"Then left I her at six or seven, who went into Lincolnshire, and I to London; where in short space I fell into favour with such as were of honourable and good calling." But though he knew how to get a friend he "had not the gift or reason how to keep a friend." Further he tells us that he had wholly betaken himself to the planning of plays, that "these vanities and other trifling pamphlets I penned of love and vain fantasies was my chiefest stay of living," and that he had refrained his wife's company for six years.
What may be the value of the third class of biographical material, that derived from contemporary references, is, perhaps, best revealed by reviewing the history of the controversy with Gabriel Harvey. In 1590 Richard Harvey, the second of three brothers, attacked all poets and writers, and Lyly and Nash particularly, in a pamphlet entitled The Lamb of God, terming them "piperly make-plays and make-bates," and comparing them with Martin. Though not himself attacked, Greene, because "he writ more than four others," retorted in defence of his brother dramatists in A Quip for an Upstart Courtier (1592), making a satirical thrust at the Harveys as the sons of a rope-maker. At the request of Greene's physician the most offensive lines were expunged from all except possibly the first edition. But the harm had been done. Greene died before the Harveys could or would make answer. Then, in Gabriel Harvey's Four Letters (1592), the memory of Greene was attacked in one of the most venomous pamphlets known to the literature of vilification. Harvey's four epistles were followed by Nash's Strange News, and other controversial pamphlets, in which Nash attempts, rather light-heartedly, to defend Greene's memory. Other writers who take occasion to speak a good word for Greene, after his death, are Chettle in A Kind Hart's Dream (1593), a certain R. B., author of Greene's Funerals (1594), and Meres in Palladis Tamia (1598). Strange as it may seem it is impossible to decide that Harvey seriously wronged Greene in his accounts of fact. Like Greene, Harvey has been too much abused on account of his unfortunate quarrels with men whom history was to discover were his superiors. His pedantry, his egotism, and the very virulence of his hatred seem to nullify the effect of his assault, without greatly militating against the truth of the account he gives. Nash, who is vigorous in his expressions of respect for his friend, is notably weak in his rebuttals of fact. With the exception of some manifest exaggerations, Harvey's account of Greene's death-bed, of his association with Cutting Ball and his sister, and of his son Fortunatus, must be accepted as substantially a true one. Harvey's account will not be given here but it is epitomised when "we come to finish up his life."
There remain for consideration, and in most part for dismissal, a few traditions that have grown up about the name of Greene. Early biographers, among whom was Dyce, attempted to show that Greene had at one time been a minister. This opinion was partly based upon the two manuscript notes on a copy of George-a-Greene: "Written by ... a minister who acted the piner's pt in it himselfe. Teste W. Shakespeare," and "Ed. Juby saith that ye play was made by Ro. Greene." Aside from the fact that these notes are not shown to have any authority, and may, in fact, contradict each other, the probabilities are all against the hypothesis that Greene was ever a minister. Nowhere in his singularly open personal revelations does he suggest that he ever acted as such. Indeed, his expressions are inconsistent with such an idea. "In all my life I never did any good," he writes in his Repentance, and in the same tract he tells of that incipient conversion that was nipped in the bud by the ridicule of his fellows. Surely this account does not sound like the confession of an ex-minister, and these same copesmates would certainly not have maintained silence had they known that Greene had held a living. Considerations of time make it impossible that Greene should have been the Robert Greene who, in 1576, was one of the Queen's chaplains, for at this time he could not have been more than eighteen years old; nor is it at all likely that he is the Greene who, in 1584-5, was vicar of Tollesbury in Essex, for in these years he was engaged in the unclerical exercise of preparing for printing The Mirror of Modesty, Morando The Tritameron of Love, The Card of Fancy, and Planetomachia. The theory that Greene was an actor is traced back to the manuscript notes already quoted, and to some ambiguous remarks by Harvey in his Four Letters. Fleay's ingenious conjecture that Greene is identical with that Rupert Persten who accompanied Leicester's company to Saxony and Denmark in 1585-87, and that this name is equivalent to "Robert the Parson," is discredited on philological grounds as well as for its general lack of weight. That Greene may have now and then assumed a part upon the stage is quite possible; but that he never associated himself with the actor's calling is made quite clear from his contemptuous treatment of actors in the passages already quoted. It is perhaps not entirely necessary to dismiss the theory, based on the entry on the title-page of Planetomachia, "By Robert Greene, Master of Arts and student in physic," that Greene had intended to study medicine, and was hindered from pursuing his purpose by his success in literature. It is likely, however, that Greene here uses the term "physic" in the sense of "natural philosophy," as it was used by Chaucer and Gower, and that he had particular desire to defend his ability to treat an astronomical topic such as that of Planetomachia.
