…The popularity of Euphues excited much imitation, and its influence is strongly marked in the works of Robert Greene. Born in Norfolk in 1560, Greene studied at Cambridge and received the degree of Master of Arts. After wasting his property in Italy and Spain, he returned to London to earn his bread by the pen. As a pamphleteer, as a poet, and especially as a dramatist, Greene achieved a considerable reputation. But his improvident habits and a life of constant debauchery brought his career to a close, amidst poverty and remorse, at the early age of thirty-two. He died in a drunken brawl, leaving in his works the evidence of talents and qualities which the degradation of his life had failed to destroy.

Greene's Arcadia was published in 1587, and bears in its fanciful title of "Camilla's Alarum to Slumber Euphues," the evidence of its inspiration. Even among pastorals the improbability of this story is surpassing. Damocles, king of Arcadia, banished his daughter with her husband and son. Sephestia, the daughter, arrived in a part of Arcadia entirely inhabited by shepherds. There she becomes a shepherdess under the name of Samela, and meets her husband, Maximus, who is already tending sheep in the same neighborhood with the name of Melicertus. Strange to say, Sephestia fails to recognize her husband, and receives his addresses as a favored lover. Soon after, Pleusidippus, Sephestia's son, is stolen by pirates, and adopted by the king of Thessaly, in whose court he grows up. The fame of Sephestia's beauty reaches her father and her son, who, ignorant of the relationship in consequence of Sephestia's change of name, both set out to woo the celebrated shepherdess. The repulsive scene of the same woman being the object at once of the passion of her father and her son is ended by Damocles carrying off Sephestia to his own court, where he proposes to execute Maximus as his successful rival, and Sephestia for her obstinate refusal of his addresses. The Delphian oracle, however, interposes in time by declaring the identity of Sephestia, and the story terminates as usual in weddings and reconciliations.

The conventional shepherd's life is well described in the Arcadia and the pastoral tone is skilfully main tained. The language, however, is confessedly euphuistic, as may be seen by the author's comment on a speech of Samela:

Samela made this reply, because she had heard him so superfine, as if Ephebus had learned him to refine his mother's tongue; wherefore though he had done it of an ink horn desire to be eloquent, and Melicertus thinking Samela had learned with Lucilla in Athens to anatomize wit, and speak none but similes, imagined she smoothed her talk to be thought like Sappho, Phaon's paramour.

The following passage could hardly be distinguished from the writings of Lyly:

I had thought, Menaphon, that he which weareth the bay leaf had been free from lightning, and the eagle's pen a preservative against thunder; that labour had been enemy to love, and the eschewing of idleness an antidote against fancy; but I see by proof, there is no adamant so hard, but the blood of a goat will make soft, no fort so well defenced, but strong battery will entry, nor any heart so pliant to restless labours, but enchantments of love will overcome.

Melicertus addresses Samela, whom he finds feeding her flocks, in the following terms:

Mistress of all eyes that glance but at the excellence of your perfection, sovereign of all such as Venus hath allowed for lovers, Enone's over-match, Arcadia's comet, Beauty's second comfort, all hail! Seeing you sit like Juno when she first watched her white heifer on the Lincen downs, as bright as silver Phoebe mounted on the high top of the ruddy element, I was, by a strange attractive force, drawn, as the adamant draws the iron, or the jet the straw, to visit your sweet self in the shade, and afford you such company as a poor swain may yield without offence; which, if you shall vouch to deign of, I shall be as glad of such accepted service, as Paris was first of his best beloved paramour.

Another of Samela's lovers, despairing of success, "became sick for anger, and spent whole eclogues in anguish."

Greene's story of "Pandosto," or "Dorastus and Fawnia," which attained a great popularity, and went through at least fourteen editions, is well known as the foundation of Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale." Shakespeare has followed Greene in the material points of the story, even so far as to make Bohemia a maritime country. But the genius of the dramatist is manifest in the miraculous and happy ending which he substitutes for the unlawful love and inconsistent suicide of Pandosto in the work of Greene. Shakespeare borrowed from the text, as well as from the plot of the novelist. The lines,

The gods themselves,
Humbling their deities to love, have taken
The shapes of beasts upon them: Jupiter
Became a bull, and bellowed; the green Neptune
A ram, and bleated; and the fire-robed god,
Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain,
As I seem now,—

are evidently a reproduction of the soliloquy of Dorastus:

