage of the sixteenth century. No single play of Shakespeare's can be said to have had the instantaneous popular success and the immediate and widespread imitation given to both of these plays. In the next play that Greene wrote unaided after the failure of his _Alphonsus of Arragon_ there is discernible an entire change in the author's attitude. He is no more originative than he was before, but he does not again attempt to treat an imitative drama in the spirit of its original. Certain of the scenes of _Alphonsus of Arragon_ were ridiculous enough, but they were undertaken in no apparent spirit of burlesque. In _Orlando Furioso_ Greene proceeds to parody the two most popular types holding the boards in his day. The real hero of _Orlando Furioso_ is not the mad French knight, Orlando, but Sacripant. And Sacripant is a foiled Tamburlaine, a high aspiring king whose ambition comes to nothingness. In the spirit of Macbeth, who himself had something of Tamburlaine's lust of conquest, are the words of Sacripant: "I hold these salutations as ominous; for saluting me by that which I am not, he presageth what I shall be." And in the musings of Sacripant there operates the spirit of Tamburlaine. "Sweet are the thoughts that smother from conceit," he reflects; his chair presents "a throne of majesty"; his thoughts "dream on a diadem"; he becomes "co-equal with the gods." The lines beginning "Fair queen of love," spoken by Orlando (p. 187 of this edition) remind us of the lofty yearning love of Tamburlaine for Zenocrate. As a play _Orlando Furioso_ is _Tamburlaine_ by perversions, and purposely so. Its chief martial spirit strives for high ends by ignoble means. He fails to win his mistress, and he fails to win his throne; done out of both by a madman. If this play is a perversion of the _Tamburlaine_ motive, it is also a burlesque on the tragedy of blood. There are indications that Greene would have been quite willing to ridicule Kyd. Nash, in the same preface to _Menaphon_ in which he had ridiculed Marlowe, satirises Kyd in the famous lines, "blood is a beggar," and "whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of tragical speeches." Kyd, as a non-university man, represented that rising coterie, of which Shakespeare was the master, against whom the jealous shafts of the university wits were directed. The signs of the influence of the tragedy of blood type are many. In the balanced and parallel lines of Senecan character, and found little elsewhere in Greene:

"Only by me was lov'd Angelica,
Only for me must live Angelica."

and

"'Angelica doth none but Medor love,'
Angelica doth none but Medor love!";

in the allusions to Orestes, "Orestes was never so mad in his life as you were"; in the symbols of a classic Hades, Pluto and Averne; in the interspersed quotations from Latin and Italian; in the vague continental setting; in the use of a chorus; in the unheroic revenge motive; in the burlesque death, and the tearing of limb from limb; in "Orlando's sudden insanity and the ridiculously inadequate occasion of it, the headlong _dénouement_, the farcical technique, the mock heroic atmosphere, the paradoxical absence of pathos, the absurdly felicitous conclusion,--all seemingly unwitting,"[11] we have either imitated or burlesqued the characteristics of the popular revenge and blood play.

That _Orlando Furioso_ was not written after 1591 is clear from a passage in _A Defence of Conny-catching_ (1592) in which Greene is charged with selling the play twice, once to the Queen's players for twenty nobles, and, when these had gone to the provinces, to the Admiral's men for as many more. As the Queen's players left the court 26th December 1591, the play must have existed before that date. A reference to the Spanish Armada provides 30th July 1588 as a posterior limit. No valid conclusions can be drawn from certain resemblances between lines in this play and lines in Peele's _Old Wives' Tale_,[12] on account of uncertainty as to the date of the latter play. There seems no reason to doubt that Gayley is right in pointing out 26th December 1588 as the date of the first performance of the play before the Queen at court.

About the time that Greene's _Orlando Furioso_ appeared there was presented, perhaps at the same play-house, the Theatre, Marlowe's play, _Dr Faustus_. In this play Marlowe treated with characteristic intensity the tragical story of a magician who aspired for wisdom as _Tamburlaine_ had aspired for power. Magic and witchcraft were popular in English literature. The story of _Dr Faustus_ was issued in German in 1587, and an English translation was probably made about the same time. The prose narrative of _The Famous History of Friar Bacon_ must also have been well known. Magic and incantation had already been used by Greene in the Brazen Head of _Alphonsus of Arragon_, in Melissa of _Orlando Furioso_, and in the priests of Rasni in _A Looking-Glass for London and England_. But that Marlowe was the first to see a large dramatic motive in the conventional magic is certain. Here again we must accept it that Marlowe was the leader and Greene the adapter. We must agree with Collins that "the presumption in favour of _Faustus_ having preceded Greene's play is so overwhelmingly strong that we cannot suppose that Marlowe borrowed from Greene." But Greene's _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ is by no means an imitation of _Dr Faustus_, nor is it a mere parody. Through his new mastery of technique Greene was deriving a method of his own that was to make him an effective and independent story-teller. Also there was developing in his art a refinement and sanity that revolted from the broadly-drawn conceits and exaggerated passion of Marlowe's early style. There is something suggestively ironical in the opposition of the titles of the two plays, the _honourable_ history of _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_, as compared with the _tragical_ history of _Dr Faustus_. So also there must be some delicate satire in the comic summoning of Burden and the Hostess as opposed to the impressive evocation of Alexander and Helen. And one of the chief episodes in the play may have a jocose oblique reference to _Dr Faustus_. "It is hardly too great an assumption," says Ward, "to regard Bacon's victory over Vandermast as a cheery outdoing by genuine English magic of the pretentious German article," represented in the play of _Dr Faustus_. In _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ we have the first extant expression of Greene's independent genius working along characteristic lines. Though Marlowe provides him his starting-point, the treatment is Greene's alone. While lacking in originativeness this play reveals that clearly-marked individual attitude toward art and the people of his brain that was to give Greene's plays a pronounced influence in the development of domestic comedy. And, according to Henslowe's records, the play was as great a success as _Dr Faustus_ had been.