We have, in a disjointed manner, no doubt, presented Greene's life under the heads of the sources from which our information is gained, rather than in regular chronological sequence, in order that due discrimination may be used in constructing the finished scheme of his life's activities. To the imaginative reader there is material enough and to spare, but to the exact scientist there is a bare modicum. Without rash assumptions it seems safe to imagine that Greene's father, like Rabbi Bilessi and Gorinius, was well-to-do; that with the exception of the duration of his domestic life, Greene's married life is substantially represented by the story of Isabel and Francesco; that as a playwright Greene experienced the vicissitudes suggested in Never too Late and A Groatsworth of Wit; and that his death is substantially represented by Harvey in Four Letters. Attempting a bare outline of Greene's life one would feel safe in assuming that he was born not earlier than 1558; that he took his bachelor's degree at St John's College, Cambridge, in 1578; thereafter toured the continent, probably after the 3rd of October 1580, at which date the first part of Mamillia was registered; that returning he took his M.A. at Clare Hall in 1583, and immediately began the composition of love pamphlets and comedies, the latter being now lost; that he married not later than 1585, lived with his wife until after the birth of a child, in 1586 deserted her, and went to London never to return. There undertaking the composition of serious plays, the first extant play is produced in 1587 or 1588, he is incorporated Master of Arts at Oxford in July 1588, and continues "that high and loose course of living which poets generally follow" (Anthony Wood), writing love pamphlets until about 1590, and then, in obedience to a promise repeatedly made by himself, pressing forward the exposure of the devices used by cozeners and conny-catchers, until his untimely death on 3rd September 1592.
During the last twelve years of a short but varied and active life Greene was more or less prominently before the public eye. For much of this time he was easily the most widely read of English writers. His literary activities were scattered over a broad range of topics and styles. In his work there are represented the wit, the romance, the bombast, the Euphuism, the Arcadianism, and no less the new naturalism of his time. He expressed himself in novellas, in pamphlets, in controversial broadsides, in comedies, in serious plays, and in Italianate verse. He was in fact the first litterateur[3] of England, and his prose fiction represents what Herford has called "for English-speaking contemporaries the most considerable body of English narrative which the language yet contained." Twenty-seven romances and prose tracts were published during Greene's lifetime, excluding The Defence of Conny-catching, which cannot with certainty be ascribed to him; and nine tracts and plays, including the doubtful George-a-Greene, were published after his death.
