to you youth's pleasure. However yet sickness, riot, incontinence, have at once shown their extremity, yet if I recouer you shall all see more fresh spring than euer sprang from me, directing you how to live, yet not dissuading you from love. This is the last I have writ, and, I fear me, the last I shall write." It is a tale of a usurer, Gorinius, who had two sons. One of them, Lucanio, was a chip of the old block; the other son, Roberto, was a scholar, who disdained his father's way of life. The old man left, when he died, his fortune to Lucanio, reserving only to Roberto, his well-read brother, "an old Groat (being the stock I first began with) wherewith I wish him to buy a groats-worth of wit for he in my life hath reproved my manner of life, and therefore at my death shall not be contaminated with corrupt gain." Roberto planned with a courtesan, Lamilia, to fleece Lucanio and share the spoils. Lamilia fleeced Lucanio, but kept the spoil all to herself and turned Roberto out of doors. Roberto was then led to join the players as their poet. He earned well for a time, but spent his gains in shameful revelry and grew hardened in wickedness. When "his immeasurable drinking had made him the perfect image of the dropsy, and the loathsome scourge of lust tyrannized in his bones: living in extreme poverty, and having nothing to pay but chalk which now his host accepted not for current, this miserable man lay comfortlessly languishing, having but one groat left (the just proportion of his father's legacy) which looking on, he cried: "O now it is too late, too late to buy wit with thee: and therefore will I see if I can sell to careless youth what I negligently forgot to buy.' "Here, gentlemen, break I off Roberto's speech; whose life in most parts agreeing with mine, found one self punishment as I have done. Hereafter suppose me the said Roberto, and I will go on with that he promised: Greene will send you now his groats-worth of wit, that never showed a mites-worth in his life: and though no man now be by to do me good, yet ere I die I will by my repentance endeavour to do all men good. "Deceiving world, that with alluring toys Hast made my life the subject of thy scorn, T'outlength my life, whom friends have left forlorn ; "Oft have I sung of Love, and of his fire; Which made full feasts increasers of desire, And proves weak love was with the poor despised; For when the life with food is not sufficed, What thoughts of love, what motion of delight, "Witness my want, the murderer of my wit: My ravished sense, of wonted fury reft, Set down the sorrow wherein I am left; “Oh, that a year were granted me to live, And for that year my former wits restored! Religious admonition follows, with ten rules of life, then there come counsels addressed to Greene's fellow-dramatists. They contain a reference to Shakespeare presently to be set forth, and are followed by a fable of the prudent ant and the improvident grasshopper. The grasshopper, after lament in verse, "died comfortless without remedy. Like him myself: like me shall all that trust to friends' or time's inconstancy. Now faint of my last infirmity, beseeching them that shall bury my body to publish this last farewell, written with my wretched hand-" Here the piece ended, and it was published after its writer's death with an appended "letter written to his wife, found with this book after his death." Greene began also to write, in his last days, "The Repentance of Robert Greene." It was published after he was dead by Cuthbert Burbie, with an added account of the end of his life. This pamphlet contains one or two biographical passages, besides a dwelling on experiences in religion, which is the main object of these few pages of his writing. "The Repentance of Robert Greene." He recalls how he was moved once by a sermon in Saint Andrew's Church at Norwich, and he ascribes the first great influence of religious thought upon his mind to a book called "Resolution." This was a work first published in 1583, of which there were editions also in 1584 "Resolu Robert and 1585, as "A Christian Directorie guiding tions," by men to Eternal Salvation, commonly called Resolutions, deuided into three Bookes." It was, and it long continued to be, widely used by Protestants as well as Catholics, although its author was the Jesuit Robert Parsons, who came into England with Edmund Campion, but had left England before December, 1581, when Campion was executed. Parsons published also, in 1584, a little "Booke of Christian Exercises appertaining to Resolution; by R. P. with a Treatise tending to Pacification," and this Book of Exercises, being also read by Protestants, was promptly altered for their use. The Christian life was, indeed, one life for Elizabethan churchmen, Catholic