It seems likely that _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ appeared the year following the production of _Dr Faustus_ in 1588. The year 1589 is also indicated by other evidence. In theme the play resembles Greene's _Tully's Love_ of that year. In verse it is not unlike _Orlando Furioso_, which had appeared in 1588. A striking piece of collateral evidence is adduced by Fleay, who, noting Edward's remark in Act I., "Lacy, thou know'st next Friday is Saint James'," is able to show that 1589 is the only year between 1578 and 1595 in which St James's day falls on Friday. Further confirmation of this date arises from a satirical thrust by Greene at the now unknown author of _Fair Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester_, in his letter prefixed to _Farewell to Folly. Fair Em_ bears about the same relationship to _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ that this play bears to _Dr Faustus_. In other words, while it is not exactly an imitation, it is in many respects a reflection and a parody of the earlier play. The chief points in which _Fair Em_ parodies Greene's play are in the title, in which the author, "somewhat affecting the letter," plays upon Greene's "Fair Maid of Fressingfield"; in the relationship of a king with his courtier in the courtship of a mistress, in Lubeck's fidelity to William the Conqueror in the matter of his love for Mariana contrasted with Lacy's treachery to Edward in courting Margaret; in Em's scornful refusal to return to Mandeville after he has discarded her contrasted with Margaret's hasty forgiveness of Lacy after his unkind desertion; and in the fact that, while in _Friar Bacon_ Lacy is put into disguise to pursue his love suits, in _Fair Em_ it is the king who masquerades to gain a mistress. Greene no more relished the imitation of his work in 1591 than he did the following year, when he wrote _A Groatsworth of Wit_. His allusion to this play in his _Farewell to Folly_ epistle is identified by his quoting two lines that occur toward the end of the play, "A man's conscience is a thousand witnesses," and "Love covereth the multitude of sins." Upon such sentiments in the drama Greene throws ridicule in the following words: "O, 'tis a jolly matter when a man hath a familiar style and can indite a whole year and never be beholding to art! But to bring Scripture to prove anything he says, and kill it dead with the text in a trifling subject of love, I tell you is no small piece of cunning." The most important point in these lines is the indication that a year had been spent in the composition of the play Greene was ridiculing. If we are to accept it that _Fair Em_ is in any respect an imitation of _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ we must count at least a year before the production of _Fair Em_ to find the date of Greene's play. Accepting early 1591 as the point after which _Fair Em_ could not have been written,[13] _Friar Bacon_ must have been produced at least a year before that time, in 1589, or early in 1590. Supposing, on account of the beautiful eulogy to Elizabeth at the close of the play, that it must have been intended for presentation at court, Gayley suggests St Stephen's day, 26th December 1589, as the probable date of the play's production.

There is an element in the play of _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ which, viewed in the light of the dramatic influences of the times, reveals again Greene's quickness of apprehension of a significant new strain in the drama. It is the introduction of Prince Edward, the King of England, and the Emperor of Germany, into the fabric of his plot. This play must precede Marlowe's _Edward II._ by several months, and at this point we are able finally to dissociate Greene's genius from the direct influence of his great contemporary. In order to develop this point it may be well to glance hastily at the history of the chronicle type of play in England to the time of Greene's _James IV._ Plays on subjects drawn from English history had been more or less common since the production of _Gorboduc_ in 1562. Three Latin plays, _Byrsa Basilica_ and the two college plays by Thomas Legge, _Richardus Tertius_, had come somewhat near to the true chronicle type. But it was not until the latter years of the ninth decade of the century that dramatists began on any large scale to utilise the history and mythology of England's kings and wars for the celebrating of her contemporary glories. Even before the Spanish Armada England had become conscious of her own power and eager for the display of her prowess. It was under the stimulus of this growing consciousness of might that the first true chronicle play, _The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth_, was written. In this play a dramatist for the first time displays an adequate sense of the objective value of the materials derived from history, combined with that insight into human nature and largeness of imaginative power that are necessary to make of the dry records of Holinshed and Stow a moving dramatic story. _The Life and Death of Jack Straw_, which also probably preceded the Armada in its first production, is, while not so good as _The Famous Victories_, a play of vigorous characterisation and native English colouring of historical events. But we are probably not far from the truth in supposing that it was the year 1588 that brought the complete development of the chronicle type. From this year dates the production of the two parts of _The Troublesome Reign of King John of England_, the date being indicated by the allusion to _Tamburlaine_ in the prologue. _The First Part of the Contention betwixt two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster_, etc., and _The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York_, etc., upon which are based the second and third parts of Shakespeare's _Henry VI._ trilogy, must be dated little, if any, later. _The Troublesome Reign_ is known to have been performed by the Queen's men after the other university men had left Greene alone as representative of this company. The theory that connects Greene's name with the composition is, however, so much a matter of conjecture that nothing can be gained from its consideration. Following these two works, almost certainly not preceding them, as some have thought, comes Marlowe's _Edward II._, the faultless masterpiece of his dramatic composition, produced probably in 1590. And within a few years, in quick succession, there came _Edward III., Richard II._, and _Richard III._, the _Henry VI._ trilogy, and the culminating trilogy of the two parts of _Henry IV._ and _Henry V._

