Greene gave the ground to all that wrote upon him;
Nay, more, the men that so eclipsed his fame
Purloyned his plumes; can they deny the same?”
Even the libeller of Shakespeare deserved nothing worse than this! If this is “R. B.” when he was playing upon words, what must he have been when serious?
Another dramatist whom we can get on very well without is George Peele, the friend and fellow-roisterer of Greene. He, too, defied the inspiring influence of the air he breathed almost as successfully as his friend. But he had not that genius for being dull all the time that Greene had, and illustrates what I was just saying of the manner in which the most tiresome of these men waylay us when we least expect it with some phrase or verse that shines and trembles in the memory like a star. Such are:—
“For her I’ll build a kingly bower
Seated in hearing of a hundred streams”;
and this, of God’s avenging lightning,—
“At him the thunder shall discharge his bolt,
And his fair spouse, with bright and fiery wings,