Greene, Robert (1558-1592)

English dramatist and pamphleteer. His most popular play was the patriotic comedy Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, printed in 1594. Among his prose romances, Pandosto (1588) gave Shakespeare the plot for A Winter's Tale. The autobiographical A Groats-Worth of Wit, Bought with a Million of Repentance (1592) contains an attack on Shakespeare as ‘an upstart crow’.

Plays Those of his plays that survive are Orlando furioso (1594) and Alphonsus King of Aragón (1599), tragedies in the style of Christopher Marlowe; Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay; and The Scottish History of James the Fourth (1598), a romantic comedy; he has also been credited with George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield (1599).

Romances His prose romances include Namillia (1580-83), Guydonius, the Card of Fancy (1584), Perimedes the Blacksmith (1588), Menaphon (1589), later reprinted as Greene's Arcadia, and Tully's Love (1589). Some of these contain beautiful lyrical pieces.

Pamphlets In his pamphlets, Greene turned from idealism to sordid realism. They include Euphues his Censure of Philautus (1587), a continuation of John Lyly's work, which provoked the critic Gabriel Harvey to sneer at Greene as ‘Euphues' Ape’. Others are Greene's Mourning Garment (1590), Never Too Late (1590), Farewell to Folly (1591), and A Quip for an Upstart Courtier (1592). He also wrote interesting accounts of low London life and the swindlers who infested the city.