Aside from Greene's remarkable versatility and rapidity of workmanship,[4] his most striking characteristic as an author is his ability immediately to adapt himself to the changing literary demands of the hour. This will be seen to have particular significance in connection with the question of the chronology of his plays, yet it is pertinent here as pointing the dividing line between his earlier and later interests in composition. At the end of Never too Late (1590) Greene says, "And therefore as soon as may be, gentlemen, look for Francesco's further fortunes, and after that my Farewell to Folly, and then adieu to all amorous pamphlets." And in the dedication of Francesco's Fortunes (Part II. of Never too Late) he advised his gentlemen readers to look for "more deeper matters." So also at the end of his Mourning Garment (1590) Greene announces that he will write no more love pamphlets. This work must serve as the first-fruits of his new labours and the last farewell to his fond desires. Again, in the dedicatory epistle to Farewell to Folly, licensed in 1587 but not published until 1591, about which time it is reasonable to suppose the epistle was written, he says this is "the last I mean ever to publish of such superficial labours." That he is sincere in this promise is clear from the fact that, while he published Philomela in 1592, he is careful in doing so to explain that it had been hatched long ago and was now given his name at the solicitation of his printer. We have here fixed a point about the year 1590 for the beginning of new and more serious work. Two theories have been advanced to explain the nature of this work. The one theory, which has among its adherents Collins, the latest editor of Greene's complete plays, supposes that Greene must refer to the beginning of his play-writing. Against this theory there are the strong objections that Greene must have written plays before he made any promise to engage in more serious writing, the strong circumstantial and internal evidence that several of the extant plays ante-date such a promise, and the no less significant fact that Greene had no pride in his work as a playwright and no respect for the calling as a serious occupation. The second theory is that Greene had long contemplated the exposure of the arts and devices of the under-world of prey, and that the year 1590 represents approximately the time at which he ceased the composition of romantic and mythologising pamphlets, which associated him with Lyly and Sidney and the more affected of the university writers, and began the composition of realistic studies in the rogue society of his own time. There is no reason to suppose that Greene was not sincere in his desire to present an edifying picture of the dangers surrounding London youth and the weaknesses and vanities in English society.[5]
The first pamphlet, A Notable Discovery of Cosenage, was printed in 1591, and was "written for the general benefit of all gentlemen, citizens, apprentices, country farmers and yeomen." Thereafter followed The Second Part of Conny-catching, The Third and Last Part of Conny-catching, A Disputation Between a He Conny-catcher and a She Conny-catcher, and others of the same type, of equal or less authenticity. All of these are very far from the old romance in content, in method and in language; Greene is now bold, slashing and fearless, and wields something of the scorpion whip of Nash in his taunting cruelty of assault. Changing his attitude he now stands very near his subject; he writes from among the society he castigates. There is some unusual significance in this new attitude of Greene's, particularly for drama. We shall find, it is believed, the same distinction between Greene's earlier and later plays, not as clearly marked as the change in prose, but definite enough to establish within the dramatic work of Greene a line of cleavage separating the mythology-loaded language and unnatural incident of the Tamburlaine and Spanish Tragedy type of play from the plays of simple poetry and homely rural atmosphere that were to prepare the way for the domestic drama of Heywood and Dekker and Munday and Chettle, and to have a real influence on the dramaturgy of Shakespeare.
Upon the question of the chronology of Greene's plays no editor can afford to be dogmatic. Yet so carefully have the varied spiritual forces of Greene's life been studied in connection with the manifest literary influences of his time, and so painstaking have been the deductions from those facts with which we are provided, that one feels safe in laying down, upon the researches of such scholars as Dyce, Fleay, Storojenko, Gayley and Collins,[6] an almost certain scheme of succession and chronology of Greene's extant dramas. A point of departure is provided by the theory of Collins, often vigorously insisted upon, that Greene did not begin to write plays until about 1590. In this belief Collins is joined by C. H. Hart,[7] who adduces the passage from Greene's Farewell to Folly, quoted two pages above, as a reason for thinking Greene took up playwriting near the end of his life. Against any such theory there are strong specific as well as important general objections. It would require that all of Greene's plays, in addition to half a dozen pamphlets, should have been written between the opening of 1591 and the time of Greene's death in 1592. In A Groatsworth of Wit Greene all but certainly refers to himself as an "arch play-making poet," and in The Repentance of Robert Greene he says, "I became an author of plays and a penner of love pamphlets." Certainly that total dissolution that follows the practices of his calling could not have taken place in two years, nor would one who thus joins the composition of plays and poems have waited until ten years after the licensing of his first tract in 1580 to write his first play. If Never too Late and A Groatsworth of Wit have any autobiographical value whatever those portions that treat of playwriting experience are worthy the most credence, and the theory that Greene should have taken up playwriting late is quite inconsistent with the purport of both of them.