Chapter III: Introduction (3)

As Marlowe moved from the sublime passion of his _Tamburlaine_ theme to the cold reserve of his _Edward II._, Greene also, casting off the turgid eloquence of his early style, attained at the end to an art of contemplative repose and genial humanity. The critic likes to feel that in stripping away the excrescences from his art he was discovering his own soul. In treating Greene as a representative Elizabethan, one should not ignore the individuality of the man that stamps all his work with a new impress. Without being original in structure or style Greene was individual in outlook and temper. He had a keener eye for the little things than any dramatist of his time, and he had also a better sympathy for the quick flashing moods and manifestations of human character. His knowledge of the concrete realities of character is an attribute of the man himself. In depicting fairies he lacks, as did Lyly, the imagination to vitalise an unreal world in the spirit of a Shakespeare. He chooses his characters from the world around him and studies them in their native habitat. His clowns, though belonging to an ancient family, are racy of the soil of England, and are fellows with Shadow, and Launce, and Speed and Grumio. Warren and Ermsby are Englishmen of a sturdy type, and Sir Cuthbert Anderson and Lady Anderson are studied as if in their Scotch castle. But Greene did something more than present the exteriors of men as types. He studied their psychology, and knew the warring forces within the individual soul, the power of circumstance, and ambition, and love to direct the forces of character into untoward paths. He knew that logic of human nature that counts consistency untrue, and constructs motives out of the syllogisms of perversity. So he divides the part of the Capitano, in the original story upon which _James IV._ was based, into two parts, one the working intelligence, Ateukin, and the other the executioner, Jaques. So also the King of Scots is no puppet. He struggles as he falls, and his fall is reflected in his distraught mind. And in the depiction of women Greene lavishes the finest forces of his genius. Nash called him "the Homer of women," and that phrase is worth the entirety of _Strange News_ in defending Greene's fame. Sometimes he goes to his own baser experience for his comment, and then there is, as in _Orlando Furioso_ (p. 191), a touch of the awful invective delivered against prostitutes in his _Never too Late_. But Greene's later art was better than this. Scottish Ida, who wins the heart of the King of Scots from English Doll, is no courtesan. Something of the respect and love that breathes through Greene's allusions to Doll his wife is seen in his treatment of all womankind. Even Angelica in _Orlando Furioso_, unformed as are her outlines, represents that fidelity of a patient Grizzel so well exemplified in Margaret in _Friar Bacon_ and Dorothea in _James IV._ Nothing in Marlowe's Queen Isabella of _Edward II._, Zenocrate of _Tamburlaine_, Abigail of _The Jew of Malta_, can equal the sweet and simple womanliness of Greene's gallery, comprising Isabel in _Never too Late_, Bellaria and Fawnia in _Pandosto_, Sephestia in _Menaphon_, Philomela and the shepherd's wife in the _Mourning Garment_, Margaret in _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_, and Ida and Dorothea in _James IV._

Greene's skill in the treatment of character grew out of his knowledge of life, and is involved in his most significant and enduring contribution to the stage. This is the introduction of realism onto a stage that was essentially romantic, and it arises from the application of dramatic art to the experiences of everyday life. Greene's low life is not artificial pastoral, nor is it the boorish clownage of the interludes. It is the characteristic life of England that we see in Harrison's _Description_, refined and beautified by a mature and chastened art. Only in such art can come the homely ideal of "beauty tempered with ... huswifery." By the time of _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ Greene's art has come home. Now in a series of domestic thumb sketches he shows us Margaret:

"And there amongst the cream bowls she did shine
As Pallas 'mongst her princely huswifery,"

and the hostess in the kitchen,

"Spitting the meat 'gainst supper for my guess,"

and the hay, and butter, and cheese displays of Harleston fair. "He was of singular pleasaunce, the very supporter, and, to no man's disgrace be this intended, the only comedian, of a vulgar writer, in this country," writes Chettle in _A Kind Hart's Dream_, summing up in striking phrase the true contemporary judgment of Greene's greatest distinction. But there is another aspect of his genius. He loved the active life of out-of-doors, and he indulged a vigorous spirit of participation in the life around him. But he saw behind things into the spirit, and his treatment of events is dignified with a rich philosophy drawn from his manifold contact with the most lavish era in England's history. To him a drama is more than an isolated and a meaningless show. In _Francesco's Fortunes_ he outlines the kind of play that he himself wrote: "Therein they painted out in the persons the course of the world, how either it was graced with honour, or discredited with vices." He leaves the hollow-sounding verbiage of his early plays to comment with the lawyer on "the manners and the fashions of this age." His _James IV._ is a play of contemplation. Bohan is an early "malcontent," and Andrew, noting the downfall of his prince, exclaims, "Was never such a world, I think, before." With the heart of a democrat Greene understands alike the problems of kings and yeomen. The counsel of the King of England to Dorothea on the obligations and dangers of sovereignty is sage and rational, and Ida's comments on the "greatest good"--that it lies not "in delights, or pomp, or majesty"--are rich with the best philosophy. In _A Quip for an Upstart Courtier_ Clothbreeches asks, "Doth true virtue consist in riches, or humanity in wealth? is ancient honour tied to outward bravery? or not rather true nobility, a mind excellently qualified with rare virtues?" So often is this note struck in Greene's plays that we might call it a personal one were it not that it is beginning to appear commonly in the literature of the time.