Greene's _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_, which appeared in the midst of a movement toward the chronicle type of play, so far adopted its formulas as to introduce historic English characters into the fabric of a story based on prose romance. No feature whatever of the chronicle element as introduced into the play is found in the source-book, nor is there any historical warrant for any of the action presented under the names of the kings. Greene's later attitude toward the rapidly-growing chronicle type of play reveals the motives and characteristics of his art at its maturity. He is still willing to borrow from the dominant types of art holding the stage at the time such expedients as shall serve to adjust his work to the popular demand. But he no longer transcends his own powers in an attempt at imitation, or does violence to his own principles of beauty in a parody of the work of a rival. His note is now a clear and individual one, and to the day of his death it sounds upon a definite key. Greene's powers were no more equal to the blowing into pulsing life of the dead bones of the chronicles of Stow and Holinshed than they were efficient to answer in verse to the lure of "impossible things" after the manner of Marlowe. Greene may have expressed himself in a chronicle play as did Marlowe in _Edward II._, and as did others of his time, but the simple fact is that no chronicle play of unmixed type can with certainty be assigned to him, and until a light is thrown that modifies somewhat the view here outlined we must regard his part in the composition of _The Troublesome Reign_ and _The True Tragedy_ as distinctly a subordinate one. These considerations are of some importance in considering _James IV._ and _George-a-Greene_. Assuming that _George-a-Greene_ is Greene's work, it is clear that here he but modified the chronicle play type to his own purposes, and that he based his story, not on historical narrative, but on the legends of the people as retained in ballad and prose romance. Nor is _James IV._ based on historical records. Going back to the source from which he drew his early stories, he rests his plot on the first novel of the third decade of Giraldi Cinthio's _Hecatommithi_. The play's sole claim to be counted in the chronicle group is based on the fact that certain of the imaginary characters of Cinthio's fiction are provided with the names of members of the English ruling family. The events of the story have no connection with history, and Greene's title, _The Scottish History of James the Fourth, slain at Flodden_, is but an ingenious device to reach with a romantic and misleading title the interest of an audience now newly turned toward historical topics.

No evidence whatever can be adduced to show that Greene was in any respect indebted to Marlowe's _Edward II._ for his pseudo-chronicle on _James IV._ Present information makes it seem probable that the plays were performed about the same time, Marlowe's play being, perhaps, a few months the earlier. The plays are quite different. Each dramatist had attained to the maturity of his powers through the purification of his artistic ideals, but whereas Marlowe's last play is held to the outlines of a rigorous art with an almost poignant reticence, Greene's _James IV._ manifests the sweetening and mellowing touch of a dignified and manly philosophy. Nor can we see any indebtedness in Greene's play to Peele's _Edward I._, though the cruel abuse of the memory of Queen Elinor contained in that play can get its only justification on the theory that the play was written immediately after the Spanish Armada, and therefore two years before _James IV._ But there is one chronicle play that Greene may have seen and that may have influenced him slightly. It is not possible here to go into the question of the authorship of _Edward III._ So excellent is the play in its choicest passages that one would not be loath to assign portions of it to Marlowe, or to Shakespeare, or to impute the entire play to the collaboration of these poets. One would even welcome evidence that the hand of Greene is to be seen in the play. Fleay assigns the play to Marlowe and sets its date of production at 1590 or earlier, basing these suppositions upon a citation from this play in a presumably satirical allusion to Marlowe in Greene's _Never too Late_; perhaps a strained double hypothesis, but one that has the possibility of truth.[14] One would tend to the theory that the play was written by Marlowe, on account of the total absence of comedy and a dulcet sweetness in the blank verse. If so it was an early study and must be placed before _Edward II. Edward III._ is like _James IV._ in the fact that it is not a pure chronicle play, but is based for its most effective scenes upon a romantic episode from Painter's _Palace of Pleasure._ As _James IV._ goes back to a novella of Cinthio, the ultimate source of the romantic by-plot of _Edward III._ is a novel by Bandello. The historical portions of the play are based on Holinshed. These romantic scenes, which comprise scene 2 of the first act and the entirety of the second act, are strikingly similar to the large theme of _James IV._ The love of King Edward for the beautiful Countess of Salisbury, whose castle he has rescued, is similar in its passion and its ill-success to the love of James for Ida. Both stories deal with Scottish wars, though in _Edward III._ the romantic element arises as a result of the English king's protection of his subject, the Countess of Salisbury, against the Scots, whereas in _James IV._ the wars result from the unfortunate love of the Scottish king for his subject, Ida, and his consequent attempt to kill his English wife, Dorothea. Like James, Edward is willing to kill his queen in order to gain his love. The Countess of Salisbury's lines,

