mouth of the judicial theorist is stopped by the fact that the greatest artist of the day moulded in this form the brightest and most universally loved plays of his maturity and by the further marvel that he chose the same fragile and even trivial vehicle for the last deep fraught expression of his ripened age.

Pastoral drama of a kind had been freely produced during the decade immediately previous to Greene's first concern with the type. But all these works, initiated perhaps by Peele's graceful "Arraignment of Paris "and continued in the sylvan comedies of Lyly, are expressions of courtly scholarship, compacted of mythological anecdote with varied reminiscences of the classical eclogue. They show no demonstrable trace of that influence of the pastoral romance which was the determining factor in romantic comedy.

Greene's first venture in the new style, "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay," is a medley illustrating to a degree unusual even in the plays of this imitative writer the desire to profit by all the current recommendations to popularity. It cannot be doubted that the comedy owes its original conception to the vogue of Marlowe's "Faustus," just as Greene's "Alphonsus" had earlier been prompted by the success of "Tamburlaine." In the interval which had elapsed since the production of the earlier work, Greene had measured the range of his dramatic powers. By selecting a supernatural theme inherently much lighter than the dark story of Faust, and by restricting himself to the presentation of the most innocent feats of white magic, Greene introduced upon the stage a type of beneficent, romantic conjurer which long enjoyed an unusual vogue. The main appeal of this most popular play lay, however, less in the doings of its two titular heroes than in the conventional romantic portrayal of the love of Edward and the Lord Lacy. Here, in the intercourse of prince and peer with the humble pastoral nymph among the cream-pots of the dairy and the booths of the rustic fair, or in the avenues of the King's forest, Greene found a thoroughly congenial subject, in the elaboration of which he has blended the gracefully unreal atmosphere of the familiar pastoral novel with certain touches of truer feeling and closer observation. In accordance with a taste which Greene perhaps began, the vagueness of the Utopian setting of this play has been relieved, without being brought at all closer to the truth of nature, by the introduction of fanciful portraits of real persons. Henry III and his heir, the three visiting sovereigns of Germany, Castile, and Saxony, and the prominent nobles of the time are pictured in consciously unhistoric lights; while Eleanor — the reward bestowed by poetic justice upon the prince in return for his magnanimous surrender of Margaret — is idealized with an indifference to actual fact probably no less complete than that which permitted Peele in his "Edward I" to paint the same reputable queen as a monster of infidelity. It is generally agreed that the chief meritof Greene's romantic plays, "Friar Bacon" and "James IV," apart from the creation of their fresh atmosphere, lies in the character of his heroines, Margaret, Dorothea, and Ida; and that these figures, together with the idyllic environment they carry with them, are a direct importation from Greene's pastoral novels. The type of woman so presented, always essentially the same, and sprung originally, it seems, from the poet's most intimate personal experience, remained an established figure in romantic comedy, and gave the species its distinctive tone. It was doubtless Greene's initiative which placed the action of Shakespeare's similar plays in a woman's world, remote always from realistic sophistication,—a world of sentiment rather than reason, in which Rosalind, Viola, Imogen and Perdita tend to outvalue their masculine associates.

A capital fault in Greene's dramatic method was always the attempt to crowd into each individual play the entire stock of incidents and plot devices at his command. This tendency doubtless accounts for the dogin-the-manger attitude toward other dramatists manifested in Greene's famous "Groatsworth of Wit." It explains also the mingling in his own plays of tawdry imitations from all the earlier styles with many hasty and superficial sketches of original motifs, ineffective in Greene's presentment, but requiring only the careful development of Shakespeare and other plagiarists of genius to become extraordinarily fruitful. "Friar Bacon" contains much which can only be understood either as a deliberate bait for vulgar popularity or an archaic survival from outworn styles. A spurious affinity to the mythological court comedy of Peele and Lyly is suggested by interlarding the speech 'of the peasant maid of Fressingfield with allusions to Phoebus and Semele, Paris, Mnon, and the vale of Troy. Much of the magical business, such as the spiriting of the Hostess of Henley and Friar Bungay through the air, and the conjuring rigid of swords and tongues, is little more than a copy from some of the most prosaic scenes of "Faustus"; while the final identification of the clown, Miles, with the old vice, and his dispatch to hell on the devil's back are still franker retrogressions to the low art level of the interlude. All this extraneous and illdigested matter, together with the unfortunate attempt to add the specious attraction of chronicle history to a work of pure imagination, confuses the issues of the play, and diverts attention from the strain of fanciful idealism which it derives from the pastoral romance and to which it owes its particular charm. By isolating and developing this special feature, Shakespeare brought into strong relief the merits apprehended only subconsciously by the readers of Greene. "The Scottish History of James IV," probably Greene's latest play, marks a considerable advance in style, but hardly shows any improvement in its treatment of dramatic plot and character. The artificial mythological verbiage, a notable mannerism of the earlier plays, has been almost entirely supplanted; but the author continues to depend for the success of the comedy rather upon the inclusion of a great variety of possible sources of interest than upon the harmonious evolution of a single theme. The main subject is derived, with very substantial alterations, from an Italian novel of Cinthio ("Hecatommithi," 3d decade, 1). Yet the real merit of the drama consists in the idyllic story which evolves about the two heroines, both embodiments of the unworldly type, who live and love, resist temptation, or wander in disguise through a sylvan land of romance wholly antipodal to the world of chicanery and politics tenanted by the insurrectionary Scottish peers, the classical parasite, Ateukin, and the symbolical Lawyer, Merchant, and Divine of Act V, scene 4. The title of the piece and the thin political scenes, lacking equally in verity and verisimilitude, are dishonest appeals to the temporary taste for history plays. They make only the slightest impression upon the reader, who remembers the play mainly for its presentation of the romantic figures and complex love adventures of Dorothea and Ida.

One excrescent element in this medley deserves somewhat more sympathetic consideration. In agreement with the practice of Kyd, Greene has set his play within a dramatic framework, consisting principally of the dialogue of Oberon, King of Fairies and the misanthropic Scot Bohan, — a figure perhaps suggested by Plutarch's Timon. As it stands, this introductory matter offends against the unity of the play, and makes it only the harder to effect the romantic illusion requisite to the appreciation of the main plot. Yet the idea that prompted the juxtaposition of the fairy king and the soured worldling was a bold one, which Shakespeare borrowed with notable success in the most venturous of his romantic comedies, "A MidsummerNight's Dream," and again when in "As You Like It" he made the melancholy Jaques a denizen of Arden.

A comparison of"James IV" with its closest Shakespearean parallel will illustrate the nature of this kind of comedy. Instead of trying, like Greene, to lend realistic probability to the palpably fictitious matter of erotic romance by an admixture of bogus history, Shakespeare chooses the contrary alternative and frankly throws down the thin wall separating the world of fancy from pure fairyland. For this procedure also Greene had indeed thrown out a blind hint by making the sons of Bohan actors in the main drama as well, but the innovation was in his case as ineffective as it was unreasoned. Shakespeare, on the other hand, by bringing his Oberon and Titania into the central plot as actors on