liiiliilPiiiP^iH :spi" ¥ti:^tr;2:tr^.:j5;- ,) vllBflARYQ^ -55 ^A WJIIVDJO^ ^OFCAllFOff^ ^. ^^Aaviian# .^MEUNIVERJ/A ' -J IJ^t' I ^\J I Ti) f ahW/: •dOJIWJJO^ 'Aavii8n# :|VER%. IVERSZ/i II r— • C3 u-l L iT( 01^" .5WtlNIVER% ca ^laDNVSOV"^' /. Mm\'^mh L^ ^OF-CMIFOf ir >- fie A\^Ebr l^ V'i ■^•; f' ^" — the word "joys *' should be " eyes " ? I SOME ACCOUNT OF EGBERT GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. Robert Greene was a native of Norwich.* The date of his birth has not been ascertained: in all probability it may be fixed about the year 1550. * Greene, dedicating his Maiden's Dream, 1591, to Lady Elizabeth Hatton, declares that he is her "ladyship's poor countryman," and signs himself "R. Greene, Nordovicensis." In 1592 was printed a piece by Lodge, entitled Euphues Shadow, the Battaile of the Sences, &c. : it •was edited by Greene, who prefixed to it the following Address ; "To the Right Honourable Robert RatclifFe, Viscount Fitzwaters, Robert Greene wisheth increase of honour and vertue. "Ever desirous (right honorable) to shew my affectionate duty to your lordship, as weU for the generall report of your vertue vniuersally conceipted in the opinion of all men, as for the natiue place of my birth, whereby I am bounde to affect your honourable father, and you for him aboue others, in suspence of this dutifull desire, it fortuned that one M. Thomas Lodge, who nowe is gone to sea with Mayster Oandish, had bestowed some serious labour in penning of a booke called Euphues Shadowe ; and by his last letters gaue straight charge, that I should not onely haue the care for his sake of the impression thereof, but also in his absence to bestowe it on some man of honor, whose worthye vertues might bee a patronage to his worke : wherevpon taking aduice with my selfe, I thought none more fit then your honour, seeing your lordships disposition was wholy giuen to the studie of good letters, to be a Mecenas to the well-imployed laboures of the absent gentleman : may therefore your lordship fauourably censure of my good meaning, in presenting your honour with this pamphlet, and courteouslye graunt acceptance of his workes and my good will, his labour hath his end, and my desire in dutie rests satisfied ; and so himibly praying for your lordships health and welfare, I take my leaue. "Your honors humbly to commaund, "Rob. Gkeene, Norfolciensis." Euphues Shadow is not mentioned in any list of Lodge's works. [At least, it had not been mentioned among them in 1831, when the present memoir originally appeared.] Why Jlr. Collier {Hist, of Engl. Dram. Poet. iii. 149, note) should suspect that it might have been written "by Greene himself," I am at a loss to understand. "I necde not make long discourse of my parentes, who for their grauitie and honest life is well knowne and esteemed amongst their neighbors ; namely, in the cittie ot Norwitch, where I was bred and borne." — The Repentance of Robert Oreene, &c., 1592. sig. C. ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. He was educated at Cambridge, taking the degree of A, B. at St. John's College in 1578, and that of A. M. at Clarehall* in 1583: in July 1588 he was incorporated at Oxford ; t and on the title-pages of some of his works he ostentatiously terms himself " Utriusque Academice in Artihiis Magister." During the time that elapsed between his taking the degree of A. B. and that of A. M. Greene visited Italy, Spain, and other parts of the continent ; J and from the The full title of the very rare piece last quoted will be found in the List of Greene's prose-works appended to this essay. It opens -adth the following Address ; ' ' The Printer to the Gentlemen Readers. ' ' Gentlemen, I know you ar not vnacquainted with the death of Robert Greene, whose pen in his life-time pleased you as well on the stage as in the stationers shops : and, to speake truth, although his loose life was odious to God and offensiue to men, yet forasmuch as at his last end he found it most grieuous to himselfe (as appeareth by this his repentant discourse), I doubt not but he shall for the same deserue fauour both of God and men. And considering, gentlemen, that Venus hath her charmes to inchaunt, that fancie is a sorceresse bewitching the senses, and follie the onely enemie to all vertuous actions ; and forasmuch as the purest glasse is the most brickie, the finest lawne the soonest staind, the highest oake most subiect to the wind, and the quickest wit the more easily woone to folly ; I doubt not but you will with regarde forget his follies, and, like to the bee, gather hony out of the good counsels of him who was wise, learned, and polliticke, had not his lasciuious life withdrawen him from those studies which had been far more profitable to him. "For herein appeareth that he was a man giuen ouer to the lust of his owne heart, forsaking all godlines, and one that daily delighted in all manner of wickednes. Since other therefore haue forerun him in the like faults, and haue been forgiuen both of God and men, I trust hee shall bee the better accepted, that, by the working of Gods holy spirit, returnes with such a resolued repentance, being a thing acceptable both to God and men. "To conclude, forasmuch as I found this discourse very passionate, and of woonderfull eflfect to withdraw the wicked from their vngodly waies, I thought good to publish the same ; and the rather, for that by his repentance they may as in a glasse see their owne foUie, and thereby in time resolue, that it is better to die repentant than to liue dishonest. "Yours, C. B.[urbie.]" The rest of the tract professes to proceed from the pen of Greene, with the exception of a few pages headed " The manner of the death and last end of Robert Greene, Maister of Artes." When I first read The Repentance I suspected it to be the forgery of some writer who had taken advantage of the public curiosity concerning so notorious a person as Greene. But now I am strongly inclined to believe that it is genuine. The translator of The French Academy, T. B., noticing English- men of atheistical opinions, mentions ' ' the testimonie which one of that crew gaue lately of himselfe, when the heauy hand of God by sicknesse summoned him to giue an accompt of his dessolute life, " and then relates an anecdote of his impiety (not speaking of him, however, by name), — which anecdote is nothing more than a quotation from The Repentance of Robert Greene. And Chettle, in the Address "To the Gentlemen Readers," prefixed to Kind-Harts Dreame, says; "About three moneths since died M. Robert Greene, leaning many papers in sundry hooTcescllers hands, among others his Groats- worth of Wit," &c. * "I find Rob. Greene, A. M., Clare Hall, 1583."— MS. note by Dr. Farmer. The Dedication of the Second Part of MamilUa (which was not printed till after Greene's death) is dated "From my Studie in Clarehall the vij. of Julie" (the year not being added). In Cole's MS. Collections relative to Cambridge (in the British Museum) I could find no mention oi Greene. + "1588, July — , Robert Green, M.A., of Cambridge, was also then incorporated." — Wood's Fasti Oxon. Part First, p. 245, ed. Bliss. X "To be briefe, gentlemen, I haue seen the world and rounded it, though not with trauell, yet with experience ; and I crie out with Salomon, Omnia sub sole vanitas. I haue smyled with the Italian, and ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 3 laxity of manners prevalent in some of those countries he seems to have acquired a taste for the dissolute habits in which he afterwards indulged. It is stated that he entered the Church. In the Lansdowne Manuscripts, 982, art. 102, fol. 187, under the head of "Additions to Mr. Wood's Report of Mr. Robert Green, an eminent poet, who died about 1592," is a reference to a document in Rymer's Foedera, from which it appears that a "Robert Grene " was, in 1576, one of the Queen's chaplains, and that he was presented by her Majesty to the rectory of Walkington in the diocese of York.* According to Octavius Gilchrist,t worn the vipers head in my hand, and yet stopt his venome ; I haue eaten Spanishe mirabolanes, and yet am nothing the more metamorphosed ; Fraunce, Germanie, Poland, Denmarke, I know them all, yet not affected to any in the fourme of my life ; oneHe I am English borne, and I haue English thoughts, not a deuill incarnate because I am Italianate, but hating the pride of Italic, because I knowe their peeuishnes: yet in all these countreyes where I haue trauelled, I hane not scene more excesse of vanitie then wee Englishe men practise through vain glory." — A Notable Discouery of Coosnage, 1591, Sig. A 2. "For being at the Vniuersitie of Cambridge, I light amongst wags as lewd as my selfe, with whome I consumed the flower of my youth ; who drew mee to trauell into Italy and Spaine, in which places I sawe and practizde such viUainie as is abhominable to declare. Thus by their counsaile I sought to furnishe myselfe with coiae, which I procured by cunning sleights from my father and my friends ; and my mother pampered me so long, and secretly helped mee to the oyle of angels, that I grew thereby prone to all mischiefe : so that beeing then conuersant with notable braggarts, boon companions, and ordinary spend-th rifts, that practized sundry superficiall studies, I became as a sien grafted into the same stocke, whereby I did absolutely participate of their nature and qualities. At my return into England, I rufifeled out in my silks, in the habit of malcontent, and seemed so discontent, that no place would please me to abide in, nor no vocation cause mee to stay myselfe in : but after I had by degrees proceeded Maister of Arts," &c. — The Repentance of Robert Greene. Sig. C. * "Anno 1576. Regina, delectis Nobis in Christo, Decano et Capitulo Ecclesise nostra Cathedralis et Metropoliticse Eboracensis, aut Vicario suo in Spiritualibus Generali et Officiali Principali, aut alii cuicumque in hac parte Potestatem habenti, Salutem. "Ad Rectoriam sive Ecclesiam Parochialem de Walkington Eboracen. Dioeces. per mortem Johannis Kewcome ultimi lucumbentis ibidem, jam vacantem et ad nostiam Donationem et Prsesentationem pleno jure spectantem, Dilectum nobis in Christo, Robertum Grene, unum CapelJanorum nostrorum Capells nostrse Regise, vobis Tenore Proesentium prsesentamus, Mandantes et Requirentes quatenus eundem Robertum Grene ad Rectoriam sive Ecclesiam Parochialem de Walkington pnedictam admittere, ipsumque Rectorem ejusdem ac in et de eadem cum suis Juribus et Pertinentiis universis instituere et investire, caeteraque omnia et singula peragere facere et perimplere, quae vestro in hac paite incumbunt Of&cio Pastorali, velitis cum favore. In cujus rei, &c. "Teste Regina apud Gorhambury tricesimo primo die Augusti. "Per hreve de Privato Sigi/lo." Rymer's Foedera, torn. xv. p. 705. See a sketch of Greene's life by Sir N. H. Nicolas, in his reprint of Davison's Poetical Rhapsody. t Examination of Ben Junson's Enmity towards Shahespeare, p. 22, where no authority is cited for the statement. The following passage of Never too Late, even if it be allowed that Greene meant Francesco for a pic- ture of himself, must not be adduced to show that he had ever been in orders : his "hauing tasted of the sweet fruits of theology " is to be referred merely to the divinity which (as well as philosophy) Francesco, " who had been nursed up at the Universities," had acquired during his academical career : — " Hast thou read Aristotle, and findest thou not in his philosophic this sentence set downe ? Omne animal irrationale ad sui similem diligendum natura dirigitur. And wilt thou that art a creature indued with reason as thou art, excelling them in wisedome, exceede them in vanities ? Hast thou tumd ouer the liberal! sciences as a scholler, and amongst them all hast not found this general principle, that vnitie is the essence of amitie, and yet wilt thon make a diuision in the greatest simpathie of all loues ? Nay, Francesco, art thou a Christian, and hast tasted of the sweet fruites of theologie, and hast not read B 2 4 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. our author was presented, IDth June, 1584, to the vicarage of Tollesbury in Essex, which he resigned the next year. And a copy of The Pinner of Wakefield exists, on the title-page of which are the following notes, in hand-wi'iting of about the time when the play was printed ; "Written by a minister who acted the piner s pt in it himselfe. Teste W. Shakespeare. Ed. Juby saith it was made by Ro. Greene." Of The Pinner of Wakefield, of these MS. Notes, and of Greene's acting, more will be said hereafter. From the title-page of his Planetomachia, 1585, where he is styled "Student in Phisicke," we may gather that, at one period of his life, he had intended to pm*sue the medical profession. That Greene has described some of his own adventures under those of Francesco in his Never too Late, must be, I think, sufficiently evident to eveiy one who has perused it with attention : and that he intended Roberto, in his Groats-worth of Wit, for a picture of himself, he has not left us to doubt ; " Heere, gentlemen, breake I off Roberto's speech, whose life in most part agreeing with mine, found one selfe punishment as I have done. Hereafter suppose me the said Roberto, and I will go on with that he promised : Greene wiU send you now his Groats-worth of Witte," &c. But, since in both narratives he has undoubtedly exaggerated the incidents and heightened the colouring much beyond the truth, it is very difficult to detennine what portions of them are to be received as facts. These two pieces may be regarded as among the best of Greene's pamphlets ; and the ample extracts which I am about to make from them, will serve not only as illustrations of his life, but as specimens of his style in prose. The Palmer's story in Never too Late,* opens thus : " In those dayes when Palmerin reigned King of Great Britaine, famoused for his deedes of chiuah-ie, there dwelled in the citie of Caerbranck a gentleman of an ancient house, called Francesco ; a man whose parentage though it were worshipfull, yet it was not indued with much wealth ; insomuch that his learning was better than his reuenewes, and his wit moi-e beneficiall than his substance. This Signer Francesco desirous to bend the coxrrse of his compasse to some peaceable port, spread no more cloath in the winde than might make easie saile, least hoysting vp too hastely aboue this in Holy Writt, pend downe by tLat miracle of wisedome Salomon, that he which is wise should reiect the strange woman, and not regard the sweetnesse of hir flattrie If then, Francesco, theologie tells thee such axiomes, wilt thou striue against the streame ?" Part First, p. 48. ed. 1590. * I print from the edition of 1590 : see the fuU title in the List of Greene's prose-works appended to this essay. I have not quoted here any of the verses with which Never too Late abounds, as they are all given in the present volume among our author's Miscellaneous Poems. ACCOUNT OF R GEEENE AND HIS WRITINGS. the maine yeard, some sodaine giist might make him founder in the deep. Though he were yong, yet he was not rash with Icainis to soare into the skie, but to crie out with olde Dedahis, Medium tenere tutissimum; treading his shooe without anie sHp. He was so generally loued of the citizens, that the richest marchaut or grauest burghmaster would not refuse to graunt him his daughter in marriage, hoping more of his insuing fortunes than of his present substance. At last, casting his eye on a gentlemans daughter that dwelt not far from Caerbranck, he feU in loue, and prosecuted his sute with such affable courtesie as the maide, considering the vertue and wit of the man, was content to set vp her rest with him, so that her fathers consent might be at the knitting vp of the match. Francesco thinking himselfe cocksure, as a man that hoped his credite in the citie might can-ie away more than a coimtry gentlemans daughter, finding her father on a day at fit opportunitie, he made the motion about the grant of his daughters marriage. The olde churle, that listened with both eares to such a question, did not in this in vtramuis aurem dormire ; but leaning on his elbow, made present aunswere, that hir dowrie required a greater feoffment than his lands were able to affoord." The old gentleman, who was called Signer Fregoso, now goes home, and rates his daughter, whose name was Isabel, for having thought of maiTying a man who was unable to maintain her. " And with that, he carried her in, and shut her vp in his owne chamber, not giuing her leaue to depart but when his key gaue her Hcense : yet at last she so cunningly dissembled, that she gat thus farre libertie, not to bee close prisoner, but to walke about the house ; yet euerie night hee shut vp her cloathes, that no nightly feare of her escape might hinder his broken slumbers." Francesco is for some time unable to gain access to his mistress, or to communicate with her in writing. At last a poor woman, for a bribe, conveys a letter from him to Isabel, who, in her answer to it, desires him to "be vpon Thursday next at night hard by the orchard vnder the greatest oake, where expect my comming, and prouide for our safe passage ; for, stood all the worlde on the one side, and thou on the other, Francesco should be my guide to direct me whither hee pleased. Faile not, then, vnlesse thou bee false to her that would haue life faile ere she falsifie faith to thee." On the appointed Thursday, at midnight, Isabel " rose vp, and finding her apparell shut vp, she was faine to goe without hose, onely in her smocke and her petticoate, with her fathers hat and an olde cloake. Thus attired hke Diana in her night-geere, she marcheth downe softly, where she found Francesco readie with a priuate and familiar frend of his to watch her comming forth ; who casting his eye aside, and seeing one in a hat and a cloake, suspecting some treacherie, di-ew his sword." He, of com-se, soon recognizes his mistress, and professes his devotion to her. " * Sir,' quoth she, ' these protestations are now bootlesse : and therefore to be bricfe, thus ' (and with that the teares trickled downe the vermilion of her cheeks, and she blubbred out this passion) ' Francesco, thou maist see by my attire the depth of my fancie, and in these homely roabes maist thou noate the recldesncsse of my fortunes, that for 6 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. thy lone have straind a note too high in loue. I offend nature as repugnant to my father, whose displeasiu-e I haue purchast to please thee ; I haue giuen a finall farewell to my friends, to be thy ^miliar ; I haue lost all hope of prefei-ment, to confirme the simpathie of both our desires : ah Francesco, see I come thus poore in apparell, to make thee rich in content. Now, if hereafter (oh, let me sigh at that, least I be forced to repent too late), when thy eye is glutted with my beautie, and thy hotte loue prooued soone colde, thou beginst to hate hir that thus loueth thee, and prove as Demophon did to Phillis, or as Aeneas did to Dido ; what then may I doo, reiected, but accm'se mine owne folly, that hath brought mee to such hard fortunes ? Giue me leaue, Francesco, to feare what may fall ; for men are as inconstant in performance as cunning in practises.' She could not fully discom-se what she was about to vtter ; but he broke oiF with this protestation. ' Ah Isabel, although the windes of Lepanthos are euer inconstant, the chriseroll euer brittle, the polype euer changeable, yet measure not my minde by others motions, nor the depth of my affection by the fleeting of others fancies ; for as there is a topace that will yeeld to euerie stamp, so there is an emerald that will yeeld to no impression. The selfe same Troy, as it had an Aeneas that was fickle, so it had a Troylus that was constant. Greece had a Piramus as it had a Demophon ; and though some haue been ingrateful, yet accuse not al to be vnthankful ; for when Francesco shall let his eye slip from thy beautie, or his thoughts from thy qualities, or his heart from thy vertues, or his whole selfe from euer honouring thee, then shal heauen cease to haue starres, the earth trees, the world elements, and euerie thing reuersed shall fall to their former chaos.' ' Why, then,' quoth Isabel, ' to horsebacke, for feare the faith of two such louers be impeached by my fathers wakefull iealouzie.' And with that (poore woman) halfe naked as she was, she mounted, and as fast as horse would pace away they post towards a towne in the said coimtrey of Britaine called Dunecastrum." Fregoso, rising early in the morning, is half distracted at Isabel's escape. " Whereupon in a despayring furie he caused all his men and his tenaunts to mount them, and to disjDerse themselues euerie one with hue and crie for the recouerie of his daughter, he himself being horst, and riding the readie way to Dunecastrum. Where he no sooner came, but fortune meaning to dally with the olde doteard, and to present him a boane to gnaw on, brought it so to passe that, as he came riding downe the towne, he met Francesco and his daughter comming from the church ; which although it piercte him to the quicke, and strainde euerie string of his heart to the highest noate of sorrow, yet he concealed it till he tooke his inne ; and then stumbling as fast as he coixld to the Mayors house of the towne, he reuealed vnto him the whole cause of his distresse, requiring his fauour for the clapping vp of this vnruly gentleman j and to make the matter the more hainous, hee accused him of felonie, that he had not onely, contrarie to the custome, bereft him of his daughter against his wil, but with his daughter had taken away certaine plate. This euidence caused the Mayor ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. straight, garded with his officers, to march downe with Fregoso to the place where Isabel and her Francesco were at breakfast, little thinking, poore soules, such a sharp storme should follow so quiet a calme." Francesco is conveyed to prison, and Isabel to the Mayor's house ; and Fregoso, " as a man carelesse what should become of them in a straunge countrey," rides back to his home. After many days the Mayor, perceiving that the charge of felony was groundless, procm^es the consent of his brethren to set Francesco free. Taking Isabel with him, he goes to the gaol, and teUs his prisonei-, that "he was content to set him at libertie, conditionally Francesco should giiie his hand to be answerable to A\hat hereafter in that behalfe might be obiected against him. These conditions accepted, Francesco was set at libertie ; and he and IsabeU, ioyntly together taking themselues to a little cottage, began to be as Cyceronicall as they were amorous ; with then* hands thrift couetiug to satisfie their hearts thirst, and to be as diligent in laboiu's as they were affectionate in loues : so that the parish wherein they lined so affected them for the course of their life, that they were coimted the very myrrom-s of a democraticaU methode ; for hee being a scholler, and nurst vp in the vniuersities, resolued rather to liue by his wit than any way to be pinched with want, thinking this olde sentence to be true, that wishers and woulders were neuer good housholders ; therefore he applied himselfe to teaching of a schoole, where by his industry he had not onelie great fauour, but gote wealth to withstand fortime. Isabel, that she might seeme no lesse profitable than her husband careful, fel to her needle, and with her worke sought to pi-euent the iuiurie of necessitie. Thus they laboured to mainetaine their loues, being as busie as bees, and as true as turtles, as desirous to satisfie the worlde with theu- desert as to feede the humours of their owne desires. Lining thus in a league of vnited vertues, out of this mutuall concorde of confirmed perfection, they had a sonne answerable to their owne proportion ; which did increase their amitie, so as the sight of their young infant was a double ratifying of their affection. Fortune and loue thus ioyning in league to make these parties to forget the stormes that had nipped the blossomes of their foi-mer yeers, addicted to the content of their loues this conclusion of blisse. After the tearme of fine yeares, Seigneur Fregoso hearing by sundry reports the fame of their forwardnesse, howe Francesco coucted to be most louinff to his dauohter, and she most dutifull to him, and both striue to exceede one an other in loyalty, glad at this mutuall agreement, hee fell from the fury of his fonner melancholic passions, and satisfied him selfe with a contented patience, that at last he directed letters to his sonne in lawe, that he should make repayre to his house with his daughter. "VMiich newes was no sooner come to the eares of this married couple, but, prouiding for all things necessai'ie for the fui-niture of their voyage, they posted as fast as they coulde towards Caerbrancke ; where speedily arriuing at their fathers house, they found such friendly intei-tainement at the olde mans hand, that they counted this smile of fortune able to countcruaile all the contrarie stormes that the aduerse planets had inflicted vj)on them." .... 8 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. " It so chanced that Francesco had necessarie businesse to dispatch certaine his vrgeut afFaii-es at the chiefe city of that iland, called Troynouant : thither, with leaue of his father, and farewell to his wife, he * departed after they were married seuen yeeres. Where after he was arriued, knowing that he should make his abode there for the space of some nine weeks, he solde his horse, and hired him a chamber, earnestlie endeuouring to make speedie dispatch of his affau'es, that he might the sooner enioy the sight of his desired Isabel ; for, did he see any woman beautiful, he viewed her with a sigh, thinking howe farre his wife did surpasse her in excellence ; were the modesty of any woman well noted by her qualities, it greened him hee was not at home with his Isabel who did excell them all in vertues." . . " As thus his thoughts were diuided on his businesse and on his wife, looking one day out at his chamber windowe hee espied a young gentlewoman which looked out at a casement right opposite against his prospect, who fixed her eies vpon him with such cunning and artificiall glaunces, as she shewed in them a chaste dis- daine and yet a modest desire. Where, by the way, gentlemen, let me say this much, that om- curtizans of Troynouant are far superiour in artificiall allurement to them of all the world ; for although they haue not the painting of Italic, nor the charms of France, nor the ieweUes of Spaine, yet they haue in their eies adamants that wil drawe youth as the jet the strawe, or the sight of the panther the ermly : their looks are like liures that will reclaime, and like Cyrces aj)paritions that can represent in them all motions ; they containe modesty, mirth, chastity, wantonnes, and what not ; and she that holdeth in her eie most ciuility, hath oft in hir heart most dishonestie, being like the pyrit stone that is fier without and frost within." . . . . . . " This courtisan, seeing this countrey Francesco was no other but a meere nouice, and that so newly that, to vse the old prouerb, he had scarce scene the lions, she thought to intrap him and so arrest him with her amorous glances that shee would wring him by the pvu-sse : wherevpon euery day shee wovdd out at hir casement stand, and there discouer her beauties." .... Francesco " when his leism-e serued him, woulde, to make proofe of his constancie, interchange amorous glaunces with this faire curtisan, whose name was Infida ; thinking his inward affections were so surely grounded on the vertues of his Isabel that no exterior proportion could effect any passion to the contrary : but at last he found by experience, that the fairest blossomes are soonest nipt with frost, the best fruite soonest touched with caterpillers, and the ripest wittes most apt to be ouerthrowen by lone. Infida taught him with her lookes to learne this, that' the eie of the basiliske pierceth with preiudice ; that the iuice of celidonie is sweete, but it fretteth deadly ; that Cyi-ces cuppes were too strong for aU antidotes, and womens flatteries too forceable to resist at voluntarie : for she so snared him in the fauours of her face that his eie beganne to censure partially of her perfection, insomuch that he thought he] Olded. "the." ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 9 her second to Isabel, if not superiour. Dallying thus with beautie as the flie in the flame, Venus, willing to shewe how forceable her influence was, so tempted with opportunitie, that as Francesco walked abroad to take the ayre, he met with Infida gadding abroad with certaine hir companions, who like blazing staiTes shewed the markes of inconstant minions ; for she no sooner drew neere Francesco, but dying her face with a vermillion blush, and in a wanton eie hiding a fained modesty, shee saluted him with a lowe coiu'tesie. Seigneur Francesco that coulde well skill to court all kinde of degrees, least he might then be thought to haue little manners, retiurned not only her coui-tesies with his bonnet, but, taking Infida by the hand, beganne thus. ' Faire mistresse, and if mine eie be not deceiued in so bright an obiect, mine ouerthwart neighbour, hauing often scene with delight, and coueted with deshe to be acquainted with your sweete selfe ; I cannot now but gratulate fortune with many thankes that hath off'ered such fit opportunitie to bring me to your presence, hoping I shall finde you so friendly as to craue that wee may be more familiar.' She that knewe howe to entertaine such a young nouice made him this cunning replie. ' Indeede, sir, ueighborhoode craues charitie, and such afi"able gentlemen as your selfe deserues rather to be entertained with com-tesie than reiected with disdaine. Therfore, sir, what priuate friendship mine honour or honestie may afibord, you aboue all (that hitherto I haue knowne) shaU commaund.' ' Then, mistres,' quoth hee, ' for that euery man counts it credite to haue a patronesse of his fortunes, and I am a meere straunger in this citie, let mee finde such fauour that all my actions may be shrowded "VTider your excellence, and carrie the name of your seruant, ready, for requitaU of such gratious countenaunce, to unsheath my sworde in the defence of my patronesse for euer.' She that had her humour fitted with this motion, answered thus, with a looke that had beene able to haue forced Troylus to haue beene trothlesse to his Cressida. ' How kindly I take it. Seigneur Francesco, for so I vnderstand your name, that you proffer youi- seruice to so meane a mistresse ! the eft'ectual fauoiu-s that shall to my poore abilitie gratifie your ciuiesie, shall manifest how I accompt of such a friend. Therefore, from henceforth Infida intertains Francesco for her seruant.' 