And yet Dorastus, shame not at thy shepheard's weede: The heavenly Godes have sometime earthly thoughts: Neptune became a ram, Jupiter a bul, Apollo a shepheard: they Gods, and yet in love; and thou a man appointed to love.¹

The story of "Philomela," "penned to approve women's chastity," is the best of Greene's tales, and approaches more closely the modern novel than any work of the time. It is related with much less than the usual prolixity, and contains two characters of distinct individuality. The scene is placed in Venice, partly in consequence of the Italian origin of the story, and partly, it would seem, because writers of fiction imagined that the further distant they could represent their incidents to have occurred, the more interest and probability would attach to them. Philippo Medici possessed a wife Philomela, renowned, "not for her beauty, though Italy afforded none so fair—not for her dowry, though she were the only daughter of the Duke of Milan—but for the admirable honours of her mind, which were so many and matchless, that virtue seemed to have planted there the paradise of her perfection." Philippo was so prone to jealousy, that he suspected even this paragon, and worked himself into a belief in her infidelity by such euphuisms as these: "The greener the Alisander leaves be, the more bitter is the sap, and the salamander is the most warm when he lieth furthest from the fire," therefore, "women are most heart-hollow, when they are most lip-holy." Inflamed by this reasoning, he induced a friend, one Lutesio, to attempt his wife's virtue, enjoining him to bring immediate information in case of any evidence of success. Lutesio, after some misgivings, undertook the task, and under the influence of Philomela's beauty, found it a very agreeable one. His most elaborate discourses on love in the abstract were met by Philomela with replies fully as long and fully as lofty, but when he made the conversation personal, and declared his attitude to be that of a lover, he was met with a virtuous indignation which fully bore out the reputation of Philomela. Even this conclusive test did not satisfy the jealous mind of the wretched Philippo. Having hired two slaves to swear in court to his wife's infidelity, he procured her banishment to Palermo. By the efforts of the Duke of Milan, this infamous proceeding was finally exposed, and Philippo, overcome by remorse, set out in search of Philomela. At Palermo, he accused himself, in a fit of despair, of a murder which had been committed in that city. But while the trial was in progress, Philomela, in order to shield her husband, appeared in court and proclaimed herself guilty of the crime. The innocence of both was discovered. Philippo, as he deserved, died immediately in an "ecstacy," and Philomela "returned home to Venice, and there lived the desolate widow of Philippo Medici all her life; which constant chastity made her so famous, that in her life she was honoured as the paragon of virtue, and after her death, solemnly, and with wonderful honour, entombed in St. Mark's Church, and her fame holden canonized until this day in Venice."

The character of Philomela possesses strong traits of feminine virtue and wifely fidelity. Philippo has little distinctiveness except in his extreme susceptibility to jealousy—a fault which was exaggerated by the author to set off the opposite qualities of Philomela. The story has no little merit in regard to the construction and sequence of the narrative, and holds up to admiration a high moral excellence. But its interest is seriously impaired by the same defect which marks all the fiction of the time. Philomela is almost the only tale which makes any pretence to being a description of actual life, or which deals with possible incidents. Yet the language, although it has some elegance, is so affectedly formal, that all sense of reality is destroyed. When Philippo's treachery to his wife is discovered, and he himself is plunged in remorse, it is in such words as these that he speaks of his exposure: "There is nothing so secret but the date of days will reveal; that as oil, though it be moist, quencheth not fire, so time, though ever so long, is no sure covert for sin; but as a spark raked up in cinders will at last being to glow and manifest a flame, so treachery hidden in silence will burst forth and cry for revenge."²…

Notes

¹ The lines quoted from the "Winter's Tale" are in act iv, sc. 3. For Greene's words see "Dorastus and Fawnia," in Hazlitt's "Shakespeare's Library," part i, vol. 4, p. 62. The resemblance between the two passages is pointed out by Dunlop ("History of Fiction," p. 404). Collier in his introduction to "Dorastus and Fawnia" denied this obligation of Shakespeare to Greene. But he was evidently led into this error by taking the following passage, instead of the one quoted in the text, for the foundation of Shakespeare's lines: "The gods above disdaine not to love women beneathe. Phœbus liked Sibilla; Jupiter Io; and why not I, then, Fawnia?"

² Another of Greene's tales, possessing much the same merits and the same defects as those already mentioned, is "Never too Late."