Adolphus William Ward

“ But, before this, the dramatist Henry Chettle published a pamphlet from the hand of the unhappy man, entitled Greene’s Groat’s-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance (1592) , containing the story of Roberto, who may be regarded, for practical purposes, as representing Greene himself. This ill-starred production may almost be said to have done more to excite the resentment of posterity against Greene’s name than all the errors for which he professed his repentance. ”

“ Fairly lucid in arrangement and fluent in style, the treatment of the madness of Orlando lacks tragic power. Very few dramatists from Sophocles to Shakespeare have succeeded in subordinating the grotesque effect of madness to the tragic; and Greene is not to be included in the list. ”

“ Of the comedy of Fair Em, which resembles Friar Bacon in more than one point, Greene cannot have been the author; the question as to the priority between the two plays is not so easily solved. The conjecture as to his supposed share in the plays on which the second and third parts of Henry VI. are founded has been already referred to. ”

“ By his own account he rapidly sank into the worst debaucheries of the town, though Nashe declares that he never knew him guilty of notorious crime. He was not without passing impulses towards a more righteous and sober life, and was derided in consequence by his associates as a “Puritane and Presizian.” ”

“ His marriage, which took place in 1585 or 1586, failed to steady him; if Francesco, in Greene’s pamphlet Never too late to mend (1590) , is intended for the author himself, it had been a runaway match; but the fiction and the autobiographical sketch in the Repentance agree in their account of the unfaithfulness which followed on the part of the husband. He lived with his wife, whose name seems to have been Dorothy (“Doll”; and cf. Dorothea in James IV.) , for a while ”

“ He creates his best effects by the simplest means; and he is indisputably one of the most attractive of early English dramatic authors.
Greene’s dramatic works and poems were edited by Alexander Dyce in 1831 with a life of the author. This edition was reissued in one volume in 1858. His complete works were edited for the Huth Library by A. B. Grosart. This issue (1881–1886) contains a translation of Nicholas Storojhenko’s monograph on Greene (Moscow, 1878) . Greene’s plays and poems were edited with introductions and notes by J. Churton Collins in 2 vols. (Oxford, 1905) ”