'And I,' quoth he, 'accept of the beauteous Infida as my mistresse.' Upon this they feU into other amorous prattle which I leaue off", and walked abroad while * it was dinner time ; Francesco stil hauing his eie vpon his new mistresse, whose beauties he thought, if they were equally tempered with vertucs, to exceede all that yet his eie had made sm-uey of Doating thus on this newe face with a new fancic, hee often wi'oong her by the hand, and brake off" his sentences, with such deepe sighes, that she perceiued by the weather- cocke where the winde blewe ; returning such amorous passions as she seemed as much mtangled as he was enamom-ed. Well, thinking, now that she had bayted her hooke, she woulde not cease while * she had fully caught the fish, she beganne thus to * while] i. e. till. 10 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. lay the traine. When they were come neere to the city gates, she stayed on a sodaine, and straining him hard by the hand, and glauncing a looke from her eies, as if she would both shew fauour and craue affection, she began thus smiHngiie to assault him. ' Seruant, the lawyers say the assumpsit is neuer good where the partie giues not somewhat in consideration ; that seruice is voide where it is not made fast by some fee. Least, therefore, your eie should make your minde variable, as mens thoughts follow their sights, and then- lookes wauer at the excellence of new obiects, and so I loose such a seruant ; to tie you to the stake with an earnest, you shall this day be my guest at dinner. Then, if heereafter you forget your mistresse, I shal appeale at the barre of loyaltie, and so condemne you of lightnes.' Francesco, that was tied by the eies, and had his hai't on his halfpeny, could not deny her, but with many thanks accepted of hir motion ; so, that agreed, they went all to Infidaes house to dinner : where they had such cheere as could vpon the sodaine be prouided ; Infida giuing him such friendly and familiar intertainement at his repast, as wel with sweet prattle as with amorous glances, that he rested captiue within the laborinth of hir flatteries." In a short time the arts of Infida have complete success : she " so plied Francesco with her flattering fawnes that, as the yron follows the adamant, the straw the jet, and the helitropion the beames of the sunne, so his actions were directed after her eie, and what she saide stoode for a principle, insomuch, that he was not onely readie in aU submisse humours to please her fancies, but willing for the least worde of oflFence to draw his weapon against the stoutest champion in al Troynouant. Thvis seated in her beauty, hee liued a long while, forgetting his returne to Caerbrancke." .... " Wel, his affaires were done, his horse soldo, and no other businesse now rested to hinder him from hying home, but his mistresse ; which was such a violent deteyner of his person and thoughts, that there is no heauen but Infidaes house ; where although hee pleasantly entred in with delight, yet cowardly he slipt away with repentance. Well, leaning him to his new loues, at last to Isabell, who daily expected the comming home of her best beloued Francesco, thinking eueiy houre a yeare till she might see him in whome rested all her content. But when (poore soule) she coulde neither feede her sight with his presence, nor her eares with his letters, she beganne to lower, and grew so discontent that she fell into a feuer. Fortune, that meant to trie hir patience, thought to prooue hir with these tragicall newes : it was tolde her by certame gentlemen her friends, who were her husbands priuate familiars, that he meant to soiorne most part of the yeere in Troynouant ; one blunt fellowe, amongest the rest, that was playne and wythout falshoode, tolde her the whole cause of his residence, howe hee was in loue wyth a most beautifull gentlewoman called Infida, and that so deepely that no perswasion might reuoke him from that alluring curtizan. At this Isabell made no accompt, but tooke it as a friuolous tale, and thought the woorse of such as buzzed such fantasticall follies into her eares : but when the generall report of his misdemeanoui's were bruted abroad thi-oughout all ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 11 Caerbrancke, then, with Llushing cheekes, she hid her head, and greening at his folhes and her owne fortunes, smothered the flames of her sorrows with inward conceit, but outwardly withstood such in satyricall tearmes as did inueigh against the honestie of Francesco ; so that she wonne great commendations of all for her loyaltie and constancie ; yet when she was gotten secret by hir selfe, hu- heart full of sorrowfuU passions, and her eies full of teares, she beganne to meditate with her selfe of the prime of her youth vowed to Francesco, how she forsooke father, friendes, and countrey to bee paramour vnto her hearts paragon, the vowes hee made, when he carried her away in the night, the solempne promises and protestations that were vttered." She then writes the following letter. "'Isabel to Francesco, health. If Penelope longde for her Vlysses, thinke Isabel wisheth for her Francesco, as loyall to thee as she was constant to the wily Greeke, and no lesse desirous to see thee in Caerbranck than she to enioy his presence in Ithaca ; watering my cheekes with as manie teares as she her face with plaints ; yet, my Francesco, hoping I haue no such cause as she to increase hir cares ; for I haue such resolution in thy constancie, that no Circes with all her inchantments, no Calipso with aU her sorceries, no Syren with all her melodies could pei'uert thee from thinking on thine Isabel ; I know, Francesco, so deeply hath the faithful promise and loyall vowes made and inter- changed betweene vs taken place in thy thoughtes, that no time how long soeuer, no distance of place howsoeuer different, may alter that impression. But why do I infen-e this needlesse insinuation to him that no vanitie can alienate from vertue 1 let me, Francesco, perswade thee with other circumstances. First, my sweete, thinke how thine Isabel lies alone, measuring the time with sighes, and thine absence with passions ; counting the day dismall and the night full of sorrowes ; being euerie way discontent, because shee is not content with her Francesco, The onely comfort that I haue in thine absence is thy child, who lies on his mothers knee, and smiles as wantonly as his father when he was a wooer. But when the boy sayes, ' Mam, where is my dad 1 when will hee come home ? ' then the calme of my content turneth to a present storme of piercing sorrowe, that I am forced sometime to say, ' Unkinde Francesco, that forgets his Isabell ! ' I hope, Francesco, it is thine affaires, not my faults, that prociu'eth this long delay ; for if I knewe my follies did any way offend thee, to rest thus long absent, I woulde punish myselfe both with outward and inward penaunce. But, howsoeuer, I pray for thy health and thy speedie retume ; and so, Francesco, farewell. Thine, more than her owne, Isabell.' " This letter awakened some feeling of remorse in the breast of Francesco ; " but when he went foorth of his chamber, and spied but liis mistresse looking out of her windowe, all this geare chauugde, and the case was altered : shee calde, and in hee must ; and there in a iest scoflPt at his wiues letters, taking his Infida in his armes, and saying, ' I will not leaue this Troy for the chastest Penelope in the world.' " . . . . " After these two loners had by the space of three yeares securely slumbred in the sweetncsse of their pleasures, and, drunkc with the surfet of content, thought no 12 ACCOUNT OF K GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. other heauen but their owne supposed happinesse ; as euerie storme hath his calme, and the greatest spring-tide the deadest ebbe, so fared it with Francesco : for so long went the pot to the water that at last it came broken home ; and so long put he his hand into his pursse that at last the emptie bottome returned him a writt of Non est imientus ; for well might the Diuell dance there, for euer a crosse to keepe him backe. Well, this loner, fuller of passions than of pence, began (when hee entred into the consideration of his owne estate) to mom-ne of the chyne, and to hang the lippe as one that for want of sounding had stroke himselfe vppon the sands : yet he couered his inward sorrowe with outward smiles, and like Janus presented his mistresse with a merrie looke, when the other side of his visage was full of sorrowes. But she, that was as good as a touchstone to trye metalls, could straight spie by the laste where the shooe wringde him ; and seeing her Francesco was almost foundred, thought to see if a skilfull farrier might mend him ; if not, like an vnthankefull hackneyman, shee meant to tourne him into the bare leas, and set him as a tyrde iade to picke a sallct. Uppon which determination, that shee might doo nothing rashly, shee made enquirie into his estate, what linings he had, what landes to sell, howe they were eyther tyed by statute or intailde % At last, thorough her secret and subtill inquisition, she found that all his corne was on the floore, that his sheepe were dipt, and the wooU solde ; to be short, that what he had by his wife coulde neither be solde nor morgaged, and what he had of his owne was spent vppon her, that nothing was lefte for him to Hue vppon but his wits. This newes was such a cooling card to this curtezan that the estreame heate of her lone was alreadie gi-owen to bee lukewarme : which Francesco might easely perceiue ; for at his arriuall his welcome was more straunge, her lookes more coy, his fare more slender, her glaunces lesse amorous ; and she seemed to bee Infida in proportion, but not in wonted passions." The simple Francesco attributes the change in the behaviour of his mistress " to the distemperatru'e of her bodie." Presently his hostess becomes clamorous for money, his creditors threaten to arrest him, and his clothes wax thread-bare. Whereupon one day, as he was sitting beside his fair courtesan, he said, " ' Knowe, then, Infida, that Troynouant is a place of gi-eat expence ; like the serjDcnt hidaspis, that the more it suckes, the more it is athirst ; eating men aliue as the crocodile ; and being a place of as daungerous allurement as the seate where the Syrens sit and chaimt their preiudiciall melodic. It is to young gentlemen like the Laborynth, whereout Theseus could not get without a threed ; but here be such monstrous Minotavires as fii'st deuour the threed and then the person. The innes are like hotehouses, which by little and little sweate a man into a consumption ; the hoste he caiTies a pint of wine in the one hand to welcome, but a poniard in the other to stab ; and the hostesse she hath smiles in her forhead, and prouides good meate for her guests, but the sauce is costly, for it far exceeds the cates. If coyne want, then either to Limbo, or els clap vp a commoditie (if so much credite be left), where he shall finde such knots as he will neuer be able witliout his vtter preiudice to vntie. ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 13 Brokers, I leaue them off, as too course ware to be mouthde with an honest mans tongue. These Minotaures, faire Infida, haue so eaten mee vp in this Laborinth as, to bee plaine with thee that art my second selfe, I want, and am so farre indebted to the mercer and mine hostesse as either thou must stand my friend to disburse so much money for me, or els I must depart from Troynouant, and so from thy sight, which how precious it is to mee, I referre to thine owne conscience ; or for an VUirmcm vale take vp my lodging in the Coimter, which I know, as it would be vncouth to me, so it would bee greeuefull to thee ; and therefore now hangs my welfare in thy wil. How loath I was to vtter vnto thee my want and sorrowe, measure by my lone ; who wish rather death than thy discontent.' Infida could scarce suffer him in so long a periode, and therefore, with her forehead fiill of fiUTOwes, shee made him this answere. ' And would you haue me, sir, buy an ounce of pleasure with a tunne of mishappes, or reach after repentaunce with so hie a rate 1 haue I lent thee the blossoms of my youth, and delighted thee with the prime of my yeares 1 hast thou had the spoile of my virginitie, and now wouldest thou haue the sacke of my substaunce ? when thou hast withered my person, aymest thou at my wealth ? No, su', no : knowe, that, for the loue of thee, I haue crackt my credite, that neuer before was stained ; I cannot looke abroad without a blush, nor go with my neighbours without a frump ; thoii, and thy name is euer cast in my dish, my foes laugh, and my friends soitow to see my follies ; wherefore, seeing thou beginnest to picke a quarrell, and hereafter, when thine owne base fortunes haue brought thee to beggarie, wilt say that Infida cost thee so many crownes and was thine ouerthrowe, auaunt, nouice, home to thine owne wife, who, poore gentlewoman, sits and wants what thou consumest at tauerns. . Thou hast had my despoyle, and I feare I beare in my bellie the token of too much loue I ought thee. Yet content with this discredite, rather than to runne into further extremitie, get thee out of my doores, for fi-om hencefoorth thou shalt neuer be welcome to Infida.' And with that shee flung vp, and went into her chamber. Francesco would haue made a replie, but shee woulde not heare him, nor holde him any more chat." The discarded louer goes to his lodging ; and " leaning his head on his hand, with teares in his eies, he beganne to be thus extremely passionate." The greater part of his soliloquy is a tirade against covirtesans : its conclusion is ; " ' What nowe rests for thee, poore infortunate man 1 Thou hast yet left a meanes to ende all these miseries, and that is this, drawe thy rapier and so die, that with a manly resolution thoii mayest preuent thy further misfortunes. Oh, although thou hast sinned, yet despaire not ; though thou arte anathema, yet proue not an atheist ; the mercie of God is aboue all his workes, and repentaunce is a pretious balme. Home to thy wife, to the wife of thy youth, Francesco ; to Isabell, who with her patience will couer all thy follies : remember this, man, Nunquam sera est ad honos mores via.' Thus hee ended, and with verie griefe fell in a slumber." On awaking, " hee arose vp and raunged about the citie, despayring of his estate as a man pennylesse, and therefore impatient because he 14 ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. knewe not how to redresse his miseries : to reUe v]:)pon the helpe of a curtizan, he sawe by experience was to hang hope in the ayre : to stand vpon the fauour of friends, that was bootelesse ; for he had fewe in the citie, as being but a straunger there, and snch as he had were wonne with an apple, trencher-friends, and therefore to bee left with the puffe of the least blast of adversities : to goe home to his wife, to faire Isabel, that was as hard a censure as the sentence of death ; for shame of his follies made him ashamed to shewe his face to a woman of so high desarts. In this perplexitie he passed ouer three or foure daies till his purse was cleane emptie, his score great, and his hostesse would trust him for no more money, but tkreatned him, if present payment were not made, to lay him in prison. This newes was hard to Francesco, that knewe not how to auoyd the preiudice ; only his refuge was, to preuent such a misfortune, to carrie his apparell to the brokers, and with great losse to make money to pay for his diet : which once discharged, he walkt vp and downe as a man forlorne, hauing neither coyne nor credite. Necessitie, that stingeth vnto the quick, made him set his wits on the tenter, and to stretch his braines as high as ela, to see how he could recouer pence to defray his charges, by any sinister meanes to salue his sorrowes : the care of his parents and of his owne honor perswaded him from making gaine by labour ; he had neuer been brought vp to any mechanicall course of life. Thus euery way destitute of meanes to line, he sight* out this olde sayd sawe, Miserrimum est fuisse beatum : yet at last, as extremities search very farre, he calde to minde that he was a scholler, and that although in these daies arte wanted honor and learning lackt his due, yet good letters were not brought to so lowe an ebbe but that there might some profite arise by them to procure his maintenance. In this humour he fell in amongst a companie of players, who perswaded him to trie his wit in writing of comedies, tragedies, or pastorals, and if he could performe any thing worth the stage, then they would largelie reward him for his paines. Francesco, glad of this motion, seeing a meanes to mitigate the extremitie of his want, thought it no dishonor to make gaine of his wit or to get profite by his pen : and therefore, getting him home to his chamber, writ a comedie ; which so generally pleased all the audience that happie were those actors in short time that could get any of his workes, he grewe so exquisite in that facultie. By this meanes his want was releeued, his credit in his hosts house recouered, his apparell in greater brauerie then it was, and his purse well lined with crownes." Infida, hearing of this change in his fortunes, " thought to cast foorth her lure to reclaime him, though by her vnkindnesse he was proued haggard ; for she thought that Francesco was such a tame foole that he would be brought to strike at any stale. Decking her selfe, * sight] i. e. sighed, — as our early writers frequently spell the word. So Spenser, The Faerie Queene, B. -vi. C. viii. st. 20 ; ' ' I was belov'd of many a gentle knight, And sude and sought with all the service dew ; Full many a one for me deepe groand and siyhH," &c. ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 15 therefore, as gorgiously as she could, painting her face with the choyce of all her drugges, she walkt abroade where shee thought Francesco vsed to take the arre. Loue and fortune, ioyning in league, so fauoured her that according to her desire she met him. At which incounter, I gesse, more for shame than loue, she blusht ; and fild her countenaunce with such repentant remorse (yet hauing her lookes full of amorous glaunces) that she seemed like Venus reconciling her selfe to froward Mars. The sight of Infida was pleasing in the eyes of Francesco, and almost as deadly as the basilisk ; that had hee not had about him moly as Vlisses, he had been inchaunted by the chaiTnes of that wylie Circes : but the abuse so stucke in his stomack that she had profered him in his extremitie that he returned all her glaunces with a frowne, and so parted." Infida makes another attempt to win back Francesco to her love, by writing to him a soothing letter full of penitence ; but he is not to be entrapped a second time, and returns an answer showing that he understands her character and is proof against all her allm'ements. The courtesan, now, perceiving " that wrought she neuer so subtillie, yet her traines were discouered, that her painted luers covild not make him stoop, so had he with reason refelled his fonner follie j when she perceiued (I say) that all her sweet potions were found to bee poysons, though she couered them neuer so darkly, she fel not in dispau-e with ouermuch loue, but swore in her selfe to intend him some secrete preiudice, if euer it lay in her by any meanes to procure it." Meantime " Isabel lining thus pensiue in that shee wanted the presence of her Francesco, yet for her patience and vertue grew so famous that all Caerbranck talked of her perfections : her beautie was admired of euerie eye, her qualities applauded in euerie mans eare, that she was esteemed for a patterne of vertuous excellence throughout the whole citie. Amongst the rest that censured of her cm-ious fauours, there was one Signor Bernardo, a bourgomaster of the citie ; who chauncing on a time to passe by the doore where Isabel soioumed, seeing so sweete a saint, began to fall enamoured of so faire an obiect ; and although he was olde, yet the fire of lust crept into his eyes and so inflamed his heart that with a disordinate desire he began to affect her : but the renowme of her chastitie was such that it almost quatted those sparkes that heated him on to such lawlesse affection. But yet when he calde to minde that want was a great stumbling-blocke, and sawe the necessitie that Isabel was in by the absence of Francesco, he thought gold would bee a readie meanes to gaine a womans good will, and therefore dispayred not of obtainhig his purpose." " Being the chiefe bourgomaster in all the citie, he determined to make a priuie search for some suspected person ; and being master of the watch himselfe, to goe vp into her chamber, and there to discouer the depth of his desu-e ; so he thought to ioyne loue and opportunitie in one union, and with his office and his age to wipe out all suspition." One night, accordingly, he puts this plan into execution, gains admittance into Isabel's chamber, and endeavom-s to overcome her chastity : his fortune, he teUs her, shall be at her command if she consent to his wishes ; but, if 16 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. not, he threatens to accuse her pubhcly of incontinence, and throw an indelible stain upon her character. Isabel's virtue is not to be shaken : she spits in his face, and bids him do his worst. Immediately she is huiTied to prison. Bernardo then assembles the other bm-gomasters in the town-hall, sends for Isabel, and producing a youth of the city whom he had suborned as a false witness, says ; " ' This young man here present for a certaine summe of money compounded to lie with Isabel, and for pence had his pleasure on her ; she alluring him with such wylie amorettes of a curtizan that in her companie he hath consumed all his substance. The young mans friends seeing his follie, and that no perswasions could disswade him from affecting her, made complaint vnto me : whereupon I examined him, and found him not onely guiltie of the crime, but tractable to be reclaimed from his follie. Seeing, then, citizens of Caerbranck, such a curtizan as this may vnder the colour of holines shrowd much preiudice, and allure many of ovu? youth to mischiefes, I thought it my duety to bring her into open infamie, that she may be punished for her fault, knowen for a harlot, and from hencefoorth line dispised and hated of all. For proofs that shee hath liued long in this leawd kinde of life, this young man shall here before you all make present deposition ' : and with that he reacht him a bible ; whereon he swore that hee had long time conuerst dishonestly with Isabel, euer since the departure of her husband. At which oath the people that were iurours in the cause, beleeuing the protestation of Bernardo and the deposition of the youth, presently found hir guiltie ; and then Bernardo and the rest of the bm-gomasters gaue iudgement, that she should presently haue some open and seuere punishment, and after be banished out of the town." She now prays aloud, calling for succour on the deity who knows her inaiocence ; and almost immediately after, " hee which had accused Isabel start vp as a man lunaticke, and cried out vnto the people, ' Thus I haue sinned, men of Caerbranck, I haue sinned : the thought of my present periurie is a hell to my conscience ; for I haue sworne falsly against the innocent, and haue consented to condemne Isabel without cause ' : and with that hee discom-st at the barre how Signer Bernardo had suborned him against the gentlewoman, and how in all his life before he neuer was in her companie." Isabel, of course, is set free, while Bernardo is punished by a great fine, to be paid to her, and declared incapable of ever bearing any oflBice in the city. " This strange euent spread abroad through all the countrey, and as fame flies swift and far, so at last it came to the eares of Francesco; for he, sitting in Troynouant at an ordinarie amongst other gentlemen, heard this fortune of Isabel reported at the table for straunge newes by a gentleman of Caerbranck, who brought in Isabel for a myrrour of chastitie, and added this more, that she was married to a gentleman of a ripe witte, good parentage, and well skild in the liberaU sciences, ' but,' quoth he, 'an vnthi'ift, and one that hath not beene with his wife this sixe yeares.' At this all the table condemned him as passing vnkinde, that could wrong so vertuous a wife with absence. He was silent and blusht, feeling the worme of his ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 1 >» conscience to wring him, and that with such a sharpe sting, that assoone as he got into his chamber, he fell to meditate with himselfe of the great abuses he offered his wife ; the excellence of her exteriour perfection, her beautie, vertue, and other rare ornaments of natm-e presented themselues into his thoughts ; that he began not onely to be passing passionate, but deepely penitent, sorrowing as much at his former follies as his hope was to ioy in his ensuing good fortunes." Soon after this, taking farewell of his friends in Troynovant, he sets out on his journey homewards. " Within fine dales hee arriued at Caerbrancke ; where, assoone as he was lighted, he went to the house where his wife soioui-ned, and one of the maides espying Francesco, yet knewe him for all his long absence, and ranne in and tolde it to Isabel that her husband was at the doore. She being at worke in her chamber, sat at this newes as one in an extasie, vntill Francesco came vp ; who at the first sight of his wife, considering the exceUencie of her beautie, her vertues, chastitie, and other perfections, and measuring her constancie with his disloyaltie, stoode as a man metamorphosed : at last he began thus. ' Ah Isabel, what shal I say to thy fortunes or my follies 1 what exordium shall I vse to shewe my penance, or discouer my sorrowes, or expresse my present ioyes? For I tell thee I conceiue as great pleasure to see thee well as gi-iefe in that I haue wi'onged thee with my absence. Might sighes, Isabel, teares, plaints, or any such exteriour passions pourtray out my inward repentance, I would shewe thee the anatomic of a most distressed man ; but amongst many son-owing thoughts there is such a confusion that superfluitie of griefes stops the sotu-ce of my discontent. To figure out my follies or the extremitie of my fancies, were but to manifest the bad course of my life, and to rub the scarre by setting out mine owne scathe ; and therefore let it suffice, I repent heartelie, I soiTowe deeplie, and meane to amend and continue in the same constantlie.' At this Francesco stoode and wept ; which Isabel seeing, conceiued by his outward gi-iefes his secret passions, and therefore taking him about the necke, wetting his cheekes with the teares that fell fi'om her eyes, she made him this womanlie and wise answere. ' What, Francesco, comest thou home ful of woes, or seekest thou at thy returne to make me weepe 1 Hast thou been long absent, and now bringest thou me a treatise of discontent ? I see thou art penitent, and therefore I like not to hears what follies are past. It sufficeth for Isabel that hencefoorth thou wilt loue Isabel, and vpon that condition, without any more wordes, welcome to Isabel.' With that she smiled and wept, and in doing both together sealed vp all her contrarie passions in a kisse." So end the adventures of Francesco and Isabel. Let us now turn to the Groats-worth of Wit bought ivith a Million of Repentance* " In an iland bound with the ocean there was sometime a citie situated, made rich by marchandize, and populous by long space : the name is not mentioned in the * I quote from the edition of 1617.— A reprint of the Groats-worth of Wit appeared in 1813, from the private press of my old friend Sir Egerton Brydges, to whose unceasing and disinterested labours in the cause of our early literature the world has not yet done justice. 