in his dramas to suggest the profligacy of the author. They are of the nature of comedies: they terminate happily, and in accordance with the strictest principles of morality. His heroines-Angelica, the fair maid of Fressingfield, Dorothea, Isabel-are models of moral no less than of physical beauty. On the whole, Greene seems to have been a clever readywitted fellow, with a gift of sweet song, and unbounded facility in the use of words: bold, shameless, somewhat cynical and bitter prepared to write to the utmost of his ability in any vein that would sell: a boisterous reveller, incapable of foregoing a rough joke even at the expense of his dearest friend. This was the man as he appeared to his fellows. But he would seem to have had an inner life of remorseful fits, abject in proportion to the intemperate height of his orgies. If indeed we had no authority beyond his "Repentance" and his "Groat's Worth of Wit" we might easily believe these to have been written for the sole purpose of replenishing his purse. But there are trustworthy accounts of his deathbed behaviour, when his "jolly long red peak" and "well-proportioned body" were finally prostrated; and these accounts lead us to believe that his repentance was unfeigned. And, indeed, the tone of his plays, and his delight in the imagination of beauty, innocence, and country joys, are indications of a better nature that lay hid under poor Robert's outer profligacy. Greene has no claim to high rank as a dramatist, and yet he deserves considerable study as a precursor of Shakespeare. Although his blank verse is somewhat monotonous, yet there is incisive and vivid energy in his language: and he had probably more influence than Marlowe in forming or enriching Shakespeare's diction. Take at random, as an illustration, the induction to Act ii. of " Alphonsus : "Thus from the pit of pilgrim's poverty Of worthy Naples, which Belinus hight ; For to encounter with his traitorous niece. The versification of this is exceedingly flat, but here and there are touches of vivid expression. The opening of this Act is energetic, reminding us of Gloucester's "Down, down to hell, and say I sent thee thither." Alphonsus kills Flaminius, and exclaims "Go, pack thee hence unto the Stygian lake, The chief Greene is sometimes accused of ranting. basis for this accusation is the character of Rasni, King of Nineveh, in the "Looking-Glass for London and England." This "Imperial swaggerer," as Campbell calls him, is puffed up with immeasurable pride till the prophet Jonah lets the wind out of him; and glories in a strain somewhat like Tamburlaine, but more like the conventional Herod of the Mysteries: "Great Jewry's God, that foiled stout Benhadad, It should be remarked, however, that this play was written by Greene in conjunction with Lodge, and that Greene's portion of the work was probably the delineation of the extortion, roguery, and debauchery of Nineveh, which was to say, of London. The particulars of the sumptuous wedding, indeed, are quite in Greene's style; he was at home in the exercise of accumulating gorgeous particulars. But there is nothing to approach the extravagant inflation of Rasni in any play of Greene's sole workmanship. He essayed a counterpart to Tamburlaine in his Alphonsus, and there had ample opportunity for unbounded rant; but Alphonsus bears his exploits lightly, and indulges but sparingly in the swelling utterance of aspiration and triumph. Greene was too cynical to have command of language for a character of sustained pride; he could pump up expression for a good many emotions, but his nature was dry in that region. He is, indeed, a standing refutation of the plausible idea that rant belongs to the infancy of the drama. Rant goes rather with the nature of the individual; and Greene, with all his roughness and recklessness, was fitted to be the pupil of Lyly more than of Marlowe. Like most of his predecessors, from Chaucer downwards, Greene makes frequent use of the goddesses and celebrated beauties of Grecian mythology for purposes of comparison. But he does more than merely repeat the names, saying that a heroine is as fair as Helen or as faithful as Penelope: he evidently exerted his imagination to conceive them in a certain visual semblance of beauty. We are not, of course, to suppose that he had any notion of conceiving classical beauty as different from English beauty: when he spoke of the port of Juno and the foot of Thetis, he probably had in his mind's eye a gait and an instep that had charmed him in the neighbourhood of St Paul's. Still, he had the notion of giving life to dead names. He had also the notion of conceiving these antique paragons at supreme moments in their history when their charms were at full height. Semele, Chloris, Daphne, Thetis, and others, are taken at the moment when their beauty proved irresistible even to the gods: Venus at the moment of her highest triumph. Amurack exclaims of his wife Fausta— "Behold the gem and jewel of mine age! See where she comes, whose heavenly majesty Doth far surpass the brave and gorgeous pace Did put in ure whenas she had obtained The golden apple at the shepherd's hands." This vein of classical allusion is one of the outcomes of Greene's passion for beautiful forms and colours. It is carried out to a weakness in his dramas, rendering him peculiarly open to the charge made at the time against University poets generally-he "smacks too much of Ovid." He sadly violates dramatic propriety by ascribing an acquaintance with the Roman poet to all his characters indiscriminately. Even lovely Peggy, the keeper's daughter at Fressingfield, can discourse of Phoebus courting lovely Semele, of the matchless hue of Helen, of the scrolls that Jove sent to Danae; she puts up an appeal to "fond Ate, doomer of bad-boding fates;" and says with enthusiasm that Lacy is "Proportioned as was Paris when, in gray, He courted Enon in the vale of Troy." If, however, we wish to see Greene at his best, we must go to the occasional songs in his prose tales.1 We might, indeed, compile from his plays a florilegium of pretty lines, such as Or "Thou gladsome lamp that wait'st on Phoebus' traiņ, "Sleep like the smiling purity of heaven, When mildest wind is loath to blend the peace." But a collection of his lyrics-songs, roundelays, jigs, sonettos, madrigals, ditties, and odes-is really like his own Cuba, a region enriched "With favours sparkling from the smiling heavens." 1 These are reprinted in Bell's Poets, along with "Hero and Leander "a charming volume. Very often he rounds off in a few lines a perfect subject for the painter, as in the burden of Sephestia's song to her child "Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee; When thou art old there's grief enough for thee." Or the opening lines of Menaphon's roundelay "When tender ewes, brought home with evening sun, Wend to their folds, And to their holds The shepherds trudge when light of day is done." In the tales these verses come in as if the author's thoughts were tired of their prose vehicle, and spontaneously and irresistibly blossomed into song. His excellence in short verses, or in a capricious mixture of short verses with long, is a curious contrast to the baldness and monotony of his blank verse: it surprises us as when an indifferent walker proves a light and graceful runner. There is nothing in any of his plays to suggest a possibility of such as the following: . Ah, what is love? It is a pretty thing, As sweet unto a shepherd as a king; And sweeter too, For kings have cares that wait upon a crown, And cares can make the sweetest love to frown: Ah then, ah then, If country loves such sweet desires do gain, His flocks are folded, he comes home at night, And merrier too, For kings bethink them what the state require, Ah then, ah then, If country loves such sweet desires do gain, In more regular and even measures, Greene is comparatively stiff and restrained. One of his longest poems, |