ROBERT, a dramatist and prolific miscellaneous writer of the latter portion of the brilliant Elizabethan era, was a native of Norwich, and born about the year 1560. He graduated in St John's College, Cambridge in 1578, and took his degree of M.A. at Clare Hall in 1583. Subsequently, in 1588, he seems to have studied at Oxford. From the period of his leaving Cambridge his life was that of an author by profession, marked no less by the extraordinary fertility of his talents than by the profigacy of his conduct, of which he has himself left many curious and affecting records. Of the forty or fifty plays, pamphlets, and poems of Greene which have come down to us, a few of his pieces are interesting as specimens of dramatic blank verse, and as illustrating the state of the English stage at a time contemporary with, or immediately preceding, the early dramas of Shakspeare. Greene was destitute of the fire and energy of genius, but he had a fine play of poetical fancy and command of classic imagery, with a smooth and copious diction, and considerable powers of invention. The true dramatic power, as evinced in the delineation of character and in depicting contrasts of situation and passion, he certainly did not possess, nor was there any approach to this on the stage before Shakspeare, excepting in the case of Marlowe. Greene's tragedy of Orlando has, however, many striking and elegant passages, and in his light comedies are scenes of low humour, interspersed with descriptions of English rural life and scenery. The play of George à Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield, doubtfully ascribed to Greene, introduces us to the forest scenes of merry Sherwood, to Robin Hood and Maid Marian. His numerous pamphlets throw light on the manners of the times, besides detailing his own adventures, knaveries, follies, and repentance. But the most popular of his works are those which borrow a lustre from their connection with Shakspeare. His tale entitled Pandosto, or the History of Dorastus and Faustina, is memorable as the story on which Shakspeare founded his delightful drama of The Winter's Tale. The original story was published in 1588, and was so popular as to have gone through thirteen editions before 1632, when a fourteenth was printed. Shakspeare followed closely the outline of Greene's novel, excepting in the miraculous last scene where Hermione is restored. The geographical blunders of making Bohemia a maritime country, and placing the temple of Apollo at Delphi in an island, were copied from his prototype, as in As You Like It the poet placed a lioness in his forest of Arden, because he found a lion in Lodge's Euphues, whence he derived the groundwork of his play. Such anachronisms are common in the old dramatists and romance writers. Their fabulous stories are quite removed from the region of the literal and possible, but geographical blunders may perhaps be ascribed to ignorance and haste. It must be regarded as one of the idiosyncrasies of Shakspeare's mighty mind, that one so boundless in knowledge, and so illimitable in his intellectual resources, should have had recourse to obscure writers and legends for the plots of his dramas. But no one, as Coleridge has remarked, can understand Shakspeare's superiority fully "until he has ascertained by comparison all that he possessed in common with others of his age, and has then calculated the surplus which is entirely Shakspeare's own." In the Winter's Tale the fascinating character of Perdita, the humour of Autolycus, and the exquisite sheep-shearing scene, are Shakspearian creations—and among his very finest. To pass from the drama of Greene, Peele, Lyly, and Marlowe, into the drama of Shakspeare, is to pass into a new world. Characters, blank verse, language, sentiment, and action—all are different, and all new.

"In his latest work, A Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance, Greene makes a well-known allusion to Shakspeare of the highest interest and value as connected with Shakspeare's dramatic progress. He addresses those gentlemen, "his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making plays," and tells them "there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Fac-totum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in a country." There is no mistaking this reference; and the words "tiger's heart," &c., are a parody upon a line in an old play, the True Tragedie of Richard Duke of York, which line, with many others in the same old drama, Shakspeare adopted in his Third Part of King Henry VI. The obvious inference is that Greene, or some of his "quondam acquaintance," the makers of plays, was singly or jointly author of the True Tragedy, which Shakspeare had altered and adopted for his own theatre. Greene's Groats-worth of Wit was published late in 1592 immediately after his death; at this

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1 Greene's reputation for scholarship—one who had "two gowns," like Dogberry, being master of arts in both universities—no doubt led Shakspeare to follow him in his geographical and classical allusions. In the Pandosto Greene makes Dorastus excuse his shepherd's disguise in this pedantic style:—"Shame not at thy shepherd's weed. The heavenly gods have sometimes earthly thoughts. Neptune became a ram, Jupiter a bull, Apollo a shepherd; they gods, and yet in love." Shakspeare thus paraphrases the passage:—

"The gods themselves, Humbling their deities to love, have taken The shapes of beasts upon them: Jupiter Became a bull and bellow'd; the green Neptune A ram and bleated; and the fire-robed god, Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain As I seem now." time, therefore, Shakspeare appeared to his rival dramatist an "upstart," who had recently shot up into public notice, and commenced his career by remodelling and improving inferior and old plays. How he "bombed out a blank verse" we all know, but the verses so written before September 1592 cannot now be ascertained. The questions, What were the plays? and How much in them was original? start to the mind; but as yet there is none to answer. If Greene could be proved to be the author of the True Tragedy and the First Part of the contention between the two famous houses of York and Lancaster, which Shakspeare also remodelled, his character as a dramatist would be materially advanced. But they seem to us much beyond the pitch of Greene, and have more of the manner of Marlowe. The tragedies of King John and Henry V. are also founded upon old plays; and Greene, or some of his associates—Marlowe, Peele, Lodge, and Nash—may have written them. The charge of plagiarism is at all events distinctly brought forward—the great dramatist was "beautified with some of the feathers" of his contemporaries; but we must always recollect that it was Shakspeare's original editors that claimed for him the undivided authorship of the historical plays, not the poet himself. His dramas "outlived him," as Heminge and Condell finely remark in their dedication, "he not having the fate, common with some, to be executor to his own writings." If the Winter's Tale could be proved to have been produced before 1592, Greene's charge against Shakspeare would be easily understood; but all the evidence, internal and external, shows that it was a much later production. The point, therefore, must remain in obscurity; and however interesting it may be to curious investigators, it does not weigh one straw in the balance as respects Shakspeare's genius or fame. Greene died in great misery on the 3rd of September 1592. At a supper the previous month, in company with Nash and some others of his associates, he had indulged to excess in pickled herrings and Rhenish wine, which brought on an illness that proved mortal. According to Gabriel Harvey, all Greene's gay companions forsook him in his last sickness, and he was maintained by a poor cobbler and his wife in their house near Doughty Street. This humble pair supported and nursed the miserable poet, decked his corpse with a garland of bays, pursuant to his own request, and paid ten shillings and fourpence for his winding sheet and burial. There is nothing in Greene's plays so impressive or dramatic as this last scene, nor anything more strange than the combination which his life presents of incurable folly, meanness, and vice, united to great literary industry. His associates did not benefit by his example; some of them sank under personal irregularities in early manhood; and it is lamentable to see how little classic acquirements and university honours, with all the aids of genius and popular favour, could effect in elevating the tastes and habits of these men, or saving them from the lowest moral degradation.