18 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. antiquary, or else worne out by times antiquitie ; what it was it greatly skils not ; but therein thus it happened. An olde new-made gentleman herein dwelt, of no small credite, exceeding wealth, and large conscience. Hee had gathered from many to bestow vpon one ; for though hee had two sonnes, he esteemed but one, that beeing, as himselfe, brought vp to bee golds bondman, was therefore helde heyre apparent of his ill-gathered goods. The other was a schoUei-, and married to a proper gentlewoman, and therefore least regarded ; for tis an olde sayde saw, ' To learning and law theres no greater foe then they that nothing know.' Yet was not the father altogether vnlettered, for hee had good experience in a Nouerint, and by the vniuersall tearmes therein contained had diiuen many gentlemen* to seeke vnknowne countries : wise he was, for hee bare ofl&ce in his parish, and sate as formally in his foxe-fiu'de gowne as if he had beene a very rpright-dealing burges : hee was religious too, neuer without a booke at his belt, and a bolt in his mouth, ready to shoote through his sinnefull neighbour." This old usm-er, called Gorinius, " after many a goutie pang that had pincht his exterior partes, many a cm'se of the people that mounted into heauens presence," is struck by a mortal disease. '"At this instant,' says he when on his death bed, ' (0 griefe to part with it !) I haue in ready coyne threescore thousand pound, in plate and jewels xv thousand, in bonds and specialities as much, in land nine hundred pound by yeare ; all which, Lucanio, I bequeath to thee : onely I reserue for Roberto, thy well-read brother, an old groate (being the stock I first began with), wherewith I wish him to buy a groats-worth of wit ; for hee in my life hath reproued my manner of life, and therefore at my death shall not be contaminated with coiTupt gaine." Gorinius dies. Lucanio "was of condition simple, shamefast, and flexible to any counsell ; which Roberto perceiuing, and pondering how little was left to him, grew into an inward contempt of his fathere vnequall legacy, and determinate resolution to worke Lucanio all possible iniui'ie : hereupon thus conuerting the sweetnesse of his study to the shai-pe thirst of reuenge, he (as enuie is seldome idle) sought out fit companions to effect his vnbrotherly resolution. Neyther in such a case is ill company faiTe to seeke, for the sea hath scarce so many ieoperdies as populous cities haue deceyuing Syrens, whose eyes are adamants, whose wordes are witchcrafts, whose dores leade downe to death. With one of these female serpents Roberto consorts ; and they conclude what euer they compassed, equally to share to their contents. This match made, Lucanio was by his brother broxTght to the bush ; where hee had scarce pruned his wings but he was fast limed, and Roberto had what he expected." Lucanio is lured to the house of the fair courtesan, Lamilia, " which was in the subm-bes of the citie, pleasantly seated, and made more delectable by a pleasaunt garden wherein it was scituate." He presents her with a diamond of great value, and is cheated out of his money at dice. " Lamilia beeing the winner, prepared a banquet, which finished, Roberto ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 19 aduised his brother to depart home, and to furnish himselfe with more crownes, least hee were outcrackt with new commers. Liicanio, loath to be outcountenaust, followed his aduise, desiring [him] to attend his retnrne, which he before had determined vnreqnested; for, as soone as his brothers backe was turned, Roberto begins to reckon with Lamilia, to be a sharer as well in the money deceitfully wonne as in the diamond so wilfully giuen. But shee, secundum mores meretricis, iested thus with the scholler. ' Why, Roberto, are you so well read, and yet shew yourselfe so shallowe-witted, to deeme women so weake of conceit that they see not into mens demerites 1 Suppose (to make you my stale to catch the woodcocke your brother) that, my tongue ouer- running mine intent, I speake of liberall reward : but what I promised, there is the point ; at least what I part with I wil bee well aduised. It may bee you wiU thus reason : had not Roberto trained Lucanio unto Lamilias lure, Lucanio had not now beene Lamihas prey ; therefore, sith by Roberto she possesseth her prize, Roberto merites an equall part. Monsti'ous absurd, if so you reason : as well you may reason thus : Lamilias dogge hath kilde her a deere ; therefore his mistris must make him a pastie. No more, pennilesse poet : thou art beguilde in me ; and yet I wonder how thou couldest, thou hast beene so often beguilde. But it fareth with licentious men as with the chased bore in the streame, who, being greatly refreshed with swimming, neuer feeleth any smart vntill he perish, reciu-elesly wounded with his own weapons. Reasonlesse Roberto, that hauing but a brokers place, asked a lenders reward ; faithles Roberto, that hast attempted to betray thy brother, irreligiously forsaking thy wife, deseruedly beene in thy fathers eye an abiect ; thinkest thou Lamilia so loose, to consort with one so lewde ? No, hypocrite : the sweet gentleman thy brother I will till death loue, and thee while I Hue loath. This share Lamilia giues thee, other gettest thou none.' As Roberto would haue replyed, Lucanio approched : to whom Lamilia discourst the whole deceit of his brother, and neuer rested intimating malitious arguments till Lucanio vtterly refused Roberto for his brother and for euer forbad him of his house. And when he would haue yeelded reasons and formed excuse, Lucanio's impatience (vrged by her importunat malice) forbad all reasoning with them that were reasonlesse, and so, giuing him Jacke Drums entertainement, shut him out of doi*es : whom we wiU foUow, and leaue Lucanio to the mercy of Lamilia. Roberto, in an extreme extasie, rent his hayre, curst his destinie, blamed his trecherie, but most of all exclaimed against Lamilia, and in her against all enticing cui-tizans." "With this he laid his head on his hand, and leant his elbow on the ground, sighing out sadly, ' Heu patior telis vulnera facta meis ! ' On the other side of the hedge sate one that heard his sorrow ; who getting ouer, came towards him, and brake off his passion. W^hen he approached, he saluted Roberto in this sort. ' Gentleman,' quoth he, ' for so you seeme, I haue by chaunce heard you discourse some part of your gi-iefe, which appeareth to be more then you 2 20 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. will discouer or I can conceit. But if you vouchsafe such simple comfort as my ability will yeeld, assure yourselfe that I will endeuour to doe the best that eyther may procure your profit or bring you pleasure ; the rather, for that I suppose you are a scholler, and pittie it is men of learning should line in lacke.' Roberto wond- ring to heare such good words, for that this yron age aifoordes few that esteeme of vertue, returned him thankefull gratulations, and, vrged by necessitie, vttered his present griefe, beseeching his aduise how he might be imployed. 'Why, easily,' quoth he, ' and greatly to your benefit ; for men of my profession get by schollers their whole liuing.' ' What is your profession 1 ' sayde Roberto. * Truly, sir,' sayde he, ' I am a player.' ' A player ! ' quoth Roberto ; ' I tooke you rather for a gentle- man of great liuing ; for if by outward habite men should be censured, I tell you, you would bee taken for a substantial! man.' * So am I where I dwell,' quoth the player, ' reputed able at my proper cost to build a windmill. What though the world once went hai'd with me, when I was fayne to carry my playing fardle a foot-backe 1 Tempora mutantur, I know you know the meaning of it better then I, but I thus conster it. It is otherwise noio ; for my very share in playing apparrell will not bee solde for two hundred poimds.' ' Truely,' sayde Roberto, ' it is strange that you should so prosper in that vaine practise, for that it seemes to me your voyce is nothing gTacious.' ' Nay, then,' sayd the player, ' I mislike yovu- iudgement : why, I am as famous for Delphrygus and The King of Fairies as euer was any of my time ; The Twelue Labours of Hercules haue I terribly thundered on the stage, and played three scenes of the Diuell in The Highivay to Heauen? ' Haue ye so ? ' said Roberto ; ' then I pray you pardon me.' ' Nay, more,' quoth the player, ' I can serue to make a pretty speech, for I was a country author, passing at a Morrall ; * for it was I that pend The Morrall of Mam Wit, The Dialogue of Diues, and for seuen yeeres space was absolute interpreter of the puppets. But now my almanacke is out of date : The people make no estimation Of Morals, teaching education. Was not this prety for a plaine rime extempore ? if ye will, yee shall haue more.' ' Nay, it is enough,' said Roberto ; ' but how mean you to vse me ? ' ' Why, sir, in making playes,' sayde the other ; ' for which you shall bee well paied, if you will take the pains.' Roberto perceiuing no remedie, thought it best to respect his present necessitie, [and], to trye his witte, went with him willinglie : who lodged him at the townes end in a house of retayle, where what happened our poet you shall hereafter heare. There, by conuersing with bad company, hee grew a malo in peius, falling from one vice to another ; and so hauing found a veine to finger crownes, hee grew cranker then Lucanio, who by this time began to droope, being thus dealt withall by Lamilia. Shee hauing bewitched him with her enticing wiles, caused him to consume in lesse tlien two yeares that infinite treasure gathered by his father with so many a poore * Morrall] i. e. Moral-play. ACCOUNT OF R. GREEXE AXD HIS WRITINGS. 21 mans curse. His lauds solde, his iewels pawude, his money wasted, hee was casseerde by Lamilia that had cooseued him of all. Then walked he, like one of D[uke] Humfreyes squires, in a threed-bare cloake, his hose drawne out with his heeles, his shoes * vnseamed lest his feete should sweate with heate : now (as witlesse as he was) he remembred his fathers wordes, his kindnes to his brother, his carelesnesse of him- selfe. In this sorrow hee sate downe on Pennilesse Bench ; where when Opus and Vsus tolde him, by the chimes in his stomacke, it was time to fall vnto meate, he was faine with the camelion to feed vpon the ayre and make patience his repast. While he was at his feast, Lamilia came flaunting by, garnished with the iewels whereof shee beguiled him : which sight serued to close his stomacke after his cold cheare. Roberto heai-ing of his brothers beggerie, albeit he had little remorse of his miserable state, yet did hee seeke him out, to vse him as a property; whereby Lucanio was somewhat prouided for. But being of simple nature, he serued but for a blocke to whet Robertoes wit on : which the poore foole perceiuing, he forsooke all other hopes of life, and fell to be a notorious pandar, in which detested course he continued till death. But Roberto now famoused for an arch-playmaking poet, his purse, like the sea, sometime sweld, anon like the same sea fell to a low ebbe ; yet seldome he wanted, his labours w^ere so well esteemed. Many, this rule hee kept, whateuer he fingered aforehand, was the certaine meanes to vnbinde a bargaine ; and being asked why he so sleightly dealt with them that did him good, ' It becomes me,' sayth he, 'to be contrarie to the world ; for commonly when vulgar men receiue earnest, they doe performe ; when I am payd any thing afore hand, I breake my promise.' He had shifte of lodgings, where in euery place his hostesse writte vp the wofull remembrance of him, his laundresse, and his boy; for they were euer his inhoushold, besides retayners in sundrie other places. His company were lightly the lewdest persons in the land, apt for pilferie, periurie, forgerie, or auy villanie. Of these he knew the caste to cogge at cardes, coosin at dice ; by these he learned the legerdemaines of nips, foysts, conicatchers, crosbyters, lifts, high lawyers, and all the rabble of that vncleane generation of vipers ; and pithilie could hee paint out their whole courses of craft : so cunning he was in all crafts as nothing rested in him almost but craftinesse. How often the gentlewoman his wife laboured vainely to recall him, is lamentable to note : but as one giuen ouer to all lewdnes, he com- municated her soiTowfuU lines among his loose sculs, that iested at her bootlesse laments. If he could any way get credit on scores, hee would then brag his creditors carried stones, comparing euery round circle to a groning 0, procured by a painfull burthen. The shameful end of sundry his consorts, deseruedly punished for their amisse, wrought no compunction in his heart ; of which one, brother to a brothell he kept, was trust vnder a tree, as round as a ball." Here I must interiiipt the nairative, and call the reader's attention to the shoes] Old ed. " Lose." 22 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. concluding part of tlie sentence last quoted, which has not been noticed by any of Greene's biographers. The person who " was trust under a tree, as round as a hnll" undoubtedly means an infamous character named Ball* (commonly called Cutting Ball) ; who, when Greene was " driven to extreme shifts," used to gather together a band of ruffianly companions, to guard him from arrests ; and who eventually was hanged at Tyburn. By the " brothell he kept " we are as certainly to understand the said Ball's sister ; of whom we shall afterwards have a glimpse when the poet is on his death-bed. The fruit of this amour was a son, baptized Fortxtnatus Greene,t who died before his father had been quite a year in the grave. Roberto, the tale goes on, was " nothing bettered, but rather hardned in wicked- nes. At last was that place iustified, God warneth men by dreames and visions in the night, and by knowne examples in the day : bvit if he returne not, he comes vpon him with iudgement that shall be felt. For now when the number of deceites caused Roberto bee hatefull almost to all men, his immeasurable di-inking had made him the perfect image of the dropsie, and the loathsom scourge of lust tyrannized in his bones ; lining in extreme pouerty, and hauing nothing to pay but chalk, which now his host accepted not for cixrrant, this miserable man lay comfortlessly lan- guishing, hauing but one groat left (the iust proportion of his fathers legacie), which looking on, he cryed, ' 0, now it is too late, too late to buy wit with thee ! and therefore will I see if I can sell to carelesse youth what I negligently forgot to buy.' " Heere, gentlemen, breake I off Roberto's speech, whose life in most part agreeing with mine, found one selfe punishment as I haue done. Hereafter suppose me the said Roberto, and I will go on with that he promised : Greene will send you now his Groatsworth of Witte, that neuer shewed a mites worth in his life ; and though no man now be by to doe mee good, yet, ere I die, I will by my repentance indeuor to do all men good." * ' ' His [Greene's] imploying of Ball (sumamecl Cuttinge Ball), till he was intercepted at Tibome, to leauy a crew of his trustiest companions to guarde him in daunger of arrestes ; his keping of the foresaid Balls sister, a sorry ragged queane, of whom he had his base sonne Infortunatus Greene." — Gabriel Harvey's Fovre Letters, and certaine Sonnets; especially touching Robert Ch-eene, &c. 1592, p. 10. Nash alludes to this blackguard : "And more (to plague you for your apostata conceipts), ballets shalbee made of your base deaths, euen as there was of Cutting JBall." — Haue with you to Saffron- Walden, &c., 1596, Sig. i. "t" "Gabriel Harvey, in his 'Four Letters and Certaine Sonnets,' 1592, names Greene's child ironically /nfortunatus Greene, to which he was led by its real name, Fortunatus : when it was born we kno^v not, but it was buried in 1593 from Holywell Street, Shoreditch, and the following is the registration of its interment at St, Leonard's : — ' 1593. Fortunatus Ch-eene was huryed the same day.'' [i. e. 12 August.] The place from whence the body was brought, ' Halywell,' was added by the clerk in the margin." Collier's Memoirs of the Principal Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare, — Introd., p. xx., note. ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS ^VRITINGS. 23 The author's striking Address to his brother poets, at the end of this tract, I resei-ve for a later part of the present essay. As the reader has now been made intimately acquainted with the Never too Late and the Groats^orth of Wit, he is left to set down as auto-biographical whatever portions of those pieces he may think proper. There is no doubt that Greene became the husband * of an amiable woman, whom, after she had borne him a child, he abandoned. His profligacy seems to have been the cause of their separation : but that they had once been strongly attached to each other is evident from the letter (hereafter to be given) which he wrote to her with his dying hand, wherein he afFectingiy conjm-es her to perform his last request "by the loue of our youth." It was, I apprehend, immediately after this rupture of his domestic ties that he repaii-ed to the metropolis, determined to rely solely on the labours of his pen for the means of subsistence, t From the following (somewhat confused) account of his career in TJie Repentarice of Robert Greene, it would seem that, even before his unfortunate marriage, he was well known as a dramatist and a writer of " love-pamphlets " : — " At my return into England [from travelling on the continent] T rufFeled out in my silks, in the habit of malcontent, and seemed so discontent that no place would please me to abide in, nor no vocation cause mee to stay myselfe in : but after I had by degrees proceeded Maister of Arts, I left the vniuersitie and away to London ; where (after I had continued some short time, and driuen my self out of credit with sundry of my frends) I became an author of playes, and a penner of love-pamphlets, so that I soone grew famous in that qualitie, that who for that trade growne so ordinary about London as Eobin Greene? Yong yet in yeares, though olde in wickednes, I began to resolue that there was nothing bad that was profitable : wherevpon I grew so rooted in all mischiefe that I had as great a delight in wickednesse as sundrie hath in godlinesse, and as much felicitie I tooke in villainy as others had in honestie." Sig. C. " Yet, let me confesse a trueth, that euen once, and yet but once, I felt a feare and horrour in my conscience, and then the terrour of Gods iudgementes did manifestly teach me that my life was bad, that by sinne I deserucd damnation, and that such was the greatnes of my sinne that I deserued no redemption. And this inward motion I receiued in Saint Andrews Chm-ch in the cittie of Norwich, at a lectm-e or sermon then preached by a godly learned man, * " The followbg, from the peculiar wording of the registration, as well as from the correspondence of dates, reads like the entry of the marriage of the ill-governed Robert Greene at St. Bartholomew the Less : — ' The xvjth day of Februarie, 1586, was maryed Wilde, otherwise Greene, unto Elizabeth Taylor.' " Collier's Memoirs of the Principal Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare, — lutrod., p. xxi. f Wood's assertion that he used his pen for the support of his wife, I am unwillingly obliged to regard as one of worthy Anthony's mistakes: "Other trifles he hath extant, which he wrote to maintain his wife, and that high and loose course of living which poets generally follow." — Fasti Oxon. Part I. p. 2iG. ed. Bliss. 24 ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. whose doctrine and the manor of whose teaching I Hked wonderfnll well ; yea, in my conscience, such was his singlenes of hart and zeale in his doctrine that hee might haue conuerted the worst * monster of the world. " Well, at that time, whosoeuer was worst, I knewe myselfe as bad as he ; for being new-come from Italy (where I learned all the villainies vnder the heauens), I was drownd in pride, whoredome was my daily exercise, and gluttony with drunkennes was my onely delight. " At this sermon the terrour of Gods iudgementes did manifestly teach me that my exercises were damnable, and that I should bee wipte out of the booke of life, if I did not speedily repent my loosenes of life, and reforme my misdemeanors. " At this sermon the said learned man (who doubtles was the child of God) did beate downe sinne in such pithie and perswasiue manner, that I began to call vnto mind the daunger of my soule, and the preiudice that at length would befall mee for those grosse sinnes which with greedines I daily committed : in so much as sighing I said to myselfe, ' Lord haue mercie vpon mee, and send me grace to amend and become a new man ! ' But this good motion lasted not long in mee ; for no sooner had I met with my copesmates, but seeing me in such a solemne humour, they demaunded the cause'of my sadnes : to whom when I had discouered that I sorrowed for my wickednesse of life, and that the preachers wordes had taken a deepe impression in my conscience, they fell vpon me in ieasting manner, calling me Puritane and Presizian, and wished I might haue a pulpit, with such other scoffing tearmes, that by their foolish perswasion the good and wholesome lesson I had learned went quite out of my remembrance ; so that I fel againe with the dog to my olde vomit, and put my wicked life in practise, and that so throughly as euer I did before. " Thus although God sent his holy spiiit to call mee, and though I heard him, yet I regarded it no longer than the present time, when sodainly forsaking it, I went forward obstinately in my misse.t Neuerthelesse, soone after I married a gentleman's daughter of good account, with whom I lined for a while : but forasmuch as she would perswade me from my wilfull wickednes, after I had a child by her, I cast her off, hauing spent vp the marriage-money which I obtained by her. " Then left I her at six or seuen, who went into Lincolneshire, and I to London ; where in short space I fell into favor with such as were of honorable and good calling. But heere note, that though I knew how to get a friend, yet I had not the gift or reason how to keepe a friend ; for hee that was my dearest friend, I would bee sure so to behaue my selfe towards him, that he shoulde euer after professe to bee my vtter enemie, or else vowe neuer after to come in my company. " Thus my misdemeanors (too many to be recited) caused the most part of those so much to despise me that in the end I became friendles, except it were in a fewe * worst] Old ed. "most." f missel i. e. amiss,— sin. ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS, 25 alehouses, who commonly for my inordinate expences would make much of me, vntil I were ou the score, far more than euer I meant to pay by twenty nobles thick. After I had wholy betaken me to the penning of plaies (which was my continuall exercise), I was so far from calling vpon God that I sildome thought on God, but tooke such delight in swearing and blaspheming the name of God that none could thinke otherwise of mee than that I was the child of perdition. These vanities and other trifling pamphlets I penned of loue and vaine fantasies was my chiefest stay of lining ; and for those my vaine discoui'ses I was beloued of the more vainer sort of people, who beeing my continuall companions, came still to my lodging, and there would continue quaffing, carowsing, and surfeting with me all the day long." — Sig. C 2. Greene chiefly claims our notice as a poet ; for though his prose-writings greatly exceed in number his poetical works, yet the former are almost all interspersed with verses, and are composed in that ornamental and figurative style which is akin to poetry. The date of the earliest of his publications yet discovered is 1583.* At that time the most distinguished poets alive in England were these. Thomas Churchyard ; an indefatigable manufacturer of coarse-spun rhyme, who had been plying his trade for many yeai-s, and who continued to ply it for many more. Barnaby Googe ; whose Zodiake of Life (a translation from Palingenius) was greatly admired. Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst ; whose Gorboduc (composed in conjunction with Thomas Norton) is the earliest specimen in our language of a regular tragedy, and whose very picturesque " Induction" in the Mirror for Magistrates still shines with a lustre that throws the yest of that bulky chronicle into the shade. Arthur Golding ; who rendei'ed Ovid's Metamorphoses into spirited and flowing lines. Nicholas Breton ; who persevered in employing his fertile pen till a late period in the succeeding reign; a man of no ordinary genius, wi-iting in his more inspired moments with tenderness * The First part of Mamillia : see List of Greene's prose-works at the end of this memoir. " The earliest edition of it [The First Part of J/a/ftzY^ta] bears date in 1583 ; and by some verses signed G. B., 'in praise of the author and his booke,' which are prefixed, it is clear that it was written, if not published, before Greene left college ; ' Greene is the i>lant, Mamillia is the flowre, Cambridge the plat where plant and flower growes.' My friend, the Kev. A. Dyce, in his beautiful edition of Greene's Works, in two vols. 8vo., also gives the date of 1583 to the publication of the first part of Greene's Mamillia. See vol. I. cvili. The second part 0^ Mamillia was undoubtedly first printed in 1593 ; and I apprehend that there may be a mistake of a figure on the title of the first part. Greene would hardly write the second part of the same story nearly ten years after the appearance of the first part." Collier's Hist, of Engl. Dram. Poet., iii. 148, note. Assuredly there is no "mistake" on the title-page of the First Part of Mamillia : the typography and spelling of that tract evince it to be of as early a date as 1583. Assuredly, too, the Second Part of Mamillia was written while Greene was resident at Cambridge (the Dedication being dated " From my Studie in Clare hall"), though it was not printed till 1593, when the author was in his gi'ave : and we may conclude that it was one of those " many papers" which, as Chettle tells us (see before, p. 2, note), Greene left "in sundry booksellers' hands." 26 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. and delicacy. George Whetstone ; whose Provios and Cassandra having afforded hints to Shakespeare for Measure for Measure, will prevent his name from being forgotten by posterity. Edmund Spenser ; celebrated only as the author of The Shepherds Calendar. Sir Philip Sidney ; whose songs and sonnets were then undoubtedly familiar to his countrymen, though they were not committed to the press till after an heroic death had set the seal vipon his glory. Sir Edward Dyer ; * of whose productions none have descended to our times that seem to justify the contemporary applause which he received. John Lyly ; who in all probability was then well-known as a dramatist, though his dramas appear to have been intended only for court-shows or private exhibitions, and though none of them were printed before 1584 ; and who in 1579 had put forth his far-famed Euphues, which gave a tone to the prose-works of Greene. Thomas Watson ; who had published a collection of elaborate and scholar-like sonnets, entitled 'EtcaToyiTraBia, or The Passionate Centurie of Love, and who wrote Latin verses with considerable skill and elegance : and Eichai-d Stanyhurst ; who went mad in English hexameters, seriously intending his monstrous absurdities for a translation of the first four books of The jEneid.f * To modern readers Dyer was known as a poet only by some sliort and scattered pieces till the discovery, about twenty years ago, of a copy of his Sixe Idillia, translated from Theocritus, printed at Oxford in 1588. " Tell me, in good sooth, doth it not too euidently appeare, that this English poet wanted but a good patterns before his eyes, as it might be some delicate and choyce elegant poesie of good M. Sidneys or M. Dyers (ouer very Castor and Pollux for such and many greater matters), when this trimme geere was in hatching ? " G. Ha,rvey's Three proper and wittie familiar Letters, &c. 1580, p. 36. " Hie quoque seu subeas Sydn^i, sine Dyeri Scrinia, qua Musis area bina patet," &c. A'uthoris ad libellum suum Protrepticon. Watson's Passionate Centurie of Love, n. d. [1581, or 2.] * ' Come, diuine poets, and sweet oratours, the siluer streaming fountaines of flowingest witt and shiningest art ; come Chawcer and Spencer, More and Cheeke, Ascham and Astely, Sidney and Dier." — G. Harvey's Pierces Supererogation, &c., 1593, p. 173. " Spencer and Shakespeare did in art excell. Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniel, " &c. Praise of ffenipseed, — Taylor's Worlcs, p. 72, ed. 1630. + As Stanyhurst's strange volume is now lying before me, and as very few of my readers can ever have seen it, I subjoin a short specimen of its style from the Second Book of The uEneid — ("Primus ibi ante omnes magna comitante catei-va," &c. v. 40) — ; * ' First then among oothers, with no smal coompanie garded, Laocoon storming from princelie castel is hastning. And a far of beloing, 'What fond phantastical harebraine Madnes hath enchaunted your wits, you townsmen vnhappie ? Weene you, blind hodipecks, thee Greekish nauie returned ? Or that their presents want craft ? Is subtil Vlisses So soone forgotten ? My lief for an haulfpennie, Troians, Either heere ar couching soom troups of Greekish asemblie. Or to crush our bulwarcks this woorck is forged, al houses For to prie surmounting thee towne : soom practis or oother Heere lurcks of coonning : trust not this treacherus ensigne : ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 27 The following wiiters, some of whom started about the same time with him on the race for fame, were added to the catalogue of English poets during Greene's years of authorship. Christopher Marlowe ; whose dramas in delineation of character and birrsts of passion were immeasurably superior to any that had been before presented on our stage, and whose fine ear enabled him to give his fervid lines a modulation unknown to earlier writers. George Peele ; * w^ho may be regarded as the next most distinguished play-wright of his day, and who attemj)ted various sorts of poetiy with success. William Warner ; the tediousness of whose long and homely Albion's England is relieved by passages of sweet simplicity. Abraham Fraunce ; t who cultivated; the unmanageable English hexameter. Thomas Nash ; | more noted And for a ful reckning, I like not barrel or herring ; Thee Greeks bestowing their presents Greekish I feare mee.' Thus said, he stout rested, with his chaapt staffe speedily running, Strong the steed he chargeth, thee planek ribs manfully riuiug. Then the iade, hit, shiuered, thee vauts haulf shrillie rebounded With clush clash buzzing, with droomming clattered humming." The Fast Fovre Boohes of Virgils jEneis, &c. 1583, p. 22. [Since this memoir first appeared, Stanyhurst's Virgil has been reprinted.] Justly did Nash characterize the English hexameter as "that drunken staggering kinde of verse which is all vp hill and downe hill, like the way betwixt Stamford and Beechfeeld, and goes like a horse plunging through the myre in the deep of winter, now soust rp to the saddle, and straight aloft on his tiptoes." — Hauc with you to Saffron- Walden, &c., 1596. Sig. A 3. * There are eleven lines of blank-verse by Peele, prefixed to Watson's EKaTOfiTraOia, &c., n. d., which was published in 1581 or early in 1582 ; but we must not on account of so trifling an effusion set him down as a writer anterior to Greene. + Fraunce is sometimes ridiculous enough. Appended to the Second Part of his Countesse of Pemhrohes luychurcJi, 1591, is a translation into English hexameters of part of the First Book of the jEtldopica of Heliodorus ; and the words "HStj Se tjKlov -nphs ova-ixas lovros (Cap. vii.) he chooses to render thus ; " Now had fyei-y Phlegon his dayes reuolution ended, And his snoring snowt with salt wanes all to beewashed." Sig. M 3. But here Fraunce was thinking of Du Bartas, who commences the Third Book of his Judith with ; " Du penible PhJegon la narine ronflante Souflloit sur les ludois la clarte rougissante Qui reconduit le jour," &c., — a passage which is translated as follows (see England's Parnassus, 1600, p. 330, and Sylvester's Bu Bartas, p. 364, ed. 1641) by Thomas Hudson ; " The snoring snout of restlesse PJtkgon blew Hot on the Indes, which did the day renew With scarlet skie," &c. (Perhaps I need hardly add that Du Bartas recollected Virgil, jEn. xii. 114 ; " cum primum alto se giirgite tollunt Solis equi, lucemque datis naribus efflant") J I have not hesitated to include Nash in this list, believing that, as his livelihood depended on his pen, he must have produced about this time several plays which have not come down to us, and which, perhaps, were never given to the press (his satirical play called The Isle of Dogs, which he produced in 1597, was certainly never printed). In 1587 he wrote the address "To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities," prefixed to our author's Menaphon; and it is extremely unlikely that he should not have tried his powers as a dramatist till after Greene's death in 1592. (We now know that 28 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS ^\TIITINGS. as a prose-satirist, and as the merciless antagonist of Gabriel Harvey. Thomas Lodge, the coadjutor of oiu- author in the LooMng-Glass for London ; whose lyi'ic pieces are sometimes highly graceful ; whose tale of Rosalynde furnished to Shake- speare the materials oi As you like it: and whose Fig for Momiis (published after Greene's death) entitles him to no mean x'ank as a satirical poet. Thomas Kyd ; who in his Spanish Tragedy has scenes of such power as to redeem the absurdities for which it was long the mark of ridicule. Sir Walter Raleigh ; * whose verses were in high repute, though probably little valued by that illustrious man himself. Hemy Constable ; a sonneteer of considerable elegance. Michael Drayton and Samuel Daniel, both afterwards so celebrated ; who, when Greene had nearly run his race, were beginning to court the notice of the public : and, far gi'eater than all, William Shakespeare ; t who was then giving new life to the dramas of his predecessors by the touches of his magic pen. It may be right to add, that while Greene flom-ished as an author, Spenser (who has been already mentioned as preceding him) embodied in verse a portion of his divine vision. J Fom- of the writers just mentioned, — Marlowe, Peele, Nash, § and Lodge, || — were Nash did not write Dido in conjunction witli Marlowe, but that he completed it after Marlowe's decease in 1593 ; see my Account of Marlowe and his Writings, p. xxxv, ed. 1858.) * He is praised, and quoted, by Puttenham in The Arte of English Poesie, 1589. f Shakespeare's earliest works for the stage were \indoubtedly rifacimenti of the plays of his prede- cessors ; and Greene, as we shall afterwards see, alludes, with a feeling of bitterness, to those successful attempts of the great dramatist. None of Shakespeare's Poems were in print during Greene's life-time. J The three first Books of The Faerie Queene were first printed in 1590, but they doubtless had been handed about in MS. several years before : Abraham Fraunce, in his Arcadian Ehetoricke, 1588, quotes the Fourth Canto of the Second Book ; and in The Second Part of Marlowe's Tamburlaine, which appears to have been acted somewhat earlier than 1587, we find a splendid simile borrowed from the thirty-second stanza of the Seventh Canto of the First Book, § Wood calls Nash Greene's "contemporary in Cambridge" (Fasti. Oxon. Part 1st. p. 246, ed. Bliss) : he was of St. John's College, and took his Bachelor's Degree in 1585. After Greene's death Nash seems to have been a good deal annoyed at liis intimacy with him being so much dwelt on by Gabriel Harvey. II That Greene was the friend to whom Lodge entrusted the publication of his Euphues Shadow, has been shown at p. I., where the Address to Viscoimt Fitzwaters, which the former prefixed to it, has been given : another Address, immediately preceding the same tract, may be exhibited here ; ' ' To the Gentlemen Readers, Health. " Gentlemen, after many of mine owne labours that you haue courteouslie accepted, I present you with Etiphues Shadowe, in the behalfe of my absent friend M. Thomas Lodge, who at his departure to sea vpon a long voyage, was willing, as a generall farewell to all courteous gentlemen, to leaue this his worke to the view ; which if you grace with your fauours, eyther as his affected meaning or the worthe of the worke requires, not onely I for him shall rest yours, but what laboures his sea studies affords, shall be, I dare promise, offered to yom- sight, to gi-atifie your courtesies, and his pen, as himselfe, euery waye youjs for euer. Farewell. Tours to command, Rob. Gkeene." Before our author's Spanish Masquerado, 1589, is the following Sonnet ; " Le doux babil de ma lire d'iuoire Serra ton front d'un laurier verdisant ; Dont a bon droit ie te voy iouissant, Mon doux ami, eternisant ta gloire. ACCOUNT OF K GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 29 the chief friends and associates of our author. Lodge has never been taxed with debauchery : but Greene and the fonner three appear to have rushed eagerly into the dissipations of London, encouraging each other in their coxu-se of folly. The money which they quickly earned by the labom- of their ever-ready pens, they seem as quickly to have squandered ; being lovers of good eating and drinking ; * fre- quenters of ordinaries and taverns, to which the youths of fashion then resorted daily. t Marlowe has been accused of atheism ; nor has Greene escaped the same charge ; ;}: while on the other hand it has been ui^ged, that their accusers, being chiefly puritans who regarded the theatre as an abomination, were not unlikely to Ton nom, mon Greene, anime par mes vers, Abaisse I'oeil de gens seditieux ; Tu de mortel es compagnon de dieux : N'est ce point grand loyer dans I'uniuers ? Ignoti nulla cupido. Thomas Lodge." * "A good fellowe bee [Greene] -was ; and would liaue drunke with thee [Gabriel Harvey] for more angels then the lord thou libeldst on [Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford] gaue thee in Christ's College." " In a night and a day would he haue yarkt vp a pamphlet as well as in seauen yeare ; and glad was that printer that might bee so blest to pay him deare for the very dregs of his wit. ' ' Hee made no account of winning credite by his workes, as thou dost, that dost no good workes, but thinkes to bee famosed by a strong faith of thine owne worthines ; his only care was to haue a spel in his purse to coniure vp a good cuppe of wine with at all times." Nash's Strange Newes, &c. 1592. E 4. Greene used to be called familiarly Rohin ; " Our moderne poets to that passe are driuen, Those names are curtal'd which they first had giuen ; And, as we wisht to haue their memories drown' d, We scarcely can afford them halfe their sound. Greene, who had in both Academies ta'ne Degree of Master, yet could neuer gaine To be call'd more than Rohin : who, had he Profest ought saue the Muse, seru'd, and been free After a seuen yeares prentiseship, might haue With credit too, gone Robert to his graue." Heywood's Hierarchie of the Blesned Angels, 1635, p. 206. "With Robin Greene it passes Kindharta capacity to deale." — Chettle's Kind-Harts Dreame, n. d. [1592] Sig. G 4. Dekker in A Knights Conjuring, &c., 1607, introduces our author and his friends together in the Elysian fields; "whil'st Marlow, Greene, and Peele had got vnder the shades of a large vyne, laughing to see Nash (that was but newly come to their colledge) still haunted with the sharpe and satyricall spirit that followed him heere vpon earth, " &c. Sig. K 4. For the entire passage, see my A ccount of Peele and his Writings in the present volume. + Vide, in Dekker's Guls Home Boohe, 1609, "Chap. V. How a yong gallant should behaue himselfe in an ordinary," p. 22, and "Chap. viii. How a gallant should behaue himselfe in a taueme," p. 30, He was to dine at an ordinary during the forenoon, then go to the play, and, after it, sup at a tavern. + See the " Note " of Marlowe's "damnable opinions " by a person named Bame, printed, from an Harleian MS., in Eitson's Observations on Wartoii's Hist, of E. P., p. 40, and in Appendix i. to my ed. of Marlowe's Works ; Beai-d's Tlieatre of God's Judgments ; Vaughan's Golden Grove ; The French Academy, &c., &c. I subjoin from The Repentance of Robert Greene the passage cited by T. B. the translator of The French Academy, — see note in page 2 of this essay; and it is but fair to mention that 30 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. magnify without scruple the offences and indiscretions of dramatic writers. But tlie words of Greene to Marlowe in tlie Address to his brother poets at the end of the Groats-worth of Wit (which will be afterwards quoted), — even if we understand those words in a modified sense, — to say nothing of the whole tenor of The Repentance of Robert Greene, are an unquestionable proof that both Marlowe and Greene were more than careless about religion ; and in Marlowe's case there is additional evidence which strongly tends to show that his tenets were as impious as his morals were depraved.* No more than five dramas,t the undoubted works of Greene, have come down to Mr. Collier, without having ever seen The Repentance of Robert Greene, expressed his conviction, in the Poetical Decameron, that our author was the person to whom T. B. alluded : "Comming one day into Aldersgate street to a welwillers house of mine, hee with other of his friendes perswaded mee to leaue my bad course of life, which at length would bring mee to vtter destruction ; wherevpon I scoffingly made them this answer ; ' Tush, what better is he that dies in his bed than he that endes his life at Tyburne ? all owe God a death : if I may haue my desire while I liue, I am satisfied ; let me shift after death as I may.' IVly friends hearing these words, greatly gi-eeued at my gracelesse resolution, made this reply ; ' If you feare not death in this world, nor the paines of the body in this life, yet doubt the second death, and the losse of your soule, which without hearty repentance must rest in hell-fire for euer and euer.' ' Hell ! ' quoth I ; ' what talke you of hell to me ? I know if I once come there, I shal haue the company of better men than myselfe ; I shal also meete with some madde knaues in that place, and so long as I shall not sit there alone, my care is the lesse. But you are mad folks,' quoth I ; ' for if I feared the ludges of the bench no more than I dread the iudgements of God, I would before I slept diue into one carles bagges or other, and make merrie with the shelles I found in them so long as they would last.' And though some in this company were fryers of mine owne fraternitie to whom I spake the wordes, yet were they so amazed at my prophane speeches that they wisht themselues foorth of my company." Sig. B 2. * In my Account of Marlowe and his Writings, p. xxxiii., ed. 1S58, I have the following remarks : *' How far the poet's [Marlowe's] freethinking was really carried, I do not pretend to determine. I certainly feel that probability is outraged in several of the statements of Bame, who appears to have had a quarrel with Marlowe, and who, it must not be forgotten, was afterwards hanged at Tyburn ; and I can readily believe that the Puritans would not stick at misrepresentation in speaking of a man whose writings had so greatly contributed to exalt the stage : but when I see that the author of The Returns from Pernassus, whom no one will suspect of fanaticism, has painted the character of Marlowe in the darkest colours, while at the same time he bestows a high encomium on his genius ; and, above all, when I remember that, before either Bame or the Puritans had come forward as his accusers, the dying Greene had borne unequivocal testimony against him to the very same effect, — it is not easy for me to resist the conviction that Marlowe's impiety was more confirmed and daring than Warton and others have been willing to allow." + The extreme scarcity of Greene's plays (as also of his pamphlets) is to be attributed, among other causes, to the fire of London in 1666 : see Evelyn's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 395, and Pepys's Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 462, 464 (which passages I have cited in my Account of Peele and his Writings). In The Shakespeare Society's Papers, vol. i. p. 83, is an essay entitled Early rarity of the worTcs of Robert Greene ; the writer of which adduces the following passage from the Introduction to Rowlands's Tis merrie when Gossips meete, ed. 1602, as " a proof of the scarcity of some of Greene's works even as early as 1602" : '■'■Gentleman. Can'st helpe me to all Greene's Bookes in one volume ? But I will haue them euery one, not any wanting. Prentice. Sir, I haue most part of them, but I lack Canny-catching, and some halfe dozen more : but I thinke I could procure them. There be in the Towne, I am sure, can fit you." Now, though it is likely enough that some of Greene's works may have been scarce in 1602, the passage just quoted is no proof that they were so : the reply of the Prentice is merely a piece of face- tiousness ; and I cannot but wonder that the essay-writer should not have perceived the joke intended. ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 31 posterity. But it is plain that cUmng the series of years when he was a regular writer for the stage he must have produced a much greater number of plays : in all probability many of them were never published, and perhaps of some which were really printed not a single copy has escaped destruction, I shall now notice his di-amatic pieces one by one : none of them were given to the press till after his death ; and it is impossible to determine when they were written or originally performed. The History of Orlando Furioso, 1594 and 1599. It is thus mentioned in Hens- lowe's Diary, under the year 1591-2, as having been acted by the Lord Strange's men ; d » * " Rd at orZamcZo, the 21 of febreary . . . . . . xvjs vj That this play was printed from a very imperfect manuscript there could be no doubt, even before Mr. Collier had discovered the curious paper which he describes as follows (and which I, of course, have used for the present edition), " The evidence to estabhsh that the character of the hero of the piece was performed by Alleyn, may be looked upon as decisive. Among the MSS. at Dulwich College is a large poi-tion of the original part of Orlando, as transcribed by the copyist of the theatre for the actor. It is in three pieces, one much longer than the others, all imperfect, being more or less injured by wonns and time. Here and there certain blanks have been supplied in a different hand-writing, and that hand-writing is Alleyn's. We may conclude, therefore, that this is the very copy from which he learnt his part ; and that the scribe, not being able in some places to read the author's manuscript, had left small spaces, which Alleyn fiUed up, either by his own suggestion, from the MS., or after inquiry of Greene. It contains no more than was to be delivered by the actor of the character of Orlando, with the cues (as they were then, and are still, technically called) regularly marked, exactly in the same manner as is done at the present day by transcribers in our theatres."t — Mr, Collier thinks that Greene's Orlando Furioso may be alluded to in the following passage of Peele's Fareivell to Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake, 1589 ; " Bid theatres, and proud tragedians, Bid Mahomet, Scipio, and mighty Tamburlaine, Jiing Charlemagne, Tom Stukeley, and the rest, Adieu." Perhaps so : but Cliarlemagne is not a character in Greene's Orlando Furioso ; nor, indeed, do I recollect any old play in which he makes his appearance. — In The Defence of Coney-catching, 1592, Greene is accused of selling it twice : "Master R. G., would it not make you blush — if you sold Orlando Furioso to the queenes players for twenty nobles, and when they were in the country, sold the same play to Lord Admiral's men, for as much more 1 Was not this plain coney-catching, M. G. ? " — If * P. 21, ed. Shake. Soc. t Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, &c., p. 7. 32 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. the reader is acquainted with Ariosto and the romance-poets of Italy, he will be startled to find that in this drama Angelica is made the daughter of Marsilius. A LooUng-Glass for London and England, 1594, 1598, 1602, and 1017, is the joint-production of Lodge and Greene. That it was several times played by the Lord Strange's men, is recorded in Henslowe's Diary, where the earliest mention of it is, — "Rd at iAe iooKw^rZasse, the 8 of marche lo91[-2] .... vijs." * As it partakes of the nature of the ancient English Mysteries, one is surprised to find the following opinion expressed by Lodge in his Wits Miserie, and the Worlds Mad- nesse, Discouering the Deuils Incarnat of this Age, 1596 ; " Againe in stage plaies to make use of hystoricall scripture, I hold it with the legists odious, and, as the councill of Trent did, Sess. § 4. Fin., I condemne it." Sig. F 4. Jonah and the Whale, who figm'e conspicuously in the Loolcing-Glass, were personages once very familiar to the populace of the metropolis : no puppet-show (or motion, as it used to be termed,) was so attractive to the citizens as that of JV^ineveh.f The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 1594, 1599, 1630, and 1655. Several notices of the acting of this play are found in Henslowe's Diary, the earliest imder the year 1591-2, when it was performed by the Lord Strange's men, — "Rd at /j-ycr &acowe, tlae 19 of febrary, satterdaye . . . xvij^ iij''." J We learn from the same authority that subsequently it was revived for the court with a new prologue and epilogue by Middleton ; "Lent unto Thomas Downton, the 14 of desembr 1602, to paye unto Mr. Mydelton ) ,, for a prologe and epeloge for the playe of Bacon for the corte, the some of i Our old dramatists hardly ever invented the stories of their pieces ; and in this, the most pleasing of his plays, Greene has closely followed the well-known prose-tract, * P. 23, ed. Shake. Soc. i* ' ' Wife. . . . But of all the sights that ever were in London, since I was married, methinks the little child, &c. was the prettiest ; that and the hermaphrodite. Citizen. Nay, by your leave, Nell, Ninevie was better. Wife. Ninevie ? Oh, that was the story of Joan and the wall, was it not, George ? Citizen. Yes, lamb." Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle, act. iii. " They say, there's a neio motion of the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the whale, to be seen at Fleet-bridge."— Ben Jonson's Every man out of his humour, act ii. sc. 1. ' ' the motions that I Lanthorn Leatherhead haue given light to, in my time, since my master Pod died ! Jerusalem was a stately thing, and so was Nineveh, and the city of Norwich," &c. Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, act. V. sc. I. "I wonder that, amongst all your objects, you presented us not with Platoes Idea, or the sight of Niniue, Babylon, Loudon, or some Stur-bridge-faire monsters." — Lingua, ed. 1617, Sig. F. ' ' I pray yee what showe will be heere to night ? I haue seen the Babones already, the Cittie of new Niniuie, and Julius fesar acted by the mammets." Euerie Woman in her Humor, 1609, Sig. H. " Here are more maskers too, I think : this masking is a heav'nly entertainment for the widow, who ne'er saw any shew yet but the puppet-play o' Nineve." Cowley's Cutter of Coleman-street, act v. sc. 11. + P. 20, ed. Shake. Soc. § P. 228, ed. Shake. Soc. ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 33 entitled The famous History of Friar Bacon. The character of Margaret, the fair maid of Fressingfield is not, however, borrowed from the prose-pamphlet. The Scottish History of James tlie Fourth, 1598.* From what source our author derived the materials of this strange fiction, I have not been able" to discover ; nor could Mr. David Laing of Edinburgh, who is so profou.ndly versed in the ancient literature of his coimtry, point out to me any Scottish chi'onicle or tract which might have afforded hints to the poet for its composition. The Comical History of Alphonsus, King of Arragon, 1599. t We learn from the speech of Venus at the close of this play that the author intended to have written a Second Part, Besides the five dramas just enumerated, it has been thought right to include in the present collection George-a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield, 1599, in consequence of the following M. S. notes having been found on the title-page of a copy of that piece which was formerly in the possession of Mr. Rhodes ; " Written by a minister who acted the piners pt in it himselfe. Teste W. Shakespeare." " Ed. Juby X saith it was made by Ro. Greene." These two memoranda are by different persons, and in handwriting of about the time when the play was printed. Statements which render it highly probable that Greene was " a minister " have been before adduced : see p. 3. In The Pinner of Wakefield, George-a-Greene compells Sir Nicholas Mannering to eat the seals of the Earl of Kendal's commission ; and Nash informs us that Greene once forced an apparitor to undergo a similar humiliation : "Had hee liu'd, Gabriel, and thou shouldst [have] so vnarteficially and odiously libeld against him as thou hast done, he would haue made thee an example of ignominy to all ages that are to come, and driuen thee to eate thy owne booke butterd, as I sawe him make an apparriter once in a taucrn eate his citation, waxe and all, very handsomly seru'd twixt two dishes." Strange Newes, &c. 1592, Sig. C 3. The incident in the drama bearing so strong a resemblance to an adventure in the life of Greene would strengthen the probability of its having been written by him, were it not that in the old prose History of George-a-Greene, on which the play is undoubtedly founded, § the valiant Pinner obliges Mannering to swallow the seals. || * According to some authorities, it was reprinted in 1 599. + An edition of 1597 is mentioned by some bibliographers. % Juby was an actor, and wrote a play called Sampson in conjunction with Samuel Rowley. § Ritson, after observing that tha drama, oi George-a-Greene, lite Pinner of Wakefield, " has been erroneously .ascriljed to Heywood the epigrammatist, and is reprinted, with other trash, in the late edition of Dodsley's Old Plays," says that it " (at least tliat part of it which we have any concern with) is foixnded on the ballad of Robin Hood and the pinder of Wakefield, wliich it directly quotes, and is in fact a most despicable performance ;^' and a little after he tells us "The [prose] History of George a II In The First Part of Sir John Oldcastle, (by Munday, Drayton, Wilson, and Hathway), 1600, the Sumner is in like manner made to gulp down his citation. D 34 ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. In Heuslowe's Diary is a list of plays acted by the Earl of Sussex's men, which contains four notices of this drama, the earliest of them being, — "Rdat (/or^^c a^j-en, the 29 of desembr 1593 iij" x^" * Among the old M. S. dramas, which the detestable carelessness of John War- burton allowed to perish, was the Hist, of Johe hy Bob. Green. The opinion that Greene was concerned in the two "histories" entitled The First Part of the Contention hetwixt the two famous hotises of Yorhe and Lancaster, &c., and The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, &c., is founded on a passage of his Address to his brother play-wrights in the Groatsworth of Wit, and will be afterwards noticed when that Address is laid before the readei'. Edward Phillips, in his (strangely incorrect) Theatrum Poetarum, 1675, informs us, that Greene was the author oi Fair Emm, 1631, and that he was associated with Lodge in composing The Laws of Nature, Lady Alimony, 1659, The Contention hetiveene Liberalitie and Prodigalitie, 1602, and Luminalia, 1627. — It is not impossible that Greene might have written Fair Emm. By The Laws of Nature we must understand one of Bale's Miracle-plays entitled The Three Laws of Nature, Moses, and Christ, &c. Lady Alimony is in a style so different from Greene's that no portion of it could have proceeded from his pen. The Contention betweene Liberalitie and Prodigalitie is probably, as Mr. Collier remarks, "an older piece revived and altered" ; and Greene "may have had some concern in it prior to 1592. "t Z^^wwma^ia was not produced till long after his death. If, as a dramatist, Greene fails to exhibit character with force and discrimination, if he has much both of the fustian and the meanness which are found more or less in all the plays of the period, and if his blank- verse is so monotonous as to pall upon the ear ; it must be allowed, on the other hand, that he not unfrequently writes with elegance and spirit, and that in some scenes he makes a near approach to simplicity and nature.* Greene, pindar of the town of Wakefield, 4to, no date, is a modern production, chiefly founded on the old play just mentioned, of neither authority nor merit." Jtobin Hood, vol. 1. p. xxix. The ballad in question I have subjoined to the play ; and the reader will see how slight a foundation the former afforded for the latter. That the prose-history was taken from the play I cannot believe : it was the almost constant custom of our old dramatists to borrow their plots and characters fi-om popular story- books, and I have no doubt that the aiithor of the play of George-a-Greene was indebted for its materials to the prose-tale on the same subject, which (though perhaps somewhat modernized) will be found in Mr. Thoms's Early Prose Romances, vol. ii. The following piece was sold by auction a few years ago [i.e. a few years before 1831] : The Pinder of Wakefield, being the History of George a Greene, the lusty Pinder of the north, briefly shoioing his manhood, and his brave merriment amongst his boon companions : full of pretty histories, songs, catches, jests, and riddles, 4to. b. 1. 1632. * P. 31, ed. Shake. Soc. + Hist, of Engl. Dram. Poet. i. 319, ii. 352. J "He was of singuler pleasaunce, the verye supporter, and, to no mans disgrace bee this intended, the only comedian of a vulgar writer in this countiy. " Chettle's Kind-Harts Dreame, n.d. [1592.] Sig. B. 3. ACCOUNT OF K GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 35 Prefixed to our author's Perimedes the MacJce-smith, 1588, is an Address to the Gentlemen Readers, part of which is as follows : " I keepe my old course, to palter vp something in prose, vsiug mine old poesie still, Omne ttilit punctum, although latelye two gentlemen poets made two mad men of Rome beate it out of their paper bucklers, and had it in derision, for that I could not make my verses iet vpon the stage in tragicall buskins, euerie worde filling the mouth like the faburden of Bo-Bell, daring God out of heauen with that Atheist Tamhurlan, or blaspheming with the mad preest of the Sonne : but let me rather openly pocket vp the asse at Diogenes hand, then wantonlye set out such impious instances of intollerable poetrie, such mad and scoffing poets, that haue propheticall sj^irits as bred of Merlins race. If there be anye in England that set the end of scollarisme in an English blanck-verse, I thinke either it is the humor of a nouice that tickles them with selfe-loue, or to[o] much frequenting the hot-house (to vse the Germaine prouerbe) hath swet out all the greatest part of their wits, which wasts gradatim, as the Italians say x>oco a poco. If I speake darkely, gentlemen, and offend with this digression, I craue pardon, in that I but answere in print what they haue offered on the stage." An obscure passage, from which it is difficult to gather anything except that Greene is highly indignant at his alleged incapacity of writing blank-verse, and alludes rather contemptuously to Marlowe's celebrated tragedy of Tamburlaine, — perhaps, also, to some other piece by the same author in which " the priest of the sun " was a character. — If Greene bore any ill-will to Marlowe in 1588, it would certainly seem to have passed away long before the latter was on his death-bed. In England's Parnassus, 1600, are several quotations from oiu' author's dramatic works. There is good reason to believe that Greene not only composed for the stage, but also occasionally appeared on it as an actor. " I was suddainely certified," says Gabriel Harvey, "that the king of the paper stage (so the gentleman tearmed Greene) had played his last part, and was gone to Tarleton."* Fovre Letters and "The best poets for comedy among the Greeks are these, Menander, Aristophanes, &c., and among the Latines, Plautus, &c. ; so the hest for comedy amongst vs bee, Edward Earle of Oxforde, Doctor Gager of Oxforde, Maister Rowley once a rare scholler of learned Pembrooke Hall in Cambridge, Maister Edwardes one of her Maiesties Chappell, eloquent and vdttie John Lilly, Lodge, Gascoyne, Greene, Shakespeare, Thomas Nash, Thomas Heywood, Anthony Mundye our best plotter. Chapman, Porter, Wilson, Hath way, and Henry Chettle." Meres's Palladia Tamia, Wit's Treasvry, 1598, fol. 283. * From the following lines in a volume of gi-eat rarity it seems that Tarlton was celebrated for his tragic as well as his comic acting : "Rich, Tarltono, comcedorum principi. Epit, Cujus (viator) sit sepulchnim hoc scire vis, Inscriptionem non habens ? Asta gradumque siste paulisper tuum : Incognitum nomen scies. Princeps comcedorum tulit quos Angliaa Tellus in hoc busto cubat. D 2 36 ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. Certaine Sonnets, &c. 1592, p. 9 : a little after he speaks of " his piperly extem- porizing and Tarletouizing ; " and in one place expressly calls him " a player," p. 25. See, too, the MS. notes ah-eady cited (p. 33) from a copy of The Pinner of Wakefield. — His friends, Marlowe and Peele, it has been ascertained, had trod the boards. The various verses which are scattered through his prose-tracts constitute, as far as we know, the whole of Greene's non-dramatic poetry, with the exception of A Maiden's Dream. Upon the death of the Right Honourable Sir Christopher Hatton, Knight, late Lord Chancellor of England, 1591 ; which was reprinted in The Shakes- peare Society's Papers, 1845, vol. ii. p. 127, by the possessor of the only copy yet discovered, who not unjustly describes it as " a favourable specimen, both of the fancy and of the facility of the writer."