or Puritan a truth that few men then had light enough to see. "Greene's Another of Greene's posthumous books was called by its publisher--Thomas Newman, in St. Dunstan's Churchyard "Greene's Vision: Written at the instant of his death. Contayning a penitent passion for Vision." the folly of his Pen." This is a piece of prose intermixed with verse, wherein Greene, troubled by the vanity of wanton writings, sleeps and dreams that he is in a meadow, where two old men come to him-Chaucer and Gower-with in diebus illis written on their garments. tells them his trouble and gets their opinions. Chaucer justifies Greene's use of his genius in writing pleasant tales. John Gower's opinion is that he has applied his wit ill, has sowed chaff, and shall reap no harvest. Chaucer defends him, and tells a merry tale of Tomkins, a jealous wheelwright at Grandchester, near Cambridge, and Catherine, his He wife. Gower objects to this, and tells another tale of the jealousy of Alexander Vandermast, a citizen of Antwerp, and of the trials of his excellent wife, Theodora, to show how, in his opinion, stories should be moralised. King Solomon then comes into the field. Chaucer and Gower bow to him, and he sums up the argument. King Solomon declares there is no wisdom but the knowledge of the law of the Lord, and decides with Gower against Chaucer's view of wit. The two tales in this piece were no doubt written by Greene, but perhaps at an earlier time, their setting only being among the industries of his last weeks or months, when he sought wisdom, but was too much in the buzz of Puritan misapprehension to know fairly what Chaucer stood for in diebus illis. Greene's Greene died of dropsy, which was thought to be not cardiac, and probably was renal. We are told that during the whole of his sickness he continually called upon God. About nine o'clock on the night before he died, “a friend of his told him that his wife had sent him commendations and that she was in good health whereat he greatly rejoiced, confessed that he had mightily wronged her, and wished that he might see her before he departed. Whereupon, feeling his time was but short, he took pen and ink, and wrote her a letter to this effect : "Sweet Wife, as euer there was any good will or friendship between thee and me, see this bearer, my Host, satisfied of his debt: I owe him ten pound, and but for him I had perished in the streets. Forget and forgive my wrongs done unto thee, and Almighty God have mercy on my soul. Farewell till we meet in Heauen, for on earth thou shalt neuer see me more. This 2 of September 1592. Written by thy dying Husband, "ROBERT GREENE.” He died next day at the house of his host, a poor shoemaker near Dowgate, and when his body was laid out the shoemaker's wife placed on its brows a wreath of laurel. "For pity renneth sone in gentle harte," saith Chaucer. Greene to his FellowDramatists. We turn now to Greene's letter in the "Groats-worth of Wit," written in his last days to fellow-dramatists: "To those Gentlemen his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making Plays, R. G. wisheth a better exercise and wisdom to prevent his extremities." His address is especially to three dramatists to whom he might join, he says, two more. The three are, first, Marlowe, "famous gracer of Tragedians," who is called upon to give glory to God: "Defer not, with me, till this last point of extremity; for little knowest thou how in the end thou shalt be visited." Next Nash, "young Juvenal, that biting satirist that lastly with me together writ a comedy. Sweet boy, might I advise thee, be advised, and get not many enemies by bitter words." It is true that Lodge had written with Greene the " Looking Glass for London and England," but Lodge was not given, as Nash was, to bitter words. Others called Nash, but none called Lodge, a Juvenal. Lodge was a little older than Greene, and would not have been addressed by him as "Sweet boy." Nash had first taken his place among writers of the day within the cover of a book by his friend Greene, and among the heap of lost Elizabethan plays, if they could revisit the light, there might be found the lost comedy by Nash and Greene. The third of the dramatists addressed was Peele, "no less deserving than the other two, in some things rarer, in nothing inferior, driven as myself to extreme shifts." He warns Peele to cherish the true life, and to seek better masters than the players. When they soothe you with terms of mastership, "remember Robert Greene, whom they have so often flattered, perishes now for want of comfort." Greene's expression, in this letter, of irritation against the freedoms taken by the players with the poets includes his important reference to Shakespeare: Shakespeare in 1592. |