popular life, which are so witty, lively and fresh, that they leave nothing to be desired. But another circumstance contributed not a little to Greene's popularity as a dramatist. His plays, with their fantastical characters and their numerous unexpected adventures, reminded the public of their favourite novels, tales of chivalry, and wonderful romances. STOROJENKO, NICHOLAS, 1878, Robert Greene; His Life and Works; A Critical Investigation, tr. Hodgetts, ed. Grosart, p. 223.

In Greene's plays we can always trace the hand of the novelist. He did not aim at unity of plot, or at firm definition of character. Yet he manages to sustain attention by his power of telling a story, inventing an inexhaustible variety of motives, combining several threads of interest with facility, and so arranging his incongruous materials as to produce a pleasing general effect. He has the merit of simplicity in details, and avoids the pompous circumlocution in vogue among contemporary authors. His main stylistic defect is the employment of cheap Latin mythology in and out of season. But his scenes abound in vivid incidents, which divert criticism from the threadbare thinness of the main conception, and offer opportunities to clever actors. SYMONDS, JOHN ADDINGTON, 1884, Shakspere's Predecessors in the English Drama, p. 557.

With a few touches from the master's hand, Margaret, the fair maid of Fressingfield, might serve as handmaid to Shakespere's women, and is certainly by far the most human heroine produced by any of Greene's own group. SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1887, History of Elizabethan Literature, p. 73.

A

It was Greene who first brought Comedy into contact with the blithe bright life of Elizabethan England, into contact with poetry, into contact with romance. He took it out into the woods and the fields, and gave it all the charm of the idyll; he filled it with incident and adventure, and gave it all the interest of the novel. freshness as of the morning pervades these delightful medleys. Turn where we will-to the loves of Lacy and Margaret at merry Fressingfield, to the wizard friar and the marvels of his magic cell at Oxford, to the patriot Pinner and his boisterous triumphs, to Oberon with his fairies.

and antics revelling round him, to the waggeries of Slipper and Miles-everywhere we find the same light and happy touch, the same free joyous spontaneity. His serious scenes are often admirable. We really know nothing more touching than the reconciliation of James and Dorothea at the conclusion of "James IV.," and nothing more eloquent with the simple eloquence of the heart than Margaret's vindication of Lacy in "Friar Bacon." The scene again in the second act of "James IV.," where Eustace first meets Ida, would in our opinion alone. suffice to place Greene in the front rank of idyllic poets. Greene's plots are too loosely constructed, his characters too sketchy, his grasp and range too limited, to entitle him to a high place among dramatists, and yet as we read these medleys we cannot but feel how closely we are standing to the Romantic Comedies of Shakspeare.-COLLINS, JOHN CHURTON, 1895, Essays and Studies, p. 173.

His best plays breathe a thoroughly national spirit, and they are instinct with love of English traditions, English virtues, and English familiar scenes. "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay" and "George-aGreene" set before us pictures of country life as natural and attractive as any in "Love's Labour's Lost" or "The Merry Wives of Windsor." A pure and fragrant air ripples through their pages, blowing from over homestead, and meadow, and stream. Here too we meet with members of every social class, prince and peasant, earl and shoemaker, philosopher and clown, all mixing in easy familiarity. So it is in the world of Shakspere, where rank is never the measure of merit, and where the ideal ruler wandering in disguise among his soldiers declares to them that the King is but a man as other men, with like senses and conditions. But Greene in his popular sympathies goes further than Shakspere, who can never be strictly called democratic, and of whose heroes and heroines not one is taken from humble life. The portrait gallery of the greater dramatist, wide and varied as it is, contains no such figures as Margaret of Fresingfield or the Pinner of Wakefield. The village maid, who is really what she seems, not, like Perdita, a princess in disguise, and who yet may be worthy of an Earl's love; the yeoman, with the

sturdy independence of his class united to genuine loyalty and ardour of heart-these are not types over which Shakspere lingers lovingly. For them we are indebted to Greene, who thus takes his place on the long list of our writers headed by Langland, and numbering Burns, Crabbe, and Wordsworth among its foremost names, who have found their truest inspiration in the joys and sorrows of the poor. BOAS, FREDERICK S., 1896, Shakspere and his Predecessors, p. 87.

In Greene, the new spirit of Renaissance sensuousness, so unbridled in Marlowe, is found to be restrained by those cool and exquisite moral motives, the elaboration of which is the crowning glory of Shakespeare. Faint and pale as Greene's historical plays must be confessed to be, they are the first specimens of native dramatic literature in which we see fore-shadowed the genius of the romantic English stage. --GOSSE, EDMUND, 1897, Short History of Modern English Literature, p. 98.