* Of Greene's numerous prose-tracts, most of which are interspersed with verses, a list will be found at the end of this essay. Their popvilarity is sufficiently testified by the repeated editions through which many of them passed. On their first appearance, doubtless, they were perused with avidity by the courtly gallants and fan- ones of the metropolis, and by the youthful students of our universities; and, long after Greene was hi his grave, they were sold on ballad-mongers' stalls and hawked about the country by chapmen, forming the favourite reading of the vulgar.t In some of them he exhibits no mean invention, and no Quo mortuo, spretse silent comedise Tragedissque turbidse. ScensB decus desiderant mutsB strnm, Risusque abest Sardonius. Hie Roscius Britannicus sepultus est, Quo notior nemo fuit. Abi, viator : sin te adhuc nomen latet, Edicet hoc quivis puer." Joannis Stradlingi Epigrammatum Libri Quatuor, Londini, 1607, duod., p. 13. * But where was his judgment when, a little before, he called Greene "Shakespeare's most distinguished contemporary and rival " ? t The Myrrour of Modestie is dedicated to the Countess of Derby, PlanetomacMa to the Earl of Leicester, Euphues his censure to Philautus to the Earl of Essex, Morando to the Earl of Arundel, Menapjhon to Lady Hales, Tidlies Loue to Lord Strange, the Mourning Garment to the Earl of Cumberland, Alcida to Sir Charles Blount, Arbasto to Lady Mary Talbot, Philomela to Lady Fitzwaters, Penelope's Web to the Countess of Cumberland and the Countess of Warwick, TliC Card of Fancy to the Earl of Oxford, &c. &c. : the dedication of A Quip for an Upstart Courtier is addressed to the Right Worshipful Thomas Barnaby Esquire, and is signed " Your duetifull adopted sonne Robert Greene." ' ' Euen Guicciardines siluer historic, and Ariostos golden cantoes, grow out of request : and the Countesse of Pembrookes Arcadia is not greene inough for queasie stomackes, but they must haue Greenes Arcadia ; and, I belleeue, most eagerlie longed for Greenes Faerie Queene." G. Hai-vey's Fovre Letters, and certaine Sonnets, &c., 1592, p. 26. Ben Jonson, in Every man out of Ms humour, insinuates that Greene was beginning to go out of fashion ; "Fast. She does observe as pure a phrase, and use as choice figures in her ordinary conferences, as any be in the Arcadia. Car. Or rather in Greene's works, whence she may steal «dth more security." Act. ii. sc. 1. But certainly for many years after this play was produced, (in 1599,) Greene continued to be very popular. ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 37 slight skill in the conduct of the flible ; bvit I cannot take upon me to determine how much he borrowed from the obscurer writers of France and Italy. His fancy was exuberant, and supplied him with an endless variety of images ; his facility of diction was very great ; and though he does not display any depth of thought, he abounds in just and pleasing reflexions. He frequently delights us with passages of real pathos and genuine beauty ; again, he is devoted to conceits and alliteration, or becomes insvifferably tedious and diffuse. His love of similies drawn from the imaginary properties of herbs, stones,* &g. he caught from Lyly ; and contemporary panegyrists imagined that they were bestowing the highest encomium on Greene when they ranked him with the fantastical author of JSujjhues.f Of the verses scattered tln-ough these tracts the merit is very unequal ; some of them have a tenderness, a pastoral simplicity, and a lyric flow, which are truly fascinating, while some scarcely rise above mediocrity, and some fall considerably below it. J England's Helicon, 1600, and Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, 1602, are enriched with some of Greene's verses, selected from his prose-tracts. § Sir Thomas Overbury, in bis Characters, describing a Chambermaid, tells us "She reads Greene's works ouer and ouer." Greene, says Anthony Wood, ' ' was 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." Fasti Oxon. Part. 1st, p. 245. ed. Bliss. * "Nash, the ape of Greene, Greene the ape of Euphues, Euphues the ape of Enuie, the three famous mammets of the presse." — G. Harvey's Pierces Supererogation, &c., 1593, Sig. S 4. "Did I," exclaims Nash, indignant at being accused of imitating Greene, "euer write of cony- catching ? stufft my stile with hearbs and stones ? or apprentisd myselfe to running of the letter ? If not, how then doo I imitate him ? " — Haue with you to Saffron- Walden, &c., 1596, Sig. V. 3. "If any man bee of a dainty and curious eare," says the author of Martine Mar-sixtus, 1592, undoubtedly alluding to Greene, " I shall desire him to repayre to those authors ; euery man hath not a perle-mint, a fish-mint, nor a bird-mint in his braine, all are not licensed to create new stones, new fowlcs, new serpents, to coyne new creatures," &c. — Preface. t " Marot et De-Mornay pour le langage Francois ; Pour L'Espaignol Gueuare, Boccace pour le Toscan ; Et le gentil Sleidan refait I'Allemand ; Greene et Lylli tons deux rafiineurs de I'Anglois." Sonnet by I. Eliote, prefixed to Greene's Perimedes, 1588. " Multis post annis, conjungens carmina prosis, Floruit Ascamus, Chekus, Gascoynus, et alter TuUius Anglorum nunc vivens Lillius, ilfum Consequitur Grenus, prteclarus vterque poeta." Anon. Verses prefixed to Greene's Alcida, 1617. " Of all the flowers a Lillie once I lou'd. Whose labouring bcautie brancht itselfe abroade ; But now old age his glorie hath remoud, And Greener obiectes are my eyes aboade." Verses by Henry Vpchear, prefixed to Greene's Mcnaphon, 1587. t " As Italy had Dante, Boccace, Petrarch, Tassu, Celiano, and Ariosto ; so England had Matthew Roydon, Thomas Atchelow, Thomas Watson, Thomas Kid, Pobert Greene, and George Peele."— Meres's Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasvry, 1598, fol. 282. § The former contains five pieces from Menaphon and two from Never too Late ; the latter, one from the Orpharion. 38 ACCOUNT OF E. GREENE AND HIS WEITINGS. In the Biographia Dramatica aud in other pubhcations it is positively stated that Greene occasionally prostituted his talents for the amusement of the rakes of the day, and that some of his pieces were polluted by gross obscenity. I am much deceived if this be not one of those falsehoods which creep into literary history, and are transferred from book to book, through the ignorance and carelessness of biographers and editors ; few of the persons perhaps who made the assertion having ever read one quarter of his works. It originated, I presume, partly in a misconception of the author s meaning, when he speaks with regi'et of the lighter productions of his pen ; and partly in the misrepresentations of puritanic writers. Greene, in an Address to George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, before his Mourning Garment, 1590, says ; " Having myself ouer- weaned with them of Nineuie in publishing sundry wanton pamphlets, and setting forth axiomes of amorous philosophy, tandem aliquando taught with a feeling of my palpable follies, and hearing with the eares of my heart Jonas crying, ' Except thou repent,' as I haue changed the inward affects of my minde, so I haue tm-ned my wanton workes to effectuall labours I hope yoiu* lordship will be glad, with Augustus Csesar, to read the reformation of a second Quid ; pardon, my lord, inferiour by a thousand degrees to him in wit or learning, but I feare halfe as fond in publishing amorous fancies." * All, I believe, that we are to gather from these expressions is, that he had written pieces, which, being on the subject of love, were light and trivial, — that (as one of his panegyrists, Roger Portington, tells him, in verses prefixed to the First Part oi Mamillia, 1583,) he had " paynted out Dan Cupids craft, And set at large the doubtful! chance of fancies drafte." " I promised, gentlemen," says Greene in an Address to the Gentleman Readers before Philomela, &c., 1592, " both in my Moiirning Garment, and Fareimll to Follie, neuer to busie my selfe about any wanton pamphlets againe, nor to haue my bi'ayne counted so addle as to set out any matter that were amorous : but yet am I come, contrary to vow and promise, once againe to the presse with a labour of loue, which I hatched long agoe, though now brought forth to light :" and let it be observed, that Philomela (which is inscribed to Lady Fitzwaters) is a moral tale of great beauty. — The author of a pamphlet called Marline Mar-sixtus. A second replie against tlie defensory and apology of Sixties the ffth, &c. 1592, has the following passages in his preface, which were undoubtedly pointed at Greene : " What publishing of friuolous * In Greene's Quip for an Upstart Courtier, <£t., are these words ; "Only I must needes say to him that some of his trade will print lewd hookes and bawdy pamphlets, but auri sacra fames quid non ?" I remember perfectly to have seen an edition of this tract with the date 1592 (during which year it seems to have been several times printed), wherein, after the words " bawdy pamphlets," was inserted, between brackets, " by R, G." : but in the edition of 1592, in the King's Library, the passage stands as just given. ACCOUNT OF K GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 39 and scurrilous prognostications, as if Will Sommers were againe reuiued ! what counterfeiting and cogging of prodigious and fabulous monsters, as if they labored to exceede the poet in his Metamorphosis ! what lasciuious, vnhonest, and amorous discourses, such as Augustus in a heathen common-wealth could neuer tolerate ! and yet they shame not to subscribe, 'By a graduate in Cambridge, in Artibus Magister ' ; as if men should iudge of the fruites of art by the ragges and parings of wit, and endite the vniuersities as not onely accessary to their vauitie but nurses of bawdry : we would the world should know, that howsoeuer those places haue power to create a Master of Artes, yet the art of loue is none of the seauen thus affecting to bee famous, they become notorious, that it may be saide of them as of the Sophisters at Athens, dum volunt haberi celebriter docti, innotescunt insigniter asinini, and when with shame they see their folly, they are faine to put on a mourning garment, and crie, Farewell."* But is not this merely the language of some canting individual, who held in utter loathing any writer whose pen had been employed on tales of love 1 — In that very ciirious poetical tract, Greene's Funeralls by R. B.t, Gent., 1594, the purity of his amorous pieces is particularly dwelt upon ; * ' He, Le is dead, that wrote of your delights ; That wrote of ladies and of parramours ; Of budding beautie, and hii- branched leaues, Of sweet content in royall nuptialls. His gadding Muse, although it ran of loue, Yet did hee sweetly morralize his songs ; Ne euer gaue the looser cause to laugh, Ne men of iudgement, for to be offended." — Sig. B. * An allusion to Greene's Movrn'mg Garment and Farewell to Folly. + Ritson supposed that E. B. meant Richard Barnfield ; but it is scarcely possible that he could have been the author of so mean a composition. — Greene's Funeralls contains the following " Catalogue of certaine of his Bookes. Camilla for the first and second part ; The Card of Fancie, and his Tullies loue ; His Nunquam sera, and his Nightingale ; His Spanish Masquerade, and his Change ; His Menuphon, and Metamorphosis ; His Orpharion, and the Denmarke King ; His Censure, and his Loues Tritameron ; His Disputation, and The Death of him That makes all England shed so many teares ; And many more that I haue neuer scene, May witnes well vnto the world — his wit Had he so well as well applied it." Sig. C 2. In the 8th and 9th lines there is an allusion to Greene's poem on the death of Sir Christopher Hatton, A Maiden's Dream (already mentioned, p. 36). 40 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. In The Repentance of Robert Greene his love-pamphlets are noticed in no stronger terms of reprobation than " These vanities and other trifling pamphlets I penned of lone and vaine fantasies was my chiefest stay of lining; and for those my vaine discourses I was beloued of the more vainer sort of people," &c. Sig. C 3. Nor must it be forgotten that Greene was in the habit of inscribing his productions to high-born personages, both male and female : and would the notorious author of grossly licentious tracts have presumed to aspire to the patronage of such illus- trious names as are to be found in note t p. 361 Fandosto. The triumph of Time, &c., 1588 (with the running-title. The Historie of Doixistus and Fawnid), is perhaps the most memorable of the prose-works of Greene, because on it oar great dramatist founded his Winters Tale. To those who may read the novel for the first time, having a previous acqiiaintance with the play of Shakespeare, — and to what reader is it altogether imknown 1 — the former will appear cold and uninteresting on a recollection of the marvellous truth and reality of the latter. But Fandosto is far from a contemptible production : if portions of it are disfigured by bad taste and coarseness of feeling, there are also portions composed in a very pleasing and affecting manner. The story, there is every reason to believe, was the invention of Greene : how far Shakespeare has deviated from it I proceed to show. * " In the countrey of Bohemia there rayned a king called Pandosto, whose fortunate successe in warres against his foes, and bountifull curtesie towardes his friendes in peace, made him to be greatly feared and loued of all men. This Pandosto had to wife a ladie called Bellaria, by birth royall, learned by education, faire by natm-e, by vertues famous ; so that it was hard to iudge whether her beautie, fortune, or vertue, wanne the greatest commendations. These two, lincked together in perfect loue, led their liues with such fortunate content that their subiects greatly reioyced to see their quiet disposition. They had not beene married long, but fortune (willing to increase their happines) lent them a sonne, so adorned with the gifts of nature as the perfection of the ohilde greatly augmented the loue of the parentes and the ioy of their commons." ....'" Fortune enuious of such happy successe, willing to shewe some signe of her inconstancie, turned her wheele, and darkned their bright sun of prosperitie with the mistie cloudes of mishap and misery. For it so happened that Egistus king of Sycilia, who in his youth had bene brought vp with Pandosto, desirous to shewe that neither tracte of time nor distance of place coxild diminish their former friendship, prouided a nauie of ships and sayled into Bohemia, to visite his old friend and companion : who, hearing of his arriuall, went himselfe in person and his wife Bellaria, accompanied with a great traine of lords and ladies, to meete Egistus ; and espying him, alighted from his horse, embraced him very louingly, protesting that nothing * I quote from tlie edition of 1 588. (Since the first appearance of tlae present memoir, Pandosto has been reprinted complete in Collier's Shakespeare' s Library.) ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 41 in the world could haue happened more acceptable to him then his comming, wishing his wife to welcome his olde friend and acquaintance : who (to shewe how she liked him whom her husband loued) intertayned him with such ftimiliar curtesie as Egistus perceiued himselfe to bee vei'ie well welcome. After they had thus saluted and embraced eche other, they mounted againe on horsbacke, and rode toward the citie, deuising and recounting howe being children they had passed their youth in friendely pastimes : where, by the meanes of the citizens, Egistus was receyued with triu.mph8 and shewes, in such sort that he maruelled how on so small a warning they coulde make such preparation. Passing the streetes thus with such rare sightes, they rode on to the pallace : where Pandosto entertained Egistus and his Sycilians with such banqueting and sumptuoiis cheare, so royally as they all had cause to commend his princely liberality ; yea, the verie basest slaue that was knowne to come from Sycilia was vsed with such curtesie that Egistus might easily perceiue how both hee and his were honored for his friendes sake. Bellaria (who in her time was the flower of curtesie), willing to shew how vnfaynedly shee looued her husband by his fi-iends intertainement, vsed him likewise so familiarly that her countenance bewraied how her minde was affected towardes him ; oftentimes comming herselfe into his bed-chamber to see that nothing should be amis to mislike him. This honest familiarity increased dayly more and more betwixt them ; for Bellaria, noting in Egistus a princely and boimtifuU minde, adorned with sundrie and excellent qualities, and Egistus, finding in her a vertuous and curteous disposition, there grew such a secret vniting of their affections, that the one could not weU be without the company of the other ; insomuch that when Pandosto was busied with such vi-gent affaires that hee could not bee present with his friend Egistus, Bellaria would walke with him into the garden, where they two in priuat and pleasant deuises would passe away the time to both their contents. This custome still continuing betwixt them, a certaine melancholy passion entring the minde of Pandosto di-aue him into sundry and doubtfidl thoughts. First, he called to minde the beauty of his wife Bellaria, the comelines and brauerie of his friend Egistus, thinking that lone was aboue all lawes, and therefore to be staied with no law ; that it was hard to put fire and flaxe together without burning ; that their open pleasures might breede his secrete displeasures. He considered with himselfe that Egistus was a man and must needes lone ; that his wife was a woman and therefore subiect vnto loue ; and that where fancy forced, friendship was of no force. These and such like doubtfull tlioughtes, a long time smoothering in his stomacke, beganne at last to kindle in his minde a secret mistrust, which, increased by suspition, grewe at last to a flaming iealousie that so tormented him as he could take no rest. He then beoan to measure all their actions, and to misconstrue of their too priuate familiaritie, iudgiug that it was not for honest affection, but for disordinate fancy ; so that hee began to watch them more narrowely, to see if hee coxilde gette any true or certaine proofe to confirme his doubtfull suspition. While thus he noted their lookes and gestm-es, 42 ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. and susjiected their thoughtes aud meaninges, they two, seely soules, who doubted nothing of this his treacherous intent, frequented daily eache others companie : which ch'aue him into such a franticke passion, that he beganne to beare a secret hate to Egistus and a lowring countenaunce to Bellaria ; who marueihng at such vnaccus- tomed frowns, began to cast beeyond the nioone, and to enter into a thousand sundrie thoughtes, which way she should offend her husband ; but finding in herselfe a cleare conscience, ceassed to muse, vntil such time as she might find fit opportunitie to demaund the cause of his dumps. In the meane time Pandostoes minde was so farre charged with iealousy that he did no longer doubt, but was assured (as he thought), that his friend Egistus had entered a wrong pointe in his tables, and so had played him false play : whei-eupon, desirous to reuenge so great an iniury, he thought best to dissemble the grudge with a faire and friendly countenance, and so vnder the shape of a friend to shew him the tricke of a foe. Deuising with himself a long time how he might best put away Egistus without suspition of treacherous murder, hee concluded at last to poyson him." Pandosto endeavours to accomplish his purpose by means of Franion his cup-bearer, offering him at last either preferment or death according as he should consent or refuse to become the instrument of his vengeance. Franion promises to despatch Egistus ; but soon after informs that monarch of his danger, and flies w^ith him from Bohemia. Pandosto now "commaundes that his wife should be carried straight to prison vntil they heard further of his pleasure. The guarde, vnwilling to lay their hands on * such a vertuous princesse, and yet fearing the kings fury, went very sorrowfull to fulfill their charge, Comming to the queen es lodging, they found her playing with her yong sonne Garinter; vnto whom with teares doing the message, Bellaria, astonished at such a hard censure, and finding her cleere conscience a sure aduocate to pleade in her cause, went to the prison most willingly ; where with sighes and teares shee past away the time till she might come to her triall." Pandosto next " caused a generall proclamation to be made through all his realme, that the queene and Egistus had, by the helpe of Franion, not onely committed most incestuous adultery, but also had conspired the kings death ; wherevpon the traitor Franion was fled away with Egistus, and Bellaria was most iustly imprisoned." Presently Bellaria finds herself pregnant, and laments her fate with bitter complaints. " The jay lor, pitying those her heauie passions, thinking that if the king knew she were with childe, he wou.ld somewhat appease his fury aud release her from prison, went in al hast and certified Pandosto what the effect of Bellarias complaint was : who no sooner heard the jaylor say she was with childe, but as one possessed with a phrenzie, he rose vp in a rage, swearing that shee, and the basterd brat she was [quick] withall, should die, if the gods themselues said no ; thinking that sm'ely by computation of time, that Egistus and not he was the father to the childe. This * on] Old ed. " one." ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 43 suspitious thought galled afresh his * halfe-healed sore, in so much as he could take no rest vntill he might mittigate his choller with a iust reuenge ; which happened presently after. For Bellaria was brought to bed of a faire and beautifull daughter : which no sooner Pandosto hearde but he determined that both Bellaria and the young infant should be burnt with fire. His nobles, hearing of the kings cmell sentence, sought by perswasions to diiiert him from his bloodie determination, laying before his face the innocencie of the childe, and vertuous disposition of his wife, how she had continually loued and honoui-ed him so tenderly that without due proofe he could not, nor ought not, to appeach her of that crime. And if she had faiilted, yet it were more honourable to pardon with mercy then to punish with extremity, and more kingly to be commended of pitty than accused of rigoxu- ; and as for the childe, if he should punish it for the mothers offence, it were to striue against nature and iustice ; and that vnnatm-al actions doe more offend the gods then men ; how causelesse cruelty nor innocent blood neuer scapes without reuenge. These and such like reasons coidd not appease his rage, but he rested resolute in this, that Bellaria being an adultresse, the childe was a bastard, and he would not suffer that such an infamous brat should call him father. Yet at last (seeing his noblemen were importunate vpon him) he was content to spare the childes life, and yet to put it to a w^orse death. For he found out this deuise, that seeing (as he thought) it came by fortune, so he would commit it to the charge of fortune, and therefore caused a little cock-boat to be prouided, wherein he meant to put the babe, and then send it to the mercies of the seas and the destenies. From this his peeres in no wise could perswade him, but that he sent presently two of his guard to fetch the childe : who being come to the prison, and with weeping teares recounting their maisters message, Bellaria no sooner heard the rigorious resolution of her mercilesse husband but she fell downe in a swound, so that all thought she had bin dead ; yet at last being come to her selfe, shee cryed and screeched out in this wise. 'Alas, swcete infortunate babe, scarce borne, before enuied by fortune ! would the day of thy birth had beene the tenne of thy life ! then shoiddest thou haue made an ende to care, and preuented thy fathers rigom*. Thy faults cannot yet deserue such hatefull reuenge ; thy dayes are too short for so shai-pe a doome ; but thy vntimely death must pay thy mothers debts, and her guiltlesse crime must bee thy gastly cm-se. And shalt thou, sweete babe, be committed to fortune, when thou art already sj^ited by fortime 1 Shall the seas be thy harbour, and the hard boate thy cradle ] Shall thy tender mouth, in steede of sweete kisses, be nipped with bitter stormes ? Shalt thou haue the whistling windes for thy lullabie, and the salt sea fonie insteede of sweete milke 1 Alas, what destinies would assigne such hard hap ? What father would be so cruell % Or what gods will not reuenge such rigor 1 Let me kisse thy lippes, sweete infant, and wet thy tender cheekes with my teares, and put this * his] Olded. "this." 44 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. chayne about thy little necke, that, if fortune saue thee, it may helpe to succoiir thee. Thus,* since thou must goe to surge in the gastfull seas, with a sorrowfull kisse I bid thee farewell, and I pray the gods thou maist fare well.' Such and so great was her griefe, that, her vitall spirits being suppressed with sorrow, she fell againe downe into a trance, hauing her sences so sotted with care, that after shee was reuiued, yet shee lost her memorie, and lay for a great time without mouing, as one in a trance. The guard left her in this perplexitie, and carried the child to the king ; who, quite deuoide of pity, commanded that without delay it should bee put in the boat, hailing neither saile nor rudderf to guid it, and so to bee carried into the midst of the sea, and there left to the wind and wane as the destinies please to appoint. The very ship-men, seeing the sweete covmtenance of the yong babe, began to accuse the king of rigor, and to pity the childs hard fortune : but feare constrayned them to that which their nature did abhorre ; so that they placed it in one of the ends of the boat, and with a few greene bows made a homely cabben to shroud it as they could from wind and weather. Hauing thus trimmed the boat, they tied it to a shij), and so haled it into the mayne sea, and then cut in sunder the coarde : wdiich they had no sooner done, but there arose a mighty tempest, which tossed the little boate so vehemently in the wanes that the ship-men thought it collide not continue longe without sincking; yea, the storme grewe so great, that with much labour and perill they got to the shoare." Bellaria being brought into open court for her trial, " fell downe vpon her knees, and desired the king that for the loue he bare to his young sonne Garinter, whome she brought into the world, that hee woulde graunt her a request ; which was this, that it would please his maiestie to send sixe of his noblemen whome he best trusted to the Isle of Delphos, there to enquire of the Oracle of Apollo whether she had committed adultery with Egistus, or conspired to poyson him with Franion ; and if the god Apollo, who by his deuine essence knew al secrets, gaue answere that she was guiltie, she were content to suffer any torment, were it neuer so ten-ible. The request was so reasonable that Pandosto could not for shame deny it, vnlesse he woulde bee counted of all his subiects more wilfull then wise : he therefore agreed that with as much speede as might be there should be certaine embassadores dispatched to the He of Delphos ; and in the meane season he commanded that his wife should be kept in close prison. Bellaria hauing obtained this graunt, was now more carefuU for her little babe that floated on the seas then sorrowfull for her owne mishap ; for of that she doubted ; of her selfe shee was assured, knowing if Apollo should giue oracle according to the thoughts of the hart, yet the sentence should goe one her side, such was the clearenes of her minde in this case. But Pandosto (whose suspitious head still remained in one song) chose out six of his nobility whom hee knew were scarse indifferent men in the queenes behalfe, and prouiding all things fit for their iom-ney * Thus] Olded. "This." t rudder'] Old ed. "other." ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 4^5 sent them to Delphos. Thoy willing to fulfill the kinges commaund, and desirous to see the situation and custome of the iland, dispatched then- affaires with as much speede as might be, and embarked themselues to this voyage ; which (the wind and weather seruing fit for their pm*pose) was soone ended. For within three weekes they aiTiued at Delphos : where they were no sooner set on lande but with great deuotion they went to the Temple of Apollo, and there offring sacrifice to the god and giftes to the priest, as the custome was, they humbly craned an aunswere of their demaund. They had not long kneeled at the altar, but Apollo with a loude voice saide, ' Bohemians, what you finde behinde the alter take, and depart.' They forthwith obeying the oracle, founde a scroule of parchment wherein was written these words in letters of golde ; THE ORACLE. Suspition is no proof e; iealousie w an vnequall iudge: Bellaria is chast; Egistus blamelesse/ Franion a true subiect; Pandosto treacherous; his babe an innocent; and the king shal Hue without an heire, if that which is lost be not founde. As soone as they had taken out this scroule, the priest of the god commaunded them that they should not presume to read it before they came in the presence of Pandosto, vnlesse they would incxu-re the displeasure of Apollo." On their return to Bohemia, Bellaria being brought again into the judgment-hall before the assembled lords and commons, speaks thus; " *If the deuine powers bee priuy to humane actions (as no doubt they ai'e), I hoj>e my patience shall make fortune blushe, and my vnspotted life shall staine spightfull* discredit. For although lying report hath sought to appeach mine honor, and suspition hath intended to soyle my credit with infamie, yet where vertue keepeth the forte, report and suspition may assayle, but neuer sack. How I haue led my life before Egistus comming, I appeale, Pandosto, to the gods and to thy conscience. "What hath passed betwixt him and me, the gods onely know, and I hope will presently reueale. That I loued Egistus, I cannot denie ; that I honored him, I shame not to confesse : to the one I was forced by his vertues ; to the other for his dignities. But as touching lasciuious lust, I say Egistus is honest, and hope myselfe to be found without spot : for Franion, I can neither accuse him nor excuse him, for I was not priuie to his departure : and that this is true which I haue heere rehearsed, I refeiTe myselfe to the deuine oracle.' Bellaria had no sooner sayd, but the king commaunded that one of his dukes should reade the contentes of the scroule ; which after the commons had heard, they gaue a gi*eat shout, rcioysing and clapping their hands that the queene was cleare of that false accusation. But the king, whose conscience was a witnesse against him of his witlesse furie and false-suspected iealousie, was so ashamed of his rashe folly that he intreated his nobles to perswade Bellai'ia to forgiue and forget these iniuries ; promising not onely * spightfull] Olded. " spiglitfully." 4(B ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. to shew himselfe a loyall and louing husband, but also to reconcile himselfe to Egistus and Franion ; reuealing then before them all the cause of their secrete flighte, and how treacherously hee thought to haue practised his death, if the good minde of his cupbearer had not preuented his purpose. As thus he was relating the whole matter, there was worde brought him that his young sonne Garinter was sodainly dead : which newes so soone as Bellaria heard, surcharged before with extreame ioy and now suppressed with heauie sorrowe, her vitall spirites were so stopped that she fell downe presently dead, and could be neuer reuiued. This sodaine sight so appalled the kinges sences that he sanck from his seate in a sound, so as he was fayne to be carried by his nobles to his pallace, where hee lay by the space of three dayes without speache. His commons were, as men in dispaire, so diuersly distressed ; there was nothing but mourning and lamentation to be heard throughout al Bohemia ; their young prince dead, their vertuous queene bereaued of her life, and their king and soueraigne in great hazard : this tragicall discourse of fortune so daunted them as they went like shadowes, not men ; yet somewhat to comfort their heauie hearts, they heard that Pandosto was come to himselfe and had recouered his speache : who as in a fury brayed out these bitter speaches. ' miser- able Pandosto, what surer witnesse then conscience ? what thoughts more sower then suspition ? what plague more bad then iealousie 1 Unnaturall actions offend the gods more than men ; and causelesse crueltie neuer scapes without reuenge. I haue committed such a bloudy fact, as repent I may, but recall I cannot. Ah, iealousie ! a hell to the minde, and a horror to the conscience, suppressing reason, and inciting rage : a worse passion then phrensie, a greater plague than madnesse. Are the gods iust ? then let them reuenge such brutishe crueltie : my innocent babe I haue drowned in the seas ; my louing wife I haue slaine with slaunderous suspition ; my trustie friend I haue sought to betray ; and yet the gods are slacke to plague such offences. Ah, vniust Apollo ! Pandosto is the man that hath committed the faulte : why should Garinter, seely childe, abide the paine 1 Well, sith the gods meane to prolong my dayes to increase my doloiu", I will offer my guiltie bloud a sacrifice to those sackles * soules whose lines are lost by my rigorous folly.' And with that he reached at a rapier to haue murdered himselfe : but his peeres being present stayed him from such a bloudy acte, perswading him to think that the commonwealth con- sisted on his safetie, and that those sheepe could not but perish that wanted a sheepheard ; wishing that, if hee would not liue for himselfe, yet he shovdd haue care of his subiects, and to put such fancies out of his minde, sith in sores past help salues doe not heale but hurt, and in thinges past cure care is a corrasiue. With these and such like perswasions the kinge was ouercome, and began somewhat to quiet his minde ; so that assoone as hee could goe abroad, hee caused his wife to bee embalmed and wrapt in lead with her young sonne Garinter ; erecting a rich and * sacMes] i. e. innocent. ACCOUNT OF K GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 47 famous sepulchre, wherein hee intombed them both, making such solemne obsequies at her funeral as al Bohemia might perceiiie he did greatly repent him of his fore- passed folly ; causing this epitaph to be ingrauen on her tombe iu letters of golde • THE EPITAPH. Here lyes entombde Bellaria faire, Falsly accused to he vnchaste • Cleared by Apollos sacred doome, Yet slaine hy iealousie at last. What ere thou he that passest hy, Cursse him that causde this queene to die. This epitaph being ingrauen, Paudosto would once a day repaire to the tombe, and there with watiy plaintes bewaile his misfortune ; coueting no other companion but soiTowe, nor no other harmonic but repentance. But leaning him to his dolorous passions, at last let vs come to shewe the tragicall discourse of the young infant. Who, beeing tossed with winde and wane, floated two whole daies without succour, readie at euery puife to bee drowned in the sea ; till at last the tempest ceassed, and the little boate was di-iueu with the tyde into the coast of Sycilia, where, sticking vppon the sandes, it rested. Fortune minding to be wanton (willing to shewe that as she hath wrinckles on her browes, so shee hath dimples in her cheekes), thought, after so many sower lookes, to lend a fayned smile, and, after a puffing stoime, to bring a pretty calme : shee began thus to dally. It fortuned a poore mercenary sheepheard that dwelled in Sycilia, who got his liuing by other mens flockes, missed one of his sheepe, and thinking it had strayed into the couert that was hard by, sought very diligently to find that which he could not see, fearing either that the wolues or eagles had vndone him (for hee was so poore as a sheepe was halfe his substaunce), wandered downe toward the sea-cliffes, to see if perchaunce the sheepe was browsing on the sea-iuy, whereon they greatly doe feede. But not finding her there, as he was ready to returne to his flocke, hee heard a childe crie ; but knowing there was no house nere, he thought he had mistaken the sound, and that it was the bleatyng of his sheepe. Wherefore looking more narrowely, as he cast his eye to the sea, he spyed a little boate, from whence, as he attentiuely listened, he might heare the cry to come. Standing a good while in a maze, at last he went to the shoare, and wading to the boate, as he looked in, he saw the little babe lying al alone, ready to die for hunger and colde, wrapped in a mantle of scarlet, richely imbrodered with golde, and hauing a chayne about the necke. The sheepeheard, who before had neuer scene so fairc a babe nor so riche iewels, thought assuredly that it was some little god, and began with gi'cat deuocion to knock on his breast. The babe, who wrythed with tlic head to seeke for the pap, began againe to cry afresh : whereby the poore man knew that it was a childe, which by some sinister meancs was driuen thither by distresse of weather ; maruailing how such a seely 48 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. infant, which by the mantle and the chayne could not be but borne of noble parentage, should be so hardly crossed with deadly mishap. The poore sheepheard, perplexed thus with diners thoughts, tooke pitty of the childe, and determined with himselfe to carry it to the king, that there it might be brought vp according to the worthinesse of birth ; for his ability coulde not afforde to foster it, though his good minde was willing to further it. Taking therefore the chylde in his armes, as he foulded the mantle together, the better to defend it from colde, there fell downe at his foote a very faire and riche purse, wherein ho founde a great summe of golde : which sight so reuiued the shepheards spirits, as he was greatly rauished with ioy, and daimted with feare ; ioyfull to see such a summe in his power, and feareful, if it should be knowne, that it might breede his further daunger. Necessitie wisht him at the least to retaine the golde, though he would not keepe the childe : the simplicity of his conscience feared* him from such deceiptfull briberie.t Thus was the poore manne perplexed with a doubtfull dilemma, vntill at last the couetousnesse of the coyne ouercame him ; for what will not the gi'eedy desire of golde cause a man to doe 1 so that he was resolued in himselfe to foster the child, and with the summe to relieue his want. Resting thus resolute in this point, he left seeking of his sheepe, and as couertly and secretly as he coulde, went by a by-way to his house, least any of his neighbours should perceaue his carnage." The shepherd, who is called Porrus, and his wife, having no children of their own, rear the babe as their daughter, giving her the name of Fawnia. With the money which he had found in the purse Porrus having bought the lease of a pretty farm and a small flock of sheep, "grewe in short time to bee a man of some wealth and credite." When Fawnia " came to the age of sixteene yeeres, shoe so increased with exquisite perfection both of body and minde, as her natm-al disposition did bewray that she was borne of some high parentage ; but the people thinking she was daughter to the shephard Porrus, rested only amazed at hir beauty and wit : yea, she won such fauour and commendations in eiiery mans eye, as her beautie was not onely praysed in the countrey, but also spoken of in the court ; yet such was her submisse modestie, that although her praise daily increased, her mind was no whit puffed vp with pride, but humbled her selfe as became a country mayde and the daughter of a poore sheepheard. Euery day she went forth with her sheepe to the field, keeping them with such care and diligence as al men thought she was verie painfull, defending her face from the heat of the sunne with no other vale but with a garland made of bowes and flowers ; which attire became her so gallantly as shee seemed to bee the goddesse Flora her selfe for beauty." Dorastus, the only son of Egistus and aged about twenty, (who has just off'ended his father by showing decided dislike to the proposal that he should marry the King of Denmark's daughter,) becomes violently enamoured of the lovely shepherdess : she returns his passion, and consents * feared] Mr. Collier {Shakespeare's Library) prints "scared," — rightly perhaps. + briber ie] i. e. theft. ACCOUNT OF R. GEEENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 49 to be his wife. " Hauing thus phght their troath eacli to other, seeing they could not haue the full fruition of their loue in Sycilia, for that Egistus consent woulde neuer bee graunted to so meane a match, Dorastus determined assone as time and oportunitie would giue them leaue, to prouide a great masse of money, and many rich and costly iewels for the easier cariage, and then to transporte themselues and their treasure into Italy, where they should leade a contented life, vntil such time as either he could be reconciled to his father, or els by succession come to the king- dome." Soon after this, the neighbom-s of Porrus inform him of the meetings of the loners, fearing that the prince meant to lure Fawnia to folly. The old shepherd, greatly distressed at the intelligence, and dreading the anger of the king, resolves to go to his majesty, give him an account of his having found Fawnia in the little boat, and show him the chain and jewels that accompanied her : " ' by this meanes,' " says he to his wife, " ' I hope the king will take Fawnia into his seruice, and we, whatsoeuer chaunceth, shal be blamelesse.' This deuice pleased the good wife very well, so that they determined, assoone as they might know the king at leisure, to make him priuie to this case. In the meane time Dorastus was not slacks in his a,ffaires, but applyed his matters with such diligence that he prouided all thinges fitte for their iourney. Treasure and iewels he had gotten great store, thincking there was no better friend then money in a strange countrey ; rich attire he had prouided for Fawnia ; and because he could not bring the matter to passe without the helps and aduice of some one, he made an old seruant of his, called Capnio, who had sei-ued him from his child-hood, priuie to his affaires ; who, seeing no perswasions could preuaile to diuert him from his setled determination, gaue his consent, and dealt so secretly in the cause that within short space hee had gotten a ship ready for theyr passage. The mariners, seeing a fit gale of winde for their purpose, wished Capnio to make no delayes, least, if they pretermitted this good weather, they might stay long ere they had such a fayre winde. Capnio, fearing that his negligence should hinder the iom-ney, in the night time conueyed the trunckes full of treasure into the shippe, and by secrette meanes let Fawnia vnderstand that the next morning they meant to depart. She vpon this newes slept verie little that night, but gotte vp very early, and wente to her sheepe, looking euery minute when she should see Dorastus ; who taried not long, for feare delay might breede daunger, but came as fast as he could gallop, and without any great cii'cumstance tooke Fawnia vp behinde him, and rode to the haueu where the shippe lay, w^hich was not three quarters of a mile distant from that place. He no sooner came there but the maniners were readie with their cock-boate to set them aboard ; where, being coucht together in a cabben, they past away the time in recounting their old loues til their man" Capnio should come. Poitus, who had heard that this morning the king would go abroad to take the ayi-e, called in haste to his wife to bring him his holyday hose and his best iacket, that he might goo like an honest substantiall man to tell his tale. His wife, a good cleanly wenche, brought him all things fitte, and spungd him vp very 50 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. liandsomlie, giuing him the chaine * and iewels in a Httle bose, which Forms for the more safety put in his bosom. Hauing thus all his trinkets in a readines, taking his stafiFe in his hand, he bad his wife kisse him for good lucke, and so hee went towards the pallace. But as he was going, fortune (who meant to showe him a httle false play) preuented his purpose in this wise. He met by chaunce in his way Capnio, who trudging as fast as he could with a little coffer vnder his arme to the ship, and spying Pomis, whome he knewe to be Fawnias father, going towardes the pallace, being a wylie fellow, began to doubt the worst, and therefore crost him the way, and askt him whither he was going so earely this morning. Porrus (who knew by his face that he was one of the court) meaning simply, told him that the kmgs son Dorastus dealt hardly with him ; for he had but one daughter who was a little beautifull, and that his neighboures told him the young prince had alliu-ed her to folly : he went therefore now to complaine to the king how gi'eatly he was abused. Capnio (who straight way smelt the whole matter) began to soth him in his talke, and said that Dorastus dealt not like a prince to spoyle any poore manes daughter in that sort : he therefore would doe the best for him he could, because he knew he was an honest man, ' But,' quoth Capnio, ' you lose jour labour in going to the pallace, for the king meanes this day to take the aire of the sea, and to goe aboord of a shippe that lies in the hauen : I am going before, you see, to prouide all things in a redinesse ; and if you wil follow my counsaile, tume back with me to the hauen, where I will set you in such a fitte place as you may speake to the king at your pleasure.' Porrus, giuing credit to Capnios smooth tale, gaue him a thousand thanks for his friendly aduise, and went with him to the hauen, making all the way his complaintes of Dorastus, yet concealing secretlie the chaine and the iewels. Assone as they were come to the sea-side, the mamners, seeing Capnio, came a-land with their cock-boote ; who still dissembling the matter, demaunded of Porrus if he would go see the ship 1 who, vnwilling and fearing the worst because he was not well acquainted with Capnio, made his excuse that he could not brooke the sea, therefore would not trouble him. Capnio, seeing that by faire meanes hee could not get him aboord, commaunded the mariners that by violence they should carrie him into the shippe ; who like stm'dy knaues hoisted the poore shepheard on their backes, and bearing him to the boate, lanched from the land. Porrus, seeing himselfe so cunningly betraied, durst not crie out, for hee sawe it would not preuaile ; but began to intreate Capnio and the mariners to be good to him, and to pittie his estate ; hee was but a poore man that lined by his labour : they, laughing to see the shepheard so afraide, made as much haste as they could and sette him aboorde. Porrus was no sooner in the shippe but he saw Dorastus walking with Fawnia ; yet he scarse knew her, for she had attu'ed her selfe in riche apparell, which so increased her beauty that shee resembled rather an angell then a mortall creature. Dorastus and Fawnia were halfe * chaine] Old ed. "chaines." ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 51 astonished to see the olde shepherd, maruailing greatly w^hat -wind had brought him thithei', til Capnio told them al the whole discourse ; how Porrus was going to make his complaint to the king, if by pollicie he had not preuented him ; and there- fore now, sith he was aboord, for the auoiding of further danger, it were best to carrie him into Italy. Dorastiis praised greatly his mans deuise, and allowed of his counsaile : but Fawnia (who stil feared Porrus as her father) began to blush for shame, that by her meanes he should either incur[i-]e daunger or displeasure. The old shephard, hearing this hard sentence, that he should on such a sodaine be caried from his wife, his country, and kinsfolke, into a foiTaine lande amongst straungers, began with bitter teares to make his complaint, and on his knees to intreate Dorastus, that pardoning his vnaduised folly, he would giue him leaue to goe home ; swearing that hee would keepe all thinges as secret as they could wish. But these protes- tations could not preuaile, although Fawnia intreated Dorastus very earnestly ; but the mariners, hoisting their maine sailes, waied ankers, and hailed into the deepe." Egistus, greatly alarmed at the disappearance of the prince, learns at last from a fisherman in what company he had set sail ; and is so grieved at " his sonnes reck- lesse follie" that he falls into a very dangerous quartan fever. "But his sonne Dorastus little regarded either father, countrie, or kingdome, in respect of his lady Fawnia ; for fortune smyling on this young nouice, lent him so lucky a gale of winde for the space of a day and a night, that the maryners lay and slept vpon the hatches : but on the next morning, about the breake of the day, the aire began to ouercast, the winds to rise, the seas to swel, yea, presently there arose such a fearfull tempest as the ship was in danger to be swallowed vp with euery sea, the maine mast with the violence of the wind was tlu'own ouer-boord, the sayles were tome, the tackliugs rent * in sunder, the storme raging still so furiously that poore Fawnia was almost dead for feare, but that she was greatly comforted with the presence of Dorastus. The tempest continued three dayes, al which time the mariners euerie minute looked for death, and the aire was so darkned with cloudes that the maister could not tell by his compasse in what coast they were. But vjDon the fourth day, about ten of the clocke, the wind began to cease, the sea to wax calme, and the sky to be cleare, and the mariners desciyed the coast of Bohemia, shooting of their ordnance for ioy that they had escaped such a fearefuU tempest. Dorastus, hearing that they were an-iued at some harbour, sweetly kissed Fawnia, and bad her be of good cheare : when they tolde him that the port belonged vnto the cheife cittie of Bohemia where Pandosto kept his court, Dorastus began to be sad, knowing that his father hated no man so much as Pandosto, and that the king himself had sought secretly to betray Egistus : this considered, he was halfe afraide to goe on land, but that Capnio counselled him to chaunge his name and his countrey, vntil such time as they could get some other barke to transport them into Italy. Dorastus liking this deuise, * rent] Old ed, "went." E 2 52 ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. made his case priuy to the marriners, rewarding them bountifully for their paines, and charging them to saye that he was a gentleman of Trapolonia called Meleagitis. The shipmen, willing to shew what friendship they could to Dorastus, promised to be as secret as they could or hee might wish ; and vppon this they landed in a little village a mile distant from the citie : where, after they had rested a day, thinking to make prouision for their mariage, the fame of Fawnias beauty was spread through- out all the citie, so that it came to the eares of Pandosto ; who then being about the age of fifty, had notwithstanding yong and freshe affections, so that he desired greatly to see Fawnia ; and to bring this matter the better to passe, hearing they had but one man, and how they rested at a very homely house, he caused them to be apprehended as spies, and sent a dozen of his garde to take them ; who being come to their lodging, tolde them the kings message. Dorastus no whit dismayed, accompanied with Fawnia and Capnio, went to the com-t (for they left Poitus to keepe the stufFe) ; who being admitted to the kings presence, Dorastus and Fawnia with humble obeysance saluted his maiestie." Pandosto is amazed at the loveliness of Fawnia ; and when Dorastus has told him a tale devised for the occasion, he angrily declares, " till I heare more of her parentage and of thy calling, I wil stay you both here in Bohemia." The young prince answers the king with much bold- ness, and is committed to prison, while " the rest of the shipmen " are thrown into a dungeon ; but Fawnia is treated with great courtesy. The king now endeavours to overcome the chastity of the beautiful stranger, but his various alliu'ements are vain ; and he swears at last that, if she does not yield to his wishes, he will have recourse to violence. Meantime Egistus learns from some Bohemian merchants that his son is imprisoned by Pandosto, and sends ambassadors to that monarch with a request " that Capnio, Fawnia, and Porrus, might be murthered and put to death, and that his sonne Dorastus might be sent home in safetie. Pandosto hauing atten- tiuely and with great meruaile heard their embassage, willing to reconcile himselfe to Egistus, and to shew him how greatlie he esteemed his fauour,* although loue and fancy forbad him to hurt Fawnia, yet in despight of loue hee determined to execute Egistus will without mercy ; and therefore he presently sent for Dorastus out of prison ; who meruailing at this vnlooked for curtesie, found, at his comming to the kings presence, that which he least doubted of, his fathers embassadours ; who no sooner sawe him, but with great reuerence they honored him ; and Pandosto embracing Dorastus, set him by him very louingly in a chaire of estate. Dorastus, ashamed that his follie was bewraied, sate a long time as one in a muse, til Pandosto told him the summe of his fathers embassage ; which he had no sooner heard, but he was toucht at the quicke for the cruell sentence that was pi-onounced against Fawnia. Biit neither coidd his sorrow nor perswasions preuaile ; for Pandosto commaunded that Fawnia, Porrus, and Capnio, should bee brought to his presence : favour] Old ed. "labour." ACCOUNT OF E, GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 53 who wei'e no sooner come but Pandosto, hauing his foimer loue turned to a disdainful hate, began to rage against Fawnia in these tearmes. ' Thou disdainfull vassal, thou currish kite, assigned by the destinies to base fortune, and yet with an aspiring minde gazing after honor, how durst thou presume, being a beggar, to match with a prince 1 by thy alluring lookes to inchant the sonne of a king to leaue his owne countrie to fulfill thy disordinate lusts 1 desj^ightfull minde ! a proud heart in a beggar is not vnlike to a great fire in a smal cottage, which warmeth not the house, but burneth it : assui'e thyselfe thou shalt die. And thou, old doating foole, whose follie hath bene such as to suff"er thy daughter to reach aboue thy fortune, looke for no other meede but the like punishment. Bvit, Capnio, thou which hast betrayed the king, and hast consented to the vnlawfull lust of thy lord and maister, I know not how iustly I may plague thee ; death is too easie a punishment for thy falsehood, and to Hue, if not in extreame miserie, were not to shew thee equitie. I therefore award that thou shalt haue thine eyes put out, and continually, while * thou diest, grinde in a mil like a brute beast.' The feare of death brought a sorrowfuU silence \^on Fawnia and Capnio : but Porrus, seeing no hope of life," confesses that Fawnia is not his daughter, tells how he found her in the little boat, and shows the chain and jewels that accompanied her. " Pandosto would scarce suffer him to tell out his tale but that he enquired the time of the yeere, the manner of the boate, and other ch'cumstaunces ; which when he found agreeing to his count, he sodainelie leapt from his seate, and kissed Fawnia, wetting her tender cheeks with his teares, and crying, ' My daughter Fawnia ! Ah sweete Fawnia ! I am thy father, Fawnia.' This sodaine passion of the king di-aue them all into a maze, especially Fawnia and Dorastus. But when the king had breathed himselfe a while in this newe ioy, hee rehearsed beefore the embassadours the whole matter, how hee hadde entreated his wife Bellaria for iealousie, and that this was the childe whome hee [had] sent to floate in the seas. Fawnia was not more ioyfull that she had found such a father then Dorastus was glad he should get such a wife. The embassadors reioyced that their yong prince had made such a choice, that those kingdomes, which through enmitie had long time bin disseuered, should now through perpetual amitie be vmted and recon- ciled. The citizens and subiects of Bohemia (heai'ing that the king had found againe his daughter which was supposed dead, ioyfuU that there was an heire aparant to his kingdome) made bonfires and showes tliroughout the cittie. The courtiers and knights appointed iusts and turneis, to signifie their willing mindes in gratifying the kings hap. Eighteenc dales being past in these princely sports, Pandosto, willing to recompence old Porrus, of a shepheard made him a knight : which done, prouiding a sufl&cient nauie to receiue him and his retinue, accompanied with Dorastus, Fawnia, and the Sicilian embassadours, he sailed towai-ds Sicilia, where he was most princelie entertained by Egistus ; who hearing this comicall euent, reioyced gi-eatly at his 54 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. sonnes good happe, and without delay (to the perpetuall ioy of the two yong louers) celebmted the marriage : which was so sooner ended but Pandosto, calling to mind how first he betraied his friend Egistus, how his iealousie was the cause of Bellarias death, that contrarie to the law of nature hee had lusted after his owne daughter, — moued with these desperate thoughts, he fell in a melancholie fit, and, to close vp the comedie with a tragicall stratageme, hee slewe himselfe : whose death being many daies bewailed of Fawnia, Dorastus, and his deere friend Egistus, Dorastus, taking his leaue of his father, went with his wife and the dead corps into Bohemia ; where, after it was * sumptuouslie intoombed, Dorastus ended his daies in contented quiet." The reader will perceive that the characters of Antigonus, Paulina, Autolycus, and the Young Shepherd, in the Winter's Tale, are the creations of Shakespeare. Greene, during his chequered life, having sometimes " kept villanous company," tiuTied to account his intimate acquaintance with the sharpers and rogues of the metro- polis by publishing several pamphlets wherein he laid open all the mysteries of their ai-ts.t Prefixed to the first of these pieces, A Notable Discouery of Coosnage, 1591, is an Address " To the Yong Gentlemen, Marchants, Apprentises, Farmei-s, and plain Countiymen," which begins thus : " Diogenes, gentlemen, from a counterfait coiner of money, became a cun'ant corrector of manners, as absolute in the one as dissokite in the other : time refineth mens affects, and their humors grow different by the distinction of age. Poor Quid, that amorously wiit in his yoiith the art of loue, complained in his exile amongst the Getes of his wanton follies ; and Socrates age was vertuous, thogh his prime was licentious. So, gentlemen, my younger yeeres had vncertaine thoughtes, but now my ripe daies cals on to repentant deedes, and I son'ow as much to see othei-s wilful as I delighted once to be wanton. The odde mad-caps I haue beene mate too, not as a companion, but as a spie to haue an insight into their knaueries, that seeing their traines I might eschew their snares ; those mad fellowes I learned at last to loath by their owne gracelesse villenies ; and what I saw in them to their confusion, I can forwame in others to my countreies commodity. None could decipher tyranisme better then Aristipptis, not that his nat\ire was cruell, but that he was nourtured with Dionisius : the simple swaine that cuts the lapidaries stones can distinguish a ruby from a diamond onely by his laboiu- : though I haue not practised their deceits, yet conuersing by fortune and talking vppon purpose with such copes-mates, hath geuen mee light into their conceiptes, and I can decipher their qualities, though I vtterly mislike of their * it ivas] Old eil. "they were." + "But I thanke God that hee put it in my head to lay open the most horrible cooseiiages of the common Conny-catchcrs, Cooseners, and Crosse-biters, which I haue indifferently handled in those my seuerall discourses already imprinted. And my trust is, that those discourses will doe great good, and bee very bcneficiall to the common-wealth of England."