Elizabethan Prose Fiction | Samuel Lee Wolff (essay date 1912)
Samuel Lee Wolff (essay date 1912)
SOURCE: "Chapter III-Robert Greene" and "Chapter IV-Thomas Nash and Thomas Lodge," in The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction, Columbia University Press, 1912, pp. 365-460.
[In the following excerpt, Wolff argues the influence of Greek literature on the works of Greene, illustrating his contention with numerous and detailed examples.]
The popular request for rapid work from Greene's pen, and the versatility of his own imitative talent for storytelling, sent him to many sources and subjected him to many influences. One of the most widely-read of the writers of his time, he was always in the fashion of the moment. He would, as Nash tells us,1 "yark up" a pamphlet "in a night and a day" to meet a publisher's demand for a "best seller"; and he was nothing if not up to date. Euphues appeared in 1578 and '79, and in 1580 Greene was ready with Mamillia (licensed 1580; published...
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