GENERAL

Other newes I am advertised of, that a scald triviall lying Pamphlet, called "Greens Groats worth of Wit" is given out to be of my doing. God never have care of my soule, but utterly renounce me, if the least word or syllable in it proceeded from my penne, or if I were any way privie to the writing or printing of it. NASHE, THOMAS, 1592, Pierce Penilesse his Supplication to the Divell.

Be not dismaied (my good freends) that a deade man shoulde acquaint you with newes; for it is I, I per se I, Robert Greene, in Artibus Magister, he that was wont to solicite your mindes with many pleasant conceits, and to fit your fancies, at the least every quarter of the yere, with strange and quaint devises, best beseeming the season, and most answerable to your pleasures.-RICH, BARNABE? 1593, Greenes Newes both from Heaven and Hell. He was a pastoral sonnet-maker and author of several things which were pleasing to men and women of his time. They made much sport and were valued among scholars; but since they have been mostly sold on ballad-mongers stalls.WOOD, ANTHONY, 1691-1721, Fasti Oxonienses, vol. I, p. 136.

He had great vivacity of intellect, a very inventive imagination, extensive reading, and his works abound with

frequent and successful allusions to the Classics. It is surprising to see how polished and how finished some of his pieces are, when it is considered that he wrote most of them to supply his immediate necessities, and in quick succession one to another.-BELOE, WILLIAM, 1807, Anecdotes of Literature and Scarce Books, vol. II, p. 190.

It must be confessed that many of the prose tracts of Greene are licentious and indecent; but there are many also whose object is useful and whose moral is pure. They are written with great vivacity, several are remarkable for the most poignant raillery, all exhibit a glowing warmth of imagination, and many are interspersed with beautiful and highly-polished specimens of his poetical powers. On those which are employed in exposing the machinations of his infamous associates, he seems to place a high value, justly considering their detection as an essential service done to his country; and he fervently thanks his God for enabling him so successfully to lay open the "most horrible Coosenages of the common ConnyCatchers, Cooseners, and Crosse Biters,' names which in those days designated the perpetrators of every species of deception. and knavery. Though most of the productions of Greene were written to supply the wants of the passing hour, yet the poetical effusions scattered through his works betray few marks of haste or slovenliness, and many of them, indeed, may be classed among the most polished and elegant of and elegant of their day. To much warmth and fertility of fancy they add a noble strain of feeling and enthusiasm, together with many exquisite touches of the pathetic, and so many impressive lessons of morality, as, in a great measure, to atone for the licentiousness of several of his prose tracts.-DRAKE, NATHAN, 1817, Shakspeare and his Times, vol. 1, pp. 494, 627.

Greene's style is in truth most whimsical and grotesque. He lived before there was a good model of familiar prose; and his wit, like a stream that is too weak to force a channel for itself, is lost in rhapsody and diffuseness.-CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets.

A pretty little instructive bibliographical volume might be put forth, respecting

the works with choice morsels of quotations therefrom-of the above not very harmonious quartetto. Let Robert Greene play the first fiddle. DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL, 1824, The Library Companion, p. 591, note.

A pleasing wit, rich, graceful, who gave himself up to all pleasures, publicly with tears confessing his vices, and the next moment plunging into them again.

You see the poor man is candid, not sparing himself; he is natural; passionate in everything, repentance or otherwise; eminently inconstant; made for self-contradiction, not self-correction. TAINE, H. A., 1871, History of English Literature, tr. Van Laun, vol. I, bk. ii, ch. ii, p. 236.

There was an absolute chasm between the foulness of his life and the serenity of his intellect, and, at least until he became a repentant character, no literary theme interested him very much, unless it was interpenetrated with sentimental beauty. This element inspired what little was glowing and eloquent in his plays; it tinctured the whole of his pastoral romances with a rosy Euphuism, and it turned the best of his lyrics to the pure fire and air of poetry. From his long sojourn in Italy and Spain he brought back a strong sense of the physical beauty of men and women, of fruits, flowers, and trees, of the coloured atmosphere and radiant compass of a southern heaven. All these things passed into his prose and into his verse, so that in many of the softer graces and innocent voluptuous indiscretions of the Elizabethan age he is as much a forerunner as Marlowe is in audacity of thought and the thunders of a massive line.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1880, English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. 1, p. 402.