"As easy may my intellectual soul
Be lent away, and yet my body live,
As lend my body, palace to my soul,
Away from her, and yet retain my soul,"

have something of Ida's incorruptible purity of principle when she asks Ateukin "can his warrant keep my soul from hell?" Ida's scorn of the man who would

"be a king of men and worldly pelf
Yet hath no power to rule and guide himself,"

is like King Edward's--

"Shall the large limit of fair Britanny
By me be overthrown, and shall I not
Master this little mansion of myself?
Give me an armour of eternal steel!
I go to conquer kings; and shall I not then
Subdue myself?"[15]

In no pre-Shakespearean drama outside of Greene's own work is the simple beauty of chaste womanhood presented with the passion and sympathy that are to be found in _Edward III._ Certainly Ida of _James IV._, the Countess of Salisbury of _Edward III._, and Imogen of Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_ are a trio of womanly beauty and purity. In respect of poetry, the Countess of Salisbury scenes of _Edward III._, in spite of their somewhat cloying sweetness, transcend any sustained passages in Greene's works. Yet the poetry of _James IV._ is of the same order. If Greene could but have prolonged his vagrant notes of beauty he would have equalled the best in this play. In respect of dramaturgy and human psychology _James IV._ is far in advance of _Edward III._ The simple and undeveloped story of love is in the hands of the more skilled plotter of plays complicated to a fit representation of the social implications of an act, and the passion of Edward is in James developed to the awful inward struggle of a sinning soul. In the absence of facts as to the authorship of _Edward III._, and as to the date of its composition, it is impossible to draw any conclusions as to influence or inter-relationship. It is clear, however, that Greene's play is written in the spirit of _Edward III._, in that it is an adaptation of the romantic motive that Greene knew so well how to compass to the purposes of the popular chronicle play.

_James IV._, which is the last undoubted play of Greene's composition, is also the best. Dramatically it is far in advance of any other of his plays, and there is almost no trace of the affected classical and mythological allusion that had marked his earlier writing. Considerations of style and structure indicate that it was written soon after _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_. Allusions to contemporary events, such as Dorothea's mention of the Irish uprisings, the idea of a union of England and Scotland, that run through the play, and the brave words spoken by Dorothea, who is not herself a maid, as a delicate compliment to Elizabeth in her French wars,

"Shall never Frenchman say an English maid
Of threats of foreign force will be afraid,"

indicate that the play was produced about 1590. Gayley suggests that it was presented by Greene's company at court on 26th December 1590, or as one of their five performances in 1591. A pretty point is also made by the same scholar based upon a resemblance between lines in this play and certain lines of Peele's. Though the matter is too confused to serve well as chronological data it seems worthy of review if only for the reason that slightly different results may be reached than those indicated by Gayley. In the first scene of the first act of _James IV._ Ida has the following lines:

"And weel I wot, I heard a shepherd sing,
That, like a bee, love hath a little sting."

Comparing this with lines in the fragment of Peele's _The Hunting of Cupid_, preserved in a manuscript volume of extracts by Drummond of Hawthornden, the conclusion is reached that it is Peele, the writer of pastoral, to whom Greene refers as "shepherd," and that Greene's lines are a direct transcription from Peele. Referring to the Stationers' Registers we learn that Peele's _The Hunting of Cupid_ was listed for 26th July 1591, certainly later than we should be willing to place the beginning of composition on Greene's _James IV._ The formal proviso, "That if it be hurtful to any other copy before licensed ... this to be void," may or may not indicate the existence of an earlier copy. That the general motive was in the air and had caught the ear of Greene is clear from the snatches and fragments of it we find in his late work. In the _Mourning Garment,_ registered 1590, are lines moving upon the same rhyme and answering the same interrogation as Peele's verses:

"Ah, what is love? It is a pretty thing.
As sweet unto a shepherd as a king."[16]

One who gets this haunting strain in mind cannot fail to notice how frequently Greene uses the rhyme of _thing, bring, king,_ and _sting_ in _James IV._ Once it is:

"Although a bee be but a little thing,
You know, fair queen, it hath a bitter sting."

And in the first scene of the second act Greene plays upon the repetition of this rhyme. Peele himself again uses the refrain in _Decensus Astræ_, licensed October 1591. The argument from the fact that "weel I wot" in Ida's line seems to reflect the same clause in _The Hunting of Cupid_ would be stronger were it not that "weel I wot" occurs only in the Drummond manuscript and is not found in the fragment quoted by Dyce[17] from the Rawlinson manuscript. Here instead of "weel I wot" is found "for sure." As Greene himself has used the refrain in a song sung by a shepherd's wife it leaves room to doubt that either the swains of _The Hunting_ or Peele himself was the shepherd. It is clear that the first general use of the motive had occurred in Greene's _Mourning Garment_. The positive objections to placing _James IV._ subsequent to July 1591 lead one to one of three conclusions: (1) Peele's lyric had long been written before it was entered in the _Stationers' Registers_, and in manuscript form inspired the strains in the _Mourning Garment_ and _James IV._; (2) Greene himself provides the prototype of Peele's lyric in his _Mourning Garment_ verse and its cognate form in _James IV._; (3) or, as seems most probable, fragmentary strains that have been found are reminiscences of a popular song that has not yet been traced.

