"Frown'st thou thereat, aspiring Lancaster?"
he forgot the important and established truth that Marlowe was imitating Shakspere in the "Contention."
For two centuries, until Malone's "Dissertation," nobody had claimed that Marlowe wrote any portion of the "Contention"; for nearly two centuries, the "Second and Third Parts of Henry VI." had appeared as the sole work of Shakspere, embodying act for act, scene for scene, event for event and character for character, the whole "Contention," and nobody had claimed that he was not the sole author of both. We therefore respectfully submit that Professor Wendell has no warrant for his assertion that "to his contemporaries he must have seemed deficient in originality, as least as compared with Lilly or Marlowe." "Henry VI." was not "collaborative." Marlowe did not develop the type of chronicle history into his "almost masterly Edward II."
But Professor Wendell further asserts that "Greene and Peele were the chief makers of such plays" before Marlowe, and the implication is that Shakspere, in his historical plays, "followed the superficial fashion" set by them.
Of Greene's dramas, only two purport to have been his work,—"Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay" and "The Scottish History of James the Fourth." "Orlando Furioso," generally assigned to him, has no name on its title page; "Alphonsus, King of Aragon," is probably his, as it bears the initials "R. G."; "The Looking Glass for London and England" bears the joint names of Lodge and Greene; "The pleasant conceyted comedy of George-a-Green, the Pinner of Wakefield," sometimes assigned to him, is of doubtful authorship.
"Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay" is characterized by Knight as "the old story of the Brazen Head. There is here, unquestionably, more facility in the versification, much less of what we may distinguish by the name of fustian, and some approach to simplicity and even playfulness. But whenever Greene gets hold of a king, he invariably makes him talk in the right royal style which we have already seen; and our Henry III. does not condescend to discourse in a bit more simple English than the Soldan of Egypt or the King of Nineveh."
This play was first printed in 1594.
The old popular tradition of Friar Bacon and his magic arts is interwoven with the loves of Prince Edward and Earl Lacy. Legend and love story have nothing in common, and their connection is merely accidental. The Friar's design fails through the stupidity of his servant, but no explanation is given of the folly of entrusting such weighty matters to a fool. The love story turns upon the retirement from the amorous contest in favor of Lacy, but no reason is assigned for the resulting trials of the successful party. There is no glimpse of history or of historical chronicle in the piece. Of one thing we may be certain: With all his wonderful power, Shakspere was incapable of imitating "The honorable Historie of Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay."
"James the Fourth" appeared in print in 1598 under the title "The Scottish Historie of James the Fourth, slaine at Flodden, intermisted with a pleasant Comedie &c." Of this drama Ulrici says that "Greene, led astray perhaps by Marlowe, ventured upon a task quite beyond him. He as yet obviously had no idea of the dignity of history, of an historical spirit, of an historical conception of the subject, or of an historical form of the drama. History with him resolves itself into a romance." This opinion is fully sustained by the play itself; James falls in love with Ida, the daughter of the Countess of Arran, but in spite of his disloyalty, his Queen is faithful. James repents for the very good reason that Ida spurns him, but not until he has ordered the Queen to be killed. The murder is unsuccessfully attempted, and after her partial recovery, she rushes between the armies, disarms the hostility of her father, the English King, and wins back her husband's love. The chief characters are Oberon, King of Fairies, and Rohan, a "misanthropic recluse." Rohan has this veracious "history" enacted before Oberon, and so justifies himself for having withdrawn from a bad world. This is the "pleasant Comedie" which is connected with the main action by Slipper, Rohan's son, who plays the part of clown. It is not strange that the impartial critic summed up the review with the remark that "the atmosphere of history was evidently too pure and cool for Greene's taste." The play is a romance from beginning to end; it has no pretension to the character of an historical drama. Mr. Dyce says of it: "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 Edinburg, who is so profoundly versed in the ancient literature of his country, point out to me any Scottish chronicle or tract which might have afforded hints to the poet for its composition."
The play originally called in 1599 "The Chronicle History of Alphonsus, King of Aragon" is based upon a semi-historical foundation, and yet, as the highest authority has pronounced, Greene "has erected such a romantic and fantastic structure upon this foundation, that it would be doing him an injustice to judge his work from the standpoint of an historical drama."