— TAe Bemntance of Robert Greene, 1592. Sig. C 3. ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 55 practises." It was not without many threats of vengeance from this blackguard crew that our author persevered in describing their various villanies. About the beginning of August, 1592, Greene having partaken too largely of pickled henings and Rhenish wine, at an entertainment where Nash was a principal guest, was, in consequence, seized by an illness which terminated in death.* The * My chief authority for the account of Greene's last illness and death is the tract entitled Fovre Letters, and certaine Sonnets ; especially touching Robert Greene, &c. 1592, by Gabriel Harvey, whose enmity towards our author, and the cause of it, will be afterwards particularly noticed. Though this person has lowered himself in the eyes of posterity by his malignant attack on the memory of Greene, the fact of his having been the friend of Spenser is alone sufficient to prove the respectability of his character ; and since he tells us that his information concerning Greene's miserable end was derived from the hostess who kindly acted as nurse to the dying poet, I see no reason for questioning the truth of his statements. The small portion of Nash's Strange Newes, Of the intercepting of certain Letters, &c. 1592, which is occupied by remarks on Harvey's attack on Greene, is weak and unsatisfactory : it must be observed, too, that Nash had not seen Greene for a month before his death, and was anxious to disclaim any great intimacy having existed between them. "My next businesse was to enquire after the famous author ; who was reported to lye dangerously sicke in a shoemakers house neere Dow-gate ; not of the plague or the pockes, as a gentleman saide, but of a surfett of pickle herringe and Rennish wine," &c. — G. Harvey's Fovre Letters, &c. 1592, p. 5, "His keping of the foresaid Balls sister, a son'y ragged quean e, of whome liee had his base sonne, Infortunatus Greene," &c. — Id. p. 10. See p. 22 of this memoir. " Truely I haue beene ashamed to heare some ascertayned reportes of hys most woefull and rascall estate ; how the wretched fellow, or shall I say the prince of beggai's, laid all to gage for some few shillinges ; and was attended by lice ; and would pittifully beg a penny-pott of Malmesie ; and could not gett any of his old acquaintance to comfort or visite him in his extremity but Mistris Appleby and the mother of Infortunatus. Alas, euen his fellow- writer, a proper yong man if aduised in time, that was a principall guest at that fatall banquet of pickle-herring (I spare his name, and in some respectes wish him well), came neuer more at him ; but either would not, or happily could not, performe the duty of an affectionate and fiiithfull frend. The poore cordwainers wife was his onely nurse, and the mother of Infortunatus hys sole companion, but when Mistresse Appleby came, as much to expostulate iniuries with her as to visite him." — Id. p. 10. ' ' His hostisse Isam, with teares in her eies and sighes from a deeper fountaine (for she loued him derely), tould me of his lamentable begging of a penny-pott of Malmesy ; and, sir reuerence, Low lowsy he and the mother of Infortunatus were (I would her surgeon found her no worse then lowsy !) ; and how he was faine, poore soule, to borrow her husbandes shirte, whUes bis owne was a washing; and how his dublet and hose and sword were sold for three shillinges ; and beside the charges of his winding sheete, which was foure shillinges, and the charges of hys buriall yesterday in the New-churchyard neere Bedlam, which was six shillinges and foure pence, how deeply hee was indebted to her poore husbande, as appeered by hys owne bonde of tenne poundes ; which the good woman kindly shewed me, and beseeched me to read the writting beneath, which was a letter to his abandoned wife in the behalfe of his gentle host, not so short as persuasible in the beginning and pittifuU in the ending." — -Id. p. 11. " Greene surfeted not of pickeld hearing, but of an exceeding feare of his [Harvey's] familiar epistles." — Nash's Strange Newes, &c. 1592, Sig. D 4. " For the lowsie circumstance of his pouerty before his death, and sending that miserable writte to his wife, it cannot be but thou lyest, learned Gabriell. ' ' I, and one of my fellowes Will. Monox (hast thou neuer heard of him and his great dagger ?), were in company with him, a month before he died, at that fatall banquet of Rhenish wine and pickled hearing (if thou wilt needs haue it so) ; and then the inuentorie of his apparrell came to more than three shillings (though thou saist the contrarie). I know a broker, in a spruce leather ierkin, with a great number of golde rings on his fingers, and a bunch of keies at his girdle, shall giue you thirty shillings for the doublet alone, if you can helpe him to it. Harke in your eare ; hee had a very faire cloake with sleeues, of a graue goose-turd greene ; it would serue you as fine as may bee : no more words ; if you bee wise, play the good husband and listen after it ; you may buy it ten shillings better cheape than it cost wretched man lay sick at the house of a poor shoemaker near Dowgate, reduced to a state of squahd poverty. The compassionate kindness of his host and hostess furnished him, as far as their means allowed, with all the necessaries which his con- dition required ; and in the latter, who, according to Harvey, had no ordinaiy regard and admiration for her lodger, he found an anxious and attentive nurse. He appears to have been deserted by his former gay associates : even Nash, his companion at the Lim. By S. Siluer, it is good to bee circumspect iu castiug for the worlde ; theres a great many ropes go to ten shillings. If you want a greasy paire of silk stockings also to shew yourselfe in at the court, they are there to be had too amongst his moueables." — Id. Sig. E 4. " Neither was I Greenes companion any more than for a carowse or two." — Id. Sig. H. "A thousande there bee that haue more reason to speake in his behalfe than I, who, since I first knew him about town, haue beene two yeares together and not seene him." — Id. Sig, L. 4. " The manner of the death and last end of Robert Greene, Maister of Artcs. " After that he had pend the former discourse (then lying sore sicke of a surfet which hee had taken with drinking), hee continued most patient and penitent ; yea, he did with teares forsake the world, renounced swearing, and desired forgiuenes of God and the worlde for all his offences : so that during all the time of his sicknesse (which was about a moneths space) hee was neuer heard to sweare, raue, or blaspheme the name of God, as he was accustomed to do before that time ; which greatly comforted his welwillers, to see how mightily the grace of God did worke in him. ' ' He confessed himselfe that he was neuer heart-sicke, but said that al his paine was in his belly. And although he continually scowred, yet still his belly sweld, and neuer left swelling vpward, vntUl it sweld him at the hart and in his face. " During the whole time of his sicknes, he continually called vpon God, and recited these sentences following ; * Lord, forgiue me my manifold offences ! Lord, haue mercie vpon me ! Lord, forgiue me my secret sinnes, and in thy mercie, Lord, pardon them all ! Thy mercie, Lord, is aboue thy works!' And with such like godly sentences hee passed the time, euen till he gaue vp the ghost. " And this is to bee noted, that his sicknesse did ngt so greatly weaken him but that he walked to his chaire and backe agaiue the night before he departed ; and then (being feeble) laying him downe on his bed, about nine of the clocke at night, a friend of his tolde him that his wife had sent him commend- ations and that shee was in good health : whereat hee greatly reioiced, confessed that he had mightily wronged her, and wished that hee might see her before he departed. Wherevpon (feeling his time was but short) hee tooke pen and inke, and wi-ote her a letter to this effect : ' ' Sweet wife, as euer there was any good will or friendship betweene thee and mee, see this bearer (my host) satisfied of his debt : I owe him tenne pound ; and but for him I had perished in the streetes. Forget and forgiue my wi-onges done vnto thee ; and Almighty God haue mercie on my soule ! Farewell till we meet in heauen ; for on earth thou shalt neuer see me more. This 2. of September. 1592. Written by thy dying husband, Robert Greene." The Repentance of Rohert Greene, &c. 1592, Sig. D 2. In my text I have given Greene's letter to his wife as it is found in Harvey's pamphlet. The following passage concerniug her occurs in the tract last quoted : " But, oh my deare wife, whose company and sight I haue refrained these sixe yeares, I aske God and thee forgiueness for so greatly wronging thee, of whome I seldome or neuer thought vntill now : pa»don mee (I pray thee) wheresoeuer thou art, and God forgiue mee all my offences ! " — Sig. C 4. "As Archesilaus Prytanteus," says Meres, "perished by wine at a drunken feast, as Hermippus testifieth in Diogenes ; so Robert Greene died of a surfet taken at pickeld herrings and Rhenish wine, as witnesseth Thomas Nash, who was at the fatall banquet." — Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury/, 159S, fol. 286. ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 57 " fatal banquet," kept aloof. " Of his old acquaiutance," however, two females " visited him in his extremity : " the one was the mother of his illegitimate son, Fortunatus Greene (see p. 22 of this memoir) ; the other was a Mistress Appleby. In this humble dwelling, oppressed by disease and poverty and self-reproach, he languished for about a month's space. Shortly before his death, having given a bond to his host for ten pounds which he owed him, he wrote beneath it the following letter to his forsaken wife, whom he had not seen during the last sis years : " Doll, I charge thee, by the loue of our youth and by my soules rest, that thou wilte see this man paide ; for if hee and his wife had not succom'ed me, I had died in the streetes. Robert Greene." He expired on the 3d of September, 1592. There have been too many of the Muses' sons whose vices have conducted them to shame and sorrow, but none, perhaps, who have sunk to deeper degi-adation and misery than the subject of this memoir. From a passage in Harvey it appears that Greene's hostess crowned his dead body with a garland of bays,* and that he had requested that this honour might be * " When I begin to conflict with ghostes, then looke for my confutation of his fine quippe or quaint dispute, whome his sweete hostisse, for a tender farewell, crowned with a garlande of baj'es ; to shew that a tenth Muse honoured Mm more being deade then all the nine honoured him aliue. I know not whether Skelton, Elderton, or some like flourishing peet were so enterred : it was his owne request and his nurses devotion ; and happily some of his fauourites may imitate the example. One that wished him a better lodging then in a poore iourneymans house, and a better graue then in that churchyard in Bedlam, hath perfourmed a little peece of a greater duety to a laureat poet ; ' Here lies the man whom Mistresse Isam crown'd with bayes ; Shee, shee, that ioyde to heare her nightingales sweete layes.' Which another no sooner read, but he immediatly subscribed, as speaking to the ignorant passenger ; ' Heere Bedlam is ; ami heere a poet garish, Gaily bedeck' d, like forehorse of the parish.' " G. Harvey's Fovre Letters, &c. p. 12. " By this blessed cuppe of sacke which I now holde in my hand, and drinke to the health of all Christen soules in, thou art a puissant epitapher. "Yea ? thy Muses foot of the twelues, old Long Meg of Westminster ? Then I trowe thou wilt stride ouer Greenes graue, and not stumble : if you doe, wee shall come to your taking vp. Letter. ' Here lies the man whom Jlistris Isam cround with bays ; She, she, that ioyd to heare her nightingales sweete lays.' Co)7iment. ' Here, Mistris Isam, Gabriel floutes thy bays : Scratch out his eyes that printeth thy dispraise.' "She, she -will scratch, and, like a scritching night-owle, come and make a dismal noise vnder thy chamber windowe for deriding her so dunstically. A bigge fat lusty wench it is, that hath an arme like an Amazon, and will bang thee abhominationly, if euer shee catch thee in her quarters. It is not \our 2'>oet garish and your forehorse of the jiarish that shall redeeme you from her fingers, but shee will make actuall proof e of you, according as you desire of God in the vnder following lines." — Nash's Strange Newes, kc. 15 'J 2, Sig. F. 58 ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. paid to his remains ; a ceremony contrasting ludicrously and moiirnfully with the circumstances of his death ! He was buried in the New Churchyard near Bedlam on the 4th of September.* Of his personal appearance we are enabled to form some idea. Chettle thus describes him : " With him was the fifth, a man of indifferent yeares, of face amible, of body well proportioned, his attire after the habite of a scholler-like gentleman, onely his haire was somewhat long, whome I supposed to be Robert Greene, Maister of Artes." — Kind-Harts Dreame,&c.\\. d. [1592], Sig. B 3. Hai'vey notices "hisfonde disguisinge of a Master of Arte with ruffianly haire."t — Fovre Letters and Certaine Sonnets, &c. 1592, Sig. B 2. And Nash informs us that "a iolly long red peake like the spire of a steeple hee cherisht continually without cutting, whereat a man might hang a iewell, it was so sharpe and pendant." — Strange Newes, &c. 1592, Sig. E 4. He left two sons, — one by his wife (see his letter to her, p. 62), and one by the sister of " Cutting Ball." The name and fate of the former are alike unknown : the latter (as already mentioned, p. 22) was baptized Fortunatus, and died in August 1593. Soon after Greene's decease, his Groatsivorth of Wit hought with a million of Hepentance, &c., was given to the public by Henry Chettle ; and that it is a genuine production admits of no doiibt.;]: Large portions of this interesting piece, as illus- * See the quotation from Harvey (p. 55, note) where mention is made of " hys buriall yesterday .•" Harvey's letter is dated Sept. 5th. " Thomam Fullerum et Richardnm Bakerum, historicos, et Rohertum Greene, poetam, paupertate prope enectos fuisse accepimus," says Menckeuius, enumerating varioiis literary men of England who have come to unfortunate ends, in his Preface to Analecta de Calamitate Litteratorum, 1707 ; which Preface is addressed " Ad virum illustrissimum atque excellentissimum, Dominum Joannem Robinson, Magnffi Britannias Regince ad Regem Suecite Legatum hoc temi>ore Extraordinarium et Plenipotentiarium." f Harvey taunts Nash with wearing the same unseemly superfluity ; " Methinkes the raunging eyes vnder that long haire (which some would call ruffianly haire) should scarsely yet be bathed in the heauenly teares of Christ, or washed in the diuine teares of penitence." —A New Letter of Notable Contents, &c., 1593. Sig. C 4. There is an allusion in this sentence to a work by Nash entitled Chrisfs Teares ouer Jerusalem, 1593. + Chettle (a fertile dramatic writer, though very few of his plays have been printed) in the Address to the Gentlemen Readers, prefixed to his Kind-Harts Dreame. Conteininrj fine Apparitions, ivith their Inuectiues against abuses raigning. Deliuered by seuerall Ghosts vnto him to be publisht, after Piers Penilesse Post had refused the carriage, n. d. [1592], says ; "I had onely in the copy this share; it [the Groatsivorth of IFiY] was il written, as sometime Greenes hand was none of the best ; licensd it must be, ere it could bee printed, which could neuer be if might not be read : to be briefe, I writ it ouer, and, as neare as I could, followed the copy, onely in that letter [ — to his brother poets — ] I put something out, but in the whole booke not a worde in ; for I protest it was all Greenes, not mine, nor Maister Nashes, as some vniustly haue affirmed." Nash was very angry at the report of its being written by him : " Other newes I am aduertised of, that a scald triuiall lying pamphlet, cald Greens Groats-toorth of Wit, is giuen out to be of my doing. God neuer haue care of my soule, but vtterly renounce me, if the least word or sillable in it proceeded from my pen, or if I were any way priuie to the writing or printing of it." — Epistle from the Author to the Printer, before Pierce Pennilesse his Supplication to the Diuell (I quote from ed. 1595). Mr. Collier {Life of Shakespeare, p. cxxxi. ) has expressed ' ' some doubts of the authenticity of the Groatsworth of Wit as a work by Greene." But (as I have observed in my Account of Marlowe ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 59 trative of our author's life, have been before cited (see p. 17, sqq.) : and I now extract the very striking and impressive Address to his brother play-wrights, with which it concludes : * a I To those Gentlemen his quondam acquaintance, that spend theii* wits in making playes, R. G. wisheth a better exercise, and wisedome to preuent his extremities. "If wofull experience may mooue you, gentlemen, to beware, or vnheard-of wretchednes intreat you to take heed, I doubt not but you will look backe with sorrow on yom- time past, and endeuour with repentance to spend that which is to come. Wonder not (for with thee will I first beginne), thou famous gi-acer of tragedians,t that Green, who hath said with thee, like the foole in his heart, ' There is no God,' should now giue glorie vnto his greatnesse ; for penetrating is his power, his hand lyes heauy vpon me, he hath spoken vnto me with a voyce of thunder, and I haue felt X he is a God that can punish enemies. Why should thy excellent wit, his gift, be so blinded that thou shouldest giue no glory to the giuer 1 Is it pestilent Machiuihan policie that thou hast studied 1 peevish§ follie ! what are his rules but meere confused mockeries, able to extirpate in small time the generation of mankinde ? for if sic volo, sic iubeo, holde in those that are able to commaund, and if it be lawfull fas et nefas, to doo any thing that is beneficiall, onely tyrants should possesse the earth, and they, striuing to exceed in tiranuy, should ech to other be a slaughterman, till, the mightyest out-liuing all, one stroke were left for Death, that in one age mans life should end. The broacher|| of this dyabolicall atheisme is dead, and in his life had neuer the felicitie he aymed at, but, as he beganne in craft, liued in feai'e, and ended in dispaire. Quam inscrutabilia stent Dei iudicia ! This murderer of many brethren had his conscience seared like Cayne ; this betrayer of him that gaue his life for him inherited the portion of Judas; this apostata perished as ill as Julian : and wilt thou, my friend, be his disciple? Looke vnto mee, by him perswaded to that libertie, and thou shalt finde it an infernall bondage. I know the least of my demerits merit this miserable death ; but wilfull striuing against knowne truth exceedeth all the terrors of my soule. Deferre not, with mee, till this last point of extremitie ; for little knowest thou how in the end thou shalt be visited. and fiis Writings, p. xxx, note, ed. 1858) I cannot think tliese doubts well-founded. The Address to the play-wrights has an earnestness which is scarcely consistent with forgery ; and Chettle, though an indigent, appears to have been a respectable nian. Besides, the Groaisworth of Wit, from beginning to end, closely resembles ia style the other prose-works of Greene. * I quote from the edition of 1617. f i. e. Christopher Marlowe. i felt] Old ed. "left." § peevis/i] Old ed. "punish." II bi-oachef] Old ed. "Brother." "Brobably Francis Kett, A.M. of Wimondham in Norfolk, who was bred at Bennet College in Cambridge, and was chosen fellow 1573. In February 1589 he was burnt at Norwich for holding detestable opinions against Christ." — MS. Note by M alone. 60 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. " With thee I ioyue yoiiug Juuenall,* that byting satyrist, that lastlyt with mee together writ a comedie. Sweet boy, might I aduise thee, be aduised, and get not many enemies by bitter words : inueigh against vaine men, for thon canst dec it, no man better, no man so well ; thou hast a libertie to reprooue all and name none ; for one being spoken to, all are offended, — none beeing blamed, no man is inim'ied. Stop shallow water still running, it will rage ; tread on a worme, and it will tunie ; then blame not schollers who are vexed with sharpe and bitter lines, if they reprooue thy too much liberty of reproofs. ^' And thouj no lesse deseruing then the other two, in some things rarer, in nothing inferiour, driuen, as myselfe, to extreame shifts, a little haue I to say to thee ; and, were it not an idolatrous oath, I would sweare by sweet S. George, thou art vnworthy better hap, sith thou dependest on so meane a stay. Base-minded men all three of you, if by my misery yee bee not warned ; for vnto none of you, like me, sought those burs to cleaue ; those puppits, I meane, that speake from our mouths, those anticks garnisht in our colovu-s. Is it not strange that I to whome they all haue bin beholding, is it not like that you to whom they all haue bin beholding, shall, were yee in that case that I am now, be both of them at once forsaken 1 Yes, trust them not ; for there is an rpstart crow § * i.e. Thomas Lodge. His Fig for Momus, printed in 1595, shows his talent as a "byting satyrist." The " comedie " here alluded to is A Looking-glass for London and England. ' ' Dr. Farmer is of opinion that the second person addressed by Greene is not Lodge, but Nashe, who is often called Juvenal by the wi-iters of that time ; but that he was not meant, is decisively proved by the extract from Chettle's pamphlet [see p. 58, note, of this memoir] ; for he [Chettle] never would have laboured to vindicate Nashe from being the wi'iter of the Groatsworth of Wit, if any part of it had been professedly addressed to him. Besides, Lodge had written a play in conjunction with Greene, called A Looking-glass for London and England, and was author of some satii'ical pieces ; but we do not know that Nashe and Greene had ever written in conjunction." — Malone's Life of Shakespeare, p. 307, ed. 1821, t lastly] Qy. "lately"? + i. e. George Peele. § By the "crow beautified with our feathers" and "' the on ely 5Aa^e-scewe in a countrey," it is evident that Greene alludes to Shakespeare, who, beyond all doubt, began to cater for the stage by altering the works of other dramatists: — "our feathers" must mean certain plays which had been written, either separately or conjointly, by Greene, Marlowe, Lodge, or Peele, — It is well known that The Second and Third Parts of Shakespeare's Henry Vlth are founded on two old "histories" entitled The First Part of the Contention betwixt the ttco famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster, &c., and The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, &c ; and that in The True Tragedie, and also in The Third Part of Henry Vlth, act i. sc. 4, occurs the line, " tiger's heart, wrapt in a woman's hide," — which Greene here parodies, — "with his Tygres heart wrapt in a players hyde." Hence it has been concluded that Greene, or some of the friends whom he now addresses, had a share in the com- position of The First Part of the Contention, &c., and of The True Tragedie, &c. : and my own conviction is, that both pieces were mainly (if, indeed, not wholly) by Miirlowe, who, alone of the dramatists in question, could have thrown into those two plays the vigour which is so remarkable in several scenes. (See more on this subject in my A ccount of Marlowe and his Writings, pp. xlviii — ix, ed, 1858.) — A vast number of early English dramas, once acted with success, but never printed, has ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WHITINGS. 61 beautified with our feathers, that, with his Tygres lieart ivrapt in a players hyde^ supposes hee is as well able to bombast out a blanke-verse as the best of you ; and, beeing an absolute lohannes-fac-totum, is in his owne conceyt the onely Shake-scene in a countrey. Oh, that I might intreat your rare wittes to bee imployed in more profitable courses, and let these apes imitate your past excellence, and neuer more acquaynte them with your admyred inuentions ! I knowe the best husband of you all will neuer prooue an usurer, and the kindest of them all will neuer prooue a kinde nurse : yet, whilst you may, seeke you better maisters ; for it is pitty men of such rare wits should bee subiect to the pleasures of such rude groomes. " In this I might insert two more that both haue wi-itte against these buckram gentlemen : but let their owne worke serue to witnesse against theyr owne wicked- uesse, if they perseuer to maiutaine any more such peasants. For other new commers, I leaue them to the mercie of these painted monstei-s, who, I doubt not, will driue the bestr-minded to despise them : for the rest, it skills not though they make a least at them. " But now returne I again to you three, knowing my miserie is to you no newes ; and let me heartilie intreate you to be warned by my harmes. Delight not, as I haue done, in u-religious oaths, for from the blasphemers house a cm-se shall not depart. Despise drunkennes, which wasteth the wit, and maketh * men all equall vnto beasts. Flie lust, as the deathsman of the soule, and defile not the temple of entirely perished : nor is it improbable that there may hare been among them some rifacinienti by Shakespeare of plays in which Greene and his friends were largely concerned. In Greene's FmeraUs, by R. B., 1594, (see before, p.39) are the following lines, which seem to have been suggested by the passage in the Address which we are now considering ; " Greene is the pleasing obiect of an eie : Greene pleasde the eies of all that lookt vppon him. Greene is the ground of euerie painters die : Greene gaue the ground to all that wrote vpon him. Nay, more, the men that so eclipst his fame, Purloynde his plumes : can they deny the same ? " — Sig. C. It has been already shown by a quotation from the preface to Kind-harts Dreavie (see p. 58, note) that Chettle was the editor of the Groats-Worth of Wit, which, as Greene's hand-writing was bad, he had copied out for the press, his only deviatiou from the original MS. being the omission of some- thing in this Address. From the same preface it appears that ' ' one or two " of the persons pointed at in the Address were offended by the allusions to them, and suspected that they were the forgeries of Greene's editor. There can be no doubt that in the following passage Chettle is speaking of Marlowe and Shakespeare. "With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them [Marlowe] I care not if I neuer be : the other [Shak -^peare], whome at that time I did not so much spare as since I wish I had, for that as I haue moderated the heate of lining writers, and might haue vsde my owne discretion (especially in such a case) the author beeing dead, that I did not, I am as sory as if the originall fault had beene my fault, because my selfe have seene his demeanor no lesse ciuill than he exclent in the qualitie he professes ; besides, diners of worship haue reported his vprightnes of dealing which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writting that aprooues his art. For the first, whose learning I reuerence, and, at the perusing of Greenes booke, stroke out what then in conscience I thought he in some displeasure writ, or, had it beene true, yet to publish it was intollerable, him I would wish to vse me no worse than I deserue." * maketh] Old ed. "making." 