We have, a little arbitrarily perhaps, grouped the four indubitable plays of Greene's unassisted composition in order to formulate the developing characteristics of his dramatic genius. Yet there are other plays that raise problems no less interesting than those we have considered, and that might, were we able unquestioningly to assign them to Greene, go far to clarify the obscure places in his biography and his art. That Greene had a part in _A Looking-Glass for London and England_ there is, of course, no doubt, but we are not yet able to say how much of the play is his composition, and the question of its date provides some difficulties. We incline to the view that it was an early play. Lodge was absent from England in 1588 on a voyage with Captain Clark to the Islands of Terceras and the Canaries. In August 1591 he sailed from Plymouth with Cavendish and did not return until 1593, after Greene's death. _A Looking-Glass_ was then either written before 1588 or between 1589 and 1591. Collins, arguing from passages in the play remotely paralleled by biblical allusions in _Greene's Vision_ and the _Mourning Garment_, decides that it was produced in 1590. This conclusion cannot be accepted because, as Collins himself admits, references to Nineveh and Jonas are frequent in the literature of the time. Of the three reasons given by Collins for supposing that the play was not written before 1588 one is based on the slender hypothesis that as it is not proved that Greene wrote plays before 1590 this one could not have been earlier; and another is based on a gratuitous assumption that this play is that comedy "lastly writ" with "Young Juvenal" and mentioned in _A Groatsworth of Wit._[18] The argument that the realistic passage beginning "The fair Triones with their glimmering light" could only have been written after Lodge's first maritime experience carries more weight, but cannot stand long as against counter evidence of any force whatever. Nor do we see any strength in the theory that this play is a product of Greene's era of repentance. As has been shown, Greene uses repentance as a didactic motive from the first. Considering this as a moralising play one may with better force place it in the earlier years of less complex dramatic inspiration. It is difficult to conceive that in 1589, when Greene was almost certainly engaged in writing _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_, he should have been willing to go back to the motive of the interludes. As the spirit of the play is earlier than Greene's mature work, so its associations are with the earlier rather than with the later work of Lodge. _An Alarum against Usurers_, the influence of which is often apparent, was published in 1584. In the years from 1589 to 1591 inclusive Lodge was engaged on another type of work, represented by _Scillæ's Metamorphosis, Rosalynde, The History of Robert, second Duke of Normandy_, and _Catharos_, certainly as far removed as possible from the moralising vein of _A Looking-Glass_. Two published expressions by Lodge lean rather to the earlier than the later date. In _Scillæ's Metamorphosis_ (1589) Lodge vows,

"To write no more of that whence shame doth grow,
[Nor] tie my pen to penny-knaves delight."

Certainly we cannot believe that Lodge was abjuring playwriting at the very moment that he was preparing _A Looking-Glass_. The other passage occurs in Lodge's _Wits Misery_ (1596), in which Lodge says it is odious "in stage plays to make use of historical scripture." This passage should be viewed in connection with a passage in the epistle prefixed to Greene's _Farewell to Folly_ (1591), taunting the author of _Fair Em_ for "blasphemous rhetoric," and for borrowing from the scripture. Whatever may be the claims of consistency we must suppose that the argument from good policy would tend to the conclusion that the scriptural drama of Greene and Lodge was written as long as possible before these uncompromising words. Setting narrow limits, we should say that _A Looking-Glass_ was produced between the date of the production of _Tamburlaine_ and of the destruction of the Spanish Armada. In the deification of Rasni, "god on earth, and none but he," there are traces of an aspiring kingliness, and the lament of Rasni over Remilia, his queen, has the yearning note sounded in Tamburlaine's grief over the dying Zenocrate. That the play was not written during the intense excitement incident to the Armada would seem probable on general principles, for there is no hint either of imminent national danger or of the intoxication of success. The undoubted reflections of _The Spanish Tragedy_ in this play can serve only to place it in near conjunction with _Orlando Furioso_ as an early play. Whether it preceded or followed that play it is impossible now to decide.[19] As to Greene's share in the work it is impossible to speak with even the semblance of authority. The comic portions sound like Greene's work,[20] and if Greene wrote Act v. scene 4 of _James IV._ he was quite capable of writing the moralising part. In simplicity of construction the play is quite unlike Greene's other dramatic works, just as it is much better than Lodge's _The Wounds of Civil War_. Arguing from the position of their names on the title-page, one is tempted to believe that the play was planned and drafted by Lodge, and put forth by Greene somewhat after the manner used in his edition of his friend's _Euphues Shadow_ (1592).