I must take this fresh opportunity of recalling that, as the converse of Herrick's famous (or infamous) pleading that if his verse was impure his life was chaste, Greene's writings are exceptionally clean. Nor must he be refused the benefit of this in any judicial estimate of him. equally harsh and uncritical to say that this confessedly dissolute-living man wrote purely because it paid to do so. It did no such thing. It would have paid, and did pay, to write impurely, and as ministering to the insatiate appetite of readers for garbage. To his undying honour, Robert Greene, equally with

James Thomson, left scarce a line that dying he need have wished "to blot." I can't understand the nature of any one who can think hardly of Greene in the light of his ultimate penitence and absolute confession. It is (if the comparison be not over-bold) as though one had taunted David with his sin after the fifty-first Psalm.-GROSART, ALEXANDER B., 188186, ed. Life and Complete Works of Robert Greene, Editor's Introduction, vol. I, p. xix.

Crowded with similes taken for the most part from the ancient classics, and appositely applied, his poetry is at once polished and elegant. Nor, strange to say, does he betray any of those signs of slovenliness which we should expect to find in the writings of the first English poet who is said to have written for bread. Occasionally, more especially in his prose, he becomes indecent; but we must remember the manners of the times, before false modesty and hypocritical Grundyism had been born. His lessons of morality are both impressive and virtuous, so that, in his own day, he became noted alike for his goodadvice and bad example.-UNDERHILL, GEORGE F., 1887, Literary Epochs, p. 84.

The coherence of Greene's paragraphs is fairly good. The movement is light and sometimes rapid, and the Euphuistic parallelism does not retard the general progress. Proportion, however, is wholly missing. Greene was guilty of numerous clause-heaps, and of unnecessary singlesentence sections. The general loose structure of his sentence does not save him from the bane of his day-the excessive use of intermediate punctuation. -LEWIS, EDWIN HERBERT, 1894, The History of the English Paragraph, p. 88.

We have read and re-read his poems, his novels, and his plays, and at each perusal their pure and wholesome spirit, their liveliness, their freshness, their wealth of fancy and imagination, their humour, their tenderness, their many graces of style, have gained on us more and more. COLLINS, JOHN CHURTON, 1895, Essays and Studies, p. 167.

The richer note of Greene, full of English feeling, strangely heightened with pastoral and Renaissance fancies, varied in rhythm, but somewhat languorous and overwrought.-CARPENTER, FREDERIC IVES, 1897, English Lyric Poetry, 15001700, Introduction, p. xliii.

Christopher Marlow, slain by ffrancis Archer, the 1 of June 1593.-BURIALREGISTER, Parish Church of St. Nicholas, Deptford, 1593.

By practice a play-maker and a poet of scurrilitie, who, by giuing too large a swing to his owne wit, and suffering his lust to haue the full reines, . . . denied God and his sonne Christ, and not onely in word blasphemed the Trinitie, but also (as it is credibly reported) wrote bookes against it, affirming our Sauiour to be but a deceiuer, and Moses to be but a coniurer and seducer of the people, and the Holy Bible to bee but vaine and idle stories, and all religion but a deuice of policie. But see what a hooke the Lord put in the nostrils of this barking dogge! So it fell out, that, as he purposed to stab one whom he ought a grudge vnto, with his dagger, the other party perceiuing so auoyded the stroke, that withall catching hold of his wrist, hee stabbed his owne dagger into his owne head, in such sort that, notwithstanding all the meanes of surgerie that could bee wrought, hee shortly after died thereof; the manner of his death being so terrible... that it was not only a manifeste signe of God's judgement, but also an horrible. and fearefull terror to all that beheld him. But herein did the justice of God most noteably appeare, in that hee compelled his owne hand, which had written these blasphemies, to bee the instrument to punish him, and that in his braine which had deuised the same. BEARD, THOMAS, 1597, Theatre of God's Judgments.

As Jodelle, a French tragical poet, being an epicure and an atheist, made a pitiful end: so our tragical poet Marlow, for his Epicurism and Atheism, had a tragical death; as you may read of this Marlow more at large, in the Theatre of God's judgments, in the 25th chapter, entreating of Epicures and Atheists. As the poet Lycophron was shot to death by a certain rival of his so Christopher Marlow was stabbed to death by a baudy Servingman, a rival of his, in his lewd love.-MERES, FRANCIS, 1598, Palladis Tamia.

Not inferior to these was one Christopher Marlow, by profession a playmaker, who as it was reported, about fourteen. years ago wrote a book against the Trinitie. But see the effects of God's justice! It so hapned that at Detford, a little village about three miles distant from London, as he meant to stab with his poniard one named Ingram, that had invited him thither to a feast, and was then playing at tables, hee quickly perceiving it, so avoyded the thrust, that with all drawing out his dagger for his defence, hee stabd this Marlowe into the eye, in such sort, his braynes comming out, at the daggers point, hee shortly after dyed. Thus did God, the true executioner of divine justice, work the end of impious atheists.-VAUGHAN, SIR WILLIAM, 1600, Golden Grove.