62 ACCOUNT OF R, GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. the Holy Ghost. Abhorre those epicures whose loose life hath made religion loath- some to yom* eares ; and when they sooth you with tearms of mastership, remember Robert Greene, whome they haue often so flattered, perishes now for want of comfort. Remember, gentlemen, your Hues are like so many light* tapers, that are with care deliuered to all of you to maintaine : these with wind-puft wrath may be ex- tinguished, witht drunkennesse put J out, with§ negligence let fall ; for mans time of itselfe is not so short but it is more shortened by sinne. The fire of my life]] is now at the last snuife, and the want of wherewith to sustaine it, there is no substance for life to feed on. Tiiist not, then, I beseech yee, left to such weake stayes ; for they are as changeable in minde as in many attires. Well, my hand is tyred, and I am forst to leaue where I would beginne ; for a whole booke cannot contain their wrongs, IT which I am forst to knit vp in some few hues of wordes. " Desirous that you should Hue, though himselfe be dying, Robert Greene." Such was Greene's impressive exhortation to his companions, of whom. Lodge excepted, a melancholy tale is to be told : Marlowe was stabbed in a fray, and Peele died in poverty, the victim (it is said) of his vices. To the Groats- Worth of Wit is appended, — " A Letter written to his wife, found with this booke after his death. " The remembrance of many wrongs offered thee, and thy vnreprooued vertues, adde greater son-ow to my miserable state then I can vtter or thou conceiue. Neyther is it lessened by consideration of thy absence (though shame would let mee hardly behold thy face), but exceedingly aggi'auated for that I cannot (as I ought) to thy owne selfe reconcile myselfe, that thou mightest witnesse my inward woe at this instant, that haue made thee a wofuU wife for so long a time. But equal heauen hath denied that comfort, giuing, at my last neede, like succour as I haue sought all my life : being in this extremitie as voyde of helpe as thou hast beene of hope. Reason would that, after so long waste, I should not send thee a childe to bring thee greater charge : but consider hee is the fruite of thy wombe, in whose face regard not the fathers so much as thy owne perfections. Hee is yet Greene, and may grow strait, if he be carefully tended : otherwise apt enough (I feare me) to follow his fathers folly. That I haue offended thee highly, I know ; that thou canst forgette * light] i.e. lit, — lighted. t with] Old eel. "which." X 'put] Olded. "puts." § with] Olded. "which." II life] Old ed. "light." Some words seem to have dropt out from this sentence. ^ their wrongs] i.e. the wrongs done by them. So in Shakespeare's Tempest, act v. sc. 1 ; "Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick," &c. ACCOUNT OF R GEEENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 63 my iniuries, I hardly beleeue : yet perswade I my selfe, if thou saw my wretched estate, thou couldest not but lament it ; nay, certainely I know thou wovddest. All my wrongs muster themselues about me ; euery euill at once plagues me. For my contempt of God I am contemned of men ; for my swearing and forswearing no man will beleeue me ; for my gluttony I suffer hunger ; for my drunkennes, thirst ; for my adulterie, vlcerous sores. Thus God hath cast mee downe, that I might bee humbled, and punished me for example of others sinne ; and although he suffers me in this world to perish without succom-, yet trvist I in the world to come to find mercy, by the merits of my Sauiour, to whom I commend thee and commit my soule. Thy repentant husband for his disloyaltie, Robert Greene." Greene had been but a short time in his grave, when the pen of Gabriel Harvey endeavom-ed to blacken his memoiy in a work, the fierce malignity of which has thrown an indelible stain upon the character of its author. Let us particularly inquire what excited the ovei'boiling rage of this pei'sonage against our poet. Gabriel Harvey, Doctor of Laws, though now only remembered in literary history as the friend of Spenser and the antagonist of Nash, was a writer of considerable celebrity dm-ing his day. He was a profound scholar, and no inelegant composer of verses : some of his productions evince great learning and research ; and though it is impossible to admire his hobbling English hexameters (of which he pompously proclaimed himself the inventor *), we cannot read his lines prefixed to The Faerie * " If I neuer deserue anye better remembraunce, let mee rather be epitaphed The Inuentour of the English Hexameter, whome learned M. Stanihurst imitated in his Virgill, and excellent Sir Phillip Sidney disdained not to follow in his Arcadia and elsewhere, then be chronicled The Greene Maister of the Blacke Arte, or The Founder of Vgly Oathes, or The Father of Misbegotten Infortunatus, or The Scriuener of Crosbiters, or, as one of his owne sectaries termed him, The Patriarch of Shifters." G. Harvey's Fovre Letters, &c. 15D2. p. 19. " Imagin me to come into a goodly Kentishe garden of your old lords, or some other noble man, and spying a florishing bay tree there, to demaunde extempore, as foUoweth : think vppon Petrarches ' Arbor vittoriosa, triomfale, Onor d'imperadori e di poete ; ' and perhappes it will aduaunce the wynges of your imagination a degree higher ; at the least, if any thing can be added to the loftinesse of his conceite whom gentle Mistresse RosalLnde once reported to haue all the inteUigences at commaundement, and an other time christend her Segnior Pegaso : ' Encomium Lauri. 'What might I call this tree ? a laurell ? bonny laurell ! Needes to thy bowes will I bow this knee, and vayle my bonetto. Who, but thou, the renowne of prince and princely poeta ? Th' one for crowne, for garland th' other thanketh Apollo. Thrice happy Daphne, that turned was to the bay tree, Whom such seruauntes serue as challenge seruice of all men. Who chiefe lorde and king of kings but th' emperour only ? And poet of right stampe ouerawith th' emperour himselfe. 64 ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. Queene without acknowledging their beauty. He had a tolerable share of vanity : he plumed himself on his intimacy with the great ; and courting notoriety by the richness and peculiarity of his attire, he affected the Venetian costume after his return from Italy. Moving in the world's eye as the friend and associate of some of his most distinguished contemporaries, he was weak enough to be extremely anxious to conceal one vexatious fact ; namely, that his father, though a man of good family, had been a rope-maker at Saffron- Walden. He had two brothers, Eichard a divine, and John a physician : with them he became a dabbler in astrology, and a progtios- ticator of earthquakes ; but the course of events not agreeing with their predictions, they had to undergo much bitter ridicule. In evil hour did Richard Harvey in one of his publications speak slightingly and insultingly of the fraternity of poets to which Greene belonged. Our author determined not to allow this impertinence to pass unpunished ; and having reason to believe that Gabriel's " hand was in it," he resolved to take vengeance on the Harveys at one fell swoop.* Accordingly in his Who but knowes Aretyne ? was he not halfe prince to the princes ? And many a one there lines as nobly minded at all poyntes. Kow farewell, bay tree, very queene and goddesse of all trees, Kitchest perle to the crowne, and fayrest floure to the garland. Faine wod I craue, might I so presume, some farther acquaintaunce : that I might ! but I may not : woe«to my destinie therefore ! Trust me, not one more loyall seruaunt longes to thy personage. But what sayes Daphne ? Non omni dormio : worse lucke : Yet farewell, farewell, the reward of those that I honour : Glory to garden ! glory to Muses ! glory to vertue ! ' Partim loui et Palladi, Partini Apollini et Afusis." G. Harvey's Three proper and wittie familiar Letters, &c. 1580. p. 34. Nash thus alludes to, and parodies, the precious effusion last quoted ; " Tyll Greene awakte him out of his selfe-admiring contemplation, hee had nothing to doe, but walke vnder the ewe tree at Trinitie hall, and say ; ' What may I call this tree ? an ewe tree ? bonny ewe tree ! Needes to thy boughs will [I] bow this knee, and vaile my bonneto.' " Or make verses of weathercocks on the top of steeples, as he did once of the weathercocke of Alhallows in Cambridge ; * thou weathercocke that stands on the top of the Church of Alhallows, Come thy waies down, if thou darst for thy crowne, and take the wall o' vs.' * " heathenish and pagan hexamiters ! Come thy waies down from thy doctourship, and learne thy Primer of Poetry ouer again ; for certainly thy pen is in state of a reprobate with all men of iudgement and reckoning." Strange Newes, &c. 1592, Sig. D 2. Peele too ridicules the Encomium Lauri in his Old Wives Tale by putting a line of it into the mouth of Huanebango. * "Somewhat 1 am priuie to the cause of Greenes inueighing against the three brothers. Thy hot- spirited brother Richard (a notable ruffian with his pen) hauing first tooke vpon him in his blundring Persiual to play the lacke of both sides twixt Martin and vs, and snarled priuily at Pap-hatchet, Pasqulll, and others, that opposde themselues against the open slaunder of that mightie platformer of atheisme, presently after dribbed forth another fooles bolt, a booke I shoulde say, which he christened The Lamhe of God Not mee alone did hee reuile and dare to the combat, but glickt at Pap-hatchet once more, and mistermed all our other poets and writers about London ' piperly * o' vs] Old ed. "on vs." ACCOUNT OF K GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. 65 Quip for an XJiMart Courtier, or A quaint disjmte between Veluet- Breeches and Cloth- Breeches, &c.,* published but a few weeks before his death, he inserted a stinging sai'casm of seven or eight lines against the whole generation of the rope-maker. This tract having been reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany (vol. v.) does not now demand a particular description : the reader, however, who may ttrni to it, will look in vain for any thing which can be considered as at all pointed against the family of Harveys, except the following passage, f " The Rope-maker replied, that honestly ioumeying by the way he acquainted himselfe with the Collier, and for no other cause pretended. 'Honest with the diuell!' quoth the CoEier : 'ho we can he be honest, whose mother I gesse was a witch 1 for I haue heard them say that witches say their praiers backward, and so doth the Rope-maker yearne his lining by going backward, and the knaues cheefe lining is by making flitall instruments, as halters and ropes, which make-plaies and make-bates.' Hence Greene, beeing cbiefe agent for the companie (for hee writ more than foure other, how well I will not say, but Sat cito, si sat bene), tooke occasion to canuaze him a little in his Cloth-breeches and Veluet-breeches ; and because by some probable collections hee gest the elder brothers hand was in it, he coupled them both in one yoake, and, to fulfill the prouerbe Tria sunt omnia, thrust in the third brother who made a perfect parriall of pamphleters. About some seauea or eight lines it was which hath pluckt on an inuectiue of so many leaues." — Nash's Strange Newes, &c. 1592, Sig. C 2, 3. "Mast. Lilly neuer procured Greene or mee to write against him [Gabriel Haruey], but it was his own first seeking and beginning in The Lamb of God, where he and his brother (that loues dauncing so well) scummerd out betwixt them an Epistle to the Readers against all poets and writers, and M. Lilly and me by name he berufiianizd and berascald, compar'd to Martin, and termd vs piperly make-plaies and make-bates, yet bad vs holde our peace and not be so hardie as to answere him, for if we did, he would make a bloudie day in Poules Church-yard, and splinter our pens til they stradled again, as wide as a paire of compasses." — Nash's Haue with you to Saffron -walden, 1596, Sig. V 2. * Greene has silently borrowed the whole substance of his Quip from a poem by Francis Thynn, entitled The Debate betweene Pride and Lowlines, &c. ; which in 1S41 was reprinted for the Shake. Soc. under the editorship of Mr. Collier, who observes ; " But one copy of 'The Debate betweene Pride and Lowlines ' is known, and that is preserved at Bridgewater House . . . . it is very possible that it was never published for sale : the copy in question was, doubtless, presented to the then head of the family ; and it has been handed down, through the Earls and Dukes of Bridgewater, to its present possessor, Lord Francis Egerton. Greene had, perhaps, lighted accidentally upon a copy of 'The Debate,' and as many years had elapsed between the printing of it, and the period when he wished to avail himself of its contents, he might imagine that he could do so without much fear of detection. The initials F. T. only are upon the title-page of ' The Debate,' and it is doubtful if Greene, even in that day, knew who was the writer of it. That the ofifence Greene had committed, in this respect, was not discovered at the time, we have this evidence : — Greene and Gabriel Harvey were bitter enemies : the latter brought all sorts of charges against the former for calling him the son of a rope-maker, in the 'Quip for an Upstart Courtier'; and, if Harvey (a man extremely well versed in contemporary literature) had been aware of the fact that Greene's ' Quip ' had been purloined from ' The Debate, ' he would not have failed to make abundant use of the fact against his adversary. Harvey's silence renders it still more likely that 'The Debate' was never published," &c. Introduction, p. vi. Thynn's poem has no date : but Mr. Collier has distinctly shown that it must have been in print more than twenty years before Greene's Quip appeared. + Well might the editor of the Harleian Miscellany, 1810, exclaim in a note on this passage; "It seems not a little extraordinary that in this general sarcasm on professions and trades, the character of the rope-maker, which is one of those most leniently drawn, should have been conceived to point so spitefully and villainously at Gabriel Harvey's father," &c. — Vol. v. p. 410. " How is he [Gabriel's father] abused ? Instead of his name, hee is called by the craft hee gets his liuing with." Nash's Stranrje Ncwcs, kc. 1592, Sig. D. r 66 ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. diners desperate men hang themselues with.' " Sig. D 3, ed. 1592. The truth is (and I cannot but wonder that the fact should have escaped the notice of those biographers and critics who have written concerning Greene and Harvey) that the lines which so mortally oflFended Gabriel were suppressed by oiu- author : it should seem that the obnoxious page was cancelled ; and perhaps not a single uncastrated copy of the Quij has descended to our times. I at first imagined that the attack on the three coxcombs had only been handed about in MS., but I have now no doubt that it formed part of the original edition of the tract : Christopher Bird expressly mentions « the publica- Hon of that vile pamphlet " see his letter in the note below, where the different motives that Harvey and Nash have assigned to Greene for the suppression of the passage will also be found.* In the "three brothers' legend" their various foibles were no doubt most provokingly touched on. To it Nash alludes thus; "It was not for nothing, brother Richard, that Greene told you you kist your parishioners wiues with holy kisses," (fee. Strange Neives, &c. 1592, Sig. C 4. ; again, " Tubalcan, alias TubaU, first founder of Famers Hall, heere is a great complaint made, that vtriitsqiie academice Rohertus Greene hath mockt thee, because liee saide that, as thou wert the first inuenter of musicke, so Gabriell Howliglasse was the first inuenter of English hexameter verses." Id. Sig. G 2. ; and again ; " One of the three {whom the Qicip * Christopher Bird writes thus from Walden, 29tli August, 1592, to Emanuel Demetrius in London ; " In steed of other nouels [i. e. news] I sende you my opinion, in a plaine hut true sonnet, rpon the famous new worke intituled A Quippe for an vpstart Courtier, or, forsooth, A quaimt Dispute betweene Veluet-breeche.s and Cloth-breeches ; as fantasticall and fond a dialogue as I hane seene, and, for some particulars, one of the most licentious and intollerable inuectiues that euer I read. Wherein the leawd fellow and impudent rayler, in an odious and desperate moode, without any other cause or reason, amongst sondry other persons notoriously deffamed, most spitefully and villanously abuseth an auncient neighbour of mine, one M. Haruey, a right honest man of good reckoninge, and one that aboue twenty yeres since bare the chiefest office in Walden with good credite ; and hath mainetained foure sonnes in Cambridge and else where with great charges, all sufficiently able to aunsweare for themselues, and three (in spite of some few Greenes) vniuersally well reputed in both vniuersities and through the whole realrae. Whereof one, returning sicke from Norwich to Linne, in luly last, was past sence of any such malicious iniury, before the publication of that vile pamphlet." — Fovre Letters and certaine Sonnets, 1592, p. 3. In the same work Gabriel Harvey says ; "In his extreamest want he [Greene] offered ten or, rather then faile, twenty shilllnges to the printer (a huge som with him at that instant) to leaue out the matter of the three brothers ; with confession of his great feare to be called Coram for those forged imputations." — p. 5. To which Nash replies ; " Haud facile credo, I am sure the printer, beeing of that honestie that I take him for, will not affirme it. " Marry, this I must say ; there was a learned doctour of phisicke (to whom Greene in his sickenesse sent for counsaile) that, hauing read ouer the booke of Veluet-breeches and Cloth -breeches, and laughing merrilie at the tliree brothers legend, wild [i. e. wished, desired] Green in any case either to mittigate it or leaue it out ; not for any extraordinarie account hee made of the fraternitie of fooles, but for one of them was proceeded in the same facultie of phisicke hee profest, and willinglie hee would haue none of that excellent calling ill spoken off. This was the cause of the altring of it, the feare of his phisitions displeasure, not any feare else." Strange Newes, &c. ed. 1592, Sig. D 4. ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HJS WRITINGS. 67 entitles the Phpsitiony &c. Id. Sig. D. Greene having died soon after he had shot this shaft of ridicule at the Harveys, Gabriel, disappointed in his hopes of punishing by a legal process the calumniator of himself and family, meanly spit his venom on the poet's grave. That his Fovre Letters, and certaine Sonnets* &c. 1592, contain an authentic account of the last hours of Greene, I have already expressed my conviction : it was derived, Harvey tells us, from the woman who attended as nurse on the dying man; and I cannot believe that he whom Spenser thought worthy of his friendship, and honoured with a noble sonnet,t would ever have stooped to falsehood. Let it not be supposed, however, that the virulence of Harvey does not fill me with disgnist : every one possessed of the slightest sensibility must be shocked at his attempt to deface the monument of the dead.;}: Several passages from the Fovre Letters, &g., have been cited in the course of this essay, see p. 55 (note), p. 57 (note), p. 63 (note), p. 66 (note) ; and an ampler specimen of them is now subjoined : "Whiles I was thus, or to like effecte, resoluing with myselfe, and discoursing with some speciall frendes, not onely writing \Tito you, I was suddainely certified that the king of the paper stage (so the gentleman tearmed Greene) had played his last part, and was gone to Tarleton : whereof, I protest, I was nothing glad, as was expected, but vnfainedly sory ; aswell because I could haue wished he had taken his leaue with a more charitable farewell, as also because I was depriued of that remedy * Fovre Letters, and certains Sonnets: Especially touching Robert Greene, and other parties, hy him abused : But incidently of diuers excellent persons, and some matters of note. To all courteous mindes, that will voutchsafe the reading. London Imprinted by John Wolfe, 1592. 4to. t " To the right worshipfull, my singular good frend, M. Gabriell Haruey, Doctor of the Lawes. Haniey, the[e] happy aboue happiest men I read, that, sitting like a looker-on Of this worldes stage, doest note with critique pea The sharpe dislikes of each condition ; And as one carelesse of suspition, Ne fa\\Tiest for the fauour of the great, Ne fearest foolish reprehension Of faulty men, which daunger to thee threat ; But freely doest, of what thee list, entreat, Like a great lord of peerelesse liberty, Lifting the good vp to high honours seat, And the euill damning euermore to dy : For life and death is in thy doomefull writing ; So thy renowme Hues euer by endighting. Dublin, this xviii of July, 1586, Tour deuoted frend duiing life, Edmund Spencer." G. Harvey's Fovre Letters, &c. 1592, p. 75. J "As Achilles tortured the deade bodie of Hector, and as Antonius and his wife Fulvia tormented the liuelesse corps of Cicero, so Gabriell Harvey hath shewed the same inhumanitie to Greene that lies full low in his graue." Meres'a Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury, 1598, fol. 286, F 2 68 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. in law that I enteuded against him, in the behalfe of my father, whose honest reputation I was in many dueties to tender. Yet to some conceited witt, that could take delight to discouer knaueries, or were a fitte person to augment the history of conny-catchers, Lord, what a pregnant occasion were here presented to display leaud vanity in his liuely couUours, and to decipher the veiy misteries of that base arte! Petty cooseners are not woorth the naming : he, they say, was the monarch of crosbiters, and the very emperour of shifters. I was altogether vnacquainted with the man, and neuer once saluted him by name : but who in London hath not heard of his dissolute and licentious liuing ; his fonde disguisinge of a Master of Arte with ruffianly haire, vnseemely apparell, and more vnseemelye company ; his vaineglorious and Thrasonicall brauinge ; his piperly extemporizing and Tarletonizing ; his apishe counterfeiting of euery ridiculous and absurd toy ; his fine coosening of iuglers, and finer iugling with cooseners ; hys villainous cogging and foisting ; his monstrous swearinge and homble forsweai'ing ; his impious profaning of sacred textes ; his other scandalous and blasphemous rauinge ; his riotous and outragious surfeitinge ; his continuall shifting of lodginges ; his plausible musteringe and banquettinge of roystel'ly acquaintaunce at his first comminge ; his beggarly departing in euery hostisses debt ; his infamous resorting to the Banckeside, Shorditch, Southwarke, and other filthy hauntes ; his obscure Im-kinge in basest comers ; his pawning of his sword, cloake, and what not, when money came short ; his impudent pamphletting, phantasticall interludhig, and desperate libelling, when other coosening shiftes failed ; his imployinge of Ball (siu-named Cuttinge Ball), till he was intercepted at Tibome, to leauy a crew of his trustiest companions to guarde him in daunger of arrestes ; his keping of the foresaid Balls sister, a sorry ragged queane, of whome hee had his base Sonne Infortunatus Greene ; his forsaking of his owne wife, too honest for such a husband ; — particulars are infinite ; — ^liis contemning of superiours, deriding of other [othes?], and defying of all good order 1 Compare base fellowes and noble men together, and what in a manner wanted he of the ruffianly and variable nature of Catihne or Antony, but the honom'able fortunes of Catiline and Antony 1 They that haue seene much more then I haue heard (for so I am credibly infourmed) can relate straunge and almost incredible comedies of his monstrous disposition : wherewith I am not to infect the aire or defile this paper." — p. 9. " How he depailed, his ghostly mother Isam can truliest, and will fauourabliest, report : how he lined, London remembreth. Oh, what a liuelie picture of vanity ! but, oh, what a deadlie image of miserie ! and, oh, what a terrible caueat for such and such ! I am not to extenuate or preiudice his wit, which could not any way be great, though som way not the least of our vulgar wi-iters, and mani-waies very vngracious : but who euer esteemed him either wise, or learned, or honest, or any way credible ? how many gentlemen and other say of him, ' Let the paltry fellow go. Lord, what a lewde companion was hee ! what an egregious makeshift ! Where should conny-catchers haue gotten such a secretarie ? How shal cosenage do for a ACCOUNT OF R GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. C9 new register, or phantasticallitye for a new autorf They wronge him much with their epitaphes and other solemne deuises, that entitle him not at the least, The Second Toy of London, The Stale of Poules, The Ape of Euphues, The Vice of the Stage, The Mocker of the Simple World, The Flowter of his Friendes, The Foe of Himselfe, and so foorth. What durst not hee vtter with his tongue, or diuulge with his penne, or countenance with his face 1 Or whome cared hee for, but a carelesse crewe of his own associates 1 Peruse his famous bookes : and, in steede of Omne tulit pimctum, (jui miscuit vtile dulci (that, forsooth, was his professed poesie), loe, a wilde head, ful of mad braine and a thousand crochets, a scholler, a discourser, a courtier, a mffian, a gamester, a louer, a soiddier, a trauailer, a merchaunt, a broker, an artificer, a botcher, a petti-fogger, a player, a coosener, a rayler, a beggar, an omnigatherum, a gay nothing ; a stoarehouse of bald and baggage stufFe, vnwoorth the aunswering or reading ; a triuiall and triobular avitor for knaues and fooles ; an image of idlenes ; an epitome of fantasticalitie ; a mirrour of vanitie ; Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas. Alasse, that anie shoulde say, as I haue heard diuers affirme, * His witte was nothing but a minte of knauerie ; himselfe a deuiser of iugling feates ; a forger of couetous practises ; an inuentom* of monstruous oathes ; a derider of all religions ; a contemner of God and man ; a desperate Lucianist ; an abhomiaable Aretinist ; an arch-atheist ; and he arch-deserued to be well hanged seauen yeares agoe.' " — Id. p. 24. Gabriel supposes his dead brother John Harvey* to address Greene in the following powerful •'SONNET. " John Harueys Welcome to Rolert Greene. Come, fellow Greene, come to thy gaping graue ; Bidd vanity and foolery farewell : Thou ouer-long hast plaid the madbrain'd knaue, And ouer-lowd hast rung the bawdy bell. Vermine to vermine must repaire at last ; No fitter house for busy folke to dwell : Thy conny-catching pageants are past ; Some other must those arrant stories tell. These hungry wormes thiuke long for their repast : Come on : I pardon thy offence to me ; It was thy liuing : be not so aghast ; A foole and [a] phisition may agree : And for my brothers, neuer vex thyselfe ; They are not to disease a bui-ied elfe." — Id. p. 71. To this toiTent of abuse Nash replied somewhat weakly in that comparatively small portion of his Strange Newes,\ &c., 1592, which is devoted to the subject of * See the latter part of the quotation from Christopher Bird's letter, note, p. 66. + Stravge Newes, Of (he intercepting certain e Letters, and a Conuoy of Verses, as they were go^ng Priuilie to victuall the Low Countries. Unda impeUitur unda. By Tho. Nashe Gentleman. Printed 1592, 4to. I believe this piece was never reprinted, but was again put forth with a new title- 70 ACCOUNT OF R. GREENE AND HIS WRITINGS. Greene. He seems to have felt that little could be said in defence of the character of his companion, and is evidently anxious to show that no particular intimacy had existed between them. Most of what relates to Greene in the Strange Newes, o&c, has been page as The Apologie of Pierce Pennilesse, or Strange Newes, Of the intercepting certaine Letters, &c!l593. Chettle imagines the dead poet to write the following letter to Nash. "Robert Greene to Pierce Pennilesse. "Pierce, if thy carrier had beene as kinds to me as I expected, I could haue dispatched long since my letters to thee : but it is here as in the world, donum a dando deriuatur ; where there is nothing to giue, there is nothing to be got. But hauing now found meanes to send to thee, I will certifie thee a little of my disquiet after death, of which I thiuke thou either hast not heard or wilt not conceiue. " Hauing with humble penitence besought pardon for my infinite sinnes, and paid the due to death, euen in my graue was I scarse layde, when Enuie (no fit companion for Art) spit out her poyson, to disturbe my rest. Aduersus mortuos helium suscipere, inhumanum est : there is no glory gained by breaking a deade mans skull. P ascitur in viuis liuor, post fata quiescit : yet it appeares contrary in some, that inueighing against my workes, my pouertie, my life, my death, my burial, haue omitted nothing that may seeme malitious. For my bookes, of what kind soeuer, I refer their commendation or dispraise to those that haue read them : onely for my last labours, affirming, my intent was to reproue vice, and lay open such villanies as had beene very necessary to be made knowne, whereof my Blacke Boohe, if euer it see light, can sufficiently witnesse. " But for my pouertie, mee thinkes wisedome would haue brideled that inuectiue ; for cuiuis potest accidere, quod cuiquam potest. The beginning of my dispraisers is knowne ; of their end they are not sure. For my life, it was to none of them at any time hurtful ; for my death, it was repentant ; my buriall like a Christians. Alas that men so hastily shoiild run, To write their own dispraise as they haue done ! ' ' For my reuenge, it suffices, that euery halfe-eyd humanitian may account it, instar belluarum immanissimarum sceuire in cadauer. For the iniurie ofited thee, I know I need not bring oyle to thy fire. And albeit I would disswade thee from more inuectiues against such thy aduersaries (for peace is nowc aU my plea), yet I know thou wilt returne answere, that since thou receiuedst the first wrong, thou wilt not endure the last. "My quiet ghost (vn quietly distiirbed) had once intended thus to haue exclaimd ; ' Pierce, more witlesse than pennUesse, more idle than thine aduersaries ill imployde, what foolish innocence hath made thee (infant like) resistlesse to beare whateuer iniurie enuie can impose ? ' Once thou commendedst immediate conceit, and gauest no great praise to excellent works of twelue yeres labour : now, in the blooming of thy hopes, thou suffcrest slaunder to nippe them ere they can bud : thereby approuing thy selfe to be of all other most slacke, beeing in thine owne cause so remisse. ' Colour can there be none found to shadowe thy fainting ; but the longer thou deferst, the more greefe thou bringst to thy frends, and giuest the gi-eater head to thy enemies. ' What canst thou teU if (as my selfe) thou shalt bee with death preuented ? and then how can it be but thou diest disgrac'd, seeing thou hast made no reply to their twofold edition of inuectiues ? ' It may bee thou thinkst they will deale well with thee in death, and so thy shame in toUerating them will be short : forge not to thyself one such conceit, but make me thy president, and remember this olde adage, Leonem mortuum mordent catuli. ' Awake, secure boy, reuenge thy wrongs ; remember mine : thy aduersaries began the abuse, they continue it : if thou suffer it, let thy life be short in silence and obscuritie, and thy death hastie, hated, and miserable.' " All this had I intended to write ; but now I wil not giue way to wrath, but returne it vnto the earth from whence I tooke it ; for with happie soules it hath no harbour. Robert Greene." Kind- Harts Dreame,