The anonymous authorship of _George-a-Greene, Locrine_ and _Selimus_ provides problems that must continue to vex critics for some time to come. None of them is assigned to Greene on absolute evidence of any weight, yet strong support has been given to the theory of Greene's authorship of each of them. In the case of the first so respectable has been the following that no editor would care definitely to exclude the play from his list. Yet the best evidence is questionable, and much of the evidence is quite adverse to the theory of Greene's authorship. The manuscript notes on a copy of the Quarto of 1599, assigning the play to a minister who had played the pinner's part himself, and in another hand to Robert Greene (quoted on p. xxiii.), cannot to-day be considered good evidence. Judged by the well-known tests of textual and structural criticism the play almost absolutely fails to connect itself either with Greene or his contemporary university writers. Few plays of the late eighties are so isolated from the clearly-marked characteristics of the drama of the time. Of _Euphues_, of _Tamburlaine_, of _The Spanish Tragedy_, of Seneca, of the religious play, there are few, if any, traces. The rhetorical structure shows none of the artificial balances and climaxes so common at the time; there is neither ghost, chorus, dumb show nor messenger; there is no high aspiring figure, no madness, no revenge; and the bloodshed is decent. The lyrics are English and not Italian. Indeed so far is it from the classical style that it seems difficult to believe that a university man wrote the play. The rich mythology of the university wits is entirely wanting. Such classical allusions as are to be found are the stock figures of a layman's vocabulary, Leda, Helena, Venus and Hercules, the rudimentary mythology of the age. The play lies nearer to the ground in an absolute realism of the soil than any known in this group. The milk cans of _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ may be pure pastoral; the country setting of _George-a-Greene_ is pure rustic, and is not helped at all by literature. So also the play lacks many of Greene's characteristic notes. It was performed at the Rose by Sussex' men, while so far as is known Greene remained faithful to the Queen's company throughout his life. It lacks that satirical under-current, that ironic veiled counter cuff at his rivals, that personal innuendo in the midst of a good story that is so characteristic of Greene.

But in spite of the facts that are brought to his judgment the beauties of the play are such as to compel every editor to soften judgment by inclination and include the play among Greene's dramas. Certainly Greene is the only university man of his day who, knowing the affectations of literature, at the same time knew real life in the concrete well enough to write _George-a-Greene_. If truth were told it was through plays of the type of _George-a-Greene_, rather than through the more ambitious university men's plays, that the current of pure English comedy was to flow. And it is because _George-a-Greene_ integrates itself so perfectly with the development of Greene's dramatic genius, and represents so well that realism reached by a settling down of art from above, rather than arising from the vulgar fact, that we are willing to say that if Greene did not write this play he could have written one much like it. _George-a-Greene_ seems to bring to consummation the developing principles of Greene's art. As in the case of _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ there is in this play a quite unhistorical chronicle element concerning English kings. But unlike _James IV._, which is derived from an Italian original, this play tells an English story based on the native Robin Hood strain. Again, like _Friar Bacon_, the original story, which contains no romantic element, is augmented by a love story. If the play is Greene's it may represent the last and purest expression of his charming doctrine of beauty and his simple philosophy of content. To Greene beauty lay in fresh and joyous colours and in uncomplex forms. And his philosophy of repose is evolved out of the sublimation of the emotional riot of his early life. Again and again these notes are struck in _George-a-Greene_. Now it is the well-known strain:

"The sweet content of men that live in love
Breeds fretting humours in a restless mind."

Again it is contentment put into better precept:

"a poor man that is true
Is better than an earl, if he be false;"

and

"'tis more credit to men of base degree,
To do great deeds, than men of dignity."

George's words, "Tell me, sweet love, how is thy mind content," "Happy am I to have so sweet a love," and "I have a lovely leman, as bright of blee as is the silver moon," sound like Greene's style matured and softened by experience. Yet that the play is Greene's one would not dare to say. Its present form displays either hasty composition or garbled version, or both, for it is neither consistent nor well integrated. In one breath Cuddy has never seen George, and in the next delivers to King Edward a message which "at their parting George did say to me." The episodes of Jane-a-Barley, Cuddy and Musgrove, George-a-Greene and the horses in the corn, the shoemakers and the "Vail Staff" custom, Robin Hood and his followers, are but fragments thinly and crudely knit together. Perhaps this play is a unique exemplar of a class of hurriedly-sketched popular plays written by Greene for the provinces and printed from a mutilated stage copy.[21]

_The Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine_ has been ascribed to Shakespeare, Marlowe, Peele and Greene. The two former ascriptions are clearly uncritical, and the two latter present many difficulties. According to Symonds, "The best passages of the play ... are very much in the manner of Greene." In this opinion joins Brooke, the editor of _The Shakespeare Apocrypha_. With certain portions of the argument associating _Locrine_ with Greene we are in harmony. The play was issued by that Thomas Creede who had published Greene's _Alphonsus of Arragon, A Looking-Glass_, and _James IV._ In flashes of poetry, in classical allusion, in high-sounding phrases, the play is sometimes astoundingly in the temper of _Orlando Furioso_ and _Alphonsus of Arragon_. We care little for the evidence that is deduced from literal parallels. More often than not these were purposed copyings or imitations, or involuntary reminiscences of lingering refrains. But there is such a thing as an author's peculiar verbal coin, which is stamped with his sign, and can be paid out by him alone. One who knows his author well cannot but be struck with the frequent occurrence of Greene's own turn of phrase, a style that is clearly to be distinguished from the style of any other poet of his time. Brutus' salutation to his followers at the beginning of the play is much after the manner of Marsilius' welcome to the princes who were come to woo Angelica. Trumpart's imprecations by "sticks and stones," "brickbats and bones," "briars and brambles," "cook shops and shambles," remind one of Orlando's equally ludicrous "Woods, trees, leaves; leaves, trees, woods." The lyrical clownery of Strumbo is often strikingly like that of Miles in _Friar Bacon_. The senile revenge motive of Corineus resembles that of Carinus in _Orlando Furioso_. The use of the capital founded by Brutus, Troynovant, is repeated in _Never too Late_.[22] So also Guendoline's pleas for the life of her faithless husband--"his death will more augment my woes"--are quite in the spirit of Dorothea's pity for her sinning husband in _James IV._ Strumbo's use of his plackets to hide food in while Humber is starving resembles in comic intent Adam's same expedient in starving Nineveh. Certain verse propositions seem to ring with Greene's own timbre:

"The poorest state is farthest from annoy" (ii. 2, 37).[23]

"After we passed the groves of Caledone.
Where murmuring rivers slide with silent streams,
We did behold the straggling Scythians camp," etc. (ii. 3, 23).