Marlowe was happy in his buskin ('d) Muse—
Alas, unhappy in his life and end!
Pitty it is that wit so ill should dwell,
Witlent from heaven, but vices sent from hell.
Our theater hath lost, Pluto hath got
A tragick penman for a driery plot.
-ANON., 1606, The Return from Pernassus.

We read of one Marlow a Cambridge scholler, who was a poet and a filthy playmaker; this wretche accounted that meeke servant of God, Moses, to be but a conjurer, and our sweete Saviour but a seducer and deceiver of the people. But harken, ye brain-sicke and prophane poets and players, that bewitch idle eares with foolish vanities, what fell upon this prophane wretch-having a quarrell against one whom he met in a streete in London, and would have stab'd him; but the partie perceiving his villany prevented him with catching his hand and turning his owne dagger into his braines, and so blaspheming and cursing he yeelded up his stinking breath. Marke this, ye players, that live by making fooles laugh at sinne and wickedness.-RUDIERDE, EDMOND, 1618, The Thunderbolt of God's Wrath against Hard-hearted and Stiffe-necked Sinners. Marlow, renown'd for his rare art and wit, Could ne'er attain beyond the name of Kit; Although his "Hero and Leander" did Merit addition rather.

-HEYWOOD, THOMAS, 1635, Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels.

But whatever our opinions may be as to the attending circumstances, the parish register leaves us in no doubt as to the main fact by recording the burial of "Christopher Marlow, slaine by ffrancis. Archer, the 1 of June, 1593." The old church of St. Nicholas at Deptford, has been enlarged and rebuilt, and restored and re-restored, till nothing of the original except the old grey tower remains, and it is vain even to guess at the spot in which the body of the young poet was laid. He died we may well suppose in the worst inn's worst room, and his grave was dug we may be certain in the obscurest corner of the churchyard; but even had it been otherwise, all knowledge of the locality would have passed away during the dark hundred years in which Christopher Marlowe became a name unknown. CUNNINGHAM, L'Col. FRANCIS, 1870, ed. Works of Christopher Marlowe, Introduction, p, xix.

The death of Marlowe was seized upon with avidity by the Puritans, and he was held up as an awful example of the judgment of God. He was a free-thinker, an atheist, a blasphemer; there was no known crime that was not imputed to him. As no one man could have been guilty of all

the wickedness he was charged with, and as one of his accusers was afterwards hanged at Tyburn, let us charitably render the Scotch verdict-"Not proven." The Devil himself is not as black as he is painted by the theologians.-STODDARD, RICHARD HENRY, 1884, ed. Selections from the Poetical Works of A. C. Swinburne, Introduction, p. vii.

The accounts of his death are doubtful and confused, but the most probable account is that he was poniarded in selfdefence by a certain Francis Archer, a serving-man (not by any means necessarily, as Charles Kingsley has it, a footman), while drinking at Deptford, and that the cause of the quarrel was a woman of light character. He has also been accused of gross vices not to be particularised, and of atheism. Fortunately or unfortunately, there is absolutely no valid testimony to support this latter charge, the expressions respecting it being for the most part quite vague and traceable on the one side to the Puritan hatred of plays, on the other to the unquestionably loose life of Marlowe and his set; while the one specified accusation existing is due to a scoundrel called Bame, who was afterwards hanged at Tyburn. That Marlowe was a Bohemian in the fullest sense is certain: that he was anything worse there is no evidence whatever. SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1887, History of Elizabethan Literature, p. 76.

It is certain he had friends among the finest-natured men of his time. Walsingham was his patron; there seems a touch of tenderness in Shakespeare's apostrophe of the "dead shepherd" in "As you Like It;" Nash, who had sometimes been a jealous rival wrote an elegy "on Marlowe's untimely death" which has not survived; an anonymous writer in 1600 speaks lovingly of "kynde Kit Marloe;" Edward Blunt, Marlowe's friend and publisher, writes, in words that have a genuine ring, of "the impression of the man that hath been dear unto us, living an after-life in our memory;" Drayton's well-inspired lines are familiar.

There is no alloy of blame in the words of these men, Drayton and Chapman, and they were among the gravest as well as the best-loved of their time. One lingers over the faintest traces of this personality which must have been so fascinating, for