And follow such as Drake and Norris are! "The Old Tale." Although not printed until 1595, Peele's "Old Wives' Tale" may be taken as an early piece that illustrates the grace by which Peele's work is distinguished, and also pleasantly suggests transition from the story told by Wives one narrator to the story shown in action. It was a sort of child's story, told with a poet's playfulness. There was no division into acts. Three men lost in a wood were met by Clunch, and introduced to his old wife Madge, who gave them a supper, over which they sang, and then she began telling them in old wives' fashion "The Old Wives' Tale.” It is a tale of a king's daughter stolen by a conjuror, who flew off with her in the shape of a great dragon, and hid her in a stone castle, "and there he kept her I know not how long, till at last all the king's men went out so long that her two brothers went to seek her." While the old woman talked the two brothers entered, and the story-telling passed into the acting of the story: very much as the art of the medieval story-teller had passed into that of the Elizabethan dramatist. The Princess Delia was sought by her brothers, and sought also by Eumenides, her lover. A proper young man, whom the magician had turned into a bear by night and an old man by day, delivered mystic oracles by a wayside cross. Sacrapant triumphed in his spells, until Eumenides had made a friend of the ghost of Jack by paying fifteen or sixteen shillings to prevent the sexton and churchwarden from leaving poor Jack unburied. The ghost of Jack played pranks, and made an end of Sacrapant, whose destiny it was "never to die but by a dead man's hand.” The light in the conjuror's mystic glass had been blown out by one that was "neither wife, widow, nor maid." The piece included a comic braggart, who could deliver himself-in burlesque of Stanihurst-according to the reformed manner of versifying— "Philida, phileridos, pamphilida, florida, flortos; ‘Dub dub-a-dub, bounce,' quoth the guns, with a sulphurous huffsnuff." The piece might be regarded as a playful child's story, told in nursery-tale fashion with simplicity and grace. CHAPTER VII. NOVELS BY ROBERT GREENE-PLAYS BEFORE MARLOWE- END OF THE GOSSON CONTROVERSY-THOMAS LODGE- 66 FAUSTUS." MARLOWE'S "TAMBURLAINE Robert Greene. AND ROBERT GREENE was born at Norwich, as he said, "of parents who, for their gravity and honest life were well known and esteemed among their neighbours." He was bred also at Norwich, and was sent to Cambridge, where he was admitted to St. John's College as a sizar on the twenty-sixth of November, 1575. He graduated as B.A. in 1578-9. From this it may be inferred that the year of his birth was. at latest, 1560—probably 1558 or 1559. There is no reason for suggesting that he went to Cambridge at a more advanced age than seventeen. Greene wrote in 1592, the year of his death, a short account of his life, as part of "The Repentance of Robert Greene." Since his purpose in this piece was to make much of the evil he had done, we must not accept its phrases of self-condemnation without due allowance. The writer's aim was to help others by putting himself forward as an instance of misconduct that had led to ruin.* Robert * In less degree there was the same self-condemnation for the benefit of others in La Male Regle de T. Hoccleve ("E. W." vi. 123, Greene put his best mind into his books, which were all wholesome, but he was at last stirred by an enthusiasm of religious self-accusation. That Greene was drawn into dissipation by a kindly social temper, that he sank from good company into bad, and that he was ruined by unsteadiness of character, cannot be doubted. But he has been too unsparingly condemned. Even at this day the chatter of a half-civilised world remains ill-natured, light errors are gossipped into deadly sins, ill deeds are seldom lightened in the telling; and if a man be so honest as to own his faults and press heavily upon himself in doing so, men who admire themselves may think they have the best authority for blackening his character. We believe Greene when he says that he fell among dissipated companions. His writings show that he was joyous and companionable, and there might, perhaps, be evidence of weakness, not only in his ready yielding to temptation, but also in his extremities of self-reproach. "Being at the University of Cambridge," he said, "I light amongst wags as lewd as myself, with whom I consumed the flower of my youth, who drew me to travel into Italy and Spain, in which places I saw and practised such villainy as is abominable to declare. Thus by their counsel I sought to furnish myself with coin, which I procured by cunning sleights from my father and my friends, and my mother pampered me so long, and secretly helped me to the oil of angels, that I grew thereby prone to all mischief: so that being then conversant with notable braggarts, boon companions and ordinary spendthrifts, I became as a scion grafted into the same stock, whereby I did absolutely participate of their nature and qualities. At my return into England, I ruffled out in my silks in the habit of Malcontent, and seemed so discontent that no place would please me to abide in, nor no vocation cause me to stay myself in. But after I had by degrees proceeded Master of Arts, I left the university and away to London, where, after I had continued for some time, and driven myself out of credit with sundry of my friends, I became an author of plays and a penner of love pamphlets, so that I soon grew famous in that quality, that who for that trade grown so ordinary about London as Robin Greene." From this we must infer that Greene travelled in Italy and Spain with some idle and extravagant young fellow-students after he had taken his B.A. degree, and that he drew money from home by representations that were not all true. His age then was about twenty. He seems to have returned to Cambridge in 1580, and on the third of October in that year there was licensed to Thomas Woodcock, on the register of the Stationers' Company, "Manilia. A Looking Glasse for ye ladies of Englande." This was Greene's first love pamphlet, of which the earliest known edition is dated 1583. "Manilia" is Greene's Mamillia," of which a second part was entered in the Stationers' Register on the sixth of September, 1583, but was not published until ten years later, in the year after its author's death. 66 In 1583 Greene, who had left St. John's College for Clare Hall, took his M.A. degree. Then he came to London, having written at Cambridge his first love pamphlet, "Mamillia: A Mirror or Looking-glasse for the Ladies of England," of which both parts were completed when their author's age was about four-and-twenty, but which was half finished two years earlier. Young writers commonly learn the mechanism of their art through imitation, and "Mamillia" was a direct imitation of Lyly's "Euphues,” begun immediately after the appearance of the first part of the book in 1579 and of the second part in 1580. The resemblance is as close as it can be in a young novelist with real power of his own, who was to the end a follower of Lyly. The love pamphlet, which had its origin in Italy, over laid the action of the novel with descants of love after the |