About the circles of her curious walks,
And with their murmur summon easeful sleep
To lay his golden sceptre on her brows.
The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe
2. Robert Greene (1560–92) wrote much and recklessly, but his plays are of sufficient merit to find a place in the development of the drama. He was born at Norwich, educated at Cambridge (1575) and at Oxford (1588), and then took to a literary life in London. If all accounts, including his own, are true, his career in London must have taken place in a sink of debauchery. He is said to have died, after an orgy in a London ale-house, “of a surfeit of pickle herringe and Rennish wine.”
Here we can refer only to his thirty-five prose tracts, which are probably the best of his literary work, for they reveal his intense though erratic energy, his quick, malicious wit, and his powerful imagination. His plays number four: Alphonsus, King of Arragon (1587), an imitation of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine; Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1589), easily his best, and containing some fine representations of Elizabethan life; Orlando Furioso (1586), adapted from an English translation of Ariosto; and The Scottish Historie of James the Fourth (acted in 1592), not a “historical” play, but founded on an imaginary incident in the life of the King. Greene is weak in creating characters, and his style is not of outstanding merit; but his humor is somewhat genial in his plays, and his methods less austere than those of the other tragedians.
3. Thomas Nash (1567–1601) was born at Lowestoft, educated at Cambridge, and then (1586) went to London to make his living by literature. He was a born journalist, but in those days the only scope for his talents lay in pamphleteering. He took an active part in the political and personal questions of the day, and his truculent methods actually landed him in jail (1600). He finished Marlowe’s Dido, but his only surviving play is Summer’s Last Will and Testament (1592), a satirical masque. His Jack Wilton, or The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), a prose tale, is important in the development of the novel (see p. [336]).
4. Thomas Lodge (1558–1625) was the son of a Lord Mayor of London, was educated in London and at Oxford, and studied law. He deserted his legal studies, took to a literary career, and is said to have been an actor at one time.
His dramatic work is small in quantity. He probably collaborated with Shakespeare in Henry VI, and with other dramatists, including Greene. The only surviving play entirely his own is The Woundes of Civile War, a kind of chronicle-play. His pamphleteering was voluminous and energetic; and he imitated the euphuistic tales of Lyly.
5. Thomas Kyd (1558–94) is one of the most important of the University Wits. Very little is known of his life. He was born in London, educated (probably) at Merchant Taylors’ School, adopted a literary career, and became secretary to a nobleman. He became acquainted with Marlowe, and that brilliant but sinister spirit enticed him into composing “lewd libels” and “blasphemies.” Marlowe’s sudden death saved him from punishment for such offenses; but Kyd was imprisoned and tortured. Though he was afterward released, Kyd soon died under the weight of “bitter times and privy broken passions.”