"Why this, my lord, experience teaches us:
That resolution is a sole help at need" (iii. 2, 61).

"Oh, that sweet face painted with nature's dye,
Those roseall cheeks mixt with a snowy white,
That decent neck surpassing ivory" (iv. 1, 91).

"_Loc._ Better to live, than not to live at all.
_Estrild._ Better to die renowned for chastity
Than live with shame and endless infamy." (iv. 1, 133)[24]

Other minor phrases that are even more characteristic of Greene's note are, "daughters of proud Lebanon," "Aurora, handmaid of the sun," "party coloured flowers," "shady groves" (often repeated), "girt with a corselet of bright shining steel," "rascal runnagates," "overlook with haughty front," "injurious fortune," and "injurious traitor," "watery" (frequently repeated even where unnecessary), "silver streams" (often repeated), "sweet savours," "regiment," "argent streams," "university of bridewell" (to be compared with Miles' jests), "uncouth rock," "Puryflegiton" (often used; Greene uses Phlegethon), "Anthropophagie," "countercheck," "triple world," "beauty's paragon," "those her so pleasing looks," "straggling" (as an adjective expressing contempt; often used, and quite characteristic of Greene).

The considerations outlined are sufficient to incline one favourably toward the theory of Greene's authorship of _Locrine_. Yet the difficulties are such as for the present to deny the play a place among Greene's works. The date is in great doubt. The first edition of 1595 "newly set forth, overseen and corrected by W. S.," is evidently a revamped version. We cannot agree with Brooke that the play appeared before _Tamburlaine_, for, among many strains of the dramas of _The Misfortunes of Arthur_ type there are mingled undoubted influences from the revenge plays and _Tamburlaine_. It is difficult to adjust the play to any scheme of activities that has been worked out for Greene. Certainly it did not ante-date _Alphonsus of Arragon_, for there is every reason to take the prologue of that play at its word. Upon the hypothesis that it is Greene's work we should place it just before _Orlando Furioso_, the play which it resembles above all others, and about the same time as _A Looking-Glass for London and England_, which in respect of comedy it greatly resembles.

It is impossible to view with any favour the theory of Greene's authorship of _Selimus_. In every respect the play is divergent from Greene's characteristic tone and method. Grosart's theory that this play may be supposed to take the place of the promised second part of _Alphonsus of Arragon_ has no weight. Like the latter play _Selimus_ is the first part of a work that had been planned in series, and in no respect does it supplement Greene's first play. Like _Alphonsus of Arragon_ the play is constructed with such slavish fidelity to the _Tamburlaine_ principles that it is difficult to think Greene could have written _Selimus_ after the failure of _Alphonsus_. Constructively the play is unlike Greene's work. The declamation is more sustained and the action is less crowded than in Greene's other plays. The many parallel passages quoted by Grosart prove nothing more than that borrowing was the order of the age. Nor is anything proved by the fact that the same clown comedy is introduced into _Locrine_, _Selimus_ and _A Looking-Glass for London and England_. If _Locrine_ is Greene's work it was probably written about the time that he was collaborating with Lodge, and he may have introduced the same comedy into both plays. It is no more of an assumption that the author of _Selimus_ borrowed his comedy from _Locrine_ than that Greene would use the same tricks three times within two years. The blank verse of _Selimus_, built largely on a system of rhymed stanzas, is very far from that of _Locrine_ and of Greene's undoubted plays. To illustrate this no better passages could be chosen than those produced by Collins to evidence the similarity of the verse of the two plays. The vexed problem of the part taken by Greene in the _Henry VI._ plays can be treated now only as a subject for interesting but comparatively fruitless speculation. So also must be considered the ingenious and almost convincing circumstantial argument that _A Knack to Know a Knave_ is the comedy "lastly writ" by Greene and "Young Juvenal," and mentioned in _A Groatsworth of Wit_.[25]

We said in beginning that Greene is clearly typical of his time. And indeed his plays are complexes of the dominant dramatic types of the years just before Shakespeare. In his work are focused the strains leading from the three most clearly marked dramatic movements of the age. The English morality combines with rustic low life to produce the interlude, which continues its course of didacticism and horse-play until the end of the century. The Senecan drama scatters ghosts and horrors through English plays until it is etherealised in the poetry of _Tamburlaine_, and laughed to death in the parodies of _The Spanish Tragedy_. The English chronicle play gives life to the dry bones of history, and celebrates the solidarity of an England united over the face of the globe, and through all the eras of her splendid history. Of all these elements the one that remains in Greene's work from beginning to end is the didactic strain. _A Looking-Glass for London and England_ is the last full flowering of English religious drama. Yet didactic elements appear in Friar Bacon's strangely unmotivated repentance, and in the interpolated scene of a lawyer, a merchant and a divine in _James IV._ In Greene's dramas many of the types and figures from a bygone stage are mingled with the newer creations of his invention. The vices of the interludes spring up incongruously in the midst of the characters of a later drama. In _Friar Bacon_ the Vice is again carried off to hell on the back of the Devil, just as had been done years before in simpler plays; and in the same play, by the use of the expedient of perspective glasses, two actions are represented as taking place in widely separate localities, after the manner of the early masques. And aside from these persisting formulas from an older drama there are influences and obligations in relation with Lyly and Marlowe and Kyd that are literally too numerous for enumeration. As significant as any service Greene performed for English drama is the assimilation to a single dramatic end of the adverse expedients of a heterogeneous dramaturgy.