Summing up Greene's contribution to the drama of his age we should say that it lies in the essential comedy of his outlook on life, his inherent _vis comica_; in his loving insight into human nature in its familiar aspects; in his distrust of exaggeration and his tendency to turn this to burlesque; and in his beautiful philosophy of the eternal verities. Out of the drama of Greene there developed the new romantic comedy of Shakespeare and the realism of joy of domestic drama. After _George-a-Greene_ there came the Huntingdon plays of Munday and Chettle, in which the woodland knight, Robin Hood, appears again. After _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ there came _Fair Em, A Knack to Know a Knave, John-a-Kent and John-a-Cumber,_ and Dekker's _Shoemaker's Holiday_. Heywood and Samuel Rowley and Munday and Dekker and the author of _The Merry Devil of Edmonton_ share with Shakespeare indisputable strains of his individual note.

Professor Herford calls attention to the conflict, in Greene's life, between "the fresh, unworn sense of beauty and poetry," and "the bitter, disillusioned cynicism of premature old age." That conflict was a necessary one. It was present also in the discrepancy between the lyric note of Marlowe's yearning fancy and the hard reserve laid upon his later pen by bitter suffering. Both of these were true Elizabethans. They were true to their times in the vastness of their conceptions and in the narrowness of their lives, in their poetic triumphs no less than in their personal defeats. The marvellous thing is that in the midst of riotous life they should have learned repose in art, that though writing in a tavern their muse should have remained chaste. Marlowe remained to the end the poet of "air and fire." From Greene we get in the drama the first clear note of the English woodland joy that had echoed fitfully in English non-dramatic verse from the days of Chaucer and the unknown author of _Alysoun_.

_A Groatsworth of Wit_ has been so often cited as a record in the history of English drama that its value as a human document has been forgotten. Of Greene's attack therein on Shakespeare there is no need to say anything here. To those who have any concern with Greene himself it is interesting chiefly for its revelation of the awful melancholy of his last days and his pathetic sense of the wrongs suffered by the little school of dramatists of which he was a member. The sense of pity produced by reading this book is intensified by a study of Greene's last days as suggested in his own succeeding book, _The Repentance of Robert Greene_, and in the pamphlets of Harvey and Nash. Greene died on the 3rd of September 1592, of a malady following a surfeit of Rhenish wine and pickled herring. Before his death he received commendations from his wife, and his last written words were addressed to her in a request to pay the debt incurred by his sickness. We are told that after his death the keeper of his garret crowned his head with bays. Fourteen years later, when, with the exception of Lodge, the last of the university wits had passed away, and Shakespeare, whom they had all feared, had taken his abiding place, Dekker in his tract, _A Knight's Coiffuring_, shows Marlowe, Greene and Peele, together once more in Elysium, under the "shades of a large vine, laughing to see Nash, that was but newly come to their college, still haunted with the sharp and satirical spirit that had followed him here upon earth."

The text of this edition is based on Dyce's modernised text of 1861 compared with the later collations of Grosart and Collins, and editions of single plays by Ward, Manly and Gayley. The editor has been conservative in accepting modifications of Dyce's text. The act and scene divisions as found in Collins have been adopted, and the location of scenes has been indicated throughout.

ALPHONSUS, KING OF ARRAGON

The first extant edition of _Alphonsus, King of Arragon_, was printed in quarto by Thomas Creede in 1599. Lowndes mentions a quarto of 1597 of which no trace can be found. Of the two copies of the quarto of 1599 now known, one is in the library of the Duke of Devonshire, and the other is in the Dyce Library at South Kensington. _Alphonsus_ is not mentioned by Henslowe in his _Diary_, nor is there any record of the play in the Stationers' Registers. Nothing certain can be said concerning the circumstances and dates of composition and first performance of Greene's plays. But there can be no doubt that this is one of Greene's earliest plays, for in the Prologue Greene says through the mouth of Venus:

"And this my hand, which usèd for to pen
The praise of love and Cupid's peerless power,
Will now begin to treat of bloody Mars."

Nor can there be any doubt that the play was written in imitation of Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_, mention of which occurs in IV. 3. A second part, "when I come to finish up his life," is promised in the Epilogue. That the second part was not written is probably an indication of the failure of the piece. In the Preface to Greene's _Perimedes_ of 29th March 1588, we learn that two "gentlemen poets" had caused two actors to mock Greene's motto, _Omne tulit punctum_, because his verse fell short of the bombast and blasphemy of Marlowe's early style. It has been suggested that it may have been the verse of _Alphonsus_ that was ridiculed. Certainly it must have been this play, or a lost early play, for it was in drama that the "mighty line" appeared. There is in Peele's _Farewell_, April 1589, a reference to a piece of mechanism occurring in this play which closely connects it with Marlowe's first play, "Mahomet's Poo and mighty Tamburlaine." This has been discussed in the General Introduction. Greene's play is based distantly on the history of Alphonso I. of Naples and V. of Arragon (1385-1454), though with no pretence to historical accuracy.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

CARINUS, the rightful heir to the crown of Arragon.

ALPHONSUS, his son.

FLAMINIUS, King of Arragon.

BELINUS, King of Naples.

DUKE OF MILAN.

ALBINIUS.

FABIUS.

LÆLIUS.

MILES.

AMURACK, the Great Turk.

ARCASTUS, King of the Moors.

CLARAMONT, King of Barbary.

CROCON, King of Arabia.

FAUSTUS, King of Babylon.

BAJAZET.

Two Priests of MAHOMET.

Provost, Soldiers, Janissaries, etc.

FAUSTA, wife to Amurack.

IPHIGENA, her daughter.

MEDEA, an enchantress.

MAHOMET (speaking from the Brazen Head).

VENUS.

The NINE MUSES.

_THE COMICAL HISTORY OF ALPHONSUS, KING OF ARRAGON_

ACT THE FIRST