Technically Greene's contribution to the stage was most significant. Nash called him master above all others in "plotting of plays." Part of this mastery comes from his recognition of the technical requirement of continuous action on the stage. Better than any of his contemporaries, not excluding Kyd, he knew that action is of equal importance with speech in the exposition of a dramatic story. Wherever possible he visualises before his audience the successive stages in the progress of his plot, not by the use of ghosts and chorus, who serve merely a narrative purpose, but by bringing before his readers palpable expedients illustrative of the theme of the action. The use of the Brazen Head in _Alphonsus of Arragon_; the incantations of Melissa in _Orlando Furioso_; the raising of the arbor, and the death of Remilia under the incantations of the Magi in _A Looking-Glass for London and England_; the use of a visible magic to transport Burden and Helen, to raise Hercules and the tree, and to present the downfall of the Brazen Head in _Friar Bacon_, all reveal an ability to adapt the properties and expedients of the stage of the time to the purposes of the plot. This is further exemplified in the facility with which from the beginning Greene utilises such spectacular expedients as the letting down of the throne of Venus from above in _Alphonsus of Arragon_, and the descent of the throne of Oseas the prophet in _A Looking-Glass_. Not only does he use the palpable tricks of stagecraft, but he adapts these to the purposes of his dramatic exposition. The perspective glass in _Friar Bacon_ which serves to present two scenes at the same time serves also to connect two strains of the plot and to further the action by arousing Prince Edward's suspicion of the fidelity of Lacy. So magic, which in _Dr Faustus_ serves only to raise a spectacle, in this play is used as a plot expedient to delay the marriage of Margaret and Lacy. The stage directions are more full and circumstantial in Greene's plays than in those of either Marlowe or Peele, and reveal the same tendency to heighten the effect of plot by action and display.

Greene's dramas present a steady development in effectiveness of plot involution. The first plays are marked by a large amount of action and a great number of narrative fragments very crudely and inorganically clustered around the central character. _Alphonsus of Arragon_ is Greene's poorest work in this as in every other respect. Its first act is marked by hesitation and indirection; accident, coincidence and inconsistency are the rule throughout. The play is practically divided into two parts, in the first of which Alphonsus is the central figure, while Amurack serves as protagonist in the second. _Orlando Furioso_ is structurally an improvement on its predecessor, and in _A Looking-Glass for London and England_ an excellent unity of action has been attained. It is in _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ that Greene effected the most substantial advance in play technique made before Shakespeare. This is nothing less than the weaving of two distinct plots into the unity of a single dramatic narrative. On account of the crowding of the action and the sensations, the play is unbalanced and unorganised. _Friar Bacon's_ activities are divided into two distinct parts, his victory over Vandermast and his loss of the Brazen Head, and they are scattered through a half-dozen episodes. For perfect balance Prince Edward surrenders Margaret too early in the play and thus makes necessary the introduction of further retarding action based upon an unexplainable whim of Lacy. Yet granting the inchoate character of the play we must admit that in effecting the combination of the story of Friar Bacon with the story of Prince Edward, Lacy and the Fair Maid of Fressingfield, Greene accomplished an unusually significant innovation. In _James IV._ Greene's technique is at its best. Even in the faulty version that comes down to us we see traces of Greene's experimenting temper. In dumb shows he is reinstating a popular feature of older plays. His induction serves as a model for Shakespeare's _Taming of the Shrew_; and one of its characters, Oberon, is a rough draft for the fairy of that name in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, as Bohan is a prototype of Jaques in _As You Like It_. But Greene's induction is better integrated with his play than is Shakespeare's induction of Sly, the Lords and the Servants, for the two characters, Slipper and Nano, who appear first in the induction, are sent out into the play to serve as connecting links for all of its action. _James IV._ is the only one of Greene's plays that has unity of action. The plot is introduced with a masterly directness and economy. The fatal situation breaks on the reader at the beginning, and throughout the play the crux of the action remains the love of the King of Scots for another than his queen. Ateukin springs up at the psychological moment and at the dramatic crisis. The first act of the play, dramatically quite the best first act written outside of Shakespeare up to his time, provides the king's marriage to Dorothea, the revelation of his love for Ida, the enlistment of Ateukin in the cause of the king's love, and a lover for Ida to make her inaccessible. Aside from the development of the tragedy of this situation there enters into the play only one minor episode, the love of Lady Anderson for the young knight (in reality Queen Dorothea) whom she is succouring in her castle. That Greene chose to end the play after the manner of comedy, and not, as the situation would seem to require, and the taste of the age must have demanded, with the death of the erring king, is an effective indication of his later freedom from restraint